"Respectability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the benevolent.—By a series of unheard-of calamities, a young lady, daughter of a clergyman in the west of England, has been plunged," &c. &c. The difference is curious, as indicating the standard of respectability. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the other hand, the wants of the government can never obtain an adequate supply, unless all the sources of revenue are open to its demands, the finances of the community, under such embarrassments, cannot be put into a situation consistent with its respectability or its security. Thus we shall not even have the consolations of a full treasury, to atone for the oppression of that valuable class of the citizens who are employed in the cultivation of the soil. But public and private distress will keep pace with each other in gloomy concert; and ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... terrified at the idea of unknown dangers in Russia, HAD borrowed a revolver and dagger from a friend, and had packed them in her husband's trunk without his knowledge. Mr. D—— (I remember his name perfectly) was well known in Stockholm, and was a man of the highest respectability. I drove as fast as I could to the grubby hotel, where I found the poor fellow still restlessly pacing the room, and still smoking cigarette after cigarette. There was a perfect Mont Blanc of cigarette stumps on a plate, and the shifty-looking plain-clothes men ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... the beggar's wallet. I have said artist life in England is apt to have such chapters; artist life everywhere, probably. But it is only in England, I think, that the full bitterness of such experience is felt; for what knows the foreign artist of the inexorable element of Respectability? In England alone is the pervading atmosphere of respectability that which artists breathe in common with all other men—respectability, that English moral climate, with its neutral tint and temperate tone, so often sneered at in these days by its new German title of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a comfortable remnant of the lands, and the pictures of the extinct earls and barons, down to him whose sins had robbed the line of its surviving rank and left it in a position, from an heraldic point of view, of doubtful respectability. Lady Merceron felt so acutely on the subject that she banished this last nobleman to the smoking-room. There was, considering everything, an appropriateness in that position, and he no longer vexed her eyes as she sat at meat in the dining room. She had purposed ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... on as though we were about a dining table at home; minute inquiry was made into the welfare and activities of the Bulle family from the cradle to the grave. On the strength of the respectability of Bulle's relatives we were then taken under the officer's wing and piloted by him through the ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... to say that, in addition to all the rest of him, and of his personal history, and of his family, and of theirs, in addition to their social posture, as that of a serried phalanx, and to their notoriously enormous wealth and crushing respectability, she might have been ever so much less lovely for him if she had been only—well, a little prepared to answer questions. And it wasn't as if quiet, cultivated, earnest, public-spirited, brought up in Germany, infinitely travelled, awfully like a high-caste Englishman, and all the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... a cost. He pictured her exposed to the slights of those whose position was still unassailable, waiting drearily at Continental watering-places till the decree absolute should be pronounced, and finally, restored to respectability in so far as marriage with him could make it possible, but always liable to be unpleasantly reminded, as she went through life, that there had been a time when she had outraged convention. It was unthinkable! ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... week. But, of course, I owed a good deal of that ninety by the time I got it. Well, I paid my bills and then did a fool thing. I got my laundry out of the Chinaman's, put on a stiff shirt and went over to Colorado Springs. It just seemed that I had to have a glimpse of—well, you know; respectability—dress clothes—music—flowers. I remember how stiff and uncomfortable that shirt felt and how my collar scratched my neck. When I got over to the Springs I ran across some folks I'd known back home in Virginia. Richmond folks, they were. I dined with ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Great Britain alone, between the years 1686 and 1800, no less than 40,000 children died in consequence of this practice of allowing them to sleep near their nurses. I was at first disposed to doubt the accuracy of this most remarkable statement. But when I consider the respectability of the authority from which it emanated, and that it is only about 350 a year for that great empire, I cannot doubt that the estimate is substantially correct. What a sacrifice at the shrine of ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... their belief that those who were affected were a kind of sectarians, and on this account they hastened their exorcisms as much as possible, in order that the evil might not spread among the higher classes, for hitherto scarcely any but the poor had been attacked, and the few people of respectability among the laity and clergy who were to be found among them were persons whose natural frivolity was unable to withstand the excitement of novelty, even though it proceeded from a demoniacal influence. Some of the affected ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... was a beaut! Only Worth Gilbert, standing there giving the proceeding respectability by careful attention and a grave face, brought me down to ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... consider, Sir Robert," replied the old squire, all his pride of family glowing strong within him, "just consider that my table, sir, and my countenance, sir, and my sense of gratitude, sir, are a sufficient guarantee to the worth and respectability of any one whom I may ask to my house. And, Sir Robert, in addition to that, just reflect that I ask him to meet my daughter, and, if I don't mistake, I think I love, honor, and respect her nearly as much as I do you. Will you come then, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... career, too, not because she had ever met him, but because for her he was a type study in the evolution of what she called "the extra-legal ego." "With personalities like that, respectability is a disease," she told me. "There's always an almost-open conflict between the desire to be powerful and the desire to be accepted; your ordinary criminal is a moral imbecile, but people like Braun are ...
— One-Shot • James Benjamin Blish
... refreshment and a pasear in town. I judge, with five ahead of you and one in, the clerk was mighty near right when he said about two hours. That allows twenty minutes to each gentleman, which is the limit. A gentleman who requires more than twenty minutes to insure his respectability, suh, is too dirty foh such accommodations. He should resort to the river. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... making in Comanche his dream did not appear at all unreasonable. Everybody in the place advertised, owing to some subtle influence of which Mr. Mong was master, and which is known to editors of his brand wherever they are to be found. If a business man had the shield of respectability to present to all questioners, he advertised out of pride and civic spirit; if he had a past, J. Walter Mong had a nose, sharpened by long training in picking up such scents; and so he ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... country—and that the greater in numbers, in wealth, in enterprise and vigor, in average intelligence and intellectual achievements—the sentiments he had espoused were professed and believed by a great party which prided itself upon its intelligence, purity, respectability, and devotion to principle. In two thirds of the country his sentiments were held to be honorable, wise, and patriotic. Every act he had performed, every principle he had reluctantly avowed, would there have been applauded of all men. Nay, the people of that portion of the country were unable ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... of an English lady on this point seems peculiarly pertinent. "Let women," says she, "of a certain age beware of the affectation of youth, if they would avoid the shipwreck of their respectability and character. As the loveliness of girlhood fades from their cheeks, and the liquid brilliancy of youth departs from their eyes, let them make unto themselves charms which neither the rust nor moth of time can corrupt; let the warmth ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... thought 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 ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... amiability of the Christian character—one who regarded the false distinctions of society in their proper light, and knew how to set a right value upon the influence of good example, and who was "loved and respected for the steadiness and respectability of his character; for the integrity, purity, simplicity, and sincerity of his life." At the same time, the doctor is finely contrasted with his wife, who possessed the common failing of paying homage to her illustrious neighbours to obtain their notice and patronage, and who felt flattered by a collateral ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... The relations between the travellers of the great firms and 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 age would utter the phrase ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... in France is carried out according to the directions given in guide-books—the writers of which nurse the reader's respectability with the fondest care—will of course conclude that the best hotels in the wine districts are those in which the best wine of the country is to be had. This is an error. The wine in the larger hotels is almost invariably ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... sixty miles; even if it were necessary to travel through the night, you could continue to make way, although more slowly; and finally, if you were of a temper to brook delay, and did not exact from all persons the haste or energy of Hotspurs, the whole system in those days was full of respectability and luxurious ease, and well fitted to renew the image of the home you had left, if not in its elegances, yet in all its substantial comforts. What cosy old parlors in those days! low roofed, glowing ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Monsieur," of a quiet man who did not know me, but turned out from his remarks, to be Picault, the owner of the mansion. His observations were general and of a kind of a conciliatory tone, and seemed to be each uttered after grave deliberation. There was a prudence and respectability and an air of inoffensiveness about his manner which indicated the quiet merchant of means. He spoke of Madame De Rheims with great respect, and drew my attention to quondam Mlle. Alvarez, the New Orleans beauty, as ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... extended seacoast, her numerous bays, rivers, and harbors, render it highly probable that the day is not far distant when the maritime interests of Maine will exceed that of any of her sister States; and if reliance can be placed upon the statements of a scientific engineer of high respectability and standing, who has during the past year, under the direction of the government of this State and our parent Commonwealth, made a geological survey of a portion of our State, it may be doubted whether ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... not born, or originally a resident, 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 years; and, by his marriage, had ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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
... secret ambition to learn the violoncello, Mr Otkinson having in stock a violoncello that had never found a proper customer. His progress with the 'cello had been such that the theatre people offered him an engagement, which his father and his own sense of the enormous respectability of the Swanns compelled him to refuse. But he always played in the band of the Five Towns Amateur Operatic Society, and was beloved by its conductor as being utterly reliable. His connection with choirs ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... of the 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 quarters of the town, and are approached through lanes of the most ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and a devout member of her parish church. Those who had seen Mrs. Ault when her carriage took her occasionally to Ault's office in the city were much impressed by her graceful manner and sweet face, and her appearance gave Ault a sort of anchorage in the region of respectability. No one would have accused Ault of being devoted to any special kind of religious worship; but he was equally tolerant of all religions, and report said was liberal in his wife's church charities. Besides the fact that he owned a somewhat ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... coolness were a necessity of the season; but the visitor who came with keen eyes, observing everything, not because he had any special object, but because he could not help it, took in in a moment the faded air of solid respectability, the shabbiness which does not mean poverty, the decent neglect, as of a place whose inhabitants took no thought of such small matters, which showed everywhere. It was not neglect, in the ordinary sense of the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... This vantage ground he would give up by having recourse to flight, as this would be a virtual acknowledgment of guilt. He resolved instantaneously to assume an attitude of conscious integrity, and frown down upon Ben from the heights of assumed respectability. There was one danger, however, that he was known to some of the police force in his true character. But he must ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... extremely 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
... were difficulties in the way, it was equally true that the power to subdue them was fully within the reach of every man. He went on to represent the happy effects of a change from evil to good; a restoration to usefulness, peace, comfort, and respectability, which has happily been seen in many an instance. He concluded by appealing to his hearers as men, to shake off a debasing slavery; as Christians, to flee from a heinous sin; and he entreated them, if they had not done so before, to take, on ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... self-denying thrift more joy affords Than all the pleasures of extravagance. A cottage, free from clamorous creditors, Is better than a mansion dunned; a coat, However darned, if paid for, hath an ease, And a respectability beside: Gay, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... doubtless seemed necessary to make an appeal to the general public by editorial utterances, in journals supposed to be impartial and of high standing in other directions. In a New York daily paper which claims to be conducted with special regard for respectability and avoidance of unseemly sensationalism, there appeared, therefore, an editorial opposing all inquiry on the part of the legislature into the methods of animal experimentation. It is worth while to see how matters of history were placed before its readers by ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... something of that same confusion of values into which Eleanor Goodrich's visit had thrown him. At the same time it had not escaped his logical mind that Mrs. Constable had made her final plea on the score of respectability. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... proper note! I am ardent. Yet—shall I admit it?—formerly I walked in darkness. It is all due to my father. I have forgotten the prophet preaching on the hillside who denounced respectability as a low passion. But my father, while deeply religious, has views more advanced. He dotes on respectability. He tried to instil it into me and, alas! how vainly! I was as the blind, the light was withheld and continued to be until, well, until a ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... this little lesson in horsemanship was the old town of Abingdon, in southwest Virginia, on the Virginia and East Tennessee railway; a town of ancient respectability, which gave birth to the Johnstons and Floyds and other notable people; a town, that still preserves the flavor of excellent tobacco and, something of the easy-going habits of the days of slavery, and is a sort of educational center, where the young ladies ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... before it." (Neve, 97.) Dr. Kurtz wrote in the Observer of November 17, 1843: "The so-called 'anxious bench' is the lever of Archimedes, which by the blessing of God can raise our German churches to that degree of respectability in the religious world which they ought to enjoy." (Neve, 95.) The Lutheran Observer of March 21, 1862, while defending revivalism and misrepresenting the "symbolism" of the Missourians as the doctrine according to which one is saved by the Sacraments ex opere ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... that, sir," answered Mr. Brimberly, dexterously performing on the syphon, "I should answer you, drink 'e may, gamble 'e do, hetceteras I won't answer for, 'im being the very hacme of respectability though 'e ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... not expect to gain a princely fortune; he expects to earn a comfortable subsistence, and, at the same time, accumulate enough to shelter him in a rainy day, and be enabled to walk life's busy stage in comfort and respectability, and, as occasion may demand, relieve the wants of his less ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... first time I saw lawns. Neat, sharply confined, smoothshaven lawns. Sagging, slipping, eager-to-keep-up-appearances but fighting-a-losing-game lawns. Ragged, weedy, dissolute lawns. Halfbare, repulsively crippled, hummocky lawns. Bright lawns, insistent on former respectability and trimness; yellow and gray lawns, touched with the craziness of age, quite beyond all interest in looks, content to doze easily in the sun. If Miss Francis' mixture was on the upandup and she hadnt introduced a perfectly unreasonable ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... serviceable to Monseigneur." Philippe, who could take the tone of all varieties of sycophancy, became in the regions of the highest social life exactly what the position required him to be; just as at Issoudun, he had copied the respectability of Mignonnet. He had, moreover, a fine establishment and gave fetes and dinners; admitting none of his old friends to his house if he thought their position in life likely to compromise his future. He was ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... plough goes over a field. It is the middle people who are dangerous: they have both knowledge and purpose. But they, too, have their weak point. They are full of scruples—chained hand and foot by their morality and respectability. ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... and he had a pain in his back which prevented him from walking very upright. They did not speak, but in an archway did what they could with pins and handkerchiefs, and by turning up Rudstock's coat collar, to regain something of respectability. When they were once more under ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... a young heart and a sense of humour; but, as these qualities were as out of place in the Randall family as a hornpipe at a funeral, Dermod lives under a perpetual cloud of unmerited suspicion. How he is compressed into a life groove, of which an ineffably turgid respectability provides the chronic atmosphere, is the theme of Grand Chain. And because the author possesses a wonderfully delicate gift of satire and a power of character delineation that never gets out of hand, she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... them with suspicion, not wholly unjustified, for the patent respectability of Cherry's Derby hat was no compensation for the armoury belted about ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... lantern above her head in order to scrutinize the two strangers; doubtless their appearance and air of respectability reassured her, for she replied, in a ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... and daughter," said the duchess. "The mother gets the diamonds from my husband; the daughter, it seems, Mr. Aycon, is likely to get respectability from you; and I suppose they will share the respective benefits when ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... is the Dorsetshire way of hailing the return of gentle skies and genial seasons; a custom of the olden time, which is productive of good feeling among all classes, and is at present conducted with good order and respectability. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... the guests, the first of a series of entertainments planned in their honor. All the notable people of the neighborhood were represented at it. The scandalized divine returned to partake of it, and, seeing Sir Robert in a dress-suit, dignified, polished, of preternatural respectability, not to say distinction, looking the pillar of Church and State that he was, and talking with due gravity of the tariff, free trade, and the like ponderous subjects, concluded to overlook the mad behavior of the morning, and, joining him, gave ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... not sulking, Henry," she replied bitterly; "but I am heart-broken with grief and shame. It was bad enough, surely, for me to be compelled to suffer the disgrace of being a drunkard's wife, and of being, with my children, dragged down from respectability to poverty and rags, without having to endure the thought that my husband—through his drunken, quarrelsome habits—had given people the opportunity to bruit his name through the country ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... a street merchant, but among street merchants there are grades as well as among merchants whose claim to higher respectability rests upon having rent to pay. Paul felt that it was almost like having a shop of his own. He had always looked up to George Barry as standing higher than himself in a business way, and he felt that even if his earnings ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... exhorter to turn the other cheek to the smiter, but had even arrived at the dignity of a halberd in his country's service before his six-foot form required rest, and the gray-haired veteran retired, after a long peregrination, to his native town, to enjoy ease and respectability on a pension of 'eighteenpence a day'; and well did his fellow-townsmen act, when, to increase that ease and respectability, and with a thoughtful regard for the dignity of the good church service, they made him clerk and precentor—the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... 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 a more ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... seen anything of the kind before, my father being an exceptionally quiet and sober-minded individual, associating only with men of similar temperament to himself. With my new companions, however, 'respectability' was voted old-fashioned and out of date, sobriety of conduct a bore. They were fine, dashing, high-spirited young fellows, fearing nothing and nobody, and they didn't care who knew it. They drank freely, constituted themselves authorities on all kinds of sport, gambled, and ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... is one from a letter from General Houston to General Andrew Jackson, to which I particularly invite your attention, and another from General Jackson to a gentleman of high respectability, now of this place. Considering that General Jackson was placed in a situation to hold the freest and fullest interview with Mr. Miller, the private and confidential secretary of President Houston, who, President Houston informed General ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... dying a felon's death between two thieves; in perfect 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, the respectable, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... confidant and firm ally was Consuelo's brother—the alert, the linguistic, the ever-happy, ever-ready Enriquez? It was understood that his presence would not only give a certain mature respectability to our performance—but I do not think we would have contemplated this step without it. During one of our riding excursions we were to secure the services of a Methodist minister in the adjoining ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... profession it has since become, and I have a dim remembrance of their paintings—for in this respect the Stricklands, like my own mother, were very accomplished—being sold at the Soho Bazaar, a practice which helped to maintain them in the respectability and comfort becoming their position in life. But in London they never forgot the old home, and wrote so much about it in their stories, that there was not a flower, or shrub, or tree, or hedge, or mossy ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... Marie Louise had her car brought round to the door. There was nothing surprising about that. Women had given up the ancient pretense that their respectability was something that must be policed by a male relative or squire except in broad daylight. Neither vice nor malaria was believed any longer to come from exposure to the night air; nor was virtue regarded like a sum of money that must not be risked by being ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... sincerity with which a peace will be observed depends much, Scipio, on the person by whom it is sought. Your Senate, as I hear, refused to grant a peace, in some measure, because the deputies were deficient in respectability. It is I, Hannibal, who now solicit peace, who would neither ask for it unless I believed it expedient, nor will I fail to observe it for the same reason of expedience on account of which I have solicited it. And in the same manner as I, because the war was commenced by me, brought ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... 