"Indecency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what life would be, if every rogue was found out, and flogged coram populo! What a butchery, what an indecency, what an endless swishing of the rod! Don't cry out about my misanthropy. My good friend Mealymouth, I will trouble you to tell me, do you go to church? When there, do you say, or do you not, that ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... did not let matters rest on suspicion. He soon gave open proofs of his interest with the Confessor in procuring an office of some importance for one Rollo, a Roman of mean extraction and very despicable parts. When I represented to the king the indecency of conferring such an honor on such a fellow, he answered me that he was the archbishop's relation. 'Then, sir,' replied I, 'he is related to your enemy.' Nothing more passed at that time; but I soon perceived, by the archbishop's behavior, that the ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... this point let me quote from a well known anthropologist. "There is nothing more difficult for us to realize, civilized as we are, than the mental state of the man far behind us in cultivation, as regards what we call par excellence 'morality.' It is not indecency; it is simply an animal absence of modesty. Acts which are undeniably quite natural, since they are the expression of a primordial need, essential to the duration of the species, but which a long ancestral and individual education has trained us ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... wearing for their only clothing a sheet that scarcely concealed their forms, passed through the streets of the towns, or wearily trudged from village to village, responsively singing the litanies of the Virgin or the saints, and loudly repeating the refrain, Ora pro nobis.[117] Often shameful indecency and a reckless disregard of human life were displayed. In one of the villages of Champagne, during the protracted drought of 1556, the sacred scenes of the Passion were publicly enacted in the streets. The person of our Lord was ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... saw, as it were, a vista of enormous possibilities—literally enormous possibilities; but upon this dazzling vista, after one stare of amazement, he resolutely shut his eyes, even as a conscientious "scientist" should. After that, the Food of the Gods sounded blatant to the pitch of indecency. He was surprised he had used the expression. Yet for all that something of that clear-eyed moment hung about him and broke out ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... won't," said Cousin Egbert sourly. "He wants to show you off." This, I could see, was ignored as a sheer indecency. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Louis, therefore, is a highly flourishing establishment, and the proprietor knows his business well enough to be aware that indecency never pays expenses in the United States,—as all will finally discover who try it. At Cincinnati there is also a Varieties Theatre, but such a theatre! A vast and dirty barn, with whitewashed walls and no ceiling, in which a minstrel band of five men and two beauteous nymphs exerted themselves ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the dyspepsia is connected with inflamed stomach, in which case the punching practice is death. We have heard from eminent physicians, that several lives have, within their knowledge, been endangered by it. Moreover, the real indecency of the Halstedian process, particularly in the case of women, has greatly shocked ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Katharine; "but you're mistaken, aren't you?" She was, in truth, horribly uncomfortable, dismayed, indeed, disillusioned. She disliked the turn things had taken quite intensely. The indecency of it afflicted her. The suffering implied by the tone appalled her. She looked at Mary furtively, with eyes that were full of apprehension. But if she had hoped to find that these words had been spoken without understanding ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... fall had been his own rise; for Godoy was sent to Bayonne by Murat, and the old King and Queen hurried after their son in order to witness his humiliation. Ferdinand's parents attacked him with an indecency that astonished even Napoleon himself; but the Prince maintained his refusal until news arrived from Madrid which terrified him into submission. The irritation of the capital had culminated in an armed conflict between the populace and the French troops. On an attempt being made by Murat to remove ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... must prepare yourself to be told that your mother was a fish-woman, and that your father was a renegade priest or a hanged malefactor. I myself, for having shown error in a single preposition, had an invective written against me wherein I was taxed with treachery, fraud, indecency, and even hideous crimes. Such, my young friend—such are the flowers with which the glorious path of scholarship is strewed! But tell me, then: I have learned much concerning Byzantium and Thessalonica long ago from Demetrio Calcondila, who ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Marine Committee reported to Congress that "Captain Barry ought, within twenty days, make full acknowledgment to the Navy Board of having treated Mr. Hopkinson with indecency and disrespect." Nothing further appears on record, so it is presumed Captain Barry complied and the case closed. At this time Barry was, by order of the same Committee, actively at work destroying British supplies in the lower Delaware from Mantua Creek to Port Penn ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... but they take special care not to follow their excellent example. That which is not fit to be uttered before women is not fit to be uttered at all; and it is next to a proclamation, tolerating drunkenness and indecency, to send women from the table the moment they have swallowed their food. The practice has been ascribed to a desire to leave them to themselves; but why should they be left to themselves? Their conversation is always the ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... Statue there, and of the orders Catherine got to kiss it, with a "KOPF AB (Head off, if you won't)!" from the bantering Czar, whom she had to obey,—is not incredible, after what we have seen. It seems, he begged this bit of Antique Indecency from Friedrich Wilhelm; who, we may fancy, would give him such an article with especial readiness. That same day, fourth of the Visit, Thursday, 23d of the month, the august Party went its ways again; Friedrich Wilhelm convoying "as far as Potsdam;" Czar and Suite ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... slanders that one hears of him. For one thing, I have discovered that he never had any intention of putting me and yourself into a book. This he told me himself, and then read to me his latest work. As for his calling me "Lovelace," he had intended no rudeness or indecency thereby. The term is merely one of foreign derivation, meaning a clever fellow, or, in more literary and elegant language, a gentleman with whom one must reckon. That is all; it was a mere harmless jest, my beloved. Only ignorance made me lose my temper, and I have expressed to him my regret. . . ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of money matters and broker business, which he sent to Michelangelo in 1540. The Leda remained at Fontainebleau till the reign of Louis XIII., when M. Desnoyers, Minister of State, ordered the picture to be destroyed because of its indecency. Pierre Mariette says that this order was not carried into effect; for the canvas, in a sadly mutilated state, reappeared some seven or eight years before his date of writing, and was seen by him. In spite of injuries, he could trace the hand of a great master; "and I confess that nothing ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... man lives, and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer round that little idol of part-truth and part-conveniences which is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself. New truth is only wanted to expand, not to destroy, our civil ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... papers, and placing them in a drawer of his desk, closed it sharply. There was a sordid indecency about the discussion which stung him like the stroke of ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... the place was one of general resort, they noticed traces of other parties, people of the Simpson class, hail-fellow-well-met men, who didn't dance but took it out in drinking, and who in their intercourse with the other sex, betrayed more vulgar familiarity and less refined indecency than characterized the men and boys of White, Edwards, Robinson, and Co.'s set. But of these it may be supposed that the set took no heed. There was some really pretty scenery about the glen, but they took no heed of that either—to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... hero, had not Jolter, to the manifest peril of his own person, interposed, and partly by force, and partly by exhortations, put a stop to the engagement before it was fairly begun. After having demonstrated the indecency of such a vulgar rencontre, betwixt two fellow-citizens in a foreign land, he begged to know the cause of their dissension, and offered his good offices towards an accommodation. Peregrine also, seeing the fray was finished, expressed himself ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... improve upon the Old Country, as they call us, and affect to be excessively refined in their language and ideas: but they forget that very often in the covering, and the covering only, consists the indecency; and that, to use the old aphorism—"Very nice people are ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... dramatised previously. A lost play, 'Palaemon and Arcyte,' by Richard Edwardes, was acted at Court in 1566, and a second piece, called 'Palamon and Arsett' (also lost), was purchased by Henslowe in 1594. The non-Shakespearean residue of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' is disfigured by indecency and triviality, and is ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... are grieving over Rosalind.... But why in heaven's name isn't Jimmy at home this very moment,—with a wife and carpet-slippers and a large-size bottle of paregoric on his mantelpiece,—instead of here, grinning like a fool over some blatant indecency? He ought to marry; every young man ought to marry. Oh, you futile, abject, burbling twin-brother of the first patron that procured a reputation for Bedlam! why aren't you married—married years ago,—with a home of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... becomes art in poetry but forsakes it in prose. Even if some of the great prose writers rendered their prose artistic through the beauty and harmony of their periods and the picturesqueness of their expressions, still prose is not art in its real nature. So, crude indecency aside, what would be immoral in prose ceases to be immoral in verse, for in poetry Art follows its own code and form transcends the subject matter. That is why a great poet, Sully-Prudhomme, preferred prose to verse when he wanted ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... Blood-shed, as soon as his Passion is wrought to its Height, he follows his Sister the whole length of the Stage, and forbears killing her till they are both withdrawn behind the Scenes. I must confess, had he murder'd her before the Audience, the Indecency might have been greater; but as it is, it appears very unnatural, and looks like killing in cold Blood. To give my Opinion upon this Case; the Fact ought not to have been represented, but to have been told, if there ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... animosities and small but intense ambitions. They accused him of treating them with contempt, and of embezzling public money; while he retorted by charging them with encroaching on the royal prerogative and treating the representative of the King with indecency. Under such conditions an efficient conduct of the war ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... cause and effect, or only what logicians call a "mere coincidence," the fact remains that in Rome, Russia, France, and England, political corruption, cruelty of government, sexual immorality—nay, downright, impudent, open, boastful indecency—have culminated, for the most part, in the eras of the influence of viragints on government ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... refreshing in its boldness and freedom. There is no consenting estimate of this poet. Many think that his so-called poems are not poems at all, but simply a bad variety of prose; that there is nothing to him beyond a combination of affectation and indecency; and that the Whitman culte is a passing "fad" of a few literary men, and especially of a number of English critics like Rossetti, Swinburne, Buchanan, etc., who, being determined to have something unmistakably ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... me. I felt as if I had suffered a kind of indecency. I got up and changed my place. My husband watched me with the look of a man who wanted to roar with laughter. It was the proud and insolent as well as passionate look of one who had never ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... infamy but became a sworn hater of law, order, and "free-men." What he might have been before mattered not. He was now a prisoner, and—thrust into a suffocating barracoon, herded with the foulest of mankind, with all imaginable depths of blasphemy and indecency sounded hourly in his sight and hearing—he lost his self-respect, and became what his gaolers took him to be—a wild beast to be locked under bolts and bars, lest he should break out ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... sensationalism in the guise of logic. What more acceptable to the vile people of his age than the theory that in their collective capacity they could not err, that the universal reason was divine? What more logical than its culmination in that outrageous indecency, the worship of Reason in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... to my mind its size bordered on indecency. I like a box to look sufficiently large to take all I think a woman ought to need for a night's stay. Pauline often assures me it does hold everything, squashed tight, of course. I say it must be squashed very tight, and she says ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... across the bar—have you ever seen a snake swallow its prey, an equally slimy sight?—the five-cent piece of some poor fellow whose child hath neither toy nor bread, and whose broken wife, struggling in God's name to shield her children from indecency and want, will tremblingly explore his pocketbook at midnight, only to find every farthing of his wages gone. For the aforesaid smiling landlord hath poured it into the satin lap of the equally smiling wife at ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... cannot, notwithstanding all that is ludicrous in them, be read without the deepest disgust. A letter like that one of his written to Michelangelo in November, 1545, is alone of its kind; along with all the admiration he expresses for the 'Last Judgement' he charges him with irreligion, indecency, and theft from the heirs of Julius II, and adds in a conciliating postscript, 'I only want to show you that if you are "divino," I am not "d'acqua." ' Aretino laid great stress upon it— whether from the insanity of conceit or by way of caricaturing famous men—that he himself should be ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... nations surrounding them: thus, David, dancing with all his might before the ark, lifted up his ephod and exhibited his nakedness to "the eyes of the handmaids of his servants." No blame is attached to the king for such gross indecency during a public and religious ceremony; while Michal, his wife, was punished with barrenness, for expressing her disapprobation ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... that it was up to them to take the opportunity of testifying, of severing any connection that might yet exist in any one's mind between them and the other products of their parents. They did so, with the uncompromising decision proper to their years, and with, perhaps, the touch of indecency, regardlessness of the proprieties, which was characteristic of them. Their friends soon discovered that they need not guard their tongues in speaking of Potterism before the Potter twins. The way the twins put it was, 'Our family is ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... indecent, which it certainly was. I might upon these lines, and had I Zola's genius, turn out, in a page or so, a gem of literary art, render the lantern-light with the touches of a master, and lay on the indecency with the ungrudging hand of love; and when all was done, what a triumph would my picture be of shallowness and dulness! how it would have missed the point! how it would have belied the boys! To the ear of the stenographer, the talk is merely silly and indecent; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... family. 'Such a respectable family,' said George, 'the grandfather in court looking venerable, and everyone indignant upon being so disgraced by her!' But for the respectability in the best sense, I do not quite see. That all those people should acquiesce in the indecency (according to every standard of English manners in any class of society) of thrusting the personal expenses of a member of their family on Lord Ferrers, she still bearing their name—and in those peculiar circumstances of ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... immediately afterwards to the Boers and General Louis Botha? For accepting the principle of popular government, that the majority must rule, Bagot was assailed with an inhuman vehemence, which astounds the reader of the present day by its venom and its indecency. Because the governor was a just man and loyally followed constitutional usage, he was abused as a fool and a traitor not only in the colony but in England. It is small wonder that his health began to ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... only by voluntarily yielding his heart and will and life to the King, can he enter the Kingdom. We are forced to respect his personality. We may watch and pray and speak, but we cannot save. There is almost a sort of spiritual indecency in unveiling the naked soul, in attempting to invade the personality of another life. There is sometimes a spiritual vivisection which some attempt in the name of religion, which is immoral. Only holier eyes than ours, only more reverent hands than ours, can deal with the spirit ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... name from getting its desert of respect, your character supposedly remaining intact. The insult offered is intended to effect this purpose. Again, all contumely presupposes the presence of the party affronted; the affront is thrown in one's face, and therein consists the shocking indecency of the thing ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... were with him were out of all patience at the indignity and shame it would be for a proconsul of Rome to pay tribute to a crew of wretched barbarians. But he little regarded their censure, and slighting that which had only the appearance of an indecency, told them he must buy time, the most precious of all things to those who go upon great enterprises; and pacifying the barbarous people with money, he hastened his journey, and took possession of Spain, a country flourishing and populous, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... born; but the natives were particularly delighted with his running about the stage, whilst the rest of the dancers endeavoured to catch him. The ladies were much pleased with this scene, which, according to the simplicity of their ideas, had not the least indecency; they looked on, therefore, unconcernedly, and were not obliged, like some European dames, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Collections," ii. 34, supposes that the latter was omitted by M. Galland "on account of its indecency, it being a very free detail of the amours of an unfaithful wife." The true cause was that it did not exist in Galland's Copy of The Nights (Zotenberg, Histoire d' 'Ala al-Din, p. 37). Scott adds, "In this copy the Genie restores the Antelope, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... follows the traditional Anglo-Saxon lines. Anybody who knows no more of Japan than may be gathered from the pages of LAFCADIO HEARN will at least have learned that her youth is taught to regard the love-interest of an ordinary English novel as an indecency; and so will recognise the improbability of the romantic element in the play. Still, all that is of little consequence, for there must have been very few who went to His Majesty's to improve their acquaintance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... indelicacy and fierceness; but time has worn out these stains, and the same cause is now removing what is repulsive among those who toil with their hands. I cannot believe that coarse manners, boisterous conversation, slovenly negligence, filthy customs, surliness, indecency, are to descend by necessity from generation to generation in any portion of the community. I do not see why neatness, courtesy, delicacy, ease, and deference to others' feelings, may not be made the habits of the laboring multitude. A change is certainly going on among them in respect to manners. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... about the middle of the fifteenth century it was the custom for males and females to bathe together, in puris naturalibus, which was at length prohibited by Bishop Beckyngton, who ordered, by way of distinction, the wearing of breeches and petticoats; this indecency was suppressed, after considerable difficulty, at the end of the sixteenth century, (quere, what indecency does our author of the "Walks through Bath" mean? the incumbrance of the breeches and petticoats, we must imagine). It also seems, that about 1700 it was the fashion ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... That's the worst of music! I want to dance, laugh, eat pink cakes, yellow cakes, drink thin, sharp wine. Or an indecent story, now—I could relish that. The older one grows the more one likes indecency. Hah, hah! I'm laughing. What at? You said nothing, nor did the old gentleman opposite.... ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... Hoe.' [48] The first is a girl of loosest manners. Her ambition torments her to marry a nobleman, in order to obtain a 'coach.' To her mother (Mrs. Touchstone) she incessantly speaks words of most shameless indecency, which cannot be repeated; more especially as regards her 'coach,' for which she asks ever and anon. A lackey, called Hamlet, must procure it to her. We will give some fragments of that scene. The remainder cannot be offered to a modern ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... me when they will," said Mistress Clo, springing to her feet with a light jump and sending the last of her apple whizzing into space with a boyish throw. "'Tis I who am the modest woman—for all my breeches and manners. I do not see indecency where there is none—for the mere pleasure of ogling and bridling and calling attention to my simpering. I should have seen no reason for airs and graces if I had been among those on the bank when the fine young Marquess we heard of saved the boat-load on the river and gave orders ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... This famous dictum is a standing challenge to any critic who regards Burns as a creator of beauty. It is true that when Burns took this world at its apparent worst, when Scotch drink meant bestial drunkenness, when Scotch manners meant shameless indecency, when Scotch religion meant blasphemous defiance, he created The Jolly Beggars, which the same critic found a "splendid and puissant production." We must conclude, then, that sufficient genius can sublimate even a hideously sordid world into a superb work of ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... adorned by some fifty magazine covers representing the female form in every imaginable state of undress, said magazine-covers being taken chiefly from such amorous periodicals as Le Sourire and that old stand-by of indecency, La Vie Parisienne. Also Monsieur Richard kept a pot of geraniums upon his window-ledge, which haggard and aged-looking symbol of joy he doubtless (in his spare moments) peculiarly enjoyed watering. The Cook is by this time familiar to my reader. I ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... several safety skirts, but it is obvious that the best kind is one that is safe to ride in, presentable when dismounted, and easily arranged, which conditions are thoroughly fulfilled by my patent. There are riding women who object so much to the indecency of apron skirts (Figs. 55 and 56) that they adopt the dangerous closed pattern. My skirt would commend itself to those of my sex who are sufficiently old-fashioned in their ideas to desire a safe and, at the same time, decent and graceful covering. Some ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... mildly, as I sot there, "Is it that men and wimmen lose their senses, or is there a sacredness in the strains of that fiddle, that makes immodesty modest, indecency decent, and immorality moral?" And agin I sithe heavy and gin 3 deep groans. And I see Josiah gin in. All the sound reasons weighed as nothin' with him, but 2 or 3 groans, and a few sithes settled the matter. Truly Love ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... who had the folly and indecency to pick up the name of Napoleon second-hand at a sale of old pledges, has been thrashed and is a prisoner. Except the Army of the West, and the division on the Mar road, which is commanded by an old woman, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... existing divorce laws appear to be obsessed by sexual offences, other things of far more evil effect upon the home go without a remedy. There are, for example, desertion, domestic neglect, cruelty to the children drunkenness or harmful drug-taking, indecency of living and uncontrollable extravagance. I cannot conceive how any logical mind, having once admitted the principle of divorce, can hesitate at making these entirely home-wrecking things the basis of effective pleas. But in another direction, some strain of sentimentality ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... I bought was handed to me with a sort of smiling abhorrence by the kindly old kiosk woman whom I liked best to buy my daily papers of. When I came to look it through, I made more and more haste, for its satire of the priests was of an indecency so rank that it seemed to offend the nose as well as the eye. To turn from the paper was easy, but from the fact of its popularity a painful impression remained. It was not a question of whether the priests were so bad as all that, but whether its many readers ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... and green drawing-room, whose apparel made so vivid a setting for their unaccustomed costumes, each tried nervously to find a seat, desirous of hiding the emphatic blackness of his trousers. There seemed a sort of indecency in that blackness and in the colour of their gloves—a sort of exaggeration of the feelings; and many cast shocked looks of secret envy at 'the Buccaneer,' who had no gloves, and was wearing grey trousers. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... generous in theory, quarrelsome and overbearing in practice. From the year 1746 his pen seems to have been always busy. He first tried his hand on some satires, which gained for him numerous enemies; and in 1748 he produced his first novel, Roderick Random, which, in spite of its indecency, the world at once acknowledged to be a work of genius: the verisimilitude was perfect; every one recognized in the hero the type of many a young North countryman going out to seek his fortune. The variety is great, the scenes ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... soon as they shall replenish Mr. Grand's hands, I will give you notice, that you may recommence your usual drafts on him; unless the board should provide a separate fund for you, dependant on yourself alone, which I have strongly and repeatedly pressed on them, in order to remove the indecency of suffering your drafts to pass through any intermediate hand ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... was the case at other executions, "roll about the scaffold and be mangled and disfigured." "For I would not," he added, "though it may be but a trifling matter, that my remains should appear with any needless indecency after the just sentence of the law is satisfied." He spoke calmly and easily on all these particulars, nor did he even shrink when told that his head would be held up and exhibited to the multitude as ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... held unreservedly. In the "Persian Letters" it goes no farther than an elaborate apology for divorce, a scathing denunciation of celibacy, and a general licentiousness of tone. The later writings of Montesquieu are free from indecency. But it is noticeable of him, perhaps the most high-minded of the Philosophers, and of the rest of them, that while they constantly insist on the importance of virtue, they hardly rank chastity among the virtues.[Footnote: ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... little of the idolatry of India; and that little, though excessively absurd, is not characterised by atrocity or indecency. There is nothing of the sort at Ootacamund. I have not, during the last six weeks, witnessed a single circumstance from which you would have inferred that this was a heathen country. The bulk of the natives ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... finger in my face with a roguish smile, and said something with a chuckle, which I took to be the equivalent of 'O, you women, you women; it is true of you all!' I fear it was not complimentary. At no time was there the least sign of the ugly indecency of the eastern islands. All was poetry pure and simple. The music itself was as complex as our own, though constructed on an entirely different basis; once or twice I was startled by a bit of something very like the best ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not believe, what no other man living believes, that Mr. Wilkes was punished for the indecency of his publications, or the impiety of his ransacked closet. If he had fallen in a common slaughter of libellers and blasphemers, I could well believe that nothing more was meant than was pretended. But when I see, that, for years together, full as impious, and perhaps ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... young men and maidens. They are not wholly free from the taint which is to be detected in nearly all French fiction. The mark of the beast is set on not a little of the work done by the strongest men in France. M. Meilhac is too clean and too clever ever to delve in indecency from mere wantonness: he has no liking for vice, but his virtue sits easily on him, and though he is sound on the main question, he looks upon the vagaries of others with a gentle eye. M. Halevy, it seems to me, is made of somewhat sterner ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... its immense width of survey, it sweeps together from supposed systems of jurisprudence, there is an evident anxiety to thrust into especial prominence those manners and institutions which astonish the civilised reader by their uncouthness, strangeness, or indecency. The inference constantly suggested is, that laws are the creatures of climate, local situation, accident, or imposture—the fruit of any causes except those which appear to operate with tolerable constancy. Montesquieu seems, in fact, to have looked on the nature of man as entirely plastic, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... beginning of the eighteenth century, with Mme. de Lambert as its leader, there was a renascence of the preciosite of the Hotel de Rambouillet, women protesting against the prevalent grossness and indecency of manners. The salon of Mme. de Lambert was the great antechamber to the Academy, election to which was generally gained through her. A new aristocracy was forming, a new society arose; from about 1720 to 1750, libertinism and atheism, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... love is as much prohibited as its rites apparently are. Even with Crebillon fils, even with Laclos, at the most exciting moments, the terms their characters employ are circumspect and irreproachable. Whatever indecency there may be, it is never expressed in words, the sense of propriety in language imposing itself not only on the outbursts of passion, but again on the grossness of instincts. Thus do the sentiments which are naturally the strongest lose their point ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... as we were alone, the plastered skeleton thrust its arms forward, and, without giving me time to know what I was about, the creature gave me a horrible kiss, and then one of her hands began to stray with the most bare-faced indecency. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... marvelling. Bechamel, having in this way satisfied his sense of appearances, and comported himself as a Pagan should, so soon as the waiter's footsteps had passed, vented the cream of his feelings in a stream of blasphemous indecency. Whether his wife or HER stepmother had sent the detective, SHE had evidently gone off with him, and that little business was over. And he was here, stranded and sold, an ass, and as it were, the son of many generations ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... your hand on the Table when you strike, nor let your Sleeve drag upon it, if you do it is a Loss; Or if you smoke a Pipe of Spanish or Virginia, being so wedded to that Fume, that were you sure to smother all the rest of the Company you are insensible of the Indecency, be careful that the Ashes fall not on the Table, lest the Cloth be burnt, which many times falls out: In these two Cases, let the Mulcts and Forfeitures of both, but especially the Hinderance the ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... wish I could name him, but it would be an indecency to do so, for part of his charm is his complete unconsciousness of the affection, and even adoration, of the little group of younger men who call themselves his "fans"—I suppose that B——'s talk is as nearly Johnsonian in virtue ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... to originality of conception regarding the form as well as the substance, the manner as well as the matter, it is in the province of art, always provided, of course, that the artist is sane and not guilty of indecency. The artist, like the poet, is born not made; you cannot make an artist, you can only make an artisan. The artist, who represents the Creator, the creative faculty, can influence man: man cannot, and should ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... imagination of Imogen was not sullied with the impressions of indecency, and the baseness of looser desires. She understood not the innuendos of Roderic, and she remarked not with an eager and inquisitive eye the distraction of his visage. She replied therefore only to the more obvious tendency of what he said. "And is this, Edwin, all the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... reserved seats with such openness that Don Custodio, after looking toward Pepay's box to assure himself that she was not doing the same thing with some other admirer, set down in his note-book this indecency, and to make sure of it lowered his head a little to see if the actresses ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... book of the day, and passed through countless editions and endless commentaries; and yet it is agreed on all hands that there exists not another work, admitted as literature, that would bear a moment's comparison with it, for indecency, profanity, and repulsive and disgusting coarseness. His work is now a mere curiosity for the student ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... early period of our residence at Benares we sometimes met these naked creatures in the streets; but for many years they have disappeared, as there is a magisterial order that they be flogged for their indecency, however loud may be their pretension of sanctity. At Allahabad there were many devotees with their tangled hair, besmeared bodies, and very scanty clothing—if what they had on could be called clothing. These are yet seen all over the country. The time has not yet come for stringent ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... the ear of an old father, unreasonable, despotic, but fondly loving, indecent in his own expressions of preference, and blind to the indecency of his appeal for protestations of fondness! Blank astonishment, anger, wounded love, contend within him; but for the moment he ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... legs, blue with the cold, showed through the tatters of his nether garments. This under the circumstances provoked neither jeers nor pity. No one cared how the next man felt or looked. Colonel D'Hubert himself, hardened to exposure, suffered mainly in his self-respect from the lamentable indecency of his costume. A thoughtless person may think that with a whole host of inanimate bodies bestrewing the path of retreat there could not have been much difficulty in supplying the deficiency. But to loot ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... on the park bench Touches a girl's breast That throbs with its own ruthless and stupid delight. The new-born child crawls in his mother's filth. Life, the sleep walker, Lifts toward the skies An immense gesture of indecency. ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... do it with indecency. You will have the goodness to remember that if I don't look after your interests, no one else will. It's perhaps fortunate for you that I have a good deal of the man of business about me. Dolomore ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... her ribald tongue before these illustrious writings, and Indecency vomit her own nastiness elsewhere than ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... of religion, he entirely severed the connection between Church and State. He rigidly enforced all the duties of morality, and would not suffer in his presence even the approach to indecency of dress or manner. "Modesty," said he, "is ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... case of this gentleman deserves pity, especially if he loves sweetmeats, to which, if I may guess from his letter, he is no enemy. In the meantime, I have often wondered at the indecency of discharging the holiest men from the table as soon as the most delicious parts of the entertainments are served up, and could never conceive a reason for so absurd a custom. Is it because a liquorish palate, or a sweet-tooth, as they call it, is not consistent with ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... censure upon Burke, for some violent language which he had used respecting the death of Nuncomar and the connection between Hastings and Impey. Burke was then unpopular in the last degree both with the House and with the country. The asperity and indecency of some expressions which he had used during the debates on the Regency had annoyed even his warmest friends. The vote of censure was carried; and those who had moved it hoped that the managers would resign in disgust. Burke was deeply hurt. But his zeal for what he considered as the cause ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sacrilege, a blasphemy. I thought so then; I think so now. The attempt of ordinary play actors amid worldly surroundings, and before gay assemblages, to portray the sufferings of Christ and His assassination would have been a horrible indecency that would have defied the heavens and invoked a plague worse than that for the turning back of which the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau was established. We might have suggested for such a scene a Judas, or a Caiaphas, ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... Pietro Aretino (1492-1557), called "the scourge of Princes." His prose is fiercely satirical, and his poetry as strongly obscene. His works were condemned for their indecency and impiety. He received numerous and valuable gifts from those who were afraid of his criticisms. His sonnets, written to accompany engravings by Marc Antonio, from designs by Giulio Romano (1524), largely contributed to his reputation for ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Mrs. Royle. "Indecent, you call me?—you that pretend to ha' been a gentleman! I reckon, if indecency's the matter in these times, I could talk to one or two ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Dwellings there; Marsh Level; Holt Hill—Oxton; Wallasey Pool; Birkenhead Priory; Tunnel under the Mersey; Tunnel at the Red Noses—Exploration of it; The Old Baths; Bath Street; The Bath Woman; The Wishing Gate; Bootle Organs; Sandhills; Indecency of Bathers; The Ladies Walk; Mrs. Hemans; the Loggerheads; Duke Street; Campbell the Poet; Gilbert Wakefield; Dr. Henderson; Incivility of the Liverpool Clergy; Bellingham—His Career and History, Crime, Death; Peter ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... army, to hear the cold mirth of the Lieutenant; and Demetrius afterwards appearing with a pistol in his hand, in the next age to Alexander the Great[3]. And for his Shepherd, he falls twice into the former indecency of wounding women. But these absurdities, which those poets committed, may more properly be called the age's fault than theirs. For, besides the want of education and learning, (which was their particular unhappiness) they wanted the benefit ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... Socialist scheme. Socialism is against Human Nature. That is true, and it is equally true of everything else; capitalism is against human nature, competition is against human nature, cruelty, kindness, religion and doubt, monogamy, polygamy, celibacy, decency, indecency, piety and sin are all against human nature. The present system in particular is against human nature, or what is the policeman for, the soldier, the debt-collector, the judge, the hangman? What ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... well a Whig and was running a Review that was Whig from the front cover to the back. Leigh Hunt was not merely a poet, for he was also a radical, and therefore in the opinions of Tories, a believer in immorality and indecency. No matter how innocent a title might appear, it was held in suspicion, on the chance that it assailed the Ministry or endangered the purity of England. William Gifford was more than merely the editor of the Quarterly Review, for he was as well a Tory editor ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... Court, if it were questioned. He liked to recite his old triumphs. He especially plumed himself on his sagacity in dealing with one case which came before him. A complaint was made of a book well known at that time, the memoirs of a dissolute woman, which was full of indecency, but in which there could not be found a single, separate indecent sentence or word. The Major was at a loss for some time what to do in indicting it. If he set forth the whole book, it would give it an immortality on the records of the court which perhaps would be worse for the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... have fallen before the cries of a rising womanhood. The barriers of prurient puritanism are being demolished. Free woman has torn the veil of indecency from the secrets of life to reveal them in their power and their purity. Womanhood yet bound has beheld and understood. A public whose thoughts and opinions had been governed by men and by women engulfed in the old order has been ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... toes in walking. It is considered immodest to do so. Their code is, however, not so whimsical as this bit of etiquette might suggest. The intent is with them the touchstone of propriety. In their eyes a state of nature is not a state of indecency. Whatever exposure is required for convenience is right; whatever unnecessary, wrong. Such an Eden-like condition of society would seem to be the very spot for a something like the modern French school of art to have developed in. And yet it is just that study of the nude which has from immemorial ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... for his colleague, but, designing himself to give up his own consulate to Dolabella, he acquainted the senate with his resolution. But Antony opposed it with all his might, saying much that was bad against Dolabella, and receiving the like language in return, till Caesar could bear with the indecency no longer, and deferred the matter to another time. Afterwards, when he came before the people to proclaim Dolabella, Antony cried out that the auspices were unfavorable, so that at last Caesar, much to Dolabella's vexation, yielded and gave it up. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... his relations had not charitably committed it to the flames. Before the sentence of banishment had been pronounced he wrote an apology, professed penitence, and was allowed to remain at Utrecht, where he composed several pamphlets. Being exiled on account of the indecency of his writings, he came to England, where he affected decorum, and his friend and countryman Isaac Vossius, who enjoyed the patronage of Charles II. and was Canon of Windsor, obtained for him a pension charged upon some ecclesiastical fund. Never were ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... the first febrile excitement of anticipation was succeeded by the apathy of an immense fatigue, and at the back of it all a loathsome sense of the positive indecency of his going. It was hunger that was driving him, the importunate hunger of many months, apparent in his lean face and shrunken figure. And after all could any dinner be worth the pain of dressing ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... village. A festival car was being pushed by a knot of youths and by about an equal number of young women and all of them were nude. But no enlightened person believes that either decency or morals depends on clothing, or would expect to find more essential indecency and immorality in that village than in a modern city. What one would expect to find would be marriages between physically well-developed men ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... said, "in all your life have you ever once been in a crowd—formed part of it, I mean? Well, then, how can you tell? I have. There is plenty of indecency in a Jingalese crowd—especially indecent suggestion; and it is crowds the theaters have to ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... and happy. Such was the situation of Sujah Dowlah, the Nabob of Oude, and such the condition of Oude under his government. With his pedigree, I believe, your Lordships will think we have nothing to do in the cause now before us. It has been pressed upon us; and this marks the indecency, the rancor, the insolence, the pride and tyranny which the Dows and the Hastings, and the people of that class and character, are in the habit of exercising over the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and meaner grafters rose to take the place of the earlier and more robust good fellows who trafficked in the city o' shame. Graft lost class, and lost caste. It was ultimately exposed in all its shocking indecency. The light and licentious town developed a conscience. Public indignation arose and reached its height, when the grafters ventured too far in the shooting of the attorney charged ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... which he includes, with arguments. He has rather oddly distributed his material so as to make only 568 nights. The full contents are given in our Table; the following points require more special notice. Vol. i. Gauttier omits the Third Shaykh's story (No. 1c) on account of its indecency, although it is really no worse than any other story in The Nights. In the story of the Fisherman, he has fallen into a very curious series of errors. He has misunderstood King Yunan's reference to King Sindbad (Burton i. p. 50) to refer to the Book of Sindibad ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the West Indian servant climbed out of slavery into citizenship, for few West Indian masters—fewer Spanish or Dutch—were callous enough to sell their own children into slavery. Not so with English and Americans. With a harshness and indecency seldom paralleled in the civilized world white masters on the mainland sold their mulatto children, half-brothers and half-sisters, and their own wives in all but name, into life-slavery by the hundreds and thousands. They originated a special branch of slave-trading ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... you see nothing that causes you to feel ashamed and foolish? Do you—you—fail to recognize the indecency of a woman of your mental age permitting herself to fancy that she is experiencing the authentic passions of youth? Are you capable of creating life? Can you love with unsullied memory? Have you the ideals of youth, the plasticity, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... anticipated, many things were said. Inquiries were made into the venerable Senator's condition—which, the orthodox papers declared, was but another example of the indecency of the Boxer journals. The Governor went to his cotton plantation. The Lieutenant-Governor went into office, and was pronounced a worthy successor to a good executive. The venerable Senator continued to live. As Mr. Styles had predicted, ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... as I said before, the apostle taketh no notice of their manner of naming of his name, so as to reprove any indecency or unseemliness in their naming of him; wherefore he alloweth of the manner of their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... play for here to-day? She has been dead and I so short a time!... Her little hands are hardly cold as yet; But they can show such cruel indecency ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... express himself on this occasion have become memorable. "Where the devil, Master Lodovick," said the reverend personage, "have you picked up such a parcel of trumpery?" The original term is much stronger, aggravating the insult with indecency. There is no equivalent for it in English; and I shall not repeat it in Italian. "It is as low and indecent," says Panizzi, "as any in the language." Suffice it to say that, although the age was not scrupulous in ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... and lock him up!" said De Launay, calmly. "I accuse him of public indecency, spreading scandal and criminal slander. He has said that I, the General de Launay, was kicked out of the army for unmentioned crimes. I will prefer charges against him ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... with indescribable emotion. The purport of it was to invite him to dinner, and to ridicule his chivalrous respect for me. He assured him, 'that every woman had her price, and, with gross indecency, hinted, that he should be glad to have the duty of a husband taken off his hands. These he termed liberal sentiments. He advised him not to shock my romantic notions, but to attack my credulous generosity, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... disposed to be critical of his friend's diplomacy when he learned that Majendie had not succeeded in persuading Maggie to marry Mr. Mumford. But, in the end, he allowed himself to be convinced of the futility, not to say the indecency, of pressing Mr. Mumford upon the girl at the moment of her fine renunciation. He admitted that he had known all along that Maggie had her own high innocence. And when he realised the extent to which Majendie had "got him out of it," his conscience was roused by a salutary ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... effusion, and our refuge—the British Museum—is the wide sea shore and the wind of the ocean. There, there is real joy in the flesh; our statues are naked, but we are ashamed, and our nakedness is indecency: a fair, frank soul is mirrored in those fauns and nymphs; and how strangely enigmatic is the soul of the antique world, the bare, barbarous soul of beauty and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... cried and shouted and threw paper pellets at the dogs. A stout perspiring Jew in a shabby evening suit came forward and begged for decorum. Then there appeared a stout little man in a top hat who wished to recite verses of, I gathered, a violent indecency. I was uncomfortable about Vera Michailovna, but I need not have been. The indecency was of no importance to her, and she was interested in the human tragedy of the performer. Tragedy it was. The ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... upon modes of judgment not clearly analyzable in consciousness. An openness of manner in the relations of the sexes is very charming, but a little more, and it is boldness, or, if it relates to bodily habits, indecency. A modest behavior is charming, but too much modesty is prudery. Under these circumstances, when the suggestive effect of bodily habits is realized, but the effect of a given bit of behavior cannot be clearly reckoned, and when, at the same time, the ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... was horrible to have dust and splinters blown into that snug, homely room, whereas if I had been in a ruined barn I wouldn't have given the thing two thoughts. In the same way bombs dropping in central London seemed a grotesque indecency. I hated to see plump citizens with wild eyes, and nursemaids with scared children, and miserable women scuttling like rabbits in ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... procedure, from the time of his arrival in the Province down to his departure therefrom. To the serious grounds of complaint which had unquestionably been given were added numerous delinquencies of the most petty and trifling nature. It was stigmatized as "a great indecency" that Judge Willis had been seen in a dress "but little according with his situation."[113] In view of the interests involved, and of the grave nature of the questions to be decided, it seems ludicrous that the appellant ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... beaming countenance with a lowering hostility. The indecency of anyone being cheerful at such a time struck him forcibly. He would have liked mankind to have preserved till further notice a hushed gloom. He glared at the ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... French Canadians are simple, almost infantine, in their language, and as chaste in expression as the hymns of other countries. Impure songs originate in classes who know better, and revel from choice in musical slang and indecency. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... for she could not bring herself to witness Mildred Caniper's betrayal of her decay to one who had never loved her: there was an indecency in allowing Miriam to see it. Helen leaned against the door and heard faint sounds of voices, and in imagination she saw the scene. Mildred Caniper sat in her comfortable chair by a bright fire, though it was now late June of a triumphant summer, and Miriam stood near, answering questions quickly, ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... must enter a loud, a screeching protest against the Arab brutes—the schieks being the very worst of the brutes—who have these monuments in their hands. Their numbers, the filthiness of their dress—or one might almost say no dress—their stench, their obscene indecency, their clattering noise, their rapacity, exercised without a moment's intercession; their abuse, as in this wise: "Very bad English-man; dam bad; dam, dam, dam! Him want to take all him money to the grave; but no, no, no! Devil hab him, and money too!" This, be it remembered, from ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... low-vanity'd Lovelace. But let us stoop to take the wretch as he is, and make the best of him, since you are destined to stoop, to keep grovellers and worldlings in countenance. He had not been guilty of a direct indecency to you. Nor dare he—not so much of a devil as that comes to neither. Had he such villainous intentions, so much in his power as you are, they would have shewn themselves before now to such a penetrating and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... brief forbidding the king to remarry was followed by final sentence in Catharine's favor. Her last years were rendered miserable by humiliation and acts of petty spite. When she died her late husband, with characteristic indecency, [Sidenote: January 1536] celebrated the joyous event by giving a ball at which he and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... good-natured wonder, except the faces of his two guardians, and these expressed a state of conscientious worry. They were ridiculously anxious to suppress his sudden contortions, as one would some gross indecency. In the scuffle they hissed and swore under their breath. They were scandalized and made ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... late King, one of the most accomplished of dilettanti, worst of poets, and silliest of men, had latterly put the coping-stone to a life of folly by engaging in a most bare-faced intrigue with the notorious Lola Montez. The indecency and infatuation of this last liaison—far more openly conducted than any of his former numerous amours—had given intense umbrage to the nobility whom he had insulted by elevating the ci-devant ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... he might use so homespun a simile for a woman who had persistently lived for him and in him and then had made clear spaces about him by going away in the dignity of death. He wanted to breathe in the space she had left, and he also wanted to be spared the indecency of recognizing his relief. But Nan, studying the fire persistently, to allow his eyes all possible liberty of searching her face while she generously avoided his, was going on in what was evidently a preconceived task ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... should greet the verdict with a gesture of derision verged, all things considered, upon indecency. It is good to think that the warder who hustled him from the dock, and played full-back for the prison, made this as ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... talking,' he said dejectedly. 'Believe me, men who don't talk are even worse to live with than men who do. O have a care of natures that are mute. I confess I'm shirking writing this thing. It is almost an indecency. It's mixing two moods to write the sort of letter I mean to write, and at the same time to be sitting in the same ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... to be permitted? Every sensible person will surely say that it ought not to be permitted. Yet the number of people who attach themselves to this life continually increases, for year by year the prison commissioners tell us that the number of persons imprisoned for vagrancy, sleeping out, indecency, etc., continues to increase, and that short terms of imprisonment only serve as periods of recuperation for them, for in prison they are healed of their sores and ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes |
