"Decency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ignorance, could justify; but as the fellow was overjoyed to see me, I could not help giving him something to drink, and with it a caution never to speak of people of high rank and condition, even behind their backs, but under their proper names or titles, and with decency and respect: he then begged my pardon, and assured me, if he had known that either of the Ladies had been a friend of mine, he would not have coupled them so improperly together; and I am thoroughly convinced, the man left me with a resolution, never to hazard a conjecture without ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... appointment with one another, met to congratulate our happiness. Nothing could be more obliging, more free and affectionate, than the ladies; nothing more polite than the gentlemen. All was performed (for they came to supper) with decency and order, and much to every one's satisfaction; which was principally owing to good Mrs. Jervis's care and skill; who is ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... consisted of a knapsack containing two shirts and an extra pair of stockings, a sketch-book and some pencils, and such other trifling knick-knacks as a tourist usually requires in this country. I carried no more outside clothing than what common decency required: a rough hunting-coat, a pair of stout cloth pantaloons, and an old pair of boots—which is as much as any traveler needs on a Norwegian tour, though it is highly recommended by an English writer that every traveler should provide himself with two suits of clothes, a Mackintosh, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... friends also were silent and ruminative. Not unnaturally, I suspected that a desire for substantial thanks had some part in their Silence, and at a convenient spot I made suitable offering. It was done, I trust, with all decency, for I knew that I had the better kind of Calabrian to deal with; but neither the jovially intelligent man nor the pleasant simpleton would for a moment entertain this suggestion. They refused with entire dignity—grave, courteous, firm-and as soon as I had apologized, ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... that the inhabitants were ignorant of each other's affairs. Bad as are the laws and customs in a slaveholding community, the doctor, as a professional man, deemed it prudent to keep up some outward show of decency. ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... is "our Quinbus Flestrin," the young Man Mountain, a large abounding gigantically cherubic person who is not only large in body and mind beyond all decency, but seems to be growing larger as you look at him—"swellin' wisibly," as Tony Weller puts it. Mr. Coburn has represented him as flowing off the plate in the very act of being photographed and blurring his own outlines in the process. Also he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... not know you, Betsey Bobbet, but I do know decency, and I know that no munny would tempt me to write such stuff as that poetry and send it ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... at the churches marked the low state of religion: the higher ranks talked in whispers, and even at times loudly, on their family concerns, their balls and concerts. The peasantry and lower ranks behaved with more decency, but seemed to think the service a mere form; they came in at all hours, and staid but a few minutes; went ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... were to guess? Suppose there is a gentleman somewhere about who has been carrying his outraging of one's common notions of decency just a little too far? Suppose it is necessary to make an example? You may be noble, and have great wealth, and honor, and smiles from beautiful women; but if some night you find a little bit of steel getting ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... your going to live in lodgings in an obscure part of London is more than I can bear, and now it really appals me. Adela, my child, it's impossible for you to go under these circumstances. The commonest decency will oblige him ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... province of your editorials," went on the apostle of titillation smoothly. "You may in time even educate them up to a standard of decency where they won't demand the sort of thing we're giving them now. But our present business with the news columns is to catch them for ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... objected to to the highest pitch of efficiency wear twice as many petticoats as an ordinary lady does, and seldom exhibit more than their ankles. Unfortunately, municipal councillors persist in confusing decency with drapery; and both in London and the provinces certain positively edifying performances have been forbidden or withdrawn under pressure, and replaced by coarse and vicious ones. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that the Lord Chamberlain would have been any more tolerant; ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... generally staying a month or more at anchor. The little church and the Catholic mission station up on the hill did less good to the natives than these rough sailors did harm, and at length the more respectable white men could stand the disorder no longer. They formed an association to maintain decency. They seized, tried, fined or sometimes locked up for a time the worst offenders, and twice they stripped the ruffians naked, gave them a coat of tar, stuck them all over with white down from a native plant, and when they were thus decorated, ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... science of life; just the same degree of certainty have we in what relates to them in works of imitation. Indeed it is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observances of time and place, and of decency in general, which is only to be learned in those schools to which Horace recommends us, that what is called taste, by way of distinction, consists: and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment. On the whole, it appears to me, that what is called taste, in its most general ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... had rather required to be strengthened. Thereupon he made his will, and as a good Christian he sent the object of his attachment from the house, but left her a sufficient provision wherewith she might live in decency: having done so much, he divided his property among his disciples,—Giulio Romano, that is to say, whom he always loved greatly, and Giovanni Francesco, with whom was joined a certain priest of Urbino who was his kinsman, but whose name I do not know. He furthermore commanded ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... undemonstrative people. Uncle Reuben had told her once that she need not do it, that they had not expected it of her; and Aunt Hannah had added, "No more they didn't." But Marion had hushed them both by a decided sentence, to the effect that it was nothing more than ordinary justice and decency. And she did not know even now that the gratitude they might have expressed was hushed back by her cold, ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... Creed,—who does? We accept a certain given definition of a supposititious Divinity, together with the suitable maxims and code of morals accompanying that definition, ... we call this Religion, . . and we wear it as we wear our clothing for the sake of necessity and decency, though truly we are not half so concerned about it as about the far more interesting details of taste in attire. Still, we have grown used to our doctrine, and some of us will fight with each other for the difference of a word respecting it,—and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... by the better element of citizenry. His writing presents a dark picture of conditions, possibly too dark in some phases; but his picture of the power of the growing colony to establish and maintain general concepts of decency of life and conduct ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... people, whose one solace of a cup of tea would be gone unless I gave it them; to the boys who were learning to read, who wanted testaments; to the bed-ridden and sick, who wanted blankets; to the young and well, who wanted gowns (not indeed for decency, but for the natural pleasure of looking neat and smart)—and to Margaret, first and last, who was nearest to me, and who, I began to think, might want some other trifles besides a cloak. The girl come in ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... that very reason he must. Listen to me, major; if he doesn't care to please his daughter for her own sake, he will have to do so for the sake of decency. Yes, I tell you, she has thoroughly compromised herself—quite enough, if it is ever known, to spoil any other engagement her father may make. Why, ask Adele! The day of the earthquake she ABSOLUTELY had the audacity to send him out of the room upstairs into your study for ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... any farther reply. Her father felt that quite enough had been said about it, and was prepared to give the twenty pounds, under the idea that he might be thought to have made a stout fight upon the subject. "He does want them very badly—for decency's sake," said the poor wife, thus winding up her plea. Then Mr. Grey got out his check-book and wrote the check for twenty pounds. But he made it payable, not to Mr. but ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... his fat face wagged at Waters peremptorily; he quite obviously felt himself a spokesman for order and decency and the divinely ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... to what may be called an indifference to decency. It is not that in families decency is wantonly and of a set purpose disregarded, but stern necessity leads to a coarseness and indelicacy which hardens the mind and deadens the natural modesty even of the best girls. Then the low scandals of the ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... my heart," exclaimed the uxorious Thompson; "but I must say you have got some of the disgracefulest notions out of that ere chapel as ever I heard on. Why, it's only common decency to wear a dress in the pulpit; and I believe in my mind, that that's come down to us from time immemorable, like every thing else in human natur. What's your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... sparkling up into music, the elevated sentiment, the merciless exposure of vice and folly, the purest and noblest morality, largely mixed with an ostentatious ridicule of every sacred truth, and an absolute disregard of every principle of decency and duty, give strange glimpses into French ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... being spoken to in this fashion by the one whom he had grown to look upon as his inveterate enemy, and who in the past had never addressed him save to utter some sneering insult; could it be that after all there was a spark of decency in Ferd, and that when he came to reflect on how shabbily he had treated the boy who had shown such willingness to help him drag his motor-cycle out of the ditch, he was a ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... some flowers in a bowl, the small lattice window open. Though it was hot in there, it was better far than the rooms of most families in towns, living on a wage of twice as much; for here was no sign of defeat in decency or cleanliness. In her face, as in poor Herd's, was that same strange mingling of resigned despair and almost eager appeal, so terrible to disappoint. Yet, trying not to disappoint it, one felt guilty of treachery: What was the good, the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... proyning, plash and spread the VINE thinnely against the wall, giuing euery seuerall branch and cyon his place, and passage, and not suffer it to grow loosely, rudely, or like a wilde thorne, out of all decency and proportion: for you must vnderstand that your Grapes doe grow euer vpon the youngest cyons, and if of them you shall preserue too many, questionlesse for want of nourishment they will lose their vertue, and you your profit. Now if your Vine ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... As to modesty and decency, if we are simians we have done well, considering: but if we are something else—fallen angels—we have indeed fallen far. Not being modest by instinct we invent artificial ideals, which are doubtless well-meaning but are ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... she had ascribed generosity and decency to one who possessed neither. He had not even the courtesy to answer her letter, in which she had pleaded for a meeting. She felt hot with shame of herself that she had ever stooped to ask for it. She ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... pleasure to possess; and I do not want to be put to the trouble of finding out, nor of obtaining the object and transmitting it to you. Will you, therefore, buy something for yourself and send the bill to me. Of course, a sense of social decency will prevent you from spending more than a small sum, and I shall be spared all exertion beyond signing a cheque. Yours insincerely and loggishly * * *." So managed, the contrivance of present-giving becomes ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... hostility towards Great Britain which at that time pervaded America, and shortly after broke out in open war. This self-sufficient miscreant having, as he fancied, taken ample vengeance upon the Government of his native country, could not, with any degree of decency, remain in the States, from whence he sailed for France in an American sloop-of-war, carrying with him the reward of his treason and the universal contempt of mankind." (Christie's History of the War of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Among these victims the two that most attracted her sympathy were Madame de Camors and Renee Mauperin. But what horrors surrounded them! What a varied assortment of deceptions, treacheries, and mysteries, lay hidden under the outward decency and respectability of what men called "the world!" Her young head became a stage on which strange plays were acted. What one reads is good or bad for us, according to the frame of mind in which we read it—according as we discover in a volume ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... you whether the Pope be or be not the Scarlet Lady of Babylon. I hope it is not so; because I am afraid it will induce His Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer to introduce several severe bills against popery, if that is the case; and though he will have the decency to appoint a previous committee of inquiry as to the fact, the committee will be garbled, and the report inflammatory. Leaving this to be settled as he pleases to settle it, I wish to inform you, that, previously to the bill last passed in favour of the Catholics, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... her furniture, and the greater part of her jewels. The produce of these she placed in the hands of a banker, and retired to a village, where she could live much cheaper than in the metropolis, and with tolerable decency. ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... the apostolic depositum; and he must be denying that they had more than ecclesiastical authority. The distinction between divine and ecclesiastical injunctions requires little explanation: the latter are imposed by the Church for the sake of decency and order, as a matter of expedience, safety, propriety, or piety. Such is the rule among ourselves, that dissenting teachers conforming must remain silent three years before they can be ordained; or that a certain form of prayer should be ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... labour to reconcile the grossest contradictions in the writings accounted sacred by the Hindoos, and will stoop to the meanest artifices in order to apologise for the numerous glaring falsehoods and horrid violations of all decency and decorum, which abound in almost every page. Any thing, it seems, will do with these men but the word of God. They ridicule the figurative language of Scripture, but will run allegory-mad in support of the most worthless productions that ever were published. I should think it time lost to ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... single strap. Thus prepared a tackle was attached to the board, and the remains * * * were hoisted over the side of the ship into the boat, without further ceremony. If several bodies were waiting for interment, but one of them was lowered into the boat at a time, for the sake of decency. The prisoners were always very anxious to be engaged in the duty of interment, not so much from a feeling of humanity, or from a wish to pay respect to the remains of the dead, for to these feelings they had almost become ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... her, and the charm of her frankness, her innate decency under conditions so anomalous, her simple unaffected recognition of the primal facts of life lifted her to a plane in his esteem which she had not occupied until ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... pain and disgust at your conduct, Stella," she said. "Putting aside all the awful suspicions I have about this Russian, you will lay up for yourself a lifelong regret in outraging all decency by refusing to marry that good and pure young clergyman, ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... was under those lips. His kiss was as a kiss from the grave's mouth, for his throat was an open sepulchre. This was all in the past, reader. Baron Rothie was a foam-flake of the court of the Prince Regent. There are no such men now-a-days! It is a shame to speak of such, and therefore they are not! Decency has gone so far to abolish virtue. Would to God that a writer could be decent and honest! St. Paul counted it a shame to speak of some things, and yet he did speak of them—because those to whom ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... in Cuban disorders was followed in 1895 by a renewal of the revolutionary movement. The contest between the rebels and the Spanish troops, marked by extreme cruelty and a total disregard for life and property, exceeded all bounds of decency, and once more raised the old questions that had tormented Grant's administration. Gomez, the leader of the revolt, intent upon provoking American interference, laid waste the land with fire and sword. By a proclamation of November 6, 1895, he ordered the destruction of sugar plantations ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... though," said Philip, "a duty of decency and honour, and to name that girl, foolish as she is, in the same breath with your women—But here, listen to me. Best tell you now, so there may be no mistake and no excuse. Miss Cregeen is to be married to a friend of mine. I needn't say who ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... this kind, was that of Captain Kotzebue, commanding a Russian exploring expedition. Wherever he went he outraged decency by the licence he allowed his crew, and on his return home malignantly abused the English missionaries whom he found nobly struggling, against innumerable difficulties, to reclaim the hapless natives ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... I am taught to think that equity is to be put out of the question, and the decision of the affair to be put entirely on the strength of party; and, for my own part, I do not see how it is possible, if the least decency or regard for national dignity has place, that it can be called a ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... the visit he owed to John Jacks. It was not pleasant, the thought of calling at the house at Queen's Gate; Mrs. Jacks might have heard strange things about him on that mad evening three years ago. Yet in decency he must go; perhaps, too, in self-interest. And at the wonted hour ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... whom fate had thrust upon him as followers, many of them desperadoes just out of jail. See his baffled endeavors to maintain order and discipline among such a crew; to restrain their excesses, curb their lawless acts of violence, and secure some semblance of decency in their conduct toward the natives. Many of them, we read, were so given over to idleness and sloth, that they actually made the islanders beasts of burden, to carry them on their backs. It is a most unhappy fact that the missionaries ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... shot them down in cold blood, who shot a boy in the back while in the act of doing his duty, and who had called her a "damn fool" in her own house, and was even then off on the trail of another man he had sworn to kill on sight. By all the laws of justice, equity, and decency, she should hate this man! She was conscious of no other feeling toward him than a burning, unquenchable hate. And yet, deep down in her heart she knew—by the pain of her discovery of his treachery—she knew she ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the white father had bought with beads and candy. The warriors of the Sioux, the only men fit to lead, were such as Red Dog and Kills Asleep. But still Two Lance kept his temper and the public peace, and again he rode to the agent and told his story, and Boynton fired up and said in common decency the agent must do something to put a stop to Red Dog's insolence, and the agent sent for Red Dog and bade him report himself at the agency forthwith, and Red Dog replied that he would when he got ready, and if the agent wanted him sooner, why, to come ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... have sent 'em their confounded eggs weeks ago if only their rotten, twopenny-ha'penny incubator had worked with any approach to decency." ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... I hear people speaking of the ignorant foreign women I think of "Mary," and "Annie," and others I have known. I see their broad foreheads and intelligent kindly faces, and think of the heroic struggle they are making to bring their families up in thrift and decency. Would Mary vote against liquor if she had the chance? She would. So would you if your eyes had been blackened as often by a drunken husband. There is no need to instruct these women on the evils of liquor drinking—they are able to give you a few ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... renders precautions like these necessary, was in a measure unknown before their intercourse with the whites. The excellent Captain Wilson, who took the first missionaries out to Tahiti, affirms that the people of that island had, in many things, "more refined ideas of decency than ourselves." Vancouver, also, has some noteworthy ideas on this subject, respecting ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... espionage of the permanent guests of the Bexley Sands Inn, but on Wednesday night Miss Tucker left for Torquay, according to schedule. Fergus Appleton remained behind, partly to make up arrears in his literary work, and partly as a sop to decency and common sense. He did not deem it either proper or dignified to escort the young lady on her journey (particularly as he had not been asked to do so), so he pined in solitary confinement at Bexley until Saturday morning, when he followed her to ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of his landlord. These were shot down without mercy or drove before us to our quarters. Thus we obtained a tolerable load for our caravan, which consisted of five or six carioles. "With this disreputable exploit marauding ceased. A returning sense of decency and order emanating from ourselves produced a sense of contrition. It is a solemn truth that we plundered none but those who were notoriously Tories and then within the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... "There's decency even in death, I assume; Preserve it, sir, and keep away; For the mother of my first-born you Show mind undue! —Sir, I've ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... time at least, in establishing this ideal "class society." While the Nation slumbered in indifference, she feared that these men, still full of the spirit of slavery, in the very name of law and order, under the pretense of decency and justice, would re-bind those whose feet had just begun to tread the path of liberty with shackles only less onerous than those which had been dashed from their limbs by red-handed war. As she thought of these things she read the following words from the pen of one who had ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... young fellow strode off into the dusk. Somehow, with his square shoulders and his tanned, resolute country face, he seemed to typify Young America setting cheerfully forth to face— anything—that Honor and Decency may still be more than empty words in this world ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... name, and one of them, an awful man called Tom Harrison, says he is going to get compensation from him because you hit Susan in the eye with a pea and hadn't the decency to stay there and own up to it. There's the dinner bell, and I'm about sick of ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... one's passions. It began last Monday; three parts of Westminster Hall were inclosed with galleries, and hung with scarlet; and the whole ceremony was conducted with the most awful solemnity and decency, except in the one point of leaving the prisoners at the bar, amidst the idle curiosity of some crowd, and even with the witnesses who had sworn against them, while the Lords adjourned to their own House to consult. No part of the royal ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... seemed to rouse her like nothing else.... Turned on me like a tigress, by the living Tinker!—called me everything she could lay her tongue to, and threatened that she'd apply for a separation if I continued to outrage every feeling of decency that association with such a thundering brute hadn't uprooted from ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... learned Manchu, as unofficial envoy—with the agreeable duty to see and report. It was a travelling commission, not like that of 1905-06, to seek light, but to ascertain whether the representative of a power so humbled and insulted would be treated with common decency. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... short of assurances and professions of simulated friendship. Good manners to those one does not love are no more a breach of truth than "your humble servant," at the bottom of a challenge, is; they are universally agreed upon and understood to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society: they must only act defensively; and then not with arms poisoned with perfidy. Truth, but not the whole truth, must be the invariable principle of every man who hath either religion, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... over. There are other theatres open to her, of course, and all the managers are at her feet; but she has set her heart upon going abroad for some time, and has, I imagine, made so much money this season that the family cannot in decency object to her having her own way. "I am wild to get to Italy," she said to me in her emphatic, impetuous way. "Sir Walter Rutherford has talked to me so much about it that I am beginning to dream of it. ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of a proper means of cure and methods of regaining health and vigor), the utmost care and circumspection have been exercised in an endeavor to exclude from its pages anything that could be construed by the most fastidious as immodest, obscene, or in any way offensive to decency, morality or good breeding. Indeed, although purely and essentially a medical work, and intended solely for such persons whose duty it is to be acquainted with the facts given, in order to understand their complaint, ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... channel by which the Rivers Arne and Wilner, after crossing the tide-flats and salt-marsh of Marychurch Haven, make their swift united exit into Marychurch Bay. Neither was he troubled by the fact that Tandy's Castle—or more briefly and familiarly Tandy's—for all its commonplace outward decency of aspect did not enjoy an unblemished moral or social reputation. The house—a whitewashed, featureless erection—was planted at right angles to the deep sandy lane leading up from the shore, through the scattered village ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... our holy Catholic Faith. In the meantime, we, as patrons of the said churches and the others in our Indies, command persons to be named to those benefices who will assume charge of them. You will likewise see that the divine services are carried out with the necessary reverence, decency, and decorum, and that the natives of the said district are instructed in the Holy Catholic faith; you will see that the said priests and others who reside in the said provinces live honestly, and that those who are charged with the education of the Indians in the teachings of our ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... generosity in this last remark won for him the respect of the Ridgleyites who had remained on the scene, and the result of the incident was to make them feel that Campbell had acted with little or no decency. ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... extraordinary play—of all Moliere's works the farthest removed from the classical ideal—the conventional rules of religion and morality are exposed to a withering scorn; Don Juan, the very embodiment of the arrogance of intellect, and his servant Sganarelle, the futile and superstitious supporter of decency and law, come before us as the only alternatives for our choice; the antithesis is never resolved; and, though in the end the cynic is destroyed by a coup de theatre, the fool in all his foolishness still confronts ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... supposed killing of her babe, the "traveling man" interrupts and declares he is the son whom it was rumored she had drowned. In the end he is turned out of the house, not altogether unkindly, but as much for decency's sake as for his own. That the son, for any motive at all, should be turned out of the house where his mother lies dead, even though he had not stood by her living, is hard enough in the estimation of any people, but in the ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... complaining of being denied service near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a White House assistant, himself a Negro, replied that "outside of an Army post, there is little that the Federal Government can do, except to appeal to the decency of the citizens to treat men in uniform with courtesy and respect." He then suggested a course of action ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... figure when it was painted was history, and must have had a very tender interest for two persons at least. Had the painter dared to suggest motherhood in that other figure—the one with the flowered raiment—he would have offended against decency, and the art-sense of the world would have stricken his name from the roster of fame forever, and made him anathema. More has been written and said, and more copies made of that woman in the flowered ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... isolated places in rural Ireland. There can be no comparison. And my reader will understand that there is much which the European misses in the way of general physical comfort and cleanliness. Sanitation is absent in toto. Ordinary decency forbids one putting into print what the uninitiated traveler most desires to know—if he would be saved a severe shock at the outset; but everyone has to go through it, because one cannot write what one sees. All travelers who have had to put up at the caravanseries in Central and Western China ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... conditions of the fallen women, make timely a rough outline of the methods by which girls are lured into the haunts of vice, and kept there until they have lost all power or desire to escape and win their way back to decency and respectability. It is not pretended that this line is accurate, or that it fits any particular case, but the information on which it is based is gained from what are believed to be reliable sources, and it is not likely to be misleading: if ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... it. But now, I was told, they were the chief promoters of a shameful traffic, and that for a spike-nail, or any other thing they value, they would oblige the women to prostitute themselves, whether they would or no; and even without any regard to that privacy which decency required.[3] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... beating the floor with her foot, and with her face turned away and her eyes fixed upon the wall. She was no longer sobbing now, but was hardening herself against her aunt. She was resolving that she would be a castaway,—that she would have nothing more to do with godliness, or even with decency. She had found godliness and decency too heavy to be borne. In all her life, had not that moment in which Ludovic had held her tight bound by his arm round her waist been the happiest? Had it not been to her, her one single morsel of real bliss? She was thinking now whether she would fly ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... after everything that can be said of good anent them, were a black sight, and for months and months produced a scene of riot and idleness after working hours, that went far to render our housie that was before a picture of decorum and decency a tabernacle of confusion and a hell upon earth. Whenever time for stopping work came about, down we regularly all sat, night after night, the wife, Benjie, and Tommy Staytape, and myself, playing for a ha'penny the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... sense of decency forbids Communion on two accounts. The first of these is always verified, viz. the bodily defilement, with which, out of reverence for the sacrament, it is unbecoming to approach the altar (and hence those who wish to touch any sacred object, wash their hands): except perchance such uncleanness ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... quietly—"not on me. I know the ropes. Don't try those little tricks on me. I don't need professional coddling, and I don't need professional lies. You see I happen to know just a little about the action of germs. We'll do the usual things, of course—that's mere scientific decency, but if this thing has really gotten in its work—oh I've studied these things a little too long, old man, I've watched them too many times, to be able ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... slips in decorum; will have no truck with tragi-comedy in any of its forms. He hates puns and bombast, demands refinement in speech and restraint in manners. He regards Hamlet's speeches to Ophelia in the Player scene as a violation of propriety, is shocked by the lack of decency in the representation of Ophelia's madness, finds Hamlet's frequent levity and the buffoonery of Polonius alike regrettable —Shakespeare's favorite foible, he feels, is "that of raising a laugh." The introduction of Fortinbras and his army on the stage is "an ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... visitors, including their suite of divine bulls and holy monkeys, their lustrations of cow dung, ecstatic hook swingings, burning of widows, and drowning of children, and other Pantheistic Philosophies, from the banks of the Ganges. What an outrage of decency for such men to call themselves philosophers ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... really took possession of the convention and became almost frantic. I saw many women jumping up and down, dishevelled and hysterical, and some men acting in much the same way. It was absolutely unworthy of a convention of any party, a disgrace to decency, and a blot upon the reputation of our country. I am not alone in this opinion. More than once during my official life in Europe I have heard the whole thing lamented by leading liberal statesmen as bringing discredit on ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... there would be no violation of decency in their paying a visit—the little party of three—to the sights of the metropolis; but Mrs. Touchett took a different view. Like many ladies of her country who had lived a long time in Europe, she ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... she, with some severity, "to decency and to humanity; and surely you cannot refuse to see who is with him, and in what situation he lies, and whether he has met, from the strangers with whom he was left, the tenderness and care which his friends ought to have ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Common decency (I don't mean this for a joke, but I suppose it is one) should prevent anybody from going to a place discovered by somebody else; and why I write is to ask you if there is not an unwritten law against such conduct, and if so will you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... by ourselves, for the other three are destructive of all the opportunities for dissection; whereas, in the last, the coffin can lie in peaceful decency, while the remains are made to subserve the useful purposes of science. Ah! Captain Lawton, I enjoy comparatively but few opportunities of such a nature, to what I expected on entering ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... not be said, that in calling public attention to these evil consequences on the female portion of the community, we are overstepping the boundaries of propriety or decency. There is a license for the poet; a license for the stage; a license for the bar; a license for the writer of fiction; a license for the press, and why should there not be a license for a Christian writer? It is high time for true modesty to take the place ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... his feet desisted (slack'ning pace), From haste, that mars all decency of act, My mind, that in itself before was wrapt, Its thoughts expanded, as with joy restor'd: And full against the steep ascent I set My face, where highest to heav'n ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... nor a happier boy in all Holland than Hans Brinker as he watched his sister, with many a dexterous sweep, flying in and out among the skaters who at sundown thronged the canal. A warm jacket had been given her by the kind-hearted Hilda, and the burst-out shoes had been cobbled into decency by Dame Brinker. As the little creature darted backward and forward, flushed with enjoyment and quite unconscious of the many wondering glances bent upon her, she felt that the shining runners beneath her feet ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... thing more. We went about to put everything in order and lay the poor corpse in decency, and when we started to pull off his veldschoen, as I hope to die in my bed, there was a little drop of blood still wet on ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... . Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these dreadful preliminaries, the provisional removement &c. when they are proceeded with,—will you do—all you can—suggest every regard to decency and proper feeling to the persons concerned? I have a horror of that man of the grave-yard, and needless publicity and exposure—I rely on you, dearest friend of ours, to at least lend us your influence when the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... pride in any thing, it must have been in this hair,—indeed, she had little else to be proud of,—for it was always fairly tidy. Johnny, it seemed, always exacted a certain amount of cleanliness and decency as the price of her admission into his shop; not, perhaps, that he had any inherent love for this virtue, as such, or that his own comfort and happiness depended upon them, but because he feared that his trade might be injured if his customers found there such a dirty, ragged little object as Matty ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... I demanded. "Why aren't you there to keep a little decency about the thing? Why aren't you looking after ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... it—no. I really don't think it was possible. But I could have refused to get into the machine. I thought I could resist it. I took that risk, and failed." He stopped short. His body twitched with uncontrolled emotion, and in decency the negro turned his back on his master's anguish. A broken whisper reached him: "I ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... brutal proceedings I became victim of on the part of Sotillo. Something utterly inconceivable, sir; more like the proceedings of a maniac than the action of a sane man, however lost to all sense of honour and decency. But Sotillo was furious at the failure of his ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... in greater comfort, and some of the cottages are by no means unattractive. But the Royal Commissioners say that the crofter's habitation is usually "of a character that would imply physical and moral degradation in the eyes of those who do not know how much decency, courtesy, virtue, and even refinement survive amidst the sordid surroundings of a Highland hovel." An Englishman who, on seeing these "sordid surroundings," was disposed to compare the social and moral ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... resolution. Jack Wilkes headed the party that drove them away. It is agreed, that if they had seized the Bank on Tuesday, at the height of the panick, when no resistance had been prepared, they might have carried irrecoverably away whatever they had found. Jack, who was always zealous for order and decency,[1333] declares that if he be trusted with power, he will not leave a rioter alive. There is, however, now no longer any need of heroism or bloodshed; no blue ribband[1334] ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... point of order raised by NOLAN. TIM HEALY referring to difficulty of dislodging PARNELL, alluded to him as "Sitting Bull." Clamour from Parnellite section anxious for preservation of decency of debate. Speaker said, question most important. Irish Parliament in its infancy; above all things essential they should well consider precedents. Must reserve decision as to whether the phrase was Parliamentary; would suggest, therefore, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... Nicholas's face. It seemed as if the funeral had lifted a stone that had hitherto held the two angry spirits down; Nicholas, after all, was but a son-in-law, and Ralph, to his view at least, a bad son. She feared that both might think that a quarrel did not outrage decency; but she feared for Nicholas more ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... annoyance, confronted with all the Cabinet except Seward, who had resigned, and they were invited by Lincoln to discuss the matter in his presence with these Ministers. Chase, to his still greater annoyance, found himself, as the principal Minister there, compelled for decency's sake to defend Seward from the very attack which he had helped to instigate. The deputation withdrew, not sure that, after all, it wanted Seward removed. Chase next day tendered, as was natural, his resignation. Lincoln was able, now that he had the resignations of both men, to persuade both ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... advise your friend Miss Howe to concern herself less in your matters than she does, except she could do it with more decency. She has written three letters to me: very insolent ones. Your favourer, poor Mrs. Norton, thinks you know nothing of the pert creature's writing. I hope you don't. But then the more impertinent the writer. But, believing the fond woman, I sat down the more readily to answer your letter; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... shouted Steering, "twice now I've done my best to hope that somehow, somewhere you were going to throw me one line of commercial honesty and decency. I haven't asked you to measure up to very high standards, I'd have been satisfied with damned little; I've waited on you and hoped for you and let you try to bull-doze me, but by God! I'm done. You hear, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... part of it." He smiled with faint irony. "But you may take my word for it, it is so. He has thought of nothing but you and your happiness from the very beginning of things. And—unlike someone else we know—he has had the decency always to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... imaginative race are we; but we have the roots of poetry in us, and the roots of other arts, for we have reverence for what is above and beyond us. Custom, too, we worship, and decency and order. We fight unwillingly, and are very slow to anger; but we never let go. Witness the last four dreadful years; witness Europe from Mons to Gallipoli. The British private, soldier or sailor, has been the backbone of the fight for freedom. But I am a long way ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... Richard Dean, she helped to pull her fellow citizens out of the rubble and deal with that awful tragedy. She reminds us that in their response to that atrocity the people of Oklahoma City lifted all of us with their basic sense of decency and community. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... decline to recognize my rights, I must take the matter in my own hands. I, too, shall stake the claim and endeavor to get my location notice filed in the land office before yours. If you haven't any sense of justice and decency, I have." ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... absurd, and outrageous. In a village whose permanent population did not exceed four thousand, students were crowded by hundreds and thousands. To speak without exaggeration, they ruled Philistia with a rod of iron, in defiance of law and order, and not infrequently of decency itself. On this point we have an eye-witness of unquestionable veracity. In 1798, Steffens, a young Dane brimful of enthusiastic admiration for German learning, arrived in the course of his travels at Jena. He gives the following account of his first impressions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... could have run away with any decency I'd have run rather than face what came then. But the women—Heavens, how they stood ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... wants, physical and intellectual.(50)(51) Wants are either necessaries, decencies (Anstandsbeduerfnisse) or luxuries. The non-satisfaction of necessary wants causes disease or death; that of the wants of decency endangers one's social position.(52) The much greater number, and the longer continuance of his wants are among the most striking differences between man and the brute:(53) wants such as clothing, fuel,(54) tools, and those resulting from his much longer period of infancy; which last, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... and have things in common. The social instinct was strong in them, yet they had remained lonely because they could not satisfy that instinct and at that same time satisfy their desire for cleanness and decency. ...
— The Game • Jack London
... came into the throat of Nealie as she drove Rocky along the main street of Pomeroy, with Mr. Callaghan riding on ahead. How kind people were to them! Of course she did not know that in common decency Tim Callaghan should have paid Rumple fifteen shillings or a sovereign for the service rendered in caring for the cattle, and that he also should have paid something towards the damage sustained in the ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... want to know what I think, I think you're getting simply impossible to get on with. You simply never think the same as other people think. I should have thought it was only common decency at a time like this to stand up for your own class; but, no. It's always your own class that's in the wrong and the common people who ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... the heavens in what you imagine to be the approved style, to the accompaniment of correct gasps, after which, finding you have left your cigarettes behind, you look at your wrist watch and wait another five minutes, until you can with decency saunter back to your camel-driver with the feeling of something quite well done, and the unuttered hope in your mind that everyone would not have gone to bed on ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... funeral, who was buried with just the same ceremonial as his predecessor this time seven years. It is a wretched mockery after all, and if I were king, the first thing I would do should be to provide for being committed to the earth with more decency and less pomp. A host of persons of all ranks and stations were congregated, who 'loitered through the lofty halls,' chattering and laughing, and with nothing of woe about them but the garb. I saw two men in an animated conversation, and one laughing heartily ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... images and large drums. The dwelling-houses are rather poor-looking huts, with low walls and roofs and an exceedingly small entrance which is only to be passed through on one's hands and knees. Decency demands that the women should always enter the houses backward, and this occasions funny sights, as they look out of their huts like so many ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... reach, and some perverse destiny prevented him from realising any desire that had a spark of honesty and decency in it. It was not wonderful that in the midst of his loneliness and unhappiness he should have been tempted back to the old paths again, men, women, places that for more than three months now he had ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... natural state are sealed up in jars to make their acidity presentable! "There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned," and degradation in the dignity that has to be preserved. Simplicity is the only dignity. If one has not the genuine article, no affluence of starch, no snow-drift of white-linen decency, will furnish any substitute. If one has it, he will retain it, whether he stand on his head or his heels. Nothing is really undignified but affectation or conceit; and for the total extinction and annihilation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... in the march of events, the time came when the lines must be sharply drawn between the good and evil forces. Iniquity presented such a bold front, and all the foes of order and decency became so threatening, that the moral forces of society had to combine for mutual protection. The church, being the conservator of morals as of religion, was the only rallying point for these forces, and felt at once the impulse of new life. Thus, society, in the ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... principal culprit in the Salem witchcraft. The accusing girls were evidently delighted to get hold of such a notable and doughty character; and their tongues were released, on the occasion, from all restraints of decorum and decency. When the ring was formed around him "in the street," in front of Deacon Ingersoll's door, his sword unbuckled from his side, and such foul and vulgar aspersions cast upon his good name, he felt, no doubt, that it would ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... and less pressing, the other three must laugh at them, and more than laugh at them; and ask them—"Why have you education, why have you influence, why have you votes, why are you freemen and not slaves, if not to preserve the comfort, the decency, the health, the lives of men, women, and children—most of those latter your own wives and ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... atrocious act of perfidy in their favorite hero. Zurita vindicates it by a letter from the Neapolitan prince to Gonsalvo, requesting the latter to take this step, since he preferred a residence in Spain to one in France, but could not with decency appear to act in opposition to his father's wishes on the subject. If such a letter, however, were really obtained from the prince, his tender years would entitle it to little weight, and of course it would afford no substantial ground for justification. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... forget their uncomfortably decorative surroundings and talk like regular people. But when he saw how skinny were the sandwiches and how reticent the cinnamon toast he was cheered. He calculated that the whole bill couldn't, in decency, be more than ninety cents for ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... whom he flatters without reserve, and, to confess the truth, with very little art[68]. The same observation may be extended to all his dedications: his compliments are constrained and violent, heaped together without the grace of order, or the decency of introduction: he seems to have written his panegyricks for the perusal only of his patrons, and to have imagined that he had no other task than to pamper them with praises, however gross, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... seemed a very pandemonium of riot and revelry, that prolonged the night into the day, and defied the very order of nature by its audacious disregard of all decency of time, place, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... others refer to topics not included in his publications. Besides the Deontology manuscripts and a fragment upon 'Political Deontology,' there is a discussion of the means of suppressing duels, an argument against the legal punishment of certain offences against decency, and a criticism of the gospel narrative similar to Not Paul, etc. I have not thought it necessary to examine these fragments after reading Mr. Whittaker's report. Bentham's principles are sufficiently stated in his published works; and the papers which have been ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... be thought of at all. Thus, we find persons who continue very good people, as the world goes, until middle age, or even seniority; then, suddenly breaking out into some enormous offence against decency and society, which startles the whole pious neighborhood. Folks start up, with outstretched hands and staring ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... eight at night the wailing of Secundra announced that all was over; and before ten, the Indian, with a link stuck in the ground, was toiling at the grave. Sunrise of next day beheld the Master's burial, all hands attending with great decency of demeanour; and the body was laid in the earth, wrapped in a fur robe, with only the face uncovered; which last was of a waxy whiteness, and had the nostrils plugged according to some Oriental habit of Secundra's. No sooner was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... commented unfavorably. The Herald said: "The legislature passed a bill in the interest of decency and humanity, authorizing the appointment of matrons in the several police stations in the city of New York to look after female prisoners who might be placed in the station-houses. This bill was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the decency," he went on, more slowly, "to, as he thought, retain his wife's private papers. He had caused the contents of the various drawers to be dumped out upon a chair. But there was one drawer of which ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... even when drunk—which happens only on rare festive occasions and is a result of his intercourse with "the rascally Chinaman"—is perfectly decorous, and, as our author was assured, would never "dream of violating the laws of decency and good temper." For the Hindu, on the other hand, as an entirely conventional and artificial creature, obsequious, hypocritical, inhospitable, disdainful of the race on whom he fawns and before whom he trembles as "unclean," Mr. Hornaday has no other feeling than aversion and contempt. He gives ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... laid under the necessity,) I shall on no occasion transgress against the strictest rules of truth and decency, nor be wanting in that respect, which I have ever paid, and shall ever pay to Congress, as the representative body of my fellow citizens. At the same time, I shall with proper firmness, and the dignity becoming a free but injured ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... of the death of his wife, and considered that she had died without giving him the signature so necessary to the accomplishment of his wishes, no sense of decency restrained the expression of his resentment. Emily anxiously avoided his presence, and watched, during two days and two nights, with little intermission, by the corpse of her late aunt. Her mind deeply ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... with large margins. The room had its bright, durable, sociable air, the air that Laura Wing liked in so many English things—that of being meant for daily life, for long periods, for uses of high decency. But more than ever to-day was it incongruous that such an habitation, with its chintzes and its British poets, its well-worn carpets and domestic art—the whole aspect so unmeretricious and sincere—should have to do with lives that were not right. Of course ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... true; Kerns knows it; I know it—now that you have told me. You see, he couldn't tell me, because I should not have believed him. But I believe you—all you say, except one thing. And that is only a glimmer of decency left in me—not that I make any merit of it. No, it is merely instinctive. For I have not turned on the ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... hand. "Joseph, I had hoped you were not going to refer to this again for some while. I have told you hundreds of times, or more, that a woman cannot marry with decency a second time when she has two strapping daughters who have not yet ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... approving in art the highest attributes, moral and spiritual, one sees in life—if you will grant all this, let us offer a practical suggestion—a thing that one who has imposed the foregoing should try to do just out of common decency, though it be but an attempt, perhaps, to make his speculations less speculative, and to ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Comfort to the Golden Gate. We've grafted a dollar whenever we saw one that had a surplus look to it. But we never went after the simoleon in the toe of the sock under the loose brick in the corner of the kitchen hearth. There's an old saying you may have heard —'fussily decency averni'—which means it's an easy slide from the street faker's dry goods box to a desk in Wall Street. We've took that slide, but we didn't know exactly what was at the bottom of it. Now, you ought to be wise, ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... appliances to vice, my constitutional temperament broke forth with redoubled ardor, and I spurned even the common restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my revels. But it were absurd to pause in the detail of my extravagance. Let it suffice, that among spendthrifts I out-Heroded Herod, and that, giving name to a multitude of novel follies, I added no brief appendix to the long ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that?—and nothing I can say makes any impression upon her. I should have thought she had had enough of governessing the first day she went out to give a lesson: she got herself run over and nearly killed; was brought back in a cab by some gentleman, who had the decency to take the cab away again: for how we should have paid the fare, I don't know, I am sure. So I have just brought her to you to know if her mother's old friend thinks it is a right thing for Kathleen Elmsdale's ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... because they could afford to be more fastidious. Between Broadway and the "main street" of Wallacetown, and other places of its type—small railroad or manufacturing centres, standing alone in an otherwise purely agricultural community—the odds in favor of virtue, not to say decency, are all in favor of Broadway; and Wallacetown, to the average youth of Hamstead, represents the one opportunity for a "show," "something to drink," and "life" in general. Sylvia had unlocked the door of material ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... liberties and concessions that could not be permitted on the spot or in public, but must wait the opportunity of seclusion. There were, no doubt, times when the conduct of the game was carried to such a pitch of license as to offend decency; but as a rule the outward proprieties were seemingly as well regarded as at an old-fashioned husking bee, when the finding of the "red ear" conferred or imposed the privilege or penalty of exacting or granting the blushing tribute of a kiss. Actual ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... leave'! Shocking, shocking! I complained to the Bishop, but it was no use, for it seems that he has a perfect infatuation for this man Walden—they were college friends or something of that kind. As for the sarcophagus here, of course it ought in the merest common decency to have been transferred to the Cathedral of the diocese. But you see the present incumbent bought the place;—the purchase of advowsons is a scandal, in my opinion— however this man got it all his own way, more's ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... with all decency. The Marquis is at the Sanglier Noir at La Rochette. You can have no difficulty in finding him, and having found him, less difficulty still in giving or ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... now in excellent temper after their repast, we began our purchase of horses. We soon obtained five very good ones, on very reasonable terms—that is, by giving for each horse merchandise which cost us originally about $6. We have again to admire the perfect decency and propriety of the Indians; for though so numerous, they do not attempt to crowd round our camp or take anything which they see lying about, and whenever they borrow knives or kettles or any other article from the men, they return them with ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... would recommend them to others, in the like Condition, And let me intreat my Friends and Fellow-Sufferers to remember, that it is not a low Degree of Submission to the Divine Will, which is called for in the ensuing Discourse. It is comparatively an easy Thing to behave with external Decency, to refrain from bold Censures and outragious Complaints, or to speak in the outward Language of Resignation. But it is not, so easy to get rid of every repining Thought, and to forbear taking it, in some Degree ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... understand, Bunsey, that however flippantly you may choose to regard what I have said to you, you will have the decency to keep the subject-matter to yourself. I do not ask your congratulations or your approval, ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... than his share. A man may marry twice without offence to good morals and decency, I allow! but four times is ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... be born to him from a bad and base stock, on an equality with his legitimate sons; and by this the wife is robbed of her conjugal rights, the children are injured, and above all, the husband himself is enveloped in disgrace. He ought therefore to approach his wife with much self-restraint and decency, and to maintain modesty in his words, and in his deeds a regard to what is lawful and honest, and in his intercourse he should be true and discreet. And to little errors, even tho they be voluntary, he ought to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... inventions" of the lords of misrule, morrice, and May-day dancers, whom he accused of tripping about the church, even during the hours of service, and of figuring in costumes which, by their texture and scantiness, outraged ordinary notions of decency. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... of course; decency demands it. When Duncan came to me with the news I sent him instantly to Lazette to inform the sheriff of what had happened. Undoubtedly he will take Dakota ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... that I am persuaded with you he could not escape the terrible effects of the sultan's rage: therefore, should I continue to lament him all my life, my tears cannot recall him. For this reason, since I have paid all the duties decency requires of me to his memory, now he is in the grave I think I ought to endeavor to comfort myself. These are the motives of the change you see in me; I am resolved to banish melancholy entirely; and, persuaded that you will bear me company tonight, I have ordered ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... decorum. The adultery was allowed, it was not necessary to bring any witnesses to prove it; but the seduction, though highly probable from the circumstances which he had the honour to state, could not be so clearly proved.—It was of the most atrocious kind, as decency was set at defiance, and respect for reputation, which shows internal compunction, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... not speak of his family connection with Mr. Fisbee to the invalid, for, although the connection was distant, the old man was, in a way, the family skeleton, and Meredith had a strong sense of the decency of reserve in such a matter. There was one thing Fisbee's shame had made the old man unable not to suppress when he told Parker his story; the wraith of a torrid palate had pursued him from his youth, and the days of drink and despair from which Harkless had saved him were not the first in his life. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington |
