"Conventionality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... checked and diverted by the uprise of other tendencies to the dreamy, impalpable, vague, weird and horrible. There was the undoubted Celtic element in him underlying what seemed foreign to it, the disregard of conventionality in one phase, and the falling under it in another—the reaction and the retreat from what had attracted and interested him, and then the return upon it, as with added zest because of the retreat. The confessed Hedonist, enjoying life and ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... him was the slow daily influence of a large number of trifling habitual duties none of which fully strained his faculties, and the monotony of them, and the constant watchful conventionality of his deportment with customers. He was still a youth, very youthful, but you had to keep an eye open for his youthfulness if you wished to find it beneath the little man that he had been transformed into. He now took his watch out of his pocket with an absent ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... different nature of the two subjects, for one of Browning's most eminent qualities is his care in harmonising treatment with subject. King Victor and King Charles is a modern play, dealing with human nature under all the restrictions of a pervading conventionality and an oppressive statecraft. It deals, moreover, with complex and weakened emotions, with the petty and prosaic details of a secondary Western government. The Return of the Druses, on the other hand, treats of human nature in its most romantic conditions, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... our cynicism; their contented acquiescence in God's will rebukes our incessant restlessness; above all, their constant elevation shames that multitude of little vices, and little meannesses, which lie like a scurf over the conventionality of modern life. But this earlier chapter has also a special value for the young. It offers a picture which it would indeed be better for them and for us if they could be induced to study. If ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... It was only because he hated the present that he idealized the past. His primitive Golden Age was an imaginary refuge from the actual world of the eighteenth century. What he detested and condemned in that world was in reality not civilization, but the conventionality of civilization—the restrictions upon the free play of the human spirit which seemed to be inherent in civilized life. The strange feeling of revolt that surged up within him when he contemplated the drawing-rooms of Paris, with their brilliance and their ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the terrible emotions that had swept over her life in the last three weeks, to be alone in the hills or by the sea. It seemed dreadful to be tied to her great house in the city, in her mourning, shut off suddenly from the world, and bound down by the chain of conventionality to a fixed method of existence. She would give anything to go away. Why not? She suddenly realised what was so hard to understand, that she was free to go where she pleased—if only, by accident, she could chance to meet Giovanni Saracinesca before ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... words. In a picture I would put it like this—a blue sky, a meadow of rank green grass, a stream full of forget-me-nots, and a girl bending over it, with eyes the color of the flowers. Conventionality would compel me to call it Spring or Youth!" He spoke fast and ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... she recognized the well-known sentences from which they came . . . "puritanism . . . abundance of personality . . . freedom of development . . . nothing else vital in human existence . . . prudishness . . . conventionality . . . our only possible contact with the life-purpose . . . with the end of ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... eye is always on the object, and, though he represents it in his own style, that style is always normal and temperate, free from affectation, free from exaggeration or morbidity and, in the earlier periods, free from conventionality. It is art without doubt; but it is natural and normal art, such as grew spontaneously when mankind first tried in freedom to express beauty. For example, the language of Greek poetry is markedly different from that of prose, and there are ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... so ridiculous, under the direct charm of the fresh young voice that came down through the summer air from above, like a dove's note from a treetop, to apologize to Lawton's girl. The incongruity now was in forcing into this Arcadian incident anything savouring of conventionality at all. It had been so idyllic, this talk of the sun fairy and the cloud; so like a passage from an old book of legends, this dainty episode in the great, strong, Western breezes, under the great, strong, Western sky. Everything should be perfect, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... "No; for conventionality's sake. Not legally, you understand. Not even an adventure as exciting as that has happened to me. But constructively in jail. De facto, as it were. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... grass and prickly-pear just at our feet. And yet stern and wild associations gave a singular interest to the view; for here each man lives by the strength of his arm and the valor of his heart. Here society is reduced to its original elements, the whole fabric of art and conventionality is struck rudely to pieces, and men find themselves suddenly brought back to the wants and resources of ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... working from a few color sketches and many pencil studies, they painted the whole picture from first to last in the open air. Working in this way, certain qualities got into the pictures unavoidably. Necessarily the color was fresher and truer. Necessarily there was more breadth and frankness, and less conventionality and mere picture-making. The spirit of the open got onto the canvas, and the whole type of picture was changed. For the first time out-of-door values were studied as things in themselves interesting and important. The result on landscape pictures ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... night, for the first few hours, I was sublimely happy, and then a strange restlessness seized me. I was obsessed with a wish to see the flower-garden. For some minutes, stimulated by a dread of what my aunts would think of such a violation of conventionality on the part of a child, I combated furiously with the desire; but at length the longing was so great, so utterly and wholly irresistible, that I succumbed, and, getting quietly out of bed, made my way noiselessly into ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... and especially in the department of love-making. "Dangier" and his fellow-phantoms fled before the dawn of the new poetry in England, and the depressing influences of a common form—a conventional stock of images, personages, and almost language—disappeared. No doubt there was conventionality enough in the following of the Petrarchian model, but it was a less stiff and uniform conventionality; it allowed and indeed invited the individual to wear his rue with a difference, and to avail himself at least of the almost infinite diversity of circumstance and feeling ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... think about money again. He found that the larger the imaginary figures, the smaller shadow of discomfort clouded his thoughts. So he decided upon an act of princely generosity, as the result of which resolve peace returned and an unruffled mind. For the musty conventionality of his conclusion, it merely served as a peg upon which to hang thoughts not necessary ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... strong over others' weaknesses, weighing accurately the deeds and words of men and women, recognizing all there was in position and tradition, seeing with her father's clear eyes the practical meaning of any divergence from that conventionality which as a woman of the world she valued, she returned again and again to the trembling joy of that intoxicating moment. She though of her mother and sisters, of Raymond and Garnier, of Aladdin—she even forced herself to think ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... break out, with a greater show of indignation: 'I never heard of such extraordinary ideas for a girl to have, and such extraordinary things for a girl to talk about! My dear, you have acquired a freedom—you have emancipated yourself from conventionality—and I suppose I must congratulate you.' Laura only stood there, with her eyes fixed, without answering the sally, and Selina went on, with another change of tone: 'And pray if he was there, what is there so monstrous? Hasn't it happened that he is in London when I am there? ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... the glitter of parade uniform or the accurate and irreproachable evening dress of civilization. There is not a man in the group who is not quite at his ease in ball-room attire; most of them have held acquaintance time and again with the white tie and stiff "choker" of conventionality, but the average gallant of metropolitan circles would turn up his supercilious nostrils at the bare suggestion were he to see them now. The —th is in its element, however, for the order has come, and with the coming dawn it will be on the march for the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... given to the problems that will follow: thus, science as a whole is relative to the particular order in which the problems happen to have been put. It is in this meaning, and to this degree, that science must be regarded as conventional. But it is a conventionality of fact so to speak, and not of right. In principle, positive science bears on reality itself, provided it does not overstep the limits of its own domain, which ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... some of the more conservative theologians continued to repeat the old arguments, and there were many who insisted upon the belief as absolutely necessary to ordinary orthodoxy; but it is evident that it had become a mere conventionality, that men only believed that they believed it, and now a reform seemed possible in the treatment ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... primitive wants and social interests in considerable variety. It is a never-failing source of supply of the strong waters that bring the good cheer of intoxication, and lull into torpid content the mind that wants to forget its worry or its misery. It is a place where conventionality is laid aside and human beings meet on the common level of convivial good-fellowship. It is the avenue to fuller enjoyment in billiard-room, at card-table, in dance-hall, and in house of assignation, but though the door is open to them there is no obligation to enter. It is ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... debauchery resemble vertigo, for one feels a sort of terror mingled with sensuous delight, as if peering downward from some giddy—height. While shameful, secret dissipation ruins the noblest of men, in the frank and open defiance of conventionality there is something that compels respect even in the most depraved. He who goes at nightfall, muffled in his cloak, to sully his life in secret, and clandestinely to shake off the hypocrisy of the day, resembles ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... Norman nature throughout, animating the whole, uniting it all, and crowding into it an intelligent variety of original motives that would build a dozen churches of late Gothic. Nothing about it is stereotyped or conventional,—not even the conventionality. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... Prometheus the mythological, Manfred and Don Quixote the predecessors in modern literature. Also that Mephistopheles is as inexhaustible as a type of evil as Faust is as a type of virtue, and therefore that this picturesque stage devil, with all his conventionality, is akin to the serpent which tempted Eve, the Thersites of Homer, and—mirabile ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... he was really learning woman, and so clear was Labiskwee's soul, so appalling in its innocence and ignorance, that he could not misread a line of it. All the pristine goodness of her sex was in her, uncultured by the conventionality of knowledge or the deceit of self-protection. In memory he reread his Schopenhauer and knew beyond all cavil that the sad philosopher was wrong. To know woman, as Smoke came to know Labiskwee, was to know that all woman-haters ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... brought me to my senses, and with a sudden impulse of scorn, the fine scorn for scent of every honest Backfisch, I rolled it up into a ball and flung it away into the bushes, where I daresay it is at this moment. "Away with you," I cried, "away with you, symbol of conventionality, of slavery, of pandering to a desire to please—away with you, miserable little lace-edged rag!" And so young had I grown within the last few minutes that I did not even ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... admitted the old man. "That combination of conventionality and naivete is very captivating. I notice it ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... The Heir at Law was accomplished in the New York season of 1890, with Joseph Jefferson in the character of Dr. Pangloss and William James Florence in that of Zekiel Homespun. That play dates back to 1797, a period in which a sedulous deference to conventionality prevailed in the British theatre, as to the treatment of domestic subjects; and, although the younger Colman wrote in a more flexible style than was possessed by any other dramatist of the time, excepting Sheridan, he was influenced to this ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... material. More might develop out of this love of form and drama in life. We have it to a certain degree of cultivation in picturesque and refined manners, dress, and ceremonial, but even there it is hampered through conventionality and want of invention; further evolved and extended into the deeper strata of life, it would lead to a more interesting and productive existence. Surely, if God is an artist as well as a judge, he will welcome into heaven not ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... requires that marriage take precedence of schooling," said Mrs. Sproul, as her mischievous old eyes snapped at Mrs. Cockrell's placid conventionality. "The correct order is for women to take husbands and then school children should be the inevitable outcome. They are not, however, in this day and generation, which is about to be ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... with Miss. Juno. He had followed her thither with what speed he dared. She had expected him; there was not breathing-space for conventionality between these two. In one part of the garden sat an artist at his easel; by his side a lady somewhat his senior, but of the type of face and figure that never really grows old, or looks it. She was embroidering flowers from nature, tinting them to the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... Arnold. He rose hastily, and leaning on a low wall which stood near, looked down at the bright little girl at his feet. "Fluff," he said, "should you greatly mind if I threw conventionality to the winds, ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... this remarkable passage in the history of the church, it is necessary to bear in mind the social conditions that prevailed. A population perfervido ingenio, of a temper peculiarly susceptible of intense excitement, transplanted into a wild country, under little control either of conventionality or law, deeply ingrained from many generations with the religious sentiment, but broken loose from the control of it and living consciously in reckless disregard of the law of God, is suddenly aroused to a ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... thawed Mrs. Grundy's very self. He was so vital with youth and vigor, and his flow of spirits so irresistible, that Miss Hargrove found her own nerves tingling with pleasure. The episode was novel, unexpected, and promised so much for the future, that in her delightful excitement she cast conventionality to the winds, and yielded to his sportive mood. They had not gone a mile together before one would have thought they had been acquainted for years. Burt's frank face was like the open page of a book, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... be strongly developed until the Bamberg period. We have seen how that early in life he conceived a decided antipathy to the prosaic and the commonplace, and his career up to this point furnishes abundant evidence that he hated with a genuine hatred to keep in the ruts of custom and conventionality, as if bound to do so because such was prescribed by custom and conventionality. His sentiments he never concealed, and his actions harmonised, almost without exception, strictly with his sentiments; for one of his most striking and instructive ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... that such questions may be thrust into the background, and consequently inhibited from presenting us with their full value and significance. And it is this which happens only too often in daily life. The constant need of attention to external things, the absorption of the mind in conventionality and custom as these present themselves in the form of a ready-made inheritance—all these occupy so much of the attention as to prevent man from knowing and experiencing what his own life is or what it is capable of becoming. Man has ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... no answer to that natural question. In spite of her reason, Flavia was chilled by the flat conventionality of Gerard's apparent attitude, as represented by those formal inquiries. Almost she would have preferred that he had not spoken of her at all; silence could not have ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... her equal in energy and beneficence, and I was younger when you came. But I feel for her longing to be up and doing, and her puzzled chafing against constraint and conventionality, though it breaks out ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whole life had been a protest against conventionality, and this impassioned denunciation came from a new world. The sound maddened Tatsu. He leaped to the veranda, now a mere ledge thrust out over darkness, threw an arm about the slender corner-post, and strained far out, gasping, into ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... impatient of conventionality. How was it possible for these people to look so quietly, eye to eye, upon the most vitally perfect of living beings? How could they turn from me to orange frappe or ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... how I should next present myself before her. In accordance with the usages of conventionality, it would be right for me to make an early call at Mrs Clyde's, in recognition of her late assembly; and, unless I should chance to meet Min out alone, I would have no chance of making my apology before then, while, even on that occasion, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the broad veranda stood a young man - plainly a professional, for while at a glance a girl might decide that Duncan Bennet was "up to date," still there was about him that disregard for conventionality that betokens high thinking, with no room for the consideration of trifling ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... appropriating Skippy was the reflex action on the Triumphant Egghead, it was absolutely necessary that Skippy should at least give the appearance of appreciating the privilege. Miss Mimi, therefore, decided to jump the fence of strict conventionality if the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... only keep from untwisting the morning-glory, only be willing to let the sunshine do it! Dickens said real children went out with powder and top-boots; and yet the children of Dickens's time were simple buds compared with the full-blown miracles of conventionality and ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... together at work and play and on the march. The renascence of poetry can be interpreted as a revulsion against the prevailing prosiness; the amateur theatre is equally a protest against the inanity and conventionality of the commercial stage; while the Community Chorus movement is an evidence of a desire to escape a narrow professionalism in music. A similar situation has arisen in the field of domestic architecture, in the ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... washed, wrapped in clean linen cloths, and thus lowered into the earth. And this is as it should be. Why should the pomp and extravagance of man accompany him to his last resting-place? Were it not well if in this matter we abated something of our conventionality and ostentation? I do not mean to say that interments need be stripped of every thing like ornament; in all things the middle way is the safest. A simple funeral has surely in it more that awakes true religious feeling than the pomp and splendour which ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... after this do take my advice and live as others live. In a conventional world conventionality is the line of least resistance. Don't turn to the East unless the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... fell into quite a friendly and familiar groove, for Sara and Morva knew nothing of the restraints of class and conventionality. ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... alternations of tenderness and brusqueness, of devotion to her and devotion to his work, his constant offering of something new and his unremitting insistence upon something new from her each day make it impossible for her to develop the slightest tendency toward that sleeping sickness wherewith the germ of conventionality inflicts ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... unconscious of danger, filled me with profound sadness. And there was I, standing alone, seeing that sweet child flinging herself to ruin, and yet unable to prevent her, simply because I was bound hand and foot by the infernal restrictions of a miserable and a senseless conventionality. Dash it, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... familiar figure in the stalls, a fellow-student who sat there with mother and sister, black-uniformed, looking very much a gentleman. 'I, of course, am not a gentleman,' he said to himself, gloomily. Was there any chance that he might some day take his ease in that orthodox fashion? Inasmuch as it was conventionality, he scorned it; but the privileges which it represented had strong control of his imagination. That lady and her daughter would follow the play with intelligence. To exchange comments with them would be a keen delight. As for him—he had a shop-boy on one ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... see that conventionality and I are to be more two than ever henceforth, so I am going to yield up my ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... Down in Nuremberg they had standardized and conventionalized music. They had set it down in rules and men like Beckmesser could not imagine that there was any music permissible outside the regulations. Then came Walter von Stolzing. Music to him was not a conventionality but a passion—not a rule, but a life—and, when he sang, his melodies reached heights of beauty that Beckmesser's rules did not provide for. It was Walter von Stolzing who sang the Prize Song, and as the hearts ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... motley throng it was! Bohemia rubbing shoulders with orthodox conventionality. Duchesses, actors, artists, bishops, newspaper men out at elbows, deans, girl art students, spruce looking Eton boys in tall hats and short jackets, all eagerly pushing their way to the envied goal. A frantic endeavor it was, too. To tell the truth, few of the throng came to see the pictures; ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... twinkling everywhere. I could hear the ringing of some church bell; there was space, freedom for thought, a vague, uncertain prospect, out of which figures were looming curiously,—a delightful sense that I was sinning against conventionality ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... drawing his bow, is, for the time, wonderfully vivid and strong. All of these statues are evidence of the rapid progress which Greek sculpture was making in the fifth century against the demands of hieratic conventionality. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... utmost that we can give to one whom once we could caress with every tenderness of speech and touch, and that, after all, the memorial we raise is rather to our own grief, and is a decency, a mere conventionality,—this is a dreadful fact on which the heart breaks itself with such a pang, that it always seems a desolation never recognized, an anguish never felt before. Whilst I stood revolving this thought in my mind, and reading the Irish names upon the stones and the black head- boards,—the ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... of the company. At the appointed hour no Julia appeared. In her stead, Mrs. Marrable portentously approached the stage, with an open letter in her hand. She was naturally a lady of the mildest good breeding: she was mistress of every bland conventionality in the English language—but disasters and dramatic influences combined, threw even this harmless matron off her balance at last. For the first time in her life Mrs. Marrable indulged in vehement gesture, and used strong language. She handed the letter sternly, at arms-length, to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... insistence on a chaperone, which he had regarded a silly, outworn conventionality, appeared most wise. Germany was a poor place for ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... and noblest of our times makes for the strongest individualities. Every sensitive being abhors the idea of being treated as a mere machine or as a mere parrot of conventionality and respectability, the human being craves recognition of ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... Lord Torrington's tone suggested that this was a distinct advantage to Frank. "According to Miss Lentaigne then, the girl has asserted her right to live her own life untrammelled by the fetters of conventionality. That's the way she put ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... am I?" she replied. "A woman who has put herself outside the pale. Since I have sacrificed all a woman's honor, why should you not sacrifice to me some of a man's honor? Do we not live outside the limits of social conventionality? Why not accept from me what Nathan can accept from Florine? We will square accounts when we part, and only death can part us—you know. My happiness is your honor, Etienne, as my constancy and your happiness are mine. If I fail to make you happy, all is at an end. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... his young guide, and disappeared down the stairs, sliding down the banisters. Young ladies in the best society do not often indulge in this amusement, but Mary Murphy knew little of etiquette or conventionality. ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... But then it was heroic in her to speak and smile at all when she was verily in torture. Nothing short of the worship due to the great god Society could have made her control herself so admirably; but Adelaide was a faithful worshiper of the divine life of conventionality, and she had her reward. Leam showed nothing, at least nothing directly overt. Perhaps her demeanor was stiller, her laconism curter, her distaste to uninteresting companionship and current small-talk more profound, than usual; but no one seemed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Half the people who go to the Haverstocks don't wear evening dress on principle. That's their way of showing their contempt for conventionality. I suppose you'll come with me?" John nodded his head. "Good! We'll start off immediately after we've had our dinner. You'll get a good dose of Truth to-night, my son. There was a couple went there once ... the ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... however strongly they exerted themselves to throw off the shackles of conventionality in sculpture, painting, and architecture, yet yielded to the traditional force of the symbolical pattern, and accepted most of the Oriental forms, merely remodelling them for their own use, and adding to their significance what their ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... remarkable family. They had strong characters and decided tastes, but they had not their father's conventionality and preference for the high roads of life. They were devoted to sport, and at the same time abounded in mental vigour. All the brothers had the gift of drawing. John, though forced into a lawyer's office, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the exact motion, and tread in the precise footprints in which every one else speaks, moves, walks, was the only evidence of honesty. What is a man's individuality worth, if it is to be trodden out in the treadmill tramp of senseless conventionality?" ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... I didn't quite understand," he said in a new tone which she had not heard before. Mr. Balm of Gilead, alias Peter Pan, had suddenly grown up, and as Peter Rolls, Jr., was all politeness and conventionality. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... and bitter attacks. That he might obtain Christian burial, he confessed and received absolution from the Abbe Gaultier; but, with his views, this was simply a sacrifice to the proprieties; he remained a heathen poet to the end, a born satirist and scoffer at all tradition and all conventionality. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... dreaming, and if by chance we passed a girl in a governess cart, or some farmer's daughter walking to the station, we became alertly silent or obstreperously indifferent to her. For might she not be just that one exception to the banal decency, the sickly pointless conventionality, the sham modesty of the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... People do not mince along the banks of streams in patent-leather shoes or crepitating silks. Corduroy and home-spun and flannel are the stuffs that suit this region; and the frequenters of these paths go their natural gaits, in calf-skin or rubber boots, or bare-footed. The girdle of conventionality is laid aside, and the skirts rise with ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... was shocked at himself for smiling, and smiled again. For romance had come back to Italy; there were no cads in her; she was beautiful, courteous, lovable, as of old. And Miss Abbott—she, too, was beautiful in her way, for all her gaucheness and conventionality. She really cared about life, and tried to live it properly. ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... presenting the fresh-coloured, discreetly-smiling vision called 'the typical English girl.' Miss Heriot fulfilled to a nicety the requirements of those who are sensibly reassured by the spectacle of careful conventionality allied to feminine charm—a pleasant conversability that may be trusted to soothe and counted on never to startle. Hermione would almost as soon have stood on her head in Piccadilly as have said anything original, though to ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... of Bertram's nonsensical talk with Kate a little while ago, and she's ready to cast the last ravelling of white satin and conventionality behind her, and go with you to the ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... inclined to argue and dispute about it. The base, the impure desire is only the imperfect desire; if it is gratified, it reveals its imperfections, and the soul knows that not there can it stay; but it must have faced and tested everything. If the soul, out of timidity and conventionality, says 'No' to its eager impulses, it halts upon its pilgrimage. Some of the most grievous and shameful lives on earth have been fruitful enough in reality. The reason why we mourn and despond over them is, again, that we limit our hope to the single life. There is time for everything; ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... pelted with the eggs of the last twenty years' 'singing birds' as a disorderly woman and freethinking poet! People have been so kind that, in the first place, I really come to modify my opinions somewhat upon their conventionality, to see the progress made in freedom of thought. Think of quite decent women taking the part of the book in a sort of effervescence which I hear of with astonishment. In fact, there has been an enormous quantity of extravagance ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... step; even the shops have a Bohemian aspect, for trade is nowhere so much the victim of chance as here. You see no breach of the public peace, no indecorous act offends you; but the people you meet have a certain air of independence, of scorn, of conventionality, a certain carelessness which mark them as very different from the throng you have just left on Broadway. They puzzle you, and set you to conjecturing who they are and what they are, and you find yourself weaving a romance about nearly every man ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us. It might be a universal language if we ourselves were universal in our sympathies. Our finite nature, the power of tradition and conventionality, as well as our hereditary instincts, restrict the scope of our capacity for artistic enjoyment. Our very individuality establishes in one sense a limit to our understanding; and our aesthetic personality seeks its own affinities ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... grotesqueness in choice of subject and in treatment, which seems to result chiefly from his wish to portray the world as it actually is, keeping in close touch with genuine everyday reality; partly also from his instinct to break away from placid and fiberless conventionality. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... sentiment, "To Hell with the Pope!" taking out a licence, and charge him a small fee. Positive treason, such as the proclamation of Provisional Governments, would of course pay a higher rate. All these would be most interesting experiments, and would add a picturesque touch to the conventionality of modern administration. But if we were to overtax sugar or coffee, corn or butter, flax or wool, beer or spirits, land or houses, I fear that we should be beating ourselves rather severely with our own sticks. Our revenge on "Ulster" would ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... room for any other thought than of her. And yet his happiness was tampered by a thing which, if not grief, depressed and saddened him at times. Two days more and they would be at Fort o' God, and there Jeanne would be no longer his own, as she was now. Even the wilderness has its conventionality, and at Fort o' God their comradeship would end. A day of rest, two at the most, and he would leave for the camp on Blind Indian Lake. As the time drew nearer when they would be but friends and no longer ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... paintings mentioned by Pliny were commonly believed to be earlier than the foundation of Rome. At the present day the tombs of Etruria afford examples of Etruscan painting in every stage of its development, from the rudeness and conventionality of early art in the tomb of Veii to the correctness and ease of design, and the more perfect development of the art exhibited in the painted scenes in the tombs of Tarquinii. In one of these tombs the pilasters are profusely adorned ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... relations in some degree consoled her for the disappointment of womanly aspirations by a feeling of distinction. She was not like other women: her lot was set apart and peculiar. She looked down upon her sex. The conventionality of women's lives renders their vanity peculiarly susceptible to a suggestion that their destiny is in any respect unique, —a fact that has served the turn of many a seducer before now. To-day, after returning from his drive with Miss Rood, Mr. Morgan had walked ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Ingres hated academic conventionality; he mingled the Florentine and Greek schools; he sought the ideal not outside of reality but in its very essence, in the reconciliation of style with nature. Color he considered of secondary importance; he not only subordinated it voluntarily to drawing, but he did not have a natural ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Byronism was over, and polite England was already settling down to the conventionalities of the Early Victorian period. The romantic school was passing away, and the new generation was turning from it to seek reality in physical science. But deep below the conventionality and the utilitarianism alike there remained from the Revolution its legacy of lawlessness, and many were more intent on adventure ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... modification of architectural style; but the conservative instincts of the people discouraged any deviation from the conventional shapes of the temples, which appear indeed to have been firmly established long before the days of Hammurabi. The influence of conventionality finds a striking illustration in the manner in which the temples of Assyria follow Babylonian models. Soft and hard stone suitable for permanent structures was easily procured in the mountainous district adjacent to Assyria. The Assyrians used this material for statues, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... even fame to the object of future choice, and no good point is lost. Physical force and skill, and above all, victory and glory, make a hero and invest him with a romantic glamour, which, even though concealed by conventionality or etiquette, is profoundly felt and makes the winner more or less irresistible. The applause of men and of mates is sweet and even intoxicating, but that of ladies is ravishing. By universal acclaim the fair belong to the brave, strong, and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... of Daniel Randon's house Lee sat pondering over his brother's emphatic disconnected sentences. "This conventionality, that you have been so severe with, is exceedingly useful. It's not too much to say indispensable. Under its cover a certain limited freedom is occasionally possible. And where women are concerned—" he evidently didn't think it necessary even ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... when he is just about to fling himself down an Alpine precipice that his wife and Octave may have their way undisturbed. And all the time, what poetry and passion in the presentation of these things! Beside them the mere remembrance of English ignorance, prudishness, and conventionality would set the lad swelling, as he read, with a sense of superior scorn, and of wild sympathy for a world in which love and not law, truth and not legal fiction, were masters ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... remains unanswered because its pray-ers never do anything to fulfil their prayers. I do not say they are hypocrites; certainly they are not consciously so, but I do say that there is a large measure of conventionality that means nothing, in the prayers of average Christian people for more holiness and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... me for a moment throw conventionality aside; will you for that brief space of time let me speak truly and freely to you, as one might speak who has passed the ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... impossible, and the sharpness of the pony's back, riding with no saddle equally so. There was no alternative: I must either turn back, or mount as a man. Necessity gives courage in emergencies. I determined therefore to throw aside conventionality, and do in 'Iceland as the Icelanders do.' Keeping my brother at my side, and bidding the rest ride forward, I made him shorten the stirrups, and hold the saddle, and after sundry attempts succeeded in landing ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... he knew her to be, he hesitated whether he should call her by her given name, and was taken aback when she smilingly thanked him for doing so, with the assurance that she was often bored with the eternal conventionality of people in ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... chance in traveling around the country to study the free types and life of the West. Being very impressionable, he imbibed a great deal which he has turned to good account in his chosen work. At fourteen he started to carve figures from the chalk that conventionality required to be used on blackboard problems. At eighteen he entered the Chicago Art Institute, where he stayed for but three months. He soon went to Paris, going first to the Beaux Arts and later to the Colorossi and Julian Academies. ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... up quickly. The traditional formality and conventionality of the English are traditions only. There is none of it ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... I first had in my student-days," replied Fiddyes. "Conventionality, not to say a most proper and becoming reverence, prevents people by no means ignorant from considering the point. But once think upon it, and you at least, of all men, must at once perceive how utterly impossible it would be for a victim nailed upon a cross by hands and feet to preserve ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and appliances to compass a selfish or sordid end. On these occasions, as may well be imagined, many curious incidents occurred. Lincoln was usually clad "in a black broadcloth suit, nothing in his dress betokening disregard of conventionality, save perhaps his neat cloth slippers, which were doubtless worn for comfort. He was seated beside a plain cloth-covered table, in a commodious arm-chair." As each visitor approached the President he was greeted with an encouraging nod and smile, and a few moments ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... to be a whole one and might have made good, although the old man has not much use for art. Unfortunately, however, I felt I had to kick against the conventionality of the life I led and the protest I put up was a little too vigorous. It made trouble, and in consequence, my folks decided I'd better be an engineer. I couldn't follow their arguments, ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... possibilities. She is more than pretty, she is talented and she possesses character in a marked degree that sets her aside from the rest. It is this difference, this broadness of view, perhaps a certain intolerance of conventionality, that make me feel that, much as it has done for her, and that has been largely due to her own endeavors, this school, or any school, is not the place for ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... I believed with you. Nature is higher than man, and no power on earth can prove it otherwise." He looked into the softest of brown eyes, and his voice trembled. "Beside you the world is nothing. Its approval or its condemnation are things to be laughed at. With you I challenge conventionality—society—everything." He bent over her hand almost reverently and touched it ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... work this out myself, and surely I should meet officers at the ball who would gladly present me to the lady. I should be compelled to attend in field uniform, yet circumstances would excuse that, and what little I had seen of her convinced me she was no stickler for conventionality. The duty soldier was more apt to interest such a personality than any dandy on dress parade. With a word I dismissed my companion, and turned in to the camp of the Yagers, sure of a welcome at their mess-table, and a chance to ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... credited as true reflections of their prototypes. Some were wilfully false, no doubt; many more so by unavoidable accident and want of skill. Somerset felt that it required a profounder mind than his to disinter from the lumber of conventionality the lineaments that really sat in the painter's presence, and to discover their history behind the curtain ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... theories which men trained as her father and Leigh and Cardington had been trained would weigh in the balance and find wanting. How rashly she had condemned this training, how effectually her experiment had cured her of radicalism, she herself now saw clearly. The problem of liberty within conventionality was still unsolved, and she had beaten her wings against the bars ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... speedily as possible. Snow can lodge on the top of a dome, not on the ridge of a gable. And thus, as far as roofing is concerned, the gable is a far more essential feature of Northern architecture than the pointed vault, for the one is a thorough necessity, the other often a graceful conventionality: the gable occurs in the timber roof of every dwelling-house and every cottage, but not the vault; and the gable built on a polygonal or circular plan, is the origin of the turret and spire;[69] and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... very inconveniently across Christina's principles; yet she was afraid of saying too much. She reflected that her friend was breathing the soft air of luxury, which is not strengthening, and enveloped in a kind of mist of conventionality, through which she could not see. With herself it was different. She had been thrown out of all that; forced to do battle with necessity and difficulty, and so driven to lay hold of the one hand of strength and deliverance ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... long arms." He recalled this saying of the Siberian priests and the mad Cossack answer: "Therefore let us ride fast!" The swaying of the yacht was like the rhythmic motion of his Arab through the long grass beyond the Dnieper, in that wild land where conventionality and ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... bourgeois to countess, from cure to Parisian boulevardier, till the entire side of the table was in a buzz of talk. These genial people of a genial land finding themselves all in search of the same adventure, on top of a hill, away from the petty world of conventionality, remembered that speech was given to man to communicate with his fellows. And though neighbors for a brief hour, how charming such an hour can be made when into it are crowded the effervescence of personal experience, the witty exchange of comment and ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... gamblers and disreputable women, who conduct themselves with appropriate freedom from the restraints of conventionality. FERNANDE, who is too lachrymose to be a cheerful feature, is wisely placed on guard at the outer door. The company proceed to play at faro, the bank being the loser. There is a false alarm of police, and the game is suddenly stopped. The Banker, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... her very miserable, and she looked about for her mother; but Mrs. Henchard, who had less idea of conventionality than Elizabeth herself, had gone away, leaving her daughter to return at her own pleasure. The latter moved on into the dark dense old avenues, or rather vaults of living woodwork, which ran along the town boundary, and ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... occur to the woman who is about to become a mother. Most of these questions are reasonable and natural, and should be frankly answered; but a false conventionality has—until recently, at least—forbidden any open discussion of facts connected with childbirth. The inevitable result has been that, without experience of their own to guide them, prospective mothers have sought advice from ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... stretched to a long quarter of an hour before she descended. To the outward eye at least Miss Whitford looked a woman of the world, sheathed in a plate armor of conventionality. As soon as his eyes fell on her Clay knew that this pale, slim girl in the close-fitting gown was a stranger to him. Her eyes, star-bright and burning like live coals, warned him that the friend whose youth ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... another, and we try to be he. The attempt is always a failure. The worst of it is that in our effort to be another we have ceased to be ourselves, and after such a loss what do we still possess? Perhaps the disaster comes in another way. Conventionality has certain curious notions about the pulpit, the fulfilment of which it paradoxically despises as it demands it. The preacher is expected to speak in a different voice and wear a different expression in the "sacred desk" from ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... pompous sense always. He sees life in only one facet. Your lover sees its many sides, its infinite variety. He can laugh and weep; his imagination lights up dry facts with whimsical fancies; he dives through the crust of conventionality to the realities of life. 'Tis the lover keeps this old world young. The fire of youth, of eternal laughing youth, runs flaming through his blood. His days ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... sustained lofty feeling that seem to mark it the typical French symphony of its time. The strength of the work lies in a unity that is not merely of figure and outline. If we must measure a symphony mainly by the slow movement, we cannot avoid, with all the languorous beauty, a certain conventionality of mood, stressed with an exotic use of the appoggiatura, while in the Scherzo is a refined savagery of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... a limitation in the use of certain methods of war, and a total renunciation of the use of others.... If in the following work the expression "the law of war" is used, it must be understood that by it is meant only ... a limitation of arbitrary behaviour which custom and conventionality, human friendliness and a calculating egoism have erected, but for the observance of which there exists no express sanction, but only "the fear of reprisals" ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... part may be readily imagined; but it was invariably characterized by an element of refined restraint, and, whether from some implied understanding or individual sense of honour, it never passed the bounds of conventionality or a certain delicacy of respect. The delivery was consequently more or less protracted, but when each man had exchanged his three or four minutes' conversation with the fair postmistress,—a conversation ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... prejudices, attitudes, we take on through imitation. The tendency to imitate others coupled with the desire to be thought well of by others is one of the most powerful factors in producing conformity. They are the whips which keep us within the bounds of custom and conventionality. The tendency to imitate is so strong that its results are almost as certain as are those of inherited tendencies. It is almost as certain that a child will be like his parents in speech, manners, customs, ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... love, games, gayety, and flirtation. There is no such social freedom to be enjoyed anywhere as on board an ocean steamer. The breaking-up of old associations, the opening of a fresh existence, the necessity of new relationships,—this fuses the crust of conventionality, quickens the springs of life, and renders character sympathetic and fluent. The past is easily put away; we become plastic to new influences; we are delighted at the discovery of unexpected affinities, and astonished to find in ourselves so much wit, eloquence, and fine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... always picturesque, and in the presence of Englishmen he had a habit of accentuating those characteristics of speech and manner which are held by our countrymen to be native to the Peninsula. There is nothing so disarming as conventionality—and nothing less suspicious. Larralde seemed ever to be a typical Spaniard—indolently polite, ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... give the words of the minister's prayer. The words are not the prayer. Mr. Drake's words were commonplace, with much of the conventionality and platitude of prayer-meetings. He had always objected to the formality of the Prayer-book, but the words of his own prayers without book were far more formal; the prayer itself was in the heart, not on the lips, and was far better than the words. But poor ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... himself from the charge of "attempting to set up a new school in poetry," and he never throughout his life violated the conventions, literary or social, if he could possibly avoid doing so. This bias toward conservatism and conventionality shows itself particularly in the language of his poems. He was compelled, of course, to use much more concrete and vivid terms than the eighteenth century poets had used, because he was dealing with much more concrete and vivid matter; but his language, nevertheless, has a prevailing stateliness, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... habits than I was. He was engaged to a young lady all the time I was with him, and wrote letters to her constantly; but this fact did not prevent him from paying attentions to other young women, and I was aware that he was more familiar with them than conventionality would warrant. In fact he made no attempt to be secret in the matter, and often poked fun at me for my over sensitivity on the subject. Here was the key to a whole lot of meaning. The first year I was with him, I had no sweetheart or any lady friend on whom to center my affection ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Camarilla are overbearing to the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy to the provincial nobility, and the provincial nobility to the inferior classes. As I said before, it is a sliding-scale of despotism. The worst feature of it is seen in the treatment of women. Among the better classes conventionality has, doubtless, somewhat meliorated their condition. Absolute physical cruelty would be, perhaps, a violation of etiquette and good breeding; but neglect, selfishness, innate coarseness of thought, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... lady, "has as little conventionality about it as had yours. The magnitude of the danger which prompted yours must also excuse mine; I am come to repay the debt ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... seem to have been the first to break down this barrier and establish more friendly relations with his classes. He was naturally well adapted to this. Perfectly frank and fearless in his dealings with all men, he hated unnecessary conventionality, and at the same time possessed the rare art of preserving his dignity while associating with his subordinates on friendly terms. Always kindly and even sympathetic to the worst scapegraces in the division, he could assert ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... city,—gaining new experience with every hour, and studying the needs and complaints of his people for himself;—but if we should be told of a modern monarch doing likewise in our own day, we should mount on the stiff hobby-horse of our ridiculous conventionality, and accuse him of having brought the dignity of the Throne into contempt. Yet nothing perhaps can be more contemptible than a monarch who is too surrounded by flunkeyism to be a Man,—and, on the other hand, nothing could ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... two ripened fast. In defiance of all conventionality, the lady took to sitting out late at night with her elderly admirer, and, with an absolute disregard of decorum, accompanied him on long excursions. Finally, she went away with him altogether. On the occasion ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Barrington had flung off the bonds of conventionality. "Lance," she said, "you have proved your right to stay at Silverdale, and would not what you are doing now cover a great deal in ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... they would do things up in shape somehow," grunted the Bishop's son approvingly. "This is the stuff. Conventionality be tabooed. They're going to the other extreme, and that's the way to do. If you don't want an altar and candles, and a high-mucky-muck at the organ, have a hay-wagon. Gee!—Let me get up here next to Ben Hur and ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... second instant of his observation was that Sally was not at all loath to waste her time on the stranger. She was eating with a truly formidable conventionality of manner, and a certain grace with which she raised the ponderous coffee cup, made of crockery guaranteed to resist all falls, struck awe through the heart of the cowpuncher. She was bent on another conquest, ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... exclaimed Dennis impulsively; then, with a realization of the thin surface over which he was making such rapid strides despite the danger signals of conventionality, and with a diplomacy born of his native good sense, he glided, with cheerful Celtic sagacity, to safer footing by asking abruptly: "May I recommend myself"—as if he had not already done ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... had carried conventionality further than anyone, and that consequently they see a great merit in the return to realism. In the fact of not lying they ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... shut up," said the dragon severely. "Believe me, St. George," he went on, "there's nobody in the world I'd sooner oblige than you and this young gentleman here. But the whole thing's nonsense, and conventionality, and popular thick-headedness. There's absolutely nothing to fight about, from beginning to end. And anyhow I'm not going to, ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... a speech in the House of Commons, however forcible and eloquent, rarely influences a vote. Some orators, however, have gift of stirring the soul to emotions that carry a man to actions beyond range of conventionality. Such an one is the Right Hon. THOMAS LOUGH, commonly and affectionately known through several Parliaments as "Tommy." One of small faction of Liberals who have not withdrawn opposition to Military Service Bill. Declaiming against it just now on motion for Second ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... rushed into talk with Eagle before we stopped shaking hands; but he had not been able to answer the call of conventionality so soon; and it was not till after we were seated at table that he could control himself to speak. On his other side was Prince Paul's elderly dinner companion. On my other side was the new military attache ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fault, my fault, every bit of it," he muttered, still staring straight ahead. "If I hadn't been so thoughtless—As if I could imprison that bright spirit of youth in a great dull cage of conventionality, and not expect it to bruise its wings by fluttering ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... discloses fitfully on this side and that. None of these things are to be found in The Ring and the Book The action of Caponsacchi, though noble and disinterested, is hardly heroic in the highest dramatic sense, for it is not much more than the lofty defiance of a conventionality, the contemplated penalty being only small; not, for example, as if life or ascertained happiness had been the fixed or even probable price of his magnanimous enterprise. There was no marching to the stake, no deliberate encountering of the mightier risks, no voluntary submission to a lifelong ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... which have taken their place among ecclesiastical soporifics. Besides, he has recently compiled a collection of the world's best hymns into the "Standard Hymnal." In this field Converse, though conventional,—and conventionality may be considered inevitable here,—is mellow of harmony and ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... glared at me when I said something about good manners. Leaning over the table with his eyes set and his fist clenched he shouted at me, "I am a boor and the son of a boor".' So ready as he was to challenge anything which smacked of conventionality or pretension, he was not quite a safe poet to lionize or to ask into ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... strongly marked as he could; to each scale or leaf he gave a raised edge to mark its contour and distinguish it from the rest. The general effect was thus obtained by deliberate exaggeration of the relief and by a conventionality that was justified by the conditions of the problem ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... I am quite all right," she said, in answer to a question. "I shall not even have a suspicion of a limp." She held out her hand to me, and did not try to draw it away, though I grasped it rather longer and more tightly than conventionality might have approved. "You will come—soon—to see Lady Tressidy and—me?" ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... said to have been regal and dignified, to have worked hard, to have written correct state papers, and to have been capable of the deportment of an educated Christian gentleman, but to have reimbursed himself for this subservience to conventionality by occasionally retiring to an undignified residence on the sea-shore, where he transformed himself into the likeness of one of his half-clad heathen ancestors, debased himself by whisky, and revelled in ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... King was sure to astonish those around him by some breach of Court conventionality, little or great. He was liable to strong likings and dislikings, and he took no pains to conceal his sentiments in either case. He seems to have had an affectionate regard for his young niece, the Princess Victoria, and a strong ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... "Love must be wild and uncontrolled to save it from banalite. It must be a summer thunderstorm; the heavy brooding of the clouds of thought, the lightning of desire, then the crash, the downpour,—and the end, in which the bland sun smiles upon a bland world of dull but wholesome routine and tame conventionality, making believe that there never was such a thing known as the past storm! Be consoled, Denzil, and trust me,—you shall have time to make your honorable proposal, and Madame had better accept you,—for your love ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... engagements outside of certain disreputable establishments, where a genial personality or an over-burdened pocketbook gives entree, and the rules of conventionality have never even been whispered. His love affairs, confined to this class of women, have seldom lasted more than a week or ten days. His editors know him as a brilliant genius, irresponsible, unreliable, ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... it on purpose. He said that "nothing but the more gross and carnal parts of a composition will go down." His indecency was objected to in his own age, but not with any excluding severity. And I would like to call your attention to the curious conventionality of our views on this subject. Human nature does not change, but it changes its modes of expression. In the eighteenth century very grave people, even bishops, allowed themselves, in their relaxed moments, great licence in jesting. Yet they would have been scandalised by the tragic ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the vi:15 portal of humanity. Contentment with the past and the cold conventionality of materialism are crumbling away. Ignorance of God is no longer the stepping- vi:18 stone to faith. The only guarantee of obedience is a right apprehension of Him whom to know aright is Life eternal. Though empires fall, "the Lord shall vi:21 ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... to a new service—a service of self-renunciation and patient labour, undertaken—yes, I dare to say it—for the welfare of the large sisterhood of waiting and working women. A servant? No, a soldier; for I should be one among the vanguard, who strive to make a breach in the great fortress of conventionality. Not that I feared the word service, considering what Divine lips had said on that subject—"I am among you as one who serveth—" but I knew how the world shrank ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures, and Vandyke had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and temper; arid when you consider that, with a frightful conventionality of social habitude all around him, he yet conceived the simplest types of all feminine and childish loveliness;—that in a northern climate, and with gray, and white, and black, as the principal colours around him, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin |