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 the inner, at one end was a bed, and at the foot of it a fireplace, over which ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... of them has a garden (called here a compound) of considerable extent, well stocked with plants, shrubs, and trees, which serve to give them a lively and elegant appearance, and to keep them moderately cool in the hottest weather. Servants' wages being very low here, every European of any respectability is enabled to keep up a sufficient establishment, and to repair to his office in his carriage or hooded gig, in which he may defy the sun. Many of them, particularly Dutchmen, have an imprudent practice of driving in an open carriage, with an umbrella held over their ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... 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 said, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... were not only deceitful, they were more than usually deceitful with regard to these unfortunate people. In spite of their good furniture—that substantial outward sign of respectability which is the last thing which wise folk who fall into trouble try to dispose of—they were almost at the end of their tether. Already they had learnt to go hungry, and they were beginning to learn to go cold. Tobacco, the last thing the sober man foregoes among his comforts, had been given up some ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... afterwards we went down, and wishing the hostess all happiness, quitted the cabaret, returning the same road by which we had come. "Now, Peter," said O'Brien, "we're in a bit of a puzzle. This dress won't do any more, still there's a respectability about it, which will not allow me to put it off till the last moment." We walked on till daylight, when we hid ourselves in a copse of trees. At night we again started for the forest of Ardennes, for O'Brien said our best chance was to return, until they supposed that we had had time ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... interfering with the less respectable of these, Parliament and the law- courts had taken no steps for their general suppression; and, by belonging to one of them, a Londoner of peculiar opinions might have the comfort and respectability of being a church-goer like his neighbours, and yet avoid unpleasant inquisitorship. Then, again, through what the ultra-Presbyterians regarded as the Erastian backwardness of Parliament, those offences for which the parochial ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... loyalty? Such a study of the efforts and sacrifices of former citizens would bring a new sense of obligation to be worthy of the heritage they have bequeathed, and would gradually establish an attitude of loyalty to the community which would be considered as essential to respectability as devotion to one's country. Indeed, how can one be truly loyal to a great country which is mostly unknown to him if he is not loyal to the people with whom he lives day by day ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... say that it was undoubtedly a very "warm" publication, and well calculated to arouse the slumbering Blasphemy Laws. Some Freethinkers even were astonished at its audacity. A few belonging to an old-fashioned school, and a few more who were assiduously courting "respectability," resented our action; although, as the vast majority of our party were of an opposite opinion, they refrained from expressing their reprobation too loudly. In reply to their murmurs I wrote an article in my paper on "Superstitious Freethinkers." It appeared in the number for December ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... is common in our northern towns, their gables to the street, and had narrow slips of closes running down along their fronts,—and that as we receded from the harbor, a goodly portion of their number bore about them an air of respectability, long maintained, but now apparently touched by decay. I saw, in advance of one of the buildings, several vigorous-looking planes, about forty feet in height, which, fenced by tall houses in front ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... people that scarcely know how to read and write?' Yes, exactly. So, like the man in the Old Testament, 'he turned and went away in a rage.' Many of us would like that there should be a little private door for us in consideration of our position or acquirements or respectability, or this, that, or the other thing. At any rate we are not to be classed in the same category with the poor and the ignorant and the sinful and the savage all over the world. But we are so classed. Do not you and the men in Patagonia breathe the same air? Are not your bodies subject to the same laws? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... sire.[280] After the appearance of puberty, the girl (if not married) should wait for three years. On the fourth year, she should look for a husband herself (without waiting any longer for her kinsmen to select one for her). The offspring of such a girl do not lose their respectability, nor does union with such a girl become disgraceful. If, instead of selecting a husband for herself, she acts otherwise, she incurs the reproach of Prajapati herself. One should wed that girl who is not a Sapinda of one's mother or ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that Becky is attractive while Valerie is not, and that there is any amount of 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... up and paced the room restlessly. Suddenly, with Ledyard's recognition, the poor shell of respectability and self-respect which, during his lonely years, had grown about him, was torn asunder, and he was what he knew the doctor believed him. To such, Mary McAdam's request seemed a cruel jest, a taunt to drive him into the open. And yet he knew that ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... during the trial of Halloway was not a result of any desire of systematic persecution, but of a sense of wounded dignity. It was a thing unheard of, and unpardonable in his eyes, for a private soldier to assert, in his presence, his honour and his respectability in extenuation, even while admitting the justice of a specific charge; and when he remarked the Court listening with that profound attention, which the peculiar history of the prisoner had excited, he could not repress the manifestation of his anger. In justice ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... what they could make a day by their trade. It was much less, certainly, than is paid for the same labor in our country; but yet the air of comfort and respectability about the cottage, the well-clothed and well-schooled, intelligent children, spoke well for the result of ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... came back stealthily from laying the saddle blanket, which was the only covering he and Abe had, upon the sleeping form of Aunt Debby, "and my downy couch still waits for me. My life-long habits of staid respectability have been ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... moreover eminently a cultured man, a reader of the classics, in translations if not in the originals, a man with a fine taste in fiction and poetry, and a really sound and ripe archaeological knowledge, especially where sacred buildings were concerned. All his instincts, also, were towards respectability. His most burning ambition was to secure a high position in the county in which he lived, and to be classed among the resident gentry. He hated his lawyer's work, and longed to accumulate sufficient means to be able to give it ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... said Lodloe, "that you required credentials of respectability, or I might have brought ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... meekly. "'Tis easy enough to assume a name, if you have it not. I am told that Lady Sterling is assured of her respectability. She certainly shines upon us like a star at this moment. I did not know that women ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... moral complexion of their career in life. Whether they leave behind them a reputation for flagrant selfishness, meanness, and dishonesty, or for a commendable prudence and judicious regard for self,—whether they always keep within the precincts of a decent respectability, or run into disreputable courses,—depends mostly on chance and fortune. This intimate association of the saint and the sinner in the same individual, common as it is, is a stumbling-block to moralists ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... associate with, people whom in her palmy days, as mistress of her father's house, she would have thought unspeakable. She had none of this generation's tolerance and love of new sensations to attract her to unsatisfactory people. She only really liked conventional respectability. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... is built of a sort of yellow sand-stone, with pillars in front, and trees around it, is a well-proportioned building, with an air of great solidity and respectability. There are in it very fine full-lengths of King George II. and Queen Caroline, and two full-lengths of King George III. and Queen Charlotte; a full-length of Chief-Justice Haliburton, and another full-length, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... much to expect from five hundred and more English gentlemen that they should take the trouble of withstanding the continuous pressure exerted by eighty-six Parnellites. Cowardice masks itself under the show of compromise, and men of eminent respectability yield to the terror of being bored concessions which their forefathers would have refused to the threat of armed rebellion. It is unnecessary to explain how this condition of opinion, under which the best and the lowest feelings of human nature are blended in a current of democratic sentiment, ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... evidence had been adduced, Mr Wire requested that Captain Tune should be remanded for a week, and stated that the directors being anxious that he should receive as much accommodation as might be consistent with the respectability of his character and the nature of the difficulty in which he was at present involved, were desirous that bail should be taken for his appearance on the next day of investigation.—Alderman Gibbs: I shall require two respectable securities for 500l. each, and Captain Tune ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... affectation of respectability did not last long—not more than five years; long enough for the novelty to wear off. The genius or the devil that was in Cecil Grimshaw made its reappearance. He was tossed out of Dagmar's circle like a burning rock hurled from the mouth of a crater; he fell into ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... insight. And for the moment was impelled to make a clean breast of my suspicions,—nay, of my convictions of the whole devil's plot. But I had no proofs. I remembered that to the colonel my uncle was a gentleman of respectability and of wealth, and a member of his Excellency's Council. That to accuse him of scheming for my inheritance would gain me nothing in Mr. Washington's esteem. And I caught myself before I had said aught of Mr. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... proceeds of their industry, to buy themselves positions of importance, both social and political. It was not the custom to consider too curiously the source of the wealth. If it was sufficient to dazzle the eyes of the vulgar, it was pretty certain to prove the respectability ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... marry him at once, and hardly had she done so, when all the evil in his character made itself known, and as though to make up for having so long suppressed his wicked passions, he utterly threw off all appearance of goodness or respectability, and poor respectable Farmer Hamlyn's quiet, happy home became a den of thieves and vagabonds, and a meeting-place for all the lawless characters ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Stanton, bitterly, "she is disgracing herself and all related to her by her inexcusable folly in this instance. Those who pretended to be Sibley's friends at dinner, are now trying to win a little respectability by turning against him, and the story of his behavior is circulating through the house. All will soon know that he shot at Van Berg, and that he made insulting remarks about Miss Burton. It will appear to every one as if ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... nothing in common with the maxims of the copy-book. That many of us lead such lives as they would heartily disown after two hours' serious reflection on the subject is, I am afraid, a true, and, I am sure, a very galling thought. The Enchanted Ground of dead-alive respectability is next, upon the map, to the Beulah of considerate virtue. But there they all slumber and take their rest in the middle of God's beautiful and wonderful universe; the drowsy heads have nodded together in the same position since first their fathers fell asleep; and not even the sound of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... years since Christianity began its work, and it is still unaccomplished. Do you know, I sometimes think that all this talk of virtue, and teaching of religion, is a kind of practical joke, gravely kept up to find a church parade of respectability for States, a profession for hundreds, and a means of influencing men by making a tender point in their nervous system to be touched, as with a rod, when necessary—a rod that is held over them always in terrorem! We all talk about morality; but try some measure of reform, and you ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... approach. This they very soon did, heralding their advent with loud calls and cries, which our two answered. Although I could not actually translate what the jabber was all about, I am sure it was a continual question as to our respectability, and whether we were fit and presentable enough to be introduced into their ladies' society. The preliminaries and doubts, however, seemed at last to be overcome, and the natives then made their appearance. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... of the square. Everything is neat, orderly and severely dull, the most dissipated tenants of the square being boarding-house keepers of a highly sedate description. The secret of all this tremendous respectability is to be found in the contiguity to the Charter-House itself, a portion of whose buildings abut on the square, which, with many of the streets adjoining, belongs to this wealthy institution. Four years ago the place was so secluded that a stranger to London might have walked around ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... foolishly stand in the way of your own salvation,"—and he shook his head with doleful gentleness. "Moreover, Froeken Thelma, though it sorely distresses me to speak of it,—it is my duty, as a minister of the Lord, to remind you that an honest marriage,—a marriage of virtue and respectability such as I propose, is the only way to restore your reputation,—which, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... frontier frankness. He was evidently a man who had seen cities and knew countries as well. And while he was dressed with the comfortable simplicity of a Californian mounted traveler, her inexperienced but feminine eye detected the keynote of his respectability in the carefully-tied bow of his cravat. The Sierrean throat was apt to be open, free, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... plantations of sugar and coffee in the West Indies, some in Jamaica, others in British Guiana or Demerara. The infamy of the slave-trade had been abolished in 1807, but slave labour remained, and the Liverpool merchant, like a host of other men of equal respectability and higher dignity, including many peers and even some bishops, was a slaveholder. Everybody who has ever read one of the most honourable and glorious chapters in our English history knows the case of the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... much, as he had been born and bred a slave in Carolina, and, by untiring assiduity, had saved money enough to emancipate himself and his wife; "In fact," he added, "I feel this is my country, and leaving it will come hard." He had a numerous family, which he maintained in great respectability, and his business being a profitable one made him more reluctant to abandon it and the advantages that otherwise would attend his continuance in Charleston. He hospitably entertained me at his home, and appeared highly gratified ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... visit Europe for the purpose of exhibiting to the various governments his own system, and its superiority over others now in use. From a personal knowledge of Professor Morse I can speak confidently of his amiability of disposition and high respectability. The merits of his discoveries and inventions in this particular branch of science are, I believe, universally conceded in ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... make my will. I am an invalid and cannot leave my room. Will you come to me? The enclosed reference will answer for my respectability. If it satisfies you and you decide to accommodate me, please hasten your visit; I have not many days to live. A carriage will meet you at Highland Station at any hour ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... at least pity and understand him. His worst fault is that he cannot see that it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Being convinced that duty, industry, education, loyalty, patriotism and respectability are good things (and I am magnanimous enough to admit that they are not altogether bad things when taken in strict moderation at the right time and in the right place), he indulges in them on all occasions shamelessly and excessively. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... the young men emerged from the gloomy hallway to the street, which in that part was beginning to be shabby, the street lights were already heralding the dusk. The two hastened from the region of deteriorating respectability to the grandiose quarter westward, and thence to Broadway and the clang of car gongs. The human ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of the Mississippi? Spain excludes us from it. Is public credit an indispensable resource in time of public danger? We seem to have abandoned its cause as desperate and irretrievable. Is commerce of importance to national wealth? Ours is at the lowest point of declension. Is respectability in the eyes of foreign powers a safeguard against foreign encroachments? The imbecility of our government even forbids them to treat with us: our ambassadors abroad are the mere pageants ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... produce! All who are sensitive to ennui do eight times the work of a sleek, contented man. Anything but a large chair by the fireside, and a family circle! Oh! the bore of going every day over the same exhausted subjects, to the same dull persons of respectability; yet that is the doom of all domesticity. Then pleasure! A wretched play—a hot opera, under the ghostly fathership of Mr. Monck Mason—a dinner of sixteen, with such silence or such conversation!—a water-party to Richmond, to catch cold and drink bad sauterne—a flirtation, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... to work it up again would be but putting new wine into worn-out skins. But though its clientele was a yearly diminishing quantity, much business yet remained to it, and that of a good class, its name being still a synonym for solid respectability; and my father had deemed himself fortunate indeed in securing such an appointment. James Gadley had entered the firm as office boy in the days of its pride, and had never awakened to the fact that it was not still the most important legal firm within the half mile radius from Lombard ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... enslaved nation. The iron that has entered into our souls has gone too deep for you to find it. Leave the refugee alone! Laugh at him, distrust him, open your eyes in wonder at that secret self which smoulders in him, sometimes under the everyday respectability and tranquillity of a man like me—sometimes under the grinding poverty, the fierce squalor, of men less lucky, less pliable, less patient than I am—but judge us not! In the time of your first Charles you might have done us justice—the long luxury of your own freedom has made ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... men did as well as Mr. Yocomb's horses. They evidently feel they have the family name and respectability to keep up. Mr. Yocomb, what is it that smells ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... finds other places to harangue at, and letters he can always publish; but he does not appear in quite so triumphant an attitude as he did. The O'Connell tribute is said to have failed; no men of property or respectability join him, and he is after all only the leader of a mob; but it is a better sort of mob, and formidable from their numbers, and the organisation which has latterly become an integral part of mob tactics. Nothing can be more awful than the state of that country, and everybody expects that it will ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Jews. Then followed a passage of Scripture for a text from the pastor, with a short sermon thereafter. Nor was it always short. I fancied he felt the necessity of occupying the time. It was not unfrequently long enough for a very respectable discourse, if length gives the discourse its respectability. Then we had another prayer from another layman, and then the invariable announcement, "the meeting is now open," and the invariable result, a long, dead pause. In fact, the meeting would not open. Like ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... to drive stakes and do better. The lawyer, from a neighboring county, in search of a cause; the creditor in search of his runaway debtor—the judge and the jury also adding something, not less to the number than the respectability of the throng. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... value of things, not to their physical dimensions. To express in reputable language some disreputable idea, to take some scandalous situation, some low-class calling or disgraceful behaviour, and describe them in terms of the utmost "RESPECTABILITY," is generally comic. The English word is here purposely employed, as the practice itself is characteristically English. Many instances of it may be found in Dickens and Thackeray, and in English literature generally. Let us remark, in passing, that the intensity of ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... performance, the same buzzing hum of converse rises from the assemblage which you hear in the Opera corridors and lobbies. A glance at the audience will enlighten you as to their character. They represent the staid respectability of the middle class. The dresses of the ladies are often rich, seldom brilliant, and there is little sparkle of jewellery. You very frequently perceive family parties, under the care of a grave pater familias and his staid and stately partner. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... him never blush for or grieve over the sins and follies of those who owe him such a debt of gratitude, and whose first duty it is to study his happiness. You have both of you a name which must not be disgraced, a father and a grandfather of whom to show yourselves worthy; your respectability and well-doing in life rest mainly with yourselves, but far, far beyond earthly respectability and well-doing, and compared with which they are as nothing, your eternal happiness rests with yourselves. You know your duty, but snares ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... all through the journey, and none were sorry when, after a side slip or two, the coaches drew up (not before it was quite dark) outside the estancia house. A change into dry garments was very welcome, and there was to be noticed for the first time since the start of the Tacuruers, a dull air of respectability over the party, as they collected for their ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... Not beaten's still my boast: Again I'll rouse the people up to strike. But home's where different politics jar most. Respectability the women like. This form, or that form, - The Government may be hungry pike, But don't ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Thing stood uncovered before me in all its ugliness—The Thing born not of hate but of the mere love of excitement in people wearied by the dull routine and the reliable, plodding respectability of that countryside. The crime of Amos had been a great help in its way but as a topic it was worn out and would remain ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... experience, but it has been considered good enough to make Bibles out of, and it does seem as if a good word might occasionally be said for it in modern times, as if some one ought to be born before long, who will give it a certain standing, a certain moral respectability once more in human life and in the education ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... well-paid workmen in this country has become very large, who might easily save and economize, to the improvement of their moral well-being, of their respectability and independence, and of their status in society as men and citizens. They are improvident and thriftless to an extent which proves not less hurtful to their personal happiness and domestic comfort, than it is injurious to the society of which they ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... and revelling in pleasure, the solid fruit of toil and wisdom should not be caught at the same time. The way lies before us, we must turn to the right or left; and he who will pass life away in bounding from one pleasure to another, must not complain if he neither acquires wisdom nor respectability of character. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... an honorable tribe, and from the noblest family of that tribe; yet his original lot was poverty. By his good conduct, he obtained the hand of a widow of wealth and respectability, and was soon raised to an equality with the richest ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... which the watcher pictured to himself; and for him Fate could wear no aspect more terrible. Respectability, solvency, success—these were the idols to which he had given worship and tribute in all the days of his life. To propitiate these inexorable ones he had sacrificed all the dearest and best blessings which earth and heaven ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the drolleries and fantasies that the worthy Miss Deacon used to write to him, and how he had grinned at her words of reproof, admonition, and advice. She had once instigated Dolly fils to pay him a visit, and that young prop of respectability had talked about the extraordinary running of Bolter at the Scurragh meeting in Ireland; and then, glancing at Lucian's books, had inquired whether any of them had "warm bits." He had been kind though patronizing, and seemed to have moved freely in the most brilliant society of Stoke Newington. ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... venture to show themselves in such frankly disreputable places, but picked out women in the crowded streets and followed them to quiet dark places to make the arrangements—men stimulated by good dinners, or, later on, in the evening, those who left parties of elegant respectability after theater or opera. On this first night of business weather in nearly two weeks the streets were crowded with women and girls. They were desperately hard up and they made open dashes for every man they could get at. All classes were made equally bold—the shop and factory and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... There are some houses whereof the outward aspect is sealed with the seal of respectability—houses which inspire confidence in the minds of the most sceptical of butchers and bakers—houses at whose area-gates the tradesman delivers his goods undoubtingly, and from whose spotless door-steps the vagabond ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... mirthfully at her supposition. "As for women," she continued, "lady, or countess, or Marquise, what an air it gives! It finishes a woman like a lace ruff round her neck. Every woman ought to have a title—I mean every woman of respectability. I have a fancy to be a marquise, and Aunt Jacobus says I look Frenchy enough. I have heard that there is a title in the Hyde family. I must ask Aunt Jacobus. She knows everything about everybody. Lieutenant Hyde! I do wonder what ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... a self-made man. By his unaided energies he surmounted the difficulties that stood in the way of his advancement, and has achieved distinction by a career of great usefulness. His father was a man of high respectability, and most excellent character. He was a farmer in moderate circumstances, and being well advanced in life, and declining in health, when his youngest son, the tenth of twelve children, determined to acquire a liberal education, he was unable ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... looked in admiration upon so much respectability, powder, age, and gold cane united in ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... shop, the window of which was adorned with all the worst caricatures which had found their way to Abbeychurch, the portraits of sundry radical leaders, embossed within a halo of steel-pens, and a notice of a lecture on 'Personal Respectability,' to be given on the ensuing Friday at the Mechanics' Institute, by the Rev. ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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! I have seen him, in a pepper-and-salt ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... were vicious and beyond the statutory and moral laws. There was a submerged desire for respectability in the grain of even the worst of them which came to the front at times, as in defense of the town's reputation, and on election day, when they put in such a man as Judge Thayer for mayor. With a man like Judge Thayer at the head of affairs, all ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Pelham, so long in conjunction with his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, one of the principal rulers of this country. He was a man of some ability, and a tolerable speaker. The vacillations, the absurdity, the foolish jealousy of the duke, greatly injured the stability and respectability of Mr. Pelham's administration. Mr. Pelham was born in 1696, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... his high calling and prosper; he must abandon all juvenile eccentricities, and aim at the appearance of a decided enemy to free trade in the article of Wild Oats. Accordingly, as the first step towards respectability, I eschewed coloured waistcoats, and gave out that I was a marrying man. No man under forty, unless he is a positive idiot, will stand forth as a theoretical bachelor. It is all nonsense to say that there is any thing unpleasant in being courted. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... letter-writing these peculiar qualities have almost, though not altogether, disappeared. Probably conversation has suffered a like change; and we may ascribe it generally to a lowering of the social temperature, to the habits of reserve, respectability, and conventional self-restraint that in these days govern so largely the intercourse of men. Something may be due to cautious expurgation of passages which tell against the writer, or might offend modern taste; yet in other ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... who hold property in the District is large and rapidly increasing. A woman may now enter into almost any honorable profession that she chooses, and maintain her respectability. All of the professions are open to her, and the sphere of trades is rapidly widening. The progress made in this regard in the last quarter of a century amounts almost to a revolution. The first women ever admitted to the reporter's gallery of the Senate and House were Abigail ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... knew; that they may be useful, which we also acknowledge—thinking still that, if married, they would be more useful; and that they may be happy, which we trust—feeling confident, however, that they might in another position be more happy. But the question is not only as to the respectability, usefulness, and happiness of womankind, but as to that of men also. If women can do without marriage, can men do so? And if not, how are the men to get wives, if the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... He 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, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... great show of black cattle—I mean of ministers; the narrowness of their stipends here obliges many of them to enlarge their incomes by taking farms and grazing cattle. This, in my opinion, diminishes their respectability, nor can the farmer be supposed to entertain any great reverence for the ghostly advice of a pastor (they literally deserve the epithet) who perhaps the day before overreached him in a bargain. I would not have you to suppose there are no exceptions to this character, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... of the Scotch courts sets forth these facts, and attests the respectability of the gentleman who lost ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... the court a great deal; as for judgment, the article was so scarce with a certain gentleman, he advised him to keep the modicum he had for his own use. So far as mitigation of punishment was concerned, he thought the greater the respectability of the offender, the greater should be the punishment, both because his education and opportunities should have taught him better, and by way of example to others, in like case to offend. The doctrine of the gentleman, he added, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Philistines are dead and buried long ago—is really, I think, in itself much less apt and expressive than the German term. Efforts have been made to obtain in English some term equivalent to Philister or epicier; Mr. Carlyle has made several such efforts: "respectability with its thousand gigs,"[142] he says;—well, the occupant of every one of these gigs is, Mr. Carlyle means, a Philistine. However, the word respectable is far too valuable a word to be thus perverted from its proper meaning; if the English are ever to have a word for the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... posted on the oaken door,—his first obtrusive intimation of the combination of church and state,—and hesitated. He was not prepared to find that this last resting-place of his people had something to do with taxes and tithes, and that a certain material respectability and security attended his votive sigh. God and the reigning sovereign of the realm preserved a decorous alliance in the royal arms that appeared above the official notices. Presently he pushed open the door gently and entered the nave. For a moment it seemed to him ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... stand in the way of a woman's favorable reception into society. But in England, at that time, this was far otherwise. A display such as Mrs. Lee habitually forced upon people's attention would at once have the effect of banishing from her house all women of respectability. She would be thrown upon the society of men—bold and reckless, such as either agreed with herself, or, being careless on the whole subject of religion, pretended to do so. Her income, though diminished now by the partition with Mr. Lee, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... broadcloth, that jostled and squeezed each other in the struggle for gain. The shop-keeper flung down his scales and off to the share-market; the merchant embarked his funds and his credit; the clerk risked his place and his humble respectability. High and low, rich and poor, all hurried round the Exchange, like midges round a flaring gas-light, and all were to ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... doubts as to Anna's respectability were blown away completely and forever when, on opening the drawing-room door before supper, she had beheld no less a person than the geborene Dettingen seated on the sofa. The baroness had spent her life in a remote and tiny provincial ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... unfree tribes tilled the soil, and practised the mechanic arts. Agriculture seems first to have been lifted into respectability by the Cistercian Monks, while spinning, weaving, and almost every mechanic calling, if we except the scribe, the armorer, and the bell-founder, continued down to very recent tunes to be held in ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... and political importance the laity are learning to look elsewhere than to the pulpit. Oh! for one day in our National Church of Paul and Athanasius and Luther, men who spoke what they felt, unchecked by thoughts about promotion and popularity and respectability. Enthusiastic independence is as unpopular in religion as it is in politics; and the fight against prejudice and unfairness is often exceeding bitter to the man who dares to run his tilt against the opinion ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... fallen women, make timely a rough outline of the methods by which girls are lured into the haunts of vice, and kept there until they have lost all power or desire to escape and win their way back to decency and respectability. It is not pretended that this line is accurate, or that it fits any particular case, but the information on which it is based is gained from what are believed to be reliable sources, and it is not likely to be misleading: if applied in ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... completing the attributes of the place had he been asked. The fact that the aegis of marriage vows spread its protecting mantle over the proprietor, and its shadow over the permanent residents, would never have caused a wavering doubt, or certified to the moral respectability of the contracting parties. Firmstone was not the first to ask if any good thing could come out of Nazareth, or if untarnished purity could dwell in the tents of the Nazarenes. It occasionally happens that a stork is caught ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... The respectability of the witnesses, and the solemn terms of this marriage covenant, suffice to show that marriages thus solemnized were regarded as perfectly regular, and it is probable that in the absence of a minister competent to perform the ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... reality, you soak away in as voluptuous a pleasure as ever falls to the lot of man to enjoy. Then you shave, and array yourself minutely and preciously in clean clothes from head to toe, building up a new respectability, and you leave scornfully in a heap your camping garments. They have heretofore seemed clean, but now you would not touch them, no, not even to put them in the soiled-clothes basket, let your feminines rave as they may. And for at least two days ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... being in love with beauty, they neglect and despise those unaesthetic social virtues in the operation of which happiness is found. On the other hand those who pursue happiness conceived merely in the abstract and conventional terms, as money, success, or respectability, often miss that real and fundamental part of happiness which flows from the senses and imagination. This element is what aesthetics supplies to life; for beauty also can be a cause and a factor of happiness. Yet the happiness of loving beauty is either too sensuous to be stable, or else too ultimate, ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... Witherington, who had become attached to them both, would have remonstrated, observing that Cecilia was his own cousin, and that he was a confirmed bachelor; but, in this instance, Mr. Templemore was firm, and Mr. Witherington very unwillingly consented. A mercantile house of the highest respectability required a partner who could superintend their consignments to America. Mr. Witherington advanced the sum required; and in a few weeks Mr. and Mrs. Templemore sailed for ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... sort of fitting foolscap, or crown of crime and folly, in the thing called Eugenics. In all three cases the point was not so much that the pioneers had not proved their case; it was rather that, by an unexpressed rule of respectability, they were not required to prove it. This rather abrupt twist of the rationalistic mind in the direction of arbitrary power, certainly weakened the Liberal movement from within. And meanwhile it was being weakened by heavy ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... them indoors to bed at last, for the lights were going out one by one in the Cosmopolitan bedroom windows, where the virtuous rich, exhausted by their day of virtue, were subsiding, prostrate with boredom and respectability, into their various legitimate lairs, and he stayed alone out by the sea rapidly sketching out his activities for the ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... And the son standing by his father's side is a reminder in his name of a disagreeable truth.[116] A little later the man is actually required to go about barefooted, and without clothing sufficient for conventional respectability, and to continue this for three years.[117] When we remember that he was not an erratic extremist, but a sober-minded, fine-grained gentleman of refinement and of a good family, it helps us to understand a little how hard-hearted and stubborn were a people that could be ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... general philosophical abstraction from such household details, had more than once said, rather in pity to Jackeymo, than with an eye to that respectability which the costume of the servant reflects on the dignity of the master, "Giacomo, thou wantest clothes; fit thyself out ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... honest indignation interrupted the excited woman; but Fran Vorkler would not be silenced, and asked what a poor girl like her Metz possessed except her good name. How quickly suspicion would rest on a lass whose respectability was questioned! People had begun to do so ever since the Ortlieb sisters were called the "beautiful" instead of the pious and virtuous Es. This showed how such notice of the face and figure benefited Christian maidens. Yesterday and to-day she had given ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a private room, and unfolded a map of the city before them. On this he traced, with a well-kept finger-nail, a series of lines,—like those fanciful isothermal definitions that embrace the regions of perennial summer on the range of the Northern Pacific Railroad,—within which social respectability made its home. Within certain avenues and certain streets, he explained that it was a respectable thing to live. Outside of these arbitrary boundaries, nobody who made any pretense to respectability should buy a house. The remainder of the city, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland |
