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More "Impropriety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the mode of attack adopted by the British fleet, it may be considered presumptuous to speak, as the event was so completely successful; but as the necessity of any particular experiment frequently depends upon contingent circumstances, not originally calculated upon, there can be no impropriety in questioning whether the same plan be likely to succeed under all circumstances, ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... to be quite as lovely as you imagine, Miss Effingham," returned Aristabulus, who saw no impropriety in answering a remark made to Miss Van Cortlandt, or any one else, "I hope you will have the kindness to conceal the fact ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... which I had been so unceremoniously dismissed, or none. He stared. "If," said I, "I shall not be commissioned in the Coldstream, it will be utterly beyond my power to persuade even my own relatives, much less the world, that I have not been dismissed for some act of impropriety. Or, if men will not hazard saying this to my face, they will only be more likely to say it where ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... He could not imagine how he had been so foolish as to trust this man. He only wanted one thing, and that was to get to Nastasia Philipovna's, even at the cost of a certain amount of impropriety. But now the scandal threatened to be more than he had bargained for. By this time Ardalion Alexandrovitch was quite intoxicated, and he kept his companion listening while he discoursed eloquently and pathetically on subjects of all kinds, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... answer to this letter. He contented him-self with sending to the commission of thirty-six notables, then in session at Etampes for the purpose of considering the reform of the kingdom, a request to represent to the Count of Charolais the impropriety of such language, and to appeal for the punishment of the persons who had suggested it to him. The count made some awkward excuses, at the same time that he persisted in complaining of the king's obstinate pretensions and underhand ways. A serious incident now ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... it was beautiful exceedingly. All that I had ever seen or dreamed of loveliness was in that matchless living picture by the hand of the Divine Artist. So deeply did it move me that, without a thought of the impropriety of the act, I unconsciously bared my head, as a devout Catholic or well-bred Protestant uncovers before an image of the Blessed Virgin. The maiden showed no displeasure; she merely turned her glorious dark eyes upon me with a look that made me catch my breath, and without ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... excused from further attendance at prayers, the classes who remain change their seats in the chapel. It was formerly customary for the Freshmen, on taking the Sophomore seats, to signalize the event by appearing at chapel in grotesque dresses. The impropriety of such conduct has abolished this custom, but on the recurrence of the day, a uniformity is sometimes observable in the paper collars or white neck-cloths of the in-coming Sophomores, as they file in at vespers. During the evening, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... his sister, attach herself on to George's political career, and obtain from it all that excitement of life which Alice desired for herself. Alice could not love her cousin and marry him; but she felt that if she could do so without impropriety she would like to stick close to him like another sister, to spend her money in aiding his career in Parliament as Kate would do, and trust herself and her career into the boat which he was to command. She did not love her cousin; but she ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... said between the two women on that morning respecting Mr. Gilmore. Mrs. Fenwick, who had allowed herself to be convinced that Mary would act with great impropriety if she did not accept the man, thought that further speech might only render her friend obstinate. Mary, who knew the inside of her friend's mind very clearly, and who loved and respected her friend, could hardly fix her own mind. During the past night ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... which engaged both, and some of them cannot well be passed over unnoticed. One of these took place during the spring of this year, and having been a subject of newspaper remark, it may with less impropriety be mentioned than others which were more indecorously made the topics of general discussion. The incident alluded to was an extravagant scene enacted by a lady of high rank, at a rout given by Lady Heathcote; in which, in revenge, as it was reported, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... degree of humiliation. A rainy day may bring disappointment; needless failure in some enterprise brings chagrin. Shame involves the consciousness of fault, guilt, or impropriety; chagrin of failure of judgment, or harm to reputation. A consciousness that one has displayed his own ignorance will cause him mortification, however worthy his intent; if there was a design to deceive, the exposure will ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... would have tried a sweeter temper than Lucy's, and once, in the Baths of Caracalla, they had doubted whether they could continue their tour. Lucy had said she would join the Vyses—Mrs. Vyse was an acquaintance of her mother, so there was no impropriety in the plan and Miss Bartlett had replied that she was quite used to being abandoned suddenly. Finally nothing happened; but the coolness remained, and, for Lucy, was even increased when she opened the letter and read as follows. It had been ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Instance of this Impropriety of [Thought [12]] in Homer, and at the same time compare it with an Instance of the same Nature, both in Virgil and Milton. Sentiments which raise Laughter, can very seldom be admitted with any Decency into an Heroic Poem, whose Business ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... with the customary French-polished veneer of urbanity which, as a rule, constitutes the suaviter in modo of the higher class of Gallic officials. He read us a severe lecture, however, upon the alleged impropriety of our conduct; and when I ventured to protest that it was not to us the blame ought to be imputed, but to the quatrieme, he mistook my meaning, and, ere I could explain myself, he cut me short with a polite remark that the French used the cardinal ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... I met in the street a young lady who, but yesterday, seemed to me a young girl. She had in the interval taken that sudden leap from youth to maturity which is always so wonderful and perplexing. When I had seen her last there would have been no impropriety in giving her a kiss in the street. Now I should as little have thought of offering to kiss her as of whistling to the Archbishop of Canterbury if I had seen that dignitary passing on the other side of the road. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... reference was there to these fine things in poor Lionel's stable-stamped composition? When she came in this evening and saw his small sons making competitive noises in their mugs (Miss Steet checked this impropriety on her entrance) she asked herself what they would have to show twenty years later for the frame that made them just then a picture. Would they be wonderfully ripe and noble, the perfection of human culture? The contrast was before her again, the sense of the same curious duplicity (in ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... to jump at this invitation; but, no! Miss Pole and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to go. She thought it was improper; and was even half annoyed when we utterly ignored the idea of any impropriety in her going with two other ladies to see her old lover. Then came a more serious difficulty. She did not think Deborah would have liked her to go. This took us half a day's good hard talking to get over; but, at the first sentence of relenting, I seized the opportunity, and wrote and despatched ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of 'Various Readings,' because I consider that expression to be incorrect and misleading[13]. Freely allowing that the term 'variae lectiones,' for lack of a better, may be allowed to stand on the Critic's page, I yet think it necessary even a second time to call attention to the impropriety which attends its use. Thus Codex B differs from the commonly received Text of Scripture in the Gospels alone in 7578 places; of which no less than 2877 are instances of omission. In fact omissions constitute ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... the flower- shrubs with mossy bark and blighted foliage, like the lilacs under my window. Not that beauty is worthy of less than immortality; no, the beautiful should live forever,—and thence, perhaps, the sense of impropriety when we see it triumphed over by time. Apple-trees, on the other hand, grow old without reproach. Let them live as long as they may, and contort themselves into whatever perversity of shape they please, ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... if the opposition was upon the ground that it was unconstitutional—for his views of the Constitution were so excessively liberal as to make even me feel as if I belonged to the straitest sect of strict constructionists. On one occasion he had a bill to appropriate money, with obvious impropriety, for the relief of some miscreant whom he styled "one of the honest yeomanry of the State." When I explained to him that it was clearly unconstitutional, he answered, "Me friend, the Constitution ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Jewish place of worship, in which my father, who was the high priest, appeared in vestments such as I believe the Jewish priests still wear in their solemn ceremonies, and which were so closely copied from the description of Aaron's sacred pontifical robes that I felt a sense of impropriety in such a representation (purely historical, as it was probably considered, and in no way differing from the costume accepted on the French stage in Racine's Jewish plays). And I think it extremely likely that the failure of the piece, which had ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... right for other people to be virtuous so that they can be happy hereafter, but if I knew every impropriety that even Mr. Putzel has committed in his life, I would not mention one of them. My judgment has been maturing for seventy years, and I have got to that point where I know ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he said, "that under the circumstances in which we now stand there is no impropriety in my asking for an interview of a few ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... but little defence against this reproach; I should require more justification if I decided without a perfect knowledge of causes, for one side of the question, at the risk of embracing an error, and of falling into a still greater impropriety. There is wisdom in suspending one's judgment till we have succeeded in finding ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... seems to be altogether incapable, because, when we put ourselves in his case, that passion arises in our breast from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality. We blush for the impudence and rudeness of another, though he himself appears to have no sense of the impropriety of his own behavior, because we cannot help feeling with what confusion we ourselves should be covered, had we behaved in so absurd ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... '(per impossible)' human nature could make itself sinless and perfect, it would become or pass into God; and if God should abstract from human nature all imperfection, it might without impropriety be affirmed, even as Scripture doth affirm, that God assumed or took up ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... some humor her own surprise, when the book falling into her hands after a long interval of years, and when its contents were quite forgotten, she found it impossible to endure, at the age of fourscore, what at fifteen, she, like all the fashionable world of the time, had perused without an idea of impropriety." This is a striking illustration of the mere relativeness of such words as "morality," "refinement," and their opposites. If this old lady could have lived over her early youth embued with the refinement of taste which surrounded ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... in Rome with an 'Oxford don' who 'spoke Latin with a Wiltshire accent and manifest discomfort, wrote Greek letters with his tongue out, and seemed to think a Greek sentence a charm when it was a quotation and an impropriety when it wasn't.') ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... would so direct your steps that you may do all things for his glory; that he would enable you to spend the time profitably to yourself and others; that he would keep you from evil speaking, levity, and foolish jesting, and every impropriety; and that he would enable you to exert a religious influence over those with whom you may meet. Be assured, if you go out without observing this precaution, you will ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... sounds of merriment were still heard, and among the soft tones the officer imagined that he could distinguish the coarser voice of a man. Curiosity now prompted him to enter. Moreover, he reflected that if there were men there already there could not be much impropriety in his taking a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... in speaking of the "obituary method of appreciation," says that we feel a slight sense of impropriety and insecurity in contemporary plaudits. "Wait till he is well dead, and four or five decades of daisies have bloomed over him, says the world; then, if there is any virtue in his works, we will tag and label them and confer immortality upon him." But Mr. Burroughs ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... The mountains which traverse it, and impart to it its severe northern climate, belong properly to the Catskill range. On some maps of the State they are called the Pine Mountains, though with obvious local impropriety, as pine, so far as I have observed, is nowhere found upon them. "Birch Mountains" would be a more characteristic name, as on their summits birch is the prevailing tree. They are the natural home of the black and yellow birch, which grow here to unusual size. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... introducing animals, or whatever they might think necessary to contrast or make the composition more picturesque—we can no longer wonder why the poet has thought it worth setting a guard against this impropriety, when we find that such men as Raffaelle and the Caracci, in their greatest and most serious works, have introduced on the foreground mean and frivolous circumstances. Such improprieties, to do justice to the more modern painters, ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... offices, we have seen the mischiefs of it in the view now under consideration. Scandalous appointments to important offices have been made. Some cases, indeed, have been so flagrant that ALL PARTIES have agreed in the impropriety of the thing. When inquiry has been made, the blame has been laid by the governor on the members of the council, who, on their part, have charged it upon his nomination; while the people remain altogether at a loss to determine, by whose influence their interests have been committed ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... conscious of some impropriety in this domestic frankness before a third party, and Thorpe pounced through his well-mannered hesitation with the swiftness of a bird ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... girl, how is this? What sympathy can you feel with the experience of a young fellow like me on the Continent? When you know the world better, my dear girl, you will feel the impropriety of asking such a question. Pray ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... stirring up rebellion; "that neither the Irish legislature nor their constituents had signified any dissatisfaction at the relief obtained in the session preceding the last; that, to convince both of the impropriety of their peaceable conduct, opposition, by making demands in the name of Ireland, pointed out what she might extort from Great Britain; that the facility with which relief was (formerly) granted, instead of satisfying opposition, was calculated to create new demands; these demands, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... objected to this, that not seven but nine States, or two thirds of the whole number, must consent to the most important resolutions; and it may be thence inferred that nine States would always comprehend a majority of the Union. But this does not obviate the impropriety of an equal vote between States of the most unequal dimensions and populousness; nor is the inference accurate in point of fact; for we can enumerate nine States which contain less than a majority of the people [4]; and it is constitutionally possible that these nine ...
— The Federalist Papers
... immediately deprived of a pension which his great age and his long services rendered due to him. The protege of the authorities failed; and, at the time, this result was attributed to the activity with which I enlightened the members of the Academy as to the impropriety ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... me, and standing in a well-studied attitude before the picture I was looking at. "It is unpardonable vulgar and rude of you to take exception to any dances on the programme, as if Mrs. Hartmann would allow any impropriety where her own daughters are concerned." She went on fanning herself briskly, showing nothing of her indignation ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... anything; and the silence was unbroken save by an occasional rasping sound from an asthmatic fiddle in the orchestra, or a melancholy toot, toot, as one of the musicians tuned his comb. If this was to be the nature of the entertainment, I could not see any impropriety in having it on Sunday. It was as mournfully suggestive as a funeral. Little did I know, however, the capabilities of excitement which were concealed under the sober exteriors of those natives. In a few moments a little stir around the door announced ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... be unmaidenly?" questioned Bertha, innocently. "If it would be an impropriety to confide in M. de Bois, then Madeleine certainly has not made him her confidant. Oh, my poor Madeleine! It is dreadful to think that she must ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... method had certainly an advantage when combined with unmistakable sincerity. There could be no sort of doubt that he meant precisely what he said, or that he was obeying the dictates of one of the warmest of hearts. But point-blank language of this kind seems to acquire a certain impropriety in print. I must ask my readers, therefore, to take it for granted that no mother could have received more genuine assurances of the love of a son; and that his other domestic affections found utterance with all the strength of his masculine nature. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... it is my duty to beg pardon once more," said the incorrigible. "But you might have been talking on that subject, you know, without any impropriety. The religious aspects of the country are deplorable!" throwing up his hands and eyes in no bad imitation of Aminadab Sleek. "Do you ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... to the deception themselves. "I may love him, for I'm his sister!" said Cornelia; but could she in reality have become his sister, she would, beyond all else, have shrunk from it. "Nothing I do is in itself an impropriety," she could say: but her secret sense and motive were enough to make the most innocent act criminal. She closed her ears to the inner voice, and her eyes, looking at her conduct only through the crimson glass of her desire, pronounced ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... 'always the same—always equally adverse to the impropriety of conduct of every description;' and she stalked back through the room again, following Mr ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... scene, in humble thankfulness for its privileges, in ever-increasing enthusiasm in the development of the great theory upon whose validity it had staked its life, its fortunes, and its sacred honor, if I may use such expressions without impropriety in connection with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have weathered scandal except by making ourselves particularly agreeable to everybody. And somehow I got into the habit of making people laugh. It isn't very difficult. I am rather an adept at telling stories which just graze impropriety, for instance. You know, they call me the social triumph of my generation. And people are glad to see me because I am 'so awfully funny' and 'simply killing' and so on. And I suppose it tells in the long run—like ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... perfectly well what I mean," she said.—"That which we all think about so constantly, and yet affect to speak of as a joke or a slight impropriety—love, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... illustrates, or the degree or sort of merit it possesses. Tenth, second, or first century before Christ—first, eighth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, or even eighteenth century A.D.—it is still the same: no book whose subject-matter admits as possible of an impropriety according to current notions can be depended upon to fail of containing such impropriety,—can, if those notions are accepted as the canon, be placed with a sense of security in the hands of girls and youths, or read aloud to women; and this holds good just ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... that "vanishing girl" trick. Somehow I couldn't. But I said nothing. None of us said anything. We sat about that big round table as if assembled for a conference and looked at each other in a sort of fatuous consternation. I would have ended by laughing outright if I had not been saved from that impropriety by poor ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... several governors of provinces represented to the imperial court, the impropriety of such conduct. Hence many were respited from execution, but, though they were not put to death, as much as possible was done to render their lives miserable, many of them having their ears cut off, their noses slit, their right eyes put out, their limbs rendered useless by dreadful dislocations, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... but, nevertheless, the casement was never closed night nor day; and, moreover, Miss Leroy was believed by the strongest circumstantial evidence to wash herself all over every morning, a habit which Mrs. Mobbs thought "weakening," and somehow connected with ethical impropriety. When Miss Leroy was married, and first as an elderly woman became known to me, she was very inconsequential in her opinions, or at least appeared so to our eyes. She must have been much more so when she was younger. In our town we were all formed upon recognised patterns, and those who possessed ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... might without any impropriety be carried into animal life; for discerning bee-masters now find that their hives should not in the winter be exposed to the hot sun, because such unseasonable warmth awakens the inhabitants too early from their slumbers; and, by putting their juices into motion ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... judgment and authority that the men present whispered together, and seemed almost inclined to think that they had committed a shameful indiscretion in suspecting so gallant an officer and so perfect a gentleman of any impropriety, on the mere word of a strange woman, who was ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... other day that you feel as I do in regard to such matters, I take the liberty of suggesting that it seems to me of very great importance that the management of this magnificent gift should be in proper hands. May I ask you without impropriety if you will protect Mr. Parsons so that captious or unenthusiastic persons, men or women, will be unable to control the policy of his hospital? He would wish it so, I am sure. I thought of mentioning the matter to him myself, but I was afraid lest it might worry him and spoil the satisfaction ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... youth, Pratipa addressed him and said, 'Some time ago, O Santanu, a celestial damsel came to me for thy good. If thou meetest that fair-complexioned one in secret and if she solicit thee for children, accept her as thy wife. And, O sinless one, judge not of the propriety or impropriety of her action and ask not who she is, or whose or whence, but accept her as thy wife at my command!'" Vaisampayana continued, "Pratipa, having thus commanded his son Santanu and installed him on his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... was dead, and then had the boldness and audacity to accuse the rulers of having "denied the holy one and the just, and desired a murderer to be delivered unto them; and of having killed the prince of life, whom God had raised from the dead?" The reason is obvious, you see the impropriety of such argument.—But: ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... and part speechless with the anger of indefinable offences. Poor Marion! The things I tried to put before her, my fermenting ideas about theology, about Socialism, about aesthetics—the very words appalled her, gave her the faint chill of approaching impropriety, the terror of a very present intellectual impossibility. Then by an enormous effort I would suppress myself for a time and continue a talk that made her happy, about Smithie's brother, about the new girl who had come ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... which lust in liberty, together with the present trade of the stage, in all their masculine interludes, what liberal soul doth not abhor? Where nothing but filth of the mire is uttered, and that with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, such racked metaphors, with (indecency) able to violate the ear of a Pagan, and blasphemy to turn the blood of a Christian ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... are only what I should expect from you, my love; but think twice before you go up-stairs yourself! It would be considered an outrageous impropriety, were it found out." ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... though the following statement of facts will place the character of Judge Barbour, now deceased, in a very bad and even ludicrous light, the events in mind are nevertheless a part of the history of our early days in California, and I see no impropriety in complying with your request. The facts are as follows: You and I were walking together along D street in the city of Marysville, when we met Judge Barbour, who, after using some offensive and insolent remarks, gave you a verbal challenge to meet him in the way resorted to by gentlemen for the ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... let it be supposed that I mean to assert any irregularity or impropriety in Dick's profession—I merely assert the necessity for Mr. Greg's examination, if he would be master of his subject, of the manner of Gain in every case, as well as the manner of Expenditure. Such accounts must always be accurately rendered in a ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... unintentionally scanning a typewritten page that was lying before him. Like all artists, something of a madman and something of a child, he at first glanced over its contents distractedly, then with an interest so intense that he was no longer aware of the impropriety of his action. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... violent and uncalled for as it was, for it had showed her my heart and allowed me to read hers. Then she talked of my father, by whom I mean him whom you call Philemon; and she made me promise I would care for him to the last with tenderness, saying that I would be able to do this without seeming impropriety, since she had willed me all her fortune under this proviso. Finally, she gave me a key, and pointing out where the money lay hidden, bade me carry it away as her last gift, together with the package of ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... women may be kept at home by the customs of the country, they are nevertheless permitted, on certain occasions, to consult their destiny at the altar, without being exposed to the censure of vulgarity or impropriety. Barren wives are even encouraged to visit the temples, not so much for the purpose of knowing their destiny, as under a firm belief that, by rubbing the bellies of certain little copper gods, they shall conceive and bear children. But, the women in general who, from ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... him all sorts of tricks, and very often pretty rough ones too. I had never spoken much to Oliver, though I observed that whenever Mr Hooker was describing anything, Oliver, if he could do so without impropriety, stopped and listened, and seemed to take great interest in what was said. When work was over, I often saw him in the pantry reading. Not only on Sundays, but every day nearly, it seemed to me, he read the Bible at odd moments; indeed, a sailor at sea, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the first old ones also. There was neither confusion, nor noise, nor even loud talking, far less swearing, amongst the lowest of those assembled in the ring; and it is this quiet and orderly behaviour which throws over all these incongruities a cloak of decency and decorum, that hides their impropriety so completely, that even foreigners who have lived here a few years, and who were at first struck with astonishment by these things, are ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... communication without bringing to your view the just claim of the representatives of Commodore Decatur, his officers and crew, arising from the recapture of the frigate Philadelphia under the heavy batteries of Tripoli. Although sensible, as a general rule, of the impropriety of Executive interference under a Government like ours, where every individual enjoys the right of directly petitioning Congress, yet, viewing this case as one of very peculiar character, I deem it my duty to recommend it to your favorable consideration. Besides the justice of this claim, as ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... indeed," I said; "for when just now I repeated the offer of serving him for a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want of decency. He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in proposing to accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from the first hoped to find in him a brother, and habitually regarded him ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... deeply and for a second indulged in a shy glance of curiosity at the "cousin" who spoke so kindly. Then, as if guilty of an impropriety, he seized a huge carpet-bag as if it were a lady's reticule. But remembering that her eyes were upon him, he tried to cross the hall and mount the stairs with dignity. The great leathern bag did not conduce to this, and ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... "On the impropriety of getting tipsy—on the beauty of temperance? That is dreary work for a pretty young girl. No," Felix continued; "Clifford ought to frequent some agreeable woman, who, without ever mentioning such unsavory subjects, would give him a sense of its being very ridiculous to be ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... so saying, he took another turn at the tea. The race list was a tempting one, Riddlesworth, Craven Stakes, Column Stakes, Oatlands, Port, Claret, Sherry, Madeira, and all other sorts. A good week's racing in fact, for the saintly sinners who frequent the Heath had not then discovered any greater impropriety in travelling on a Sunday, then in cheating each other on the Monday. The tea was good, as were the prawns and eggs, and George brought a second muffin, at the very moment that the Yorkshireman had ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... except to a friend or two at most. Perhaps some of them may be no great entertainment to you, but of that I am far from being an adequate judge. The song to the tune of "Ettrick Banks" [The bonnie lass of Ballochmyle] you will easily see the impropriety of exposing much, even in manuscript. I think, myself, it has some merit: both as a tolerable description of one of nature's sweetest scenes, a July evening, and one of the finest pieces of nature's workmanship, the finest ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... fact, designed to digest milk, and to digest nothing else, but when the teeth are cut farinaceous matter of a more or less solid character should be gradually mixed with the milk. Almost all the illnesses of infants under twelve months of age are caused by some gross impropriety of diet, or otherwise, on the part of the mother, for which the child suffers through the medium of the milk, or they are caused by feeding the child with improper artificial food. Thick sop, and many other articles often given as food are ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... of July 3 is at hand. I regret the necessity of informing you that it is an impropriety for an officer of the Army to address the President through a printed circular.[452] Under the laws ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... of exceptional size, who intervened, turned the business into a blend of wrangle and scuffle, introduced the degrading topic of duelling into a simple wholesome rag of four against one, carried him off under the cloud of horror created by this impropriety and so saved him, still only slightly wetted, not only from this indignity but from the experiment in ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... position occupied by French ministries is enhanced by the parliamentary device of interpellation. As in Great Britain, every member of the two chambers possesses the right at any time to put to an executive head a direct question concerning any affair of state which, without impropriety, may be made the subject of open discussion. A minister may not, however, be questioned without his consent, and the incident ordinarily passes without debate. In France, however, any member may direct at a minister an interpellation, designed not to obtain ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... show, if possible, the impropriety of the phrase, Quite an Original, as applied by the barber's friends, we have, at unawares, been led into a dissertation bordering upon the prosy, perhaps upon the smoky. If so, the best use the smoke can be turned to, will be, by retiring ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... part of the joke of it all: Lois would take her time and appear when it suited her convenience. Not for gold, not for much fine gold would he have preluded her approach with any warning. And their ready assumption that they had caught him in an act of impropriety tickled him tremendously. They were all listening now; and there was undeniably something really naughty and devilish in the patter of ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... colored gentleman. You have this consolation, that God does not look upon the countenance—the color of men; that in his eye, black and white are the same; and consequently, to marry a colored person of intelligence and worth is no immorality, and in his eye, no impropriety. It is probably the design of Providence in this case, to call the attention of the public to the fresh consideration of what is implied in the great doctrine of human brotherhood. Is it true or not, that a colored ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... more conversation they sat down to dinner. Dick seated himself in an embarrassed way. He was very much afraid of doing or saying something which would be considered an impropriety, and had the uncomfortable feeling that everybody was looking at him, ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... serious, saturnine, and practical; Rabelais' was fantastical and joyous; Voltaire's was light, sportive, and verbal. Swift's wit was the wit of sense; Rabelais', the wit of nonsense; Voltaire's, of indifference to both. The ludicrous in Swift arises out of his keen sense of impropriety, his soreness and impatience of the least absurdity. He separates, with a severe and caustic air, truth from falsehood, folly from wisdom, "shews vice her own image, scorn her own feature"; and it is the force, the precision, and the honest abruptness with which the separation ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... a good deal of a slight matter, to tell the internal conflicts in the heart of a quiet person something more than juvenile and something less than senile, as to whether he should be guilty of an impropriety, and, if he were, whether he would get caught in his indiscretion. And yet the memory of the kiss that Margaret of Scotland gave to Alain Chartier has lasted four hundred years, and put it into the head of many an ill-favored poet, whether Victoria or Eugnie would do as much by him, if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the understandings and the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of their ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not a fool, but he makes himself so. His folly, whether in his actions or speeches, comes under the head of impropriety ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... better site for the purpose than Vandalia and at least as good as Jacksonville or Peoria or any of its other competitors. Of his few recorded speeches one concerns a proposed inquiry into some alleged impropriety in the allotment of shares in the State Bank. It is certainly the speech of a bold man; it argues with remarkable directness that whereas a committee of prominent citizens which had already inquired into this matter consisted of men ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... she was just getting him to subscribe to some charity or something equally innocent. Still, it was queer. But I know her too well to suspect her of any impropriety. She's really the dearest, sweetest girl, Miss Huntress, and I'm the last person in the world to ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... his sister's carriage, in company with Madame Desvanneaux and Madame Thomery, and during the drive home, these two gentle dames—for the daughter was worthy of the mother—did not fail to sneer at the fair stranger, dilating particularly upon the impropriety of the challenging salute she had given to the General, with ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... restored, the black withdrew his support, slipping aside a little, but dutifully remaining within call of a whisper. Such discretion was here evinced as quite wiped away, in the visitor's eyes, any blemish of impropriety which might have attached to the attendant, from the indecorous conferences before mentioned; showing, too, that if the servant were to blame, it might be more the master's fault than his own, since, when left to himself, he could conduct ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... then proceeded to expose the impropriety of a foreign minister demanding from the Administration an explanation of words uttered in debate in Congress, and also said that he supposed that the British had no claim to the territory in question. Mr. Canning rejoined, and referred to ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Mr. Sargent was acting wisely. Fred never had told him an untruth in his life, and a few words now might have set matters right. But to this roughness in boys Mr. Sargent had a special aversion. He had so often taken pains to instill its impropriety and vulgarity into Fred's mind that he could not now imagine ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... Upon another field, that of science, and where the Gospel would be appealed to, theological science, it must be decided beforehand. On this field Luther and Zwingli actually carried on the battle and both showed the impropriety of using passages of Scripture, and of wresting them from their true meaning, in the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... by him nor by herself could the graceful, beautifully groomed, chic little woman possibly have been regarded as she chose to describe herself. At the same time, it would have been a person utterly beyond the pale who would have admitted the possibility of impropriety in the behavior of the Princess Feodoreff, one of the greatest ladies of Petersburg. She had long since recovered any ground lost during the few months of her separation from her dissolute Prince. And within the last eighteen months rather a signal honor had been offered her in the intimate friendship ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... forever; for, before her in the sudden silence, towering above the triumphant and unrepentant Crosby, stood Mrs. Pemberton, a portentous figure of shocked matronly disapproval. And she promptly placed the blame where mothers of sons have placed it since the first similar impropriety was discovered. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... public, that you more carefully examine her side of the question. Her bankers, the Messrs. Baring, will answer for her presence whenever you desire. My banker will answer for her. The American Minister will satisfy you of the strong impropriety of any other proceeding. Oh! sir, in the name of a mother's breaking heart—in the name of sweet girlish innocence—in the name of God, believe what I say! If you err, err on the side of mercy. Think, when you lay your head this night on your pillow, the day has not been lost, for it was marked ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... interpreted literally, they would not be applicable to Jonah's case; e.g., "the weeds were wrapped about my head," v. 5. The Psalm, which is partly, but not altogether, a compilation, must have been inserted here by a later hand, hardly by the author of the book, who would have noticed the impropriety of it.] ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... obviously shocked by the impropriety of the suggestion. She looked at Mrs. Gilson, who was breathing as though she was just going under the ether. Claire said doubtfully, "Well—— If you can get me right ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... 2. The impropriety of habitual concealment may be further illustrated. An individual who endeavors to conceal the business in which he is engaged, or the place and mode of carrying it on, exposes himself to the suspicion of his fellow-men. People lose confidence in him. ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... severely, "I trust that the Countess de Laborde will see the impropriety of her presence here. Monsieur L'Abbe, will you give the countess your ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... now become improper, and Mr Hintman, by appearing insensible of the necessary change of behaviour, reduced her to great difficulties; she could not reconcile herself to receiving them; and yet to inform him of the impropriety implied a forward consciousness which she was not ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... madam, which you did me the honor to write to me. Your son will have informed you that I saw no impropriety in your delaying your departure for seven or eight days: I hope they will be sufficient for the arrangements which you have yet to make, as I cannot grant ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... a burning sense of the impropriety I had committed, and expected nothing less than instant exposure; while a vision of pistols upon the morrow floated rapidly and uncomfortably through my brain. I was greatly and immediately relieved, however, when I saw the lady merely hand the gentleman a play-bill, without speaking, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... honours—with all the appearance of virtue and sacrifice on his side. It was exactly as if he had broken out to her: "I say, you little booby, help me to be irreproachable, to be noble, and yet to have none of the beastly bore of it. There's only impropriety enough for one of us; so YOU must take it all. REPUDIATE your dear old daddy—in the face, mind you, of his tender supplications. He can't be rough with you—it isn't in his nature: therefore you'll have successfully chucked him because he was too generous ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... by the affair. Nekhludoff said what he had been thinking, and at first his aunt, Katerina Ivanovna, seemed to agree with him, but at last she became silent as the rest had done, and Nekhludoff felt that he had committed something akin to an impropriety. In the evening, soon after dinner, the large hall, with high-backed carved chairs arranged in rows as for a meeting, and an armchair next to a little table, with a bottle of water for the speaker, began to fill with people come to hear the foreigner, Kiesewetter, preach. Elegant equipages ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... dear, if you think so, it is. But not for these girls, who play the game with never a thought of impropriety and with no shock to their modesty. Much depends on how you think about ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... would appear, but Miss Schley had nothing to do in the first act till near the end, and then had only one short scene to bring down the curtain. Lady Holme knew this because she had seen the play in Paris. She thought the American version very dull. The impropriety had been removed and with it all the fun. People began to yawn and to assume the peculiar blank expression—the bankrupt face—that is indicative of thwarted anticipation. Only the Americans who had seen the piece in New York preserved ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... in his life had he studied his own character and his own conduct more accurately, or made sterner resolves, than he did as he stood there smiling, bowing, and acting without impropriety the part of host to an Emperor. No;—he could not run away. He soon made himself sure of that. He had risen too high to be a successful fugitive, even should he succeed in getting off before hands were laid upon him. He must bide his ground, if only that he might not at once confess ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... process of development. Many men, Frenchmen especially, have thought the trait peculiar to women. La Bruyre declares that "Women have no principles as men understand the word. They are guided by their feelings, and have full faith in their guide. Their notions of propriety and impropriety, right and wrong, they get from the little world embraced by their affections." And Alphonse Karr says: "Never attempt to prove anything to a woman: she believes only according to her feelings. Endeavour ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... He did not turn his glance from the street ahead of him. He had made no appeal, would make none, in fact. He had told the story with scarcely a reflection on its impropriety, that would have arrested another man from introducing such an element into his gentle fellowship with a girl like Ruth. His lack of hesitancy was born of his manly view of the outcast's blamelessness, of her dire necessity for help, and of a premonition ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... service of those who owned their bodies, and by their condition as slaves were released from all obligations of honor or of honesty. In the seventeenth century it might pass in France; for the line between gentle and simple was so sharply drawn that ladies of rank saw no greater impropriety in disrobing before their footmen than before their dogs. But the progress of liberty or of egalite blotted out the valets of comedy. Even in Regnard's time the inconsistencies of the character were noticed. Jasmin, in the "Serenade," utters revolutionary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... shown his wife, and as she and Mrs. Darling seemed chosen rather to the exclusion of the other women, but when Mira and not herself became the invariable occupant of the seat by the swell civilian's side, the indiscretion, not to say the impropriety of the affair, became glaringly apparent. It is rarely from the contemplation of our own, but rather from the errors of our neighbors, that our moral lessons are drawn, and now that in all its nakedness ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... of the detector as insignificant in comparison with that of the discoverer, and his glow of satisfaction is reserved for the nobler employment. The points on which he insists are the obligation of honestly desiring to understand an author; the impropriety of fastening on defects, or of simply balancing between defects and merits; the duty of approving with heartiness and warmth, in place of that cold-blooded moderation which he pronounces, with Vauvenargues, "a sure sign of mediocrity." If, therefore, we say that his is only one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... sternly, "if you saw any impropriety in the ceremony, why did you perform it? I beg you will now reserve your remarks. You ought to have made them before or not at all. If you be silent, the thing will probably never be heard of, and I should greatly ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Scipio, who was prepared to maintain, and would have maintained, his professional opinion, after his positive and peculiar manner, against any disputant, had not the heart to resist so general an evidence of the impropriety of his presence. Without uttering a word in vindication or apology, he folded his arms, and walked out of the house, with the submission and meekness of one who had been too long trained in humility to rebel. This desertion on the part of his companion was not, however, so quietly acquiesced ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... astonishment of these soaring spirits, when their plain friends or prudent relations presume to remonstrate with them on any impropriety in their conduct. But if these worthy people happen to be somewhat advanced in life, their contempt is then a little softened by pity, at the reflection that such very antiquated poor creatures should pretend to judge what is fit or unfit for ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... affirmed of what is mentioned above as high-class Chinese literature, which is pure enough to satisfy the most strait-laced. Chinese poetry, of which there is in existence a huge mass, will be searched in vain for suggestions of impropriety, for sly innuendo, and for the other tricks of the unclean. This extraordinary purity of language is all the more remarkable from the fact that, until recent years, the education of women has not been at all general, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... have taken a solemn vow—it is registered in heaven. You have by fraud and imposition entered into a holy place, and assumed a holy character. Add not to your crime by even harbouring the idea of impropriety, and add not to my humiliation by supposing for a moment that I am capable of being a participator. Holy Virgin," cried she, falling on her knees, "I demand thy powerful aid in this conflict of worldly passions and holy wishes. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that ours shall be made to do so, Laura. I need hardly say to you that I intend to accuse you of no impropriety of feeling in ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... vessel, insisting on my returning his visit the next day. The weather proving calm, I was enabled to fulfil my engagement, and a merry time we had of it. So pleasant did I find this sort of life, that I began to persuade myself that there would be no outrageous impropriety in acceding to O'Driscoll's proposal to lengthen our voyage. Two days thus passed pleasantly away, during which we made but little progress in our voyage. We might possibly by carrying a greater press of sail have made more, but we were, as I have observed, in no hurry ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... the idea of the sacredness of the individual soul introduced through Christianity. If the highest end of man be to live for eternity, not to live for society, the individual is invested with a new dignity; and we feel the impropriety of trespassing upon the sphere for which each man is personally responsible. In the ancient world however, where this idea was unknown, all the elements of life, religion, and morals, were made subordinate to the political. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... is perfectly loyal to England, and if as I understand it is the intention of the American Government to come out on the side of the Allies, would there be any impropriety in my going with her to the Embassy and taking my ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... "is it you who fling such a taunt to shame your own kin? If there is aught of impropriety in what this man Sir John has done, is it not our affair with him in place of ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... single words or in many together, we shall consider what they require separately and what in conjunction. Tho there is good reason for saying that perspicuity is best suited by proper words, and ornament by metaphorical, yet we should always know that an impropriety is never ornamental. But as many words very often signify the same thing, and therefore are called synonymous, some of these must be more sublime, more bright, more agreeable, and sweeter and fuller in pronunciation ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... Te-hui is, moreover, a man well up in years; and he is an old friend of our family, so if I go with him, how ever will I be able to do anything that's wrong? Should I at any time be guilty of any impropriety, he will be sure to speak to me, and to exhort me. He even knows the prices of things and customs of trade; and as I shall, as a matter of course, consult him in everything, what advantage won't I enjoy? But if you refuse ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... long; for as I stood regarding my two treasures, even as if my eyes had made her uncomfortable, she suddenly opened hers, and started to her feet, with the words, "I beg your pardon, papa," looking almost guiltily round her, and putting up her hair hurriedly, as if she had committed an impropriety in being caught untidy. This was fresh sign of a condition of mind ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... Marriage was the coward's refuge from Love. He said that Marriage had been invented by lawyers and parsons for the purpose of obtaining fees and authority. These unpleasant people, the lawyers and the parsons, had contrived to make Love an impropriety and had reduced Holy Passion to the status of a schedule to an act of parliament. Cupid had been furnished with a truncheon and a helmet and had been robbed of his wings in order that he might more suitably serve as a policeman. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... pertain to the Della Scalla; Reggio to the Gonzaga; Modena to the family of Este, and Lucca to the Florentines. But in taking possession of these cities, many disputes arose which were afterward in a great measure settled by the Venetians. Some, perhaps, will think it a species of impropriety that we have so long deferred speaking of the Venetians, theirs being a republic, which, both on account of its power and internal regulations, deserves to be celebrated above any principality of Italy. But that this ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Lydia Sessions, with his proffers of books, and his suggestions for Johnnie. The explanation of how the girl came to be riding in his car that Sunday morning was neither as full nor as penitent as Miss Lydia could have wished; yet it did recognize the impropriety of the act, and was, in so far, satisfactory. Miss Sessions made haste to form an alliance with the young man for the special upliftment of Johnnie Consadine. She would have greatly preferred to interest him ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... advocates of literary monopolies assured us that it was in that direction, and in that alone, we were to look for the cheapening of books. Now, nothing of this sort is at all pretended. On the contrary, we are here told of the extreme impropriety of a system which makes it necessary for a New England essayist to accept a single dollar for a volume that under other circumstances would sell for half a guinea; of the wrong to such essayists that results from the issue of cheap "periodicals ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... of them feel a greater interest in the conferences," replied the commander. "To-morrow we are to begin upon India, dwelling upon its geography, civilization, government, and history. Now, I wish to ask you, Doctor, if there would be any impropriety in my asking the members of your party berthed in the cabin to ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... said, "There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not occupy the time." The girls were delighted, because Dr. Dabney, the year before, had given them at this occasion a scolding on impropriety of behavior at lyceum lectures. They all declared Mr. Ingham was a love,—and so handsome! (Dennis is good-looking.) Three of them, with arms behind the others' waists, followed him up to the wagon he rode home in; and a little girl with a blue ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... startling effect on the recluse inhabitants of the place. Robert Stephenson used to tell a story of the clergyman of the parish waiting upon the foreman of one of the gangs to expostulate with him as to the shocking impropriety of his men working during Sunday. But the head navvy merely hitched up his trousers, and said, "Why, Soondays hain't cropt out here yet!" In short, the navvies were little better than heathens, and the village of Kilsby was not restored to its wonted quiet until ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Orientals to clasp their turbans. Napoleon, rising from the table took from a private drawer, two very beautiful brooches, richly set with those jewels. One he gave to Gohier, the other to his tried friend Desaix. "It is a little toy," said he, "which we republicans may give and receive without impropriety." The Director, flattered by the delicacy of the compliment, and yet not repelled by any thing assuming the grossness of a bribe, yielded ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... she and Mrs. Darling seemed chosen rather to the exclusion of the other women, but when Mira and not herself became the invariable occupant of the seat by the swell civilian's side, the indiscretion, not to say the impropriety of the affair, became glaringly apparent. It is rarely from the contemplation of our own, but rather from the errors of our neighbors, that our moral lessons are drawn, and now that in all its nakedness the ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... their sentiments, by which they receive great advantage. You remember Sir R. Payne's way of describing you, which was still more odd; he said if anybody looked through the keyhole at any time to see how you behaved when you was alone, that he was sure there would be no more impropriety in it than if you had a hundred eyes upon you. I don't like commending you myself, but I like to hear others do so, and especially when they speak about what they think, and when what they think has the ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... disposed we treated with them, and they gave us everything we desired. They all go as naked as they were born, without being ashamed, and if all were related concerning the little shame they have it would be bordering on impropriety, therefore it ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... epistle of a very singular nature. You will please to remember, that they will for the most part be brought in a few days before a court of judicature. I must therefore with all humility intreat you to excuse me from giving them a direct answer. There would be an impropriety in a person, so illustrious in rank, and whose voice is of considerable weight in the state, forestalling the inferior courts upon these subjects. One thing however I am at liberty to mention, and your ladyship may be assured, that in any thing in ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... lady commits a breach of etiquette that amounts to a gross impropriety by calling upon a gentleman, excepting upon business, at his place of business. Even relatives, unless in the immediate family, cannot receive calls from ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... the walls, or, maybe, saunter occasionally to the open door or window, to look at something which has attracted their attention, or to exchange greetings with a passing friend. All this is done with a freedom that speaks for itself of their utter unconsciousness of any impropriety in their conduct. ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... are excellent. Notwithstanding the singular variety of nationalities, one sees no outbreaks; there is no visible impropriety of conduct, no contention or intoxication, quiet and repose reign everywhere. Though the ancient Pettah, or Black Town, inhabited solely by the natives, is not a very attractive place to visit, and though it is characterized ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... come to a decision as to his title, and had told every one concerned that he meant to be as he always had been,—George Roden, a clerk in the Post Office. When spoken to, on this side and the other, as to the propriety,—or rather impropriety,—of his decision, he had smiled for the most part, and had said but little, but had been very confident in himself. To none of the arguments used against him would he yield in the least. As to his mother's name, he said, no one had doubted, and no one would doubt it for a moment. ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... divine authority of the Bible. He went through the whole debate, which lasted several days, without uttering one uncharitable, scornful, or angry word, with the exception of a single phrase in his last speech; and even that he meekly and generously recalled, after I had satisfied him of its impropriety. I never forgot the conduct of that dear good man, and his Christian meekness and forbearance had a good effect on ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... without impropriety, call him," said the Improvisatore, "for he is likely to become rich enough to command the title from those who might not ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... yet hearken, for the whole truth must be revealed. I say that I have done all that man could do, and as the event proves, not in vain. As for Prudence, I will confess to one impropriety, if it be thy pleasure to call it so, though I meant it not, and whereof thou art in some sense the cause. Knowing thy regard for her, I did speak one day of my hopes for thee, whereat the tears did stand in her eyes, and I was so moved thereat, that I did salute her cheek, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Britain and of Ireland. If Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his associates had succeeded in expelling British authority from Ireland, and in founding an Irish Republic, we should probably have recognised that Republic. Yet an American minister at the Court of St. James's saw no impropriety in advising our Government to refuse a refuge in the United States to the defeated Irish ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... gate now, and as Joost held it open for her to pass through, she saw that he had blushed to the ears at the lightly spoken words—if he had been in her room last night; the impropriety of them to him was evident. For a moment she blushed, too, then she recovered herself and grew impatient with one so artificial—and yet so simple, so self-conscious—and yet so unconscious, so desperately ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... face towards the altar, and leaning over a silver pix, in which, according to their own tenets, the Redeemer of the world must have been at that moment, as it contained the consecrated wafers, gave full vent to his risibility. Now it is remarkable that no one present attached the slightest impropriety to this—I for one did not; although it certainly occurred to me with full force at ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... reasons for not desiring this visit, outside of the possible impropriety. The summer before, during his happy weeks in Jean's company, circumstances often shaped themselves so that there were three persons on their little canoe trips and picnics—and the third was Miss Fitzpatrick. Her ingenuity in these matters had been positively remarkable. And the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... against this reproach; I should require more justification if I decided without a perfect knowledge of causes, for one side of the question, at the risk of embracing an error, and of falling into a still greater impropriety. There is wisdom in suspending one's judgment till we have succeeded in finding ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... mentioned before, that, whatever be your decision, no impropriety can attach to you. I might not, indeed, from various circumstances, and from the information I possess, I perhaps should not, have given you farther trouble on the occasion, had it not been from your own direction and appointment. And I am now willing to retire without further explanation, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... of the litany from which the service was chanted, to see how far the little details at Westminster corresponded with those at Barchester, and whether he thought his own voice would fill the church well from the Westminster precentor's seat. There would, however, be impropriety in such meddling, and he sat perfectly still, looking up at the noble roof, and guarding against the coming fatigues ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... comes a rare chance to study human types. Books hold nothing within their covers so grotesque and so pathetic, so inexplicable and so queer as the folks that jostle one another on the streets! There is the precise female who nips along in a little apologetic way, as though there was an impropriety in the very act of locomotion for which she would fain atone. From the crown of her head to her boot tips she is proper, stupid and decorous, but too much of her company would prove to endurance what sultry weather proves to cream. In fact, I think ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... curiosity that we were enabled to enjoy a nearer and better view of the beauties than strict decorum would have justified, and it may not perhaps be uninteresting to my fair readers, if, turning to advantage this slight impropriety, I here take the liberty of describing as much as I could observe of the very remarkable travelling costume of the female Affgh[a]n aristocracy. When in public the highborn Affgh[a]n lady is so completely enveloped by her large veil (literally sheet), that the person ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... the ancients, to frequent favourite forests and groves, and to inhabit particular trees, whence they sally out to seize on the passer by.[1] The Buddhist priests connive at demon worship because their efforts are ineffectual to suppress it, and the most orthodox Singhalese, whilst they confess its impropriety, are still driven to resort to it in all ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... free spirit of independence introduced by the Teutonic system; and the idea of the sacredness of the individual soul introduced through Christianity. If the highest end of man be to live for eternity, not to live for society, the individual is invested with a new dignity; and we feel the impropriety of trespassing upon the sphere for which each man is personally responsible. In the ancient world however, where this idea was unknown, all the elements of life, religion, and morals, were made subordinate to the political. The state was supreme. Looked ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... anger. Instinctively she sat down and began to sing; it was not the first time she had sat and sung in a dirty staircase. It was not a wise thing to do, but her anger prevented her from seeing its impropriety. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Dodge had arrived in New York. I proposed that he should call upon them to make inquiries about his friends at the south, with whom Dr. Flint's family were well acquainted. He thought there was no impropriety in his doing so, and he consented. He went to the hotel, and knocked at the door of Mr. Dodge's room, which was opened by the gentleman himself, who gruffly inquired, "What brought you here? How came you to know I was ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... was obviously shocked by the impropriety of the suggestion. She looked at Mrs. Gilson, who was breathing as though she was just going under the ether. Claire said doubtfully, "Well—— If you can get me right back to ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... be the duty of the minister or instructor admitted to visit any prison, to communicate to the jailor any abuse or impropriety in the prison which may come to his knowledge, on pain of being prohibited ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... cane of exceptional size, who intervened, turned the business into a blend of wrangle and scuffle, introduced the degrading topic of duelling into a simple wholesome rag of four against one, carried him off under the cloud of horror created by this impropriety and so saved him, still only slightly wetted, not only from this indignity but from the experiment in rationalism that had ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... you may go up, my dear," smiled kindly Mrs. Kilton. She was too wholesome to see the least impropriety in so ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... certain parish particularly set forth, Thomas Sludberry, the party appeared against in that suit, had made use of, and applied to Michael Bumple, the promoter, the words 'You be blowed;' and that, on the said Michael Bumple and others remonstrating with the said Thomas Sludberry, on the impropriety of his conduct, the said Thomas Sludberry repeated the aforesaid expression, 'You be blowed;' and furthermore desired and requested to know, whether the said Michael Bumple 'wanted anything for himself;' adding, 'that if the said Michael Bumple did want anything for himself, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... do improper acts, for the sake of even another, his judgment thus stupefied by cupidity.[506] Piety, wealth and pleasure,—these three constitute the fruit of life. One should acquire these three by means of being free from impropriety and sin.' ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... went out of the house immediately, being too excited to talk calmly to Annie; but I returned after supper, and reasoned with her as gently as possible on the impropriety and wickedness of her conduct. She seemed to feel very sorry, and was so penitent that my hopes of saving her, rose considerably. She promised, with tears in her eyes, to overcome her unholy love for Pattmore, and never to see him ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... gazed tranquilly around her. She did not feel the least emotion, but considered that it was a mistake not to light the lamps. Their brightness would have given the place a more cheerful look. The gloom even struck her as savouring of impropriety. Her face was warmed by the flames of some candles burning in a candelabrum by her side, and an old woman armed with a big knife was scraping off the wax which had trickled down and congealed into pale tears. And amidst the quivering silence, the mute ecstasy of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... seems to die within her. A kind of sick feeling renders her speechless; she had never thought of that—of—of the idea of impropriety being suggested as part of this most unlucky escapade. Mrs. Connolly, noting the girl's white face, feels as though she ought to have cut her tongue out, rather than have spoken, yet she had ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... to Escovedo, Perez enlarged upon the impropriety, the impossibility of Don John's leaving the Netherlands at that time. The King was so resolute upon that point, he said, that 'twas out of the question to suggest the matter. "We should, by so doing, only lose all credit with him in other things. You know what a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... principal inhabitants to make a party. It is easy for that party to heat themselves with imaginary grievances. It is easy for them to oppress a man poorer than themselves; and natural to assert the dignity of riches, by persisting in oppression. The argument which attempts to prove the impropriety of restoring him to the school, by alledging that he has lost the confidence of the people, is not the subject of juridical consideration; for he is to suffer, if he must suffer, not for their judgement, but for his own actions. It may be convenient for them to have another master; but ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... abilities and merit; yet his fine-spun system proved in effect useless and impracticable. Several attempts were afterwards made to amend these fundamental constitutions, but all to little purpose; the inhabitants, sensible of their impropriety, and how little they were applicable to their circumstances, neither by themselves, nor by their representatives in assembly, ever gave their assent to them as a body of laws, and therefore they obtained not the force of fundamental and unalterable laws in the colony. What regulations the people ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... morning, with secret distaste and displeasure, of Evelyn's intended visit to the Mertons. He could scarcely make any open objection to it; but he did not refrain from many insinuations as to its impropriety. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of discrepancy. But a person who conscientiously believes that free inquiry is, on the whole, beneficial to the interests of truth, and that, from the imperfection of the human faculties, wherever there is much free inquiry there will be some discrepancy, may, without impropriety, consider such discrepancy, though in itself an evil, as a sign of good. That there are ten thousand thieves in London is a very melancholy fact. But, looked at in one point of view, it is a reason for exultation. For what other city ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... agitation approaching to a tremor in his brother's voice, that betokened sorrow for his own impropriety in too familiarly addressing Denis, and perhaps regret that so slight and inoffensive a jest should have been so harshly received in the presence of strangers, by a brother who in reality had been his idol. He reflected upon the conversation held on that morning in ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... and children are always separate from the others, and are frequently in a building by itself. Here with no look-out from windows on the passing world, the news of which it would be an impropriety in a Circassian to question his wives about, they ply their tasks, spinning, weaving, embroidering, and knitting silver lace in an obscurity illumined by scanty rays of sunlight. The walls of these apartments are hung with dresses, not with ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... contrivance of such plans as would best lead to the effectuation of the end each had proposed to himself. It is a curious fact, that on the very Sunday afternoon on which we have seen Mr. and Mrs. Larkin conversing about the danger and impropriety of Harriet Meadows keeping company with a man like Sanford, their own daughter was actually riding out with Hatfield. In this ride they passed the residence of Mr. Meadows, who, in turn, commented upon the fact with some severity of censure towards Mr. Larkin and his wife for not looking ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... been praising Hal too," she said; "I like to hear you men admire her; it shows you can appreciate sterling worth as well - well - shall we call it daring impropriety?" ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... impropriety in her doing so," said Sir Charles. "If our hospitality does not place Miss Lindsay above suspicion, the more shame for us. How would you feel if anyone else made such ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... Cressy, "although it does not belong to us to judge. But what we see we testify to; for pride was very great in France, and especially amongst the nobles and others, that is to say, pride of nobility, and covetousness. There was also much impropriety in dress, and this extended throughout the whole of France. Some had their clothes so short and so tight that it required the help of two persons to dress and undress them, and whilst they were being undressed they appeared as if they were being skinned. Others wore dresses ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... side, as the Doric pipe of the ancients is said to have been; and the open ends of the reeds into which they blow with their mouths, are of equal height, or in a line. They have also a drum, which, without any impropriety, may be compared to an hollow log of wood. The one I saw was five feet six inches long, and thirty inches in girt, and had a slit in it, from the one end to the other, about three inches wide, by means of which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... shall perceive the necessity of repressing them, if we would spare ourselves vain regrets and useless sorrows, which certainly always afflict those who obey not the laws. Thus, a single reflection will suffice to show the impropriety of anger, the dreadful consequences of revenge, calumny, and backbiting. Every one must perceive that in giving a free course to unbridled desires, he becomes the enemy of society, and then it is the part of the laws to restrain him who renounces his reason and despises ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... Coleman has the following Note on this passage: "Madame Dacier rejects this line, because it is also to be found in the Phormio. But it is no uncommon thing with our author to use the same expression or verse for different places, especially on familiar occasions. There is no impropriety in it here, and the foregoing hemistich is rather lame without it. The propriety of consulting Micio, or Demea's present ill-humor with him, are of no consequence. The old man is surprised at Hegio's story, does not know what to do or say, and means to evade ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... five weeks in the small sanctuary as before. Who could they be? I had never directly asked the question, curious as I had been to know their history and the purpose of their visits. Had I not learned from Mr Clayton the impropriety and sinfulness of judging humanity by its looks, I should have formed a most uncharitable opinion of their characters. They were hard-featured men, sallow of complexion, rigid in their looks. I knew that, attached to the church of Mr Clayton, were two missionaries—men of rare piety, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Windham. Pitt broached the matter to Lord Grenville on 7th May, and received on the morrow a friendly but firm refusal. The following sentences are noteworthy: "We rest our determination solely on our strong sense of the impropriety of our becoming parties to a system of Government which is to be formed at such a moment as the present on a principle of exclusion.... We see no hope of any effectual remedy for those mischiefs ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... No suggestion of impropriety had entered with Cynthia. Sandy was too fine and self-forgetful to be touched by worldliness. Cynthia had come to him; he ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... many as are necessary—of the general characteristics of the Indian, both good and bad—so as to give a fair view of the character, according to the principle intimated above. And I may, perhaps without impropriety, here state, that this may be taken as the key to all the sketches which are to follow. It is quite probable that many examples of each class treated, might be found, who are exceptions to the rules stated, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... but to us is known as an infinite love, revealed in the mystery of man—I say before I begin, it is fitting that, in the absence of a common friend to do that office for me, I should introduce myself to your acquaintance, and I hope coming friendship. Nor can there be any impropriety in my telling you about myself, seeing I remain concealed behind my own words. You can never look me in the eyes, though you may look me in the soul. You may find me out, find my faults, my vanities, my sins, but you will not SEE me, at ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... present to us—none were present to Herodotus and Thucydides even in their age, on which to build trustworthy affirmations respecting the anti-Hellenic Pelasgians; and where such is the case we may without impropriety apply the remark of Herodotus respecting one of the theories which he had heard for explaining the inundation of the Nile by a supposed connexion with the ocean—that the man who carries up his story into the invisible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... our power to have recourse to any established laws of speech; but we must remark how the writers of former ages have used the same word, and consider whether he can be acquitted of impropriety, upon the testimony of Davies, given in his favour ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... his mind who the "man of experience" was, the person who had advised Kent concerning the getting of a position with a law firm in the city. He wondered what other advice might have been given. Was it Mr. Phillips who had suggested to Kent the impropriety of Elizabeth's being seen so much in his—Kendrick's—company? If so, why had he done it? What was ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... our moral power—of this superior faculty which fears no obstacle, no limit, and which subdues spiritually that even to which our physical forces give way. The object of the sublime thwarts, then, our physical power; and this contrariety (impropriety) must necessarily excite a displeasure in us. But it is, at the same time, an occasion to recall to our conscience another faculty which is in us—a faculty which is even superior to the objects before which our imagination yields. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... scattered in some forty little hamlets lying at irregular distances along the shores. There are very few English or French residents, and no Americans but the different branches of the Consul's family,—a race whose reputation for all generous virtues has spread too widely to leave any impropriety in mentioning them here. Their energy and character have made themselves felt in every part of the island; and in the villages farthest from their charming home, one has simply to speak of a familia, "the family," and the introduction is sufficient. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... hostess' novel and this was only discussed when Lady Luncon was herself somewhere at hand—the second topic concerned the books of somebody who had, most unjustly it appeared, been banned by the libraries for impropriety, and here opinions were divided as to whether the author would gain by the advertisement or lose by loss of library circulation. Thirdly, there was a new young man who had written a novel about the love ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... she was acquainted with him socially, but it is not expected when the acquaintance is purely professional. A fashionable and popular physician would be swamped with wedding-cards if that were the custom. If, however, one wishes to show gratitude and remembrance, there would be no impropriety in sending cards to ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Genesis belongs to a much higher order of thought. The Babylonian account of the deluge and the ark is more closely parallel to the Bible narrative; the two cannot possibly be independent of each other, and there may be no impropriety in holding that the Hebrew writers were acquainted with myths of general diffusion in the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... wants to bother his head with thinking; or else it is a vehement discussion, in which dogmatic assertion does duty for argument and loudness for force. In either case it rests and stimulates the tired men, while the drink refreshes their throats, and it has no more necessary impropriety than the drawing-room talk of the well-to-do. In this intercourse men who do not read the papers get an inkling of the news of the day, those who have no books come into contact with other minds, opinions are aired, the human craving for fun gets a little exercise; ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... the spell of mediaeval chivalry she prattles needlessly of Georgiana, early life, and their old home in Henderson. Although I have pointed out to her the gross impropriety of her conduct, she has persisted in reading me some of Georgiana's letters, written from the home of that New York cousin, whose mother they are now visiting. I didn't like him particularly. Sylvia relates that he was a favorite ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... is variety in unity, freedom, ease, clearness, the power of saying anything, and of striking any note in the scale of human feelings without impropriety; and such is the divine gift of language possessed by Plato in the Symposium and Phaedrus. From this there are many fallings-off in the Laws: first, in the structure of the sentences, which are rhythmical ...
— Laws • Plato
... Though I live here in what was my father's house, I live here alone. I have, alas! no longer a parent—a parent, whose presence might sanction your visits. It is unnecessary for me to point out the impropriety ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... beautiful hair that girl had! It was like sunshine, the silk of corn, the yield of the harvest. And the marvelous abundance of it! It was true that she was an artist's model; it was equally true that she had committed a mild impropriety in addressing me as she had; but, for all I could see, she was a girl of delicate breeding, doubtless one of the many whose family fortunes, or misfortunes, force them to earn a living. And it is no disgrace these days ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... queen's, in the same palace; and that of Henrietta Maria, the Queen-Mother, as she was styled, at Somerset House. Charles's was pre-eminent in immorality, and in the daily outrage of all decency; that of the unworthy widow of Charles I. was just bordering on impropriety; that of Katherine of Braganza was still decorous, though not irreproachable. Pepys, in his Diary, has this passage:—'Visited Mrs. Ferrers, and stayed talking with her a good while, there being a little, proud, ugly, talking lady ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... degree or sort of merit it possesses. Tenth, second, or first century before Christ—first, eighth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, or even eighteenth century A.D.—it is still the same: no book whose subject-matter admits as possible of an impropriety according to current notions can be depended upon to fail of containing such impropriety,—can, if those notions are accepted as the canon, be placed with a sense of security in the hands of girls and youths, or read aloud to women; and ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Miss Wharton, if my ungovernable feelings have led me into impropriety; the powerful motive—the cruel reason"—she hesitated. Frances now raised her face, and their eyes once more met; they fell in each other's arms, and laid their burning cheeks together. The embrace was long—was ardent and sincere—but neither ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... were preening himself, when the new moustachios had stuck; but as soon as he saw, or felt, his master's sorrow at their loss he immediately hung his head, showing nothing but shame for the loss he had caused his master, or for the impropriety of those delicate growths that so ill become his jowl. And now they took the road again, Rodriguez with the great frying-pan and cooking-pot; no longer together, but not too far apart for la Garda to take them both at once, and to make the doubly false charge that should so confound ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... manner of conducting the business by the agents of the King, I do not positively know; but if I were to credit many tales which I have heard about it, I should believe there had been errors at least. But I know too well the weakness and impropriety of listening to slanderous reports; and I am very confident, that all possible care will be taken of the interests of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... statements I have seen, but which I have not verified, other publishing bodies, such as the Christian Knowledge Society, have taken the same liberty with the names of the dead as the Religious Tract Society. If it be so, the impropriety is the work of the smaller spirits who have not been sufficiently overlooked. There must be an overwhelming majority in the higher councils to feel that, whenever altered works are published, the fact of alteration should be made ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... and therefore it is argued the Infinite God can not be known. Such a doctrine shocks our moral sense, and we shrink from the thought of an Infinite which includes evil. There is certainly a moral impropriety, if not a logical impossibility, in such a ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... liveliness of the French temperament. A man got up behind our carriage, and our coachman very naturally whipped him down. The man followed us quietly for a while, but at length his wounded dignity overcame his patience, and he came up to our coachman and began to speak furiously on the impropriety of his having whipped him. Finding he could make nothing of one who understood not what he said, he addressed himself to our friend Martha Towell, and said he knew he had done wrong; but the coachman ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... opposite sex which, above earth, arbitrary custom and hereditary transmission demonstrate by the mouth of the male. And just as a high-bred young lady, above earth, habituated to such compliments, feels that she cannot, without impropriety, return them, nor evince any great satisfaction at receiving them; so I who had learned polite manners at the house of so wealthy and dignified a Minister of that nation, could but smile and try to look pretty in bashfully disclaiming the compliments showered upon me. While we were thus talking, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... themselves and each other if any one would obey the preacher's exhortation and send their carriages away. The carriages were lined up in the street just as they would be outside a theatre. Some of their owners got in and drove away, making very pointed remarks on the impropriety of bringing such subjects as carriages and horses into sermons and the length that young curates would go now-a-days to obtain notoriety. Others dismissed theirs and went away trying to look unconcerned; while other ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... Carr, who, although he was so ill, kept his temper, until Mr. Chard called him a "missionary crawler." This expression made Mr. Carr lose control of himself, and he used very strong language to Captain Hendry and the supercargo upon the gross impropriety of their conduct. He certainly used expressions that he should not have employed, but under the circumstances, and bearing in mind the fact that the native crew were ready for mutiny, and that mutiny was ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... he were well, his conduct was inexcusable, and on Emily's part rendered any advance impossible." Poor Emily shrank from transgressing what her parents represented as the limits due to delicacy and decorum, and she would have died rather than have been guilty of a real impropriety, or have appeared unfeminine in the eyes of Philip Hayforth; and yet it did often suggest itself to her mind—rather, however, in the shape of an undefined feeling than of a conscious thought—that the shortest, best, most straight-forward ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Parliamentary Committee produced its report. There had been a draft report somewhat critical of the Marconi-buying Ministers by the Chairman, Sir Albert Spicer; and another considerably more critical by Lord Robert Cecil. Lord Robert's report said that Rufus Isaacs had committed "grave impropriety in making an advantageous purchase of shares . . . upon advice and information not yet fully available to the public. . . . By doing so he placed himself, however unwittingly, in a position in which his private interests or sense of obligation might easily have been in conflict with his public duty. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... such innumerable modifications, that it will appear "ever charming, ever new." For instance, let the competitors for fame in the celerity of motion always be selected according to the strictest laws of decorum, consequently a lord and a lady cannot, without great impropriety, start ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... whether Mr. Sargent was acting wisely. Fred never had told him an untruth in his life, and a few words now might have set matters right. But to this roughness in boys Mr. Sargent had a special aversion. He had so often taken pains to instill its impropriety and vulgarity into Fred's mind that he could ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... the subject was with a view of stirring up rebellion; "that neither the Irish legislature nor their constituents had signified any dissatisfaction at the relief obtained in the session preceding the last; that, to convince both of the impropriety of their peaceable conduct, opposition, by making demands in the name of Ireland, pointed out what she might extort from Great Britain; that the facility with which relief was (formerly) granted, instead of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... him, almost on my knees, to give the required promise; I offered to double, nay, treble the sum that I had named, but no; he turned from me, almost with disdain, (the low-born menial!) and requested me to retire, as I must be aware of the impropriety of such a visit, at such an hour. Perceiving the uselessness of attempting to bribe him to secrecy, I left him, cursing him for his obstinacy, and came direct to you. Heavens!' added her ladyship, drawing her robe over her partially denuded ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... those by whom he is employed. This, of course, confines him to what is generally common ground among his particular employers. In a republican country, where all his patrons are republican, he may, without impropriety, explain and commend to his pupils, as occasion may occur, the principles of free governments, and the blessings which may be expected to flow from them. But it would not be justifiable for him to ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... been addressed to the audience, and may be adduced as some slight evidence of the antiquity of the play, as in later times dramatists were not guilty of this impropriety. The old morality of "The Disobedient Child" has several instances of the kind; thus, the son says ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... with him on the impropriety of such an extravagance, and had exacted from him a promise that this wild and Monte-Christo-like course should be pursued no further; but she was very proud of her half-hoop of diamonds nevertheless, and was wont ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... actualities, she had never for a moment imagined. Their gowns, their jewels, their coiffures held her in open-mouthed marvel, until Mrs. Reed, herself annoyed and embarrassed, remanded her to her cabin and bade her learn the impropriety of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... despair. He could not imagine how he had been so foolish as to trust this man. He only wanted one thing, and that was to get to Nastasia Philipovna's, even at the cost of a certain amount of impropriety. But now the scandal threatened to be more than he had bargained for. By this time Ardalion Alexandrovitch was quite intoxicated, and he kept his companion listening while he discoursed eloquently and pathetically on ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... other people always there, too. There is the old lady who thinks the lecture improper; it doesn't matter how moral it is, she's out for impropriety and she can find it anywhere. Then there is another very terrible man against whom all American lecturers in England should be warned—the man who is leaving on the 9 P.M. train. English railways running into suburbs and near-by towns have ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... into the quiet hamlet of Kilsby must, indeed, have produced a very startling effect on the recluse inhabitants of the place. Robert Stephenson used to tell a story of the clergyman of the parish waiting upon the foreman of one of the gangs to expostulate with him as to the shocking impropriety of his men working during Sunday. But the head navvy merely hitched up his trousers, and said, "Why, Soondays hain't cropt out here yet!" In short, the navvies were little better than heathens, and the village ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... conscience and a temper of no mean proportions could dwell together in the body of a wood nymph. When he had first seen Cynthia among the willows by Coniston Water, he had thought her a wood nymph. But she scolded him for his impropriety with so unerring a choice of words that he fell in love with her intellect, too. He spent much of his time to the neglect of his canvases under the butternut tree in front of Jethro's house trying to persuade Cynthia to sit for her portrait; and if ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that excellent man who, himself, was incapable of any impropriety of conduct. "But it isn't a thing I would have done myself; I mean even if ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the detector as insignificant in comparison with that of the discoverer, and his glow of satisfaction is reserved for the nobler employment. The points on which he insists are the obligation of honestly desiring to understand an author; the impropriety of fastening on defects, or of simply balancing between defects and merits; the duty of approving with heartiness and warmth, in place of that cold-blooded moderation which he pronounces, with Vauvenargues, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... to regain it, he sprang over a holly-hedge, and came in view of the veranda of a house, just in time to see the fairy and her dog disappear behind a trellis covered with the evergreen foliage of the Cherokee rose. Conscious of the impropriety of pursuing her farther, he paused to take breath. As he passed his hand through his hair, tossed into masses by running against the wind, he heard a voice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... felt himself a lost sinner, and never knew his need of the Saviour, may reason gravely of the impropriety of 'excitement,' and the man who has never experienced the liberty of deliverance from the 'horrible pit, and the mire and clay,' may seem to be wise on the subject of Christian joy; but he knows it not. ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... with whom I had tea in Kyoto, tells of tying his wife's shoes on the street, on one occasion, only to find the Japanese amazed that a man should so humble himself. His wife's taking his arm in walking was also regarded as the height of impropriety! ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... teasing Oliver. They seemed to delight in playing him all sorts of tricks, and very often pretty rough ones too. I had never spoken much to Oliver, though I observed that whenever Mr Hooker was describing anything, Oliver, if he could do so without impropriety, stopped and listened, and seemed to take great interest in what was said. When work was over, I often saw him in the pantry reading. Not only on Sundays, but every day nearly, it seemed to me, he read the Bible ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... in Shakespeare's comedies, all that was exquisite in the home of his forefathers—what visible reference was there to these fine things in poor Lionel's stable-stamped composition? When she came in this evening and saw his small sons making competitive noises in their mugs (Miss Steet checked this impropriety on her entrance) she asked herself what they would have to show twenty years later for the frame that made them just then a picture. Would they be wonderfully ripe and noble, the perfection of ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... serves no positive end, it cannot be entirely discarded. It marks the boundary where our ability to reduce one class of psychical phenomena to another ceases. Herbart's polemic has no force against the moderate and necessary use of this idea, no matter how much it was in place in view of the impropriety of a superfluous multiplication of the faculties of the soul. The realization of the ideal of psychology, the reduction of the complex phenomena of mental life to the smallest possible number of simple elements, is limited by the heterogeneity of the original phenomena, knowing, feeling, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... same apparition again presented itself, only, on this occasion, Francesco Cenci, undressed, entered his daughter's roam and invited her to join the fete. Hardly knowing what she did, Beatrice yet perceived the impropriety of yielding to her father's wishes: she replied that, not seeing her stepmother, Lucrezia Petroni, among all these women, she dared not leave her bed to mix with persons who were unknown to her. Francesco threatened ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... impair the structure or healthy action of the parts immediately concerned in the exercise of this function. Inflammatory fevers, affections of the brain, and injuries upon the head, are among the more common causes of imperfect hearing. Hence the impropriety of striking children upon the head in correcting them, whether in the family or in the school. The instances are not few in which deafness, and the impairing of the mental faculties, have resulted from that barbarous practice familiarly known as "boxing the ears." This inhuman practice is ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... had invoked her Maker because Dick would shiver at the impropriety. "No violence," she thought satirically, remembering he was himself the instigator of violence in verse. But Dick was sorry. He had not chosen his word. It had lain in his angry mind and leaped to be used. It could ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the wall and saw nobody. During the course of this conversation they had turned their horses' heads, and were riding back towards the church, Malfi talking about Ripa's affair, remarking on the impropriety of deferring his execution so long; Mendez more than usually silent and serious, and the servant riding beside them, when, as they approached the spot, they saw coming towards them on foot a man, whom they all three recognized ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... own action, but all the parts in their neighbourhood, the stomach as one of the great centres of the system in particular; and yet, with all these facts in review, are we presented with a list of ailments as dependant upon an impropriety in digestion, which may in all probability (at least the greater part of them) be traced to a source totally different. A careful discrimination of the origin of disease is as necessary as any after treatment, which can never, indeed, be applied with a reasonable ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... unattainable. To glide reputably into a grey wig had been for years their dearest desire. As each saw herself getting older and older, saw her complexion fade and the crow's-feet gather, and her eyes grow hollow, and her teeth fall out and her cheeks fall in, so did the impropriety of her brown wig strike more and more humiliatingly to her soul. But how should a poor old woman ever accumulate enough for a new wig? One might as well cry for the moon—or a set of false teeth. Unless, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the Emperor, and of Queen Mary of Hungary, at the impropriety of his manners, had produced, however, some effect, so that on his wedding journey to England, he manifested much "gentleness and humanity, mingled with royal gravity." Upon this occasion, says another Venetian, accredited to him, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had been led to suppose the hottest place, Clifton Park, in which there was a band of music and several thousand persons, chiefly Germans, though with a good sprinkling of Irish servant-girls with their lovers and brothers, with beer and ices; but we saw no rudeness, and no more impropriety, no more excitement, no more (week-day) sin, than we had seen at the church in the morning. Every face, however, was foreign. By-and-by came in three Americans, talking loudly, moving rudely, proclaiming contempt for "lager" and yelling for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... again, had saluted the country in saluting its flags, she entered her carriage, surrounded by a brilliant escort. De Guiche had hoped that the Duke of Buckingham would accompany the admiral to England; but Buckingham succeeded in demonstrating to the queen that there would be great impropriety in allowing Madame to proceed to Paris, almost unprotected. As soon as it had been settled that Buckingham was to accompany Madame, the young duke selected a corps of gentlemen and officers to form ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... polling-place and polling—which clearly is all that it has been thought out to mean by the headless horsemen spurring their new hobbies bravely at the tail of the procession. That would be a very simple matter; the opposition based upon the impropriety of the female rubbing shoulders at the polls with such scurvy blackguards as ourselves may with advantage be retired from service. Nor is it particularly important what men and measures the women will vote for. By one means or another Tyrant Man will ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... to a consciousness of forms and quantity; a third in addition to the image is conscious of the conception or notion of the thing; a fourth attains to a notion of his notions—he reflects on his own reflections; and thus we may say without impropriety, that the one possesses more or less inner sense, than the other. This more or less betrays already, that philosophy in its first principles must have a practical or moral, as well as a theoretical or speculative side. This difference in degree does not exist in the mathematics. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... can seldom be put one for the other, without gross impropriety; and of course either is to be preferred to the other, as it better suits the sense: as, "The violation of this rule never fails to hurt and displease a reader."—Error in Blair's Lectures, p. 107. Say, "A violation ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and their 'special importations for Horse-Show Week.' But the Bishop is right, of course—nothing helps a book like a rousing attack on its morals; and as the publishers can't exactly proclaim the impropriety of their own wares, the task has to be left to the press or ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... for convoy, that they might convey their cargoes to Leghorn. On the hazard of visiting a place so critically situated, he felt it his duty strongly to remonstrate; and, aware how often danger is disregarded, where the loss is to fall on underwriters, he even suggested the impropriety of thus incurring risks which could not possibly be in the contemplation of the parties at the time of effecting the insurances, before he gave his reluctant ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... this impropriety of style. He that wishes to become a philosopher at a cheap rate easily gratifies his ambition by submitting to poverty when he does not feel it, and by boasting his contempt of riches when he has already more than he enjoys. He who would ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... suspect the real object of Olmedo, and was much inclined to have made him a prisoner: but Duero, who had much influence over Narvaez, both on account of his situation and because they were in some degree related, represented the impropriety of such an outrage against a person of his holy functions, and dissuaded him from doing so. He also suggested to him the great probability of his being able to gain over the soldiers of Cortes to his party, by means of a little policy. By these arguments he appeased Narvaez for the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... he had entered in this connection would be of lasting benefit to this and future generations and, after a careful review of the whole situation, declared that "from the close relation in which I stand to the Queen there can be no impropriety in my stating that if her subjects desire, on the occasion of the celebration of her fiftieth year as Sovereign of this great Empire, to offer her a memorial of their love and loyalty, she would specially value one which would promote the industrial ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... numbers of people, and when we were so disposed we treated with them, and they gave us everything we asked of them. They all go as naked as they were born, without being ashamed. If all were to be related concerning the little shame they have, it would be bordering on impropriety; therefore it is better to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... visitation was simply that Mr Vanslyperken had heard the corporal's tremendous snoring, as he slept in the chair, and which his imagination had turned into the words, "Mortal man." The first exclamation of Mr Vanslyperken had awoke the corporal, who, aware of the impropriety of his situation, had attempted to retreat; in so doing he had overturned the table and chairs, with the bottles ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... all, indeed!" Tuba Mokoro producing no impression on the transformed chief, one of the men, the most sedate of the party, who seldom spoke, took up the matter, and tried the lion in another strain. In his slow quiet way he expostulated with him on the impropriety of such conduct to strangers, who had never injured him. "We were travelling peaceably through the country back to our own chief. We never killed people, nor stole anything. The buffalo meat was ours, not his, and it did not become a great ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... and it is indeed exquisite. A female with a guitar by the same master is almost equal to it. There are two Lucretias—one by Guido and one by Giordano: though both are beautiful, particularly the former, there was, I thought, an impropriety in the conception of both pictures: the figure was too voluptuous—too exposed, and did not give me the idea of the matronly Lucretia, who so carefully arranged her drapery before she fell. I remember, too, a St. Cecilia by Carlo ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... conscientiously take an oath of allegiance to your government, when my love and duty are pledged to another. I earnestly hope that the present amicable relations may ever continue to exist between the two powers, but, sir, should any conflict arise between them, the impropriety of my having taken such an oath would ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... but, deferentially allowing him to pass, and then, aiming after him, as if I accepted his lead, I gently suggested to him my desires; whereupon, in the most becoming manner, he descended and plumped into the sea, without so much as flapping a wing, or being guilty of the faintest impropriety. It was beautiful. Continuing this behavior, I found my attentions uniformly reciprocated. Once, indeed, when I fell into a shade of brusquerie, the individual whom I had complimented stood upon his self-respect, and, as I thought, flew ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... most flippant kind, contains in reality the essence of Voltaire's maturest reflections upon human life. It is a singular fact that a book which must often have been read simply for the sake of its wit and its impropriety should nevertheless be one of the bitterest and most melancholy that was ever written. But it is a safe rule to make, that Voltaire's meaning is deep in proportion to the lightness of his writing—that ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... so frank, and at the same time so thoroughly courteous, about the old gentleman's address that Miss Stansfield could not be offended with him; while his age and bearing prevented her feeling that there was any impropriety in her permitting him to be her companion on the public road till she should reach the drive-gate leading up to her home. She therefore bowed her assent, and ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... Osbaldistone, whom I held in so much contempt. My uncomfortable reflections were by no means soothed by meditating the necessity of an apology for my improper behaviour, and recollecting that Miss Vernon must be a witness of my submission. The impropriety and unkindness of my conduct to her personally, added not a little to these galling considerations, and for this I could not even plead the miserable excuse ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... who know I prefer a roast potatoe and salt to the most splendid public dinner, the very sight of which always offends my infant appetite, I need not say that I am actuated solely by my pre-engagement, and by the impropriety of disappointing the friend whom I am to accompany, and to whom probably I owe the unexpected compliment of ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... ex-slave's receptions. Madame Jansoulet alone, newly landed in France with a stock of Oriental ideas impeding circulation in her mind, as her nargileh, her ostrich eggs and all the rest of her Tunisian trash impeded it in her apartments, protested against what she called impropriety, cowardice, and declared that she would never step foot inside "that creature's" doors. Immediately a slight retrograde movement took place among Mesdames Guggenheim, Caraiscaki, and other bales of finery, as always happens in Paris ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... carefulness than laymen do the relations that exist between pastors and the women of their flock. I do not understand this as a statement that there is any general looseness of conduct among the clergy at all; but as one which covers a kind of impropriety for which there is no name and no punishment. There are women whose affection for their husbands is uprooted through their intercourse with their pastors. There shall never be an improper word spoken; there shall never be a deed committed that would bring a blush to the most sensitive cheek; ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... resolve, which I don't counsel, on marking, by way of foot-note, on the now existing pyramid, accurately how many yards off and in what direction the real battle ground lies from it, there is nothing visible to me which can without ridiculous impropriety be done. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... the suggestion you make, of discontinuing proceedings against Mr. McKee, a very proper one. While I admit that there is an apparent impropriety in the publication of the letter mentioned, without my consent or yours, it is still a case where no evil could result, and which I am ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... discipline, stress was laid on the propriety and duty of private admonition, in its successive scriptural steps, before public censure. On this point one brother said he had privately admonished a neighbor of the impropriety of taking articles to the camp on the Sabbath, and he had acknowledged his fault, and promised amendment. The duty of forgiving offenders, and undoing wrongs, was also insisted on. Several had been improperly ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... magnificent Jewish place of worship, in which my father, who was the high priest, appeared in vestments such as I believe the Jewish priests still wear in their solemn ceremonies, and which were so closely copied from the description of Aaron's sacred pontifical robes that I felt a sense of impropriety in such a representation (purely historical, as it was probably considered, and in no way differing from the costume accepted on the French stage in Racine's Jewish plays). And I think it extremely likely that the failure of the piece, which had been imminent all through, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... memory so sacred in my eyes to the supercilious criticisms which are part and parcel of the right acquired by the purchaser of a book. It seemed to me that in placing the lines referring to her in a book for the trade I should be acting with as much impropriety as if I sent a portrait of her for sale to an auction room. The pamphlet in question will not, therefore, be reprinted until after my death, appended to it, very possibly being several of her letters selected by me beforehand. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... grown an absolute boor. Nobody ever talks of marriage now. A woman of fashion blushes to hear it mentioned before a third person." "Why, to say the truth, madam, I have been honoured with so great an intimacy by Damon, that I thought that might excuse the impropriety. And now, pray your ladyship, must I wait till we are alone, before I ask my friend whether his happy day be fixed?" "Since you will talk," said Miss Frampton, "of the odious subject, I believe I may tell you that it is not. We are in no such hurry." "My ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... out silently, but ere they had got a dozen yards from the ship Captain Guy felt the impropriety of permitting ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... very much. Among the dogs which received the most attention were the bulldogs. They permitted themselves startling liberties when any one caressed them, crowding themselves almost into one's arms and helping themselves without ceremony to kisses, apparently unconscious of the impropriety of their conduct. Dear me, what unbeautiful little beasts they are! But they are so good natured and friendly, one cannot ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... do it, right or wrong, proper or improper, although there is no impropriety in it. Improper becomes proper if you ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... liquor into the vestry for his refreshment after the fatigue of confirmation. And this coming to Mr. Disney's ears, he forbad them being brought thither, and with a becoming spirit remonstrated with the Archbishop upon the impropriety of his conduct, at the same time telling his Grace that his vestry should not be ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... the Adirondack section, contains more wild land than any other tract in the State. The mountains which traverse it, and impart to it its severe northern climate, belong properly to the Catskill range. On some maps of the State they are called the Pine Mountains, though with obvious local impropriety, as pine, so far as I have observed, is nowhere found upon them. "Birch Mountains" would be a more characteristic name, as on their summits birch is the prevailing tree. They are the natural home of ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... from there, making himself useful in doing chores. Mary Smith, then a young girl, passed much of her time at her grandfather's, and later was a fellow-student of Whittier's at the Academy. I think there is now no impropriety in stating that it is to her that the poem "Memories" refers.[4] She was living at the time when the biography of Whittier was written, and for that reason her name was not given, but only a veiled reference in "Life and Letters," as at ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... periwig; for a public man should travel gravely with his fashions, not foppishly before, nor dowdily behind, the central movement of his age. For long he durst not keep a carriage; that, in his circumstances, would have been improper; but a time comes, with the growth of his fortune, when the impropriety has shifted to the other side, and he is "ashamed to be seen in a hackney." Pepys talked about being "a Quaker or some very melancholy thing;" for my part, I can imagine nothing so melancholy, because ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... very suggestive of the title the "Lord" being regarded as that of the Ruling Angel of the Jews only, and not of the "Most High," i.e. God. This view has disappeared, from ignorance, and hence the impropriety of many of the statements referring to the "Lord," when they are transferred to the "Most High," e.g. ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... space to it here. Nevertheless, as I have had frequent opportunities of noticing the disease under all circumstances; in all parts of the city, and in the country; among the wealthy and the poor, I may without much impropriety offer, in a few words, the result of my observations and reflections on this head. I must unhesitatingly declare, that, establishing my opinion on what I have seen, I am led to the conviction, that the yellow fever is not a contagious disease; that ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... without the liquor being tasted by any one, and is upon the point of being returned to the red-clothed Manitou, when one of the Indians, a brave man and a great warrior, suddenly jumps up and harangues the assembly, on the impropriety of returning the cup with its content: It was handed to them, said he, by the Manitou, that they should drink out of it as he had done: to follow his example would be pleasing to him, but to return what he had given to them, might provoke his wrath, ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... think I may, without impropriety, mention one circumstance, as an instance of my father's address. Dr. Johnson challenged him, as he did us all at Talisker[1040], to point out any theological works of merit written by Presbyterian ministers in Scotland. My father, whose studies did not lie much ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... I looked into one of that fellow Charteris's books the other day—that chap you had here last week. It was bally rot—proverbs standing on their heads and grinning like dwarfs in a condemned street-fair! Who wants to be told that impropriety is the spice of life and that a roving eye gathers remorse? You may call that sort of thing cleverness, if you like; I call it damn' foolishness." And the emphasis with which he said this left no doubt that the Colonel spoke ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... he had been when his "fore-quarter of bloody beef" had been accepted unchallenged, but he professed to be so; and in his elaborate astonishment allowed Janet's remarks about a slight mistake she had made, and about the impropriety of "looking a gift horse in the mouth" ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
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