"Decent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is no feud, and it doesn't seem so romantic when you're in it. The man my sister married I thought was frightfully boring except for his family place, and being in the army, which is rather decent. He talks," she smiled, "like a phonograph with ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... answer me!" Tom cried, white with wrath. "Ye young villain, ye're nothin' but a pauper, an' should be in the Poor House, instead of livin' with decent people. Ye don't know who yer father an' mother are, do ye? An' no one else does, fer that matter. Ye wouldn't own ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... rather more refined, rather less squat than the patriarchs and prophets supporting Saint Anne under the north porch, but their quality as works of art was less striking. They resembled the Christ, Whom they escorted with decent duty: it was honest work, phlegmatic ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... with hermit heart, Disdain'st the wealth of art, And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall; But com'st a decent maid, 10 In attic robe array'd, O chaste, unboastful Nymph, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... was not much inferior to the first. He had realized a very considerable property in Sussex, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, and the New River Company; and had acquired a spacious house, with gardens and lands, at Putney, in Surrey, where he resided in decent hospitality. He died in December 1736, at the age of seventy; and by his last will, at the expense of Edward, his only son, (with whose marriage he was not perfectly reconciled,) enriched his two daughters, Catherine and Hester. The former became the ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... you on as my protege. Make a decent gambler out of you. Set you up. We can go travelling together, see the world again. You've been to space; you can tell me what it's like ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... after mother died, and if there is a person in the whole world whom I loathed it was her. No, I won't go to her; I'll write and tell father I can't—I won't; it shan't be. Nothing would induce me to live with her. Oh, Mrs. Clavering, you don't know what she is, and she—why, she doesn't speak decent English, and she knows scarcely anything. How am I to be educated, Mrs. Clavering? I could not ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... had, it happily befell, A decent education; His views would have befitted well A far ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... the barn! He had been all wrong about the barn. It was a great little place, comfortable, airy, and cheerful. What could be more invigorating than that smell of hay? Even the rats, he felt, must be pretty decent rats, when ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... idea of his boxing up those weeds to send to anybody. Still the nurse had said how pleased Polly was. By George, it is strange what will please people. He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying horses, how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the sight of the first decent sized wheat field just went to his heart, when he was coming back. Someway he could not laugh at anything that morning, for Polly was dead. And Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed to see her yet, how she ran after ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... except the failure o' a company Glasgie wy; it's been rotten, a' wes hearin', for a while, an' noo it's fair stramash. They say it 'll no be lichtsome for weedows an' mony decent fouk ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... more than you'll get," grinned Herb. "But you may astonish us all by working up something really decent. Funny things like ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... "'Taint a decent night to put a dog out o' doors," returned the fisherman; "it's a good deal mor'n likely you'd get swamped in the marsh, if I let the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... he, "if only I had had decent men, instead of jail- birds and loafers!" and he pondered sadly ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... hillside, serene in the afterglow of its one hundred and eighty-four years. The spotless white walls, the green blinds, the graceful Colonial spire, are meetly set in an environment which strikes no note of dissonance. On either side are quaint, narrow streets, lined with decent door-yards and houses almost as old as the church. Within the cool interior the cottagers, and representatives of a native aristocracy—direct descendants of the English of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... a reformed character now," he admitted. "But he is far from orthodox; far from orthodox! At one time I am told that he was one of the wildest young fellows in the neighborhood, no decent person would speak to him, and though no doubt he means well, yet I could never have confidence in ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... done to you, but a time would come when you would find that your love for me did not compensate for your life here. And marriage with me is unthinkable. You know what I am and what I have been. You know that I am not fit to live with, not fit to be near any decent woman. You know what sort of a damnable life I have led; the memory of it would always come between us—you would never forget, you would never trust me. And if you could, of your charity, both forgive and forget, you know that ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... will grant it is but decent you should be pale, and lean, and melancholick, to shew you are in love: And that I shall require of you ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Madison, with a grim smile; "you're not! It's going to be the hardest work any of you have ever done—you've got to lead decent lives ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... discovered its component parts. The man was mad, undoubtedly, and this may have been poison. But its effect is good. Poh! I will taste again, because of this weak, agued, miserable state of mine; though it is a shame in me, a man of decent skill in my way, to believe in a quack's nostrum. But it is a comfortable kind ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable, free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a "GAM," a thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat gamesome stuff about "spouters" ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... a rich, suburban Pickle family at Epsom for the Derby, and Di had been grumbling that it was exactly the sort of invitation they would get: for one night and the Derby, instead of Ascot. However, it was the time of the month for a moon, and quite decent young men had been enticed; so Di wasn't so very sorry for herself after all. Her nickname at home in Ireland, "Diana the Huntress," had been already imported, free of duty, to England, by a discarded flirtee; but I don't think she minded, it sounded so dashing, even if it was only grasping. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... investigations of evil are profoundly consistent with an indomitable optimism. Any one can say "All's right with the world," when he looks at the smiling face of things, at comfortable prosperity and a decent morality. But the test of optimism is its sight of evil. Browning has fathomed it, and he can still hope, for he sees the reflection of the sun in the depths of every foul puddle. This vivid hope and trust in man ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... over a month ago, when some of us first went up near to Pozieres village—on the day when the bombardment before our first attack was tearing branches from off the trees a hundred yards away—Pozieres had a fairly decent covering then. There was enough dead brushwood and twigs, at any rate, to hide the buildings of the place. A few pink walls could then be half seen behind the branches, or topping the ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... could, and did: the marvellous Czar Paul that was to be. Concerning whose exact paternity there are still calumnious assertions widely current; to this individual Editor much a matter of indifference, though on examining, his verdict is: 'Calumnies, to all appearance; mysteries which decent or decorous society refuses to speak of, and which indecent is pretty sure to make calumnies out of.' Czar Paul may be considered genealogically genuine, if that is much an object to him. Poor Paul, does not he father himself, were there nothing more? Only ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... It was just after he jumped the Reservation. But he was only a sulky schoolboy then, playing hookey. Besides, he had not harmed the child. He worked for Dad and was right decent, till he got in with Slade ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... human heart are evil from our youth upward. He saw at once that Colin designed this cup as a means of bringing misfortune upon Marietta: perhaps to give out, when it should be in her possession, that it was the present of some successful lover in the town, or the like, so that all decent people would thereafter keep aloof from Marietta. Therefore Monsieur Hautmartin resolved, in order to prevent any evil reports, to profess himself the giver. Moreover, he loved Marietta, and would gladly have seen her observe more strictly toward himself the sayings of the gray-headed priest ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... weekly expenditure amounted to about twenty-five dollars. Bargaining with him stood the negro-driver, a tattooed African, armed with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the hive,—the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. The beds are sometimes partitioned off ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... son. In these days even a quiet religious man, like myself, may meet with rough fellows by the way; and while that staff gives support to my feet, it is an aid to command decent behaviour from those I fall in with. I have not much to lose, having with me but sufficient to buy me victuals for my journey to Carlisle; where, as I have just told our host, I am journeying to see a brother, who is prior at a ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... tribunal. Despair was written all over it in characters impossible to be mistaken. I had fixed my resolution to go through the whole scene, if not with heroism, at least with that decent firmness which becomes a man; yet the sound of the words which consigned me to the scaffold struck me with a general chill. Momentary as the period was, the question passed through my mind, are those paralysed limbs the same which bore me so well through the hazards ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... inadequate for the wants of ordinary people. For instance, its drawing-rooms were large out of all proportion, whereas its dining-room, morning-room and library were ridiculously small. It had a spacious hall and wide landings, but its stairs were steep and narrow, and there was not even one decent-sized bedroom in the house. All the rooms had low ceilings and were small. Their only virtue was that there were ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... But Senor Belasdo, the government representative, claims that we will not be done in time, and therefore he is holding back money due us. I'm sure the rival contractors have set him up to this, because he was always decent to us before. ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... person's disposition. A mendacious umbrella is a sign of great moral degradation. Hypocrisy naturally shelters itself below a silk; while the fast youth goes to visit his religious friends armed with the decent and reputable gingham. May it not be said of the bearers of these inappropriate umbrellas that they go about the streets "with a lie in their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... success enough for any reasonable mortal? Wouldn't you say that, with a wife holding an honored and great position in the State, and his daughter by his side, he'd settle down out there and live a respectable, decent life? Not he! First of all he wants ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kind lessons and instructions, and Urad, with a decent solemnity, attended both her labours and her teacher, who was so pleased with the fruits which she saw spring forth from the seeds of virtue that she had sown in the breast of her pupil, that she now began to leave her more to herself, and exhorted her to set apart some portion of each ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... Of a certainty now I brought them—but the sight of that heathen Ojibway, when he gave me the tunic, was enough to make any decent woman faint! I shook like an aspen, if you will credit me, all the way across the drill-ground, and perhaps the scissors . . . no, indeed, I cannot find them . . . but if mademoiselle will excuse ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... makes, anyhow; and as for Barlow, he looks like an ass in that yellow- chrysanthemum wig. No man with yellow hair like that could track such a villain as Henderson makes Muddleton out to be. Fact is, Henderson is the only decent part ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... I let fall a remark on the subject of horse-racing among friends chatting together, I was voted "morose." Is it really morose to object to public gatherings which their own promoters declare to be dangerous for all decent folk? Every one knows that horse-racing is carried on mainly for the delight and profit of fools, ruffians, and thieves. That intelligent men allow themselves to take part in the affair, and defend their conduct by declaring ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... early forties "young females" were expected to be retiring, modest, and although they were as often not, by the grace of that human nature which has changed little in its progress down the centuries, they maintained a decent pretence. There were a number of belles in the room, with their attendant swains, and no doubt each thought herself a great beauty; but not one of them would have stood up alone in the central promenade of Bath House. Several of the men stared in disapproval; which emboldened ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... former trip around the Penobscot region the boys had had the good fortune to be chiefly instrumental in causing the arrest of a couple of fleeing yeggmen, who had broken into several banks, and for whose arrest quite a decent reward was offered. Not only that, but they had recovered valuable bonds and papers, that would undoubtedly cause the bank officials to back up the offer they had made, which was to the effect that two thousand dollars would be paid to the parties ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... several other stanzas. And about then Miss Cross dumped a bundle of damp clothes into Irma's box and said, "Iron these next and do them decent!" I peered suspiciously into the box. It was ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... was not so much at seeing that her friend had divined the gist of the arrangement that had been effected downstairs. It was that Vida should be at no pains to throw a decent veil over the fact of her realization that Lady John had come there in the character of scout. With an openness not wholly free from scorn, the younger woman had laid her own cards on the table. She made ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... dressed themselves afresh, and washed in the brook. One would have taken them for decent traders when that was done, for they were soberly clad in good blue cloth jerkins, with clean white hose, and red garterings not too new. Good cloaks they had also, and short seaxes in their belts. Only Evan had a short Welsh sword, and the peace strings ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... The lowest are dead as brute matter to such interests; the highest—the rich, the fashionable, the noble, from opposite causes just as dead; or if they are alive at all, it is with the rage of denunciation and opposition. They are supporters of the decent usages sanctioned by antiquity, and consecrated by the veneration of a long line of the great and noble. Whether they themselves believe in the system which they uphold or not, they are equally tenacious of it. They would preserve and perpetuate it, because it has satisfied, at any ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... half hour late from that bum suttler's canteen, I guess it was only the time it took me digestin' two quarts of the gut-wash they hand out there in the hope you won't know it from beer. No, sir, 'lazy son-of-a-bitch' from that guy is the talk no decent citizen with a bunch of guts ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... three (and I made those), and it will not cost you a paltry twenty or thirty thousand pounds. Why I know men who would give that for the precedence alone.—Here!" and he rose and took up some papers from a table: "Here is a case; a man you know, I dare say; an earl, and of a decent date as earls go: George the First. The first baron was a Dutch valet of William the Third. Well I am to terminate an abeyance in his favour through his mother, and give him one of the baronies of the Herberts. He buys off the other claimant who is already ennobled with ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... fellowship with a pleasant smile of preparation. The cats knew her better than I did. Their suspense was really shocking to witness. While she was rolling her sleeves up and tying on her apron—she was poor, evidently, but very neat and wholesome in her black dress and the decent cap which crowned her hair—while she unpacked the contents of the bag—two newspaper parcels full of rather distressing viands, scissors, and a pair of gloves which had done duty more than once,—while all these ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... unrighteous taunt at Eusebius of Caesarea. 'You and I were once in prison for the faith. I lost an eye: how did you escape?' Athanasius might perhaps have been crushed if his enemies had kept up a decent semblance of truth and fairness. But nothing was further from their thoughts than an impartial trial. Scandal succeeded scandal, till the iniquity culminated in the dispatch of an openly partizan commission ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... clean out," remarked Bainton then, in accents of deep disdain, as he stooped to gather up the refractory branches: "It beats me altogether, Passon, to know what you wants wi' a forcin' bed for weeds an' stuff in the middle of a decent garden. That old Wistaria Sinyens (Sinensis) is the only thing here that is worth keeping. Ah! Y'are a precious sight, y'are!" he continued, apostrophising the 'rambler' branches—"For all yer green buds ye ain't a-goin' to do much this year! All sham an' 'umbug, y'are!—all leaf an' shoot ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... being altered into Hawaii. No one who visits it in the present day need be afraid of sharing the fate of poor Captain Cook; for the descendants of the savages who, in his time, inhabited the island, have now, through the labours of Christian missionaries, become a very decent sort of ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... subjects within the realm, that what a man hath honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but cannot be taken from him without his consent. That the American subjects may, therefore, exclusive of any consideration of Charter rights, with a decent firmness adapted to the character of freemen and subjects, assert this natural ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... man. Ferry went to pieces, as you know, in 1885. Tonkin and the dead Courbet killed him. So they invented Boulanger. They made him War Minister. They put him on his black horse. They let him drive out the princes. Look at those five men seated there in front of that cafe. They are doubtless decent well-to-do shopkeepers, master mechanics—no matter what—I will wager you that of these five men, three believe Boulanger to be the first soldier of France, and that two of them believe the Government has driven him into exile ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... door to greet her guests, was obliged to wipe her face surreptitiously now and then, while the statues in the hall, with their burdens of ferns and lamps, showed their cool limbs beneath their scanty but still decent drapery. ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... Cincinnati, a letter informing me that he had been appointed Secretary of War, and should insist on my immediate return to Washington. I answered that I was ready to go to Washington, or anywhere, if assured of decent treatment. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... deserter.[656] "We cannot affect indifference at the treachery of Senator Douglas," said a Richmond paper. "He was a politician of considerable promise. Association with Southern gentlemen had smoothed down the rugged vulgarities of his early education, and he had come to be quite a decent and well-behaved person."[657] To political denunciation was now to be added the sting ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... now, tomorrow, I'll ruin John Ellery as sure as I'm a living man. He'll be ruined in Trumet, anyhow. He'll be thrown out by the parish committee. I'm not sure that his church people won't tar and feather him. Marrying a low-down Come-Outer hussy! As if there wa'n't decent girls of good families he might have had! But losing this church won't be the only thing that'll happen to him. The committee'll see that he doesn't get another one. I'll use my influence and have him thrown out of the Regular ministry. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Group masses of naked rock even in the wildest forms, and they may for a time afford a sublime spectacle, but they will soon grow monotonous. Paint them with bright and varied colours, as in Northern Chile, they will become fantastic; clothe them with vegetation, they must form a decent, if ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... terrible persicas, and finally discovered that they were neither more nor less than—cockroaches!—called Prossaki (Prussians) by the Russians, as they are sometimes called Schwaben (Suabians) by the Germans. Possibly they may be found in the huts of the serfs, but they are rare in decent houses. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... of all her late husband's creditors she was the worst used and the most to be pitied. And yet, she had loved him dearly for many years, and had no greater share of selfishness than is the usual lot of mortals. Such is the irritability of sudden poverty. A decent annuity would have restored her thoughts to their ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... his home, for no greater crime than that of countenancing and befriending members of the Society of Friends. He kept the Dorchester hostelry, and was wont to entertain Quakers as he did any other decent people; but for this he was apprehended and tried by the court, and sentenced to pay a fine of L20 and be thrown into prison. Finally, finding it impossible to entirely prevent his friends from holding intercourse with him, he was banished from the settlement ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... is to show that Darwinism will soon be a thing of the past, a matter of history; that we even now stand at its death-bed, while its friends are solicitous only to secure for it a decent burial. ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... in Rutland Square we found decent lodging, in a large chamber which was really the smoking room of the house. The city was crowded with tourists on account of an expected visit of the King and Queen; every other room in the hotel ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... do," said Helmar suddenly; "we are all a bit tired of the river. The next decent town we come to we'll get out and take the train on ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... it is," muttered the doctor; "but never mind that. Go on deck as soon as you're decent, and ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... of verandah, on to which opened the solitary door and window, both low and small. The floor was usually sunk below ground, and Maori builders knew of no such thing as a chimney. Though neither cooking nor eating was done in their dwelling-houses, and offal of all kinds was carefully kept at a decent distance, the atmosphere in their dim, stifling interiors was as a rule unendurable by White noses and lungs. Even their largest tribal or meeting halls had but the one door and window; the Maori mind seemed as incapable of adding thereto, as of constructing more ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... general use, it was provided for visiters, and for such of his own family as returned occasionally to his roof, and had been accustomed to this refreshment elsewhere; but neither he nor his wife ever partook of it. The raiment worn by his family was comely and decent, but as simple as their diet; the homespun materials were made up into apparel by their own hands. At the time of the decease of this thrifty pair, their cottage contained a large store of webs of woollen and linen cloth, woven from thread of their own ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... journey. Very particularly would I thank Senhor Penalosa and other officials of the Brazilian Government for the special arrangements by which we were helped upon our way, and Senhor Pereira of Para, to whose forethought we owe the complete outfit for a decent appearance in the civilized world which we found ready for us at that town. It seemed a poor return for all the courtesy which we encountered that we should deceive our hosts and benefactors, but under the circumstances we had really no alternative, and I hereby tell them that they ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "A decent competence we fully taste; It strikes our sense, and gives a constant feast: More we perceive by dint of thought alone; The rich must labour to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... as the conduct of the English missionaries may be thought, in withholding a decent reception to these persons, the latter were certainly to blame in needlessly placing themselves in so unpleasant a predicament. Under far better auspices, they might have settled upon some one ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Paris. He said he was obliged to go on business. He was away a month. And after a week had passed, Lady Anstruthers began to be restless and angry, and once she flew into a rage, and told me I was a fool, and that if I had been an Englishwoman, I should have had some decent control over my husband, because he would have respected me. In time I found out what I had done. It did ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... decent," he says, "that it should sit in the Governor's antechamber any longer. His guards and valets make such a noise, that we cannot hear each other speak. I have continually to tell them to keep quiet, which causes them to make a thousand jokes at the councillors as they pass in and out. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... them would be worth their salt if they ever felt ashamed of you. What do you care what strangers think or say? You know. You've seen life. You've stepped off the stage and carried with you the recollection of decent living, of playing square, of doing the best you could. The worst scoundrels I ever met never made any mistake with their forks. Perhaps you don't know it, but my father became rich because he could judge a man's worth almost at sight. And he kept this fortune and added to it because ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... blow on the heart is not quite so serious as a blow on the head. Fortunately for Newton, the tomahawk had only glanced along the temple, not injuring the skull, although it stunned him, and detached a very decent portion of his scalp, which had to be replaced. A lancet brought him to his senses, and the surgeon pronounced his wound not to be dangerous, provided ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... a professional education. To become a doctor a man must study some three years and hear a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how much study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably not more than this. Now most decent people hear one hundred lectures or sermons (discourses) on theology every year,—and this, twenty, thirty, fifty years together. They read a great many religious books besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... milkman is notified that his milk will no longer be received. Experience has shown that a reasonable regard for cleanliness in the stable and dairy room, with a prompt cooling of the milk, will limit the bacterial growth to this standard, and the requirement, meaning, as it does, only a decent regard for such cleanliness as a self-respecting dairyman would recognize as essential, works no hardship on any one. New York City prints its dairy rules on linen and has them tacked up in every ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... the factor aboot pittin' up a meetin'-hoose and a decent dwallin', gin ye hae left kirk and manse!' That was a' that the auld laird ever said, as his son gaed ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great! As often as I say, I have escaped from one calamity, I fall into a worse. By Allah, this is an abominable death to die! Would Heaven I had died a decent death and been washed and shrouded like a man and a Moslem. Would I had been drowned at sea or perished in the mountains! It were better than to die this miserable death!" And on such wise I kept blaming my own folly and greed of gain in that black hole, knowing not night from day; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... courtship of some decent duration, and a legal marriage at the altar. I tried to view my position on all sides, and thus to find out that which was the most favourable for my mind's eye to rest upon.—It was but a disconsolate ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Mother, don't let your prejudices carry you that far. Money's money. Old Vavrika's a mighty decent sort of saloonkeeper. Nothing rowdy ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... whole doggrel is only calculated to bring ridicule and contempt upon the Scriptures; but there are, besides, passages such as refer to Job's "Curse God, and die;" to Jeshuram waxing fat; to Jonah in the whale's belly; and other parts, which utterly unfit the MS. for decent perusal. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... decided not to, do not allow yourselves to be in situations which make it unduly difficult to carry out your decision. Drink stimulates the sex urge; few decent people would enjoy remembering that their first sex experience came when they were stimulated by liquor. If you drink, avoid emotional situations in secret thereafter, until this stimulus has worn ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... pity, give me grudging and envy. I have been moderate in what I have written. I shall be more full if Caesar meets me graciously; and then those gentlemen who are so jealous that I should have a decent house to live in will make a wry face.... Enough of this. Since those who have no power will not be my friends, I must endeavor to make friends with those who have. You will say you wished this long ago. I know that you wished it, and that I have been a mere ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... soul when done with the body, she was disappointed because she couldn't carry the old body along with her. Don't let these things trouble you. Live one summer so you will be worthy to breathe the air of the next if you live to see it; take care of your body so it will make a decent weed if God chooses to make one out ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... going to stop squandering money for things I don't want. I'm going to stop accepting invitations, and meeting people I don't like and don't want to know. I've tried your game—I've tried it hard, and I don't like it; and I'm going to get out before it's too late. I'm going to find some decent and simple place to live in; and I'm going down town to find out if there isn't some way in New York for a man ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... the better, Violet,' said Arthur. 'You are all right, you know, and in great favour with John. He can do anything with my father, and I have written. We shall be at home before the end of another month, and set going with a decent income in London. A house—where shall it be? Let me see, he can't give me less than L1000 a year, perhaps L1600. I vow I don't see why it should not be L2000. John wants no more than he has got, and will never marry now, and there is only ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her a hand up?" Then he asked her about herself: Had she friends? Where did her family live? Could she do any work? He was rather diverted by his own philanthropy, but it seemed to him that it would be the decent thing to advise the girl, seriously. "I'll talk to her," he thought. "Come on!" he said; "let's hunt up some place and ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... matron kept her little school, Gentle of heart, yet knowing well to rule; Staid was the dame, and modest was her mien; Her garb was coarse, yet whole, and nicely clean; Her neatly border'd cap, as lily fair, Beneath her chin was pinn'd with decent care; And pendent ruffles, of the whitest lawn, Of ancient make, her elbows did adorn. Faint with old age, and dim were grown her eyes, A pair of spectacles their want supplies; These does she guard secure, in leathern case, From thoughtless ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... far as you'll get to-night," he said. "I'll see you safe to Shelby, and then make tracks for Port Vigor. I hope there's a decent inn at Shelby where you can ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... that it represents the reawakening of the desire for knowledge which had been in abeyance during the stormy centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, when men had little leisure for anything but the constant labour to secure a little decent order and peace. For a few years, indeed, in the ninth century the genius of Charlemagne had almost restored the order of civilization, and even in those few years the human mind reasserted itself, and for a moment the learning and culture which had been preserved mainly by the ...
— Progress and History • Various
... of his relations with Craive. They had begun at a club, over cards. The two had little in common—Craive was a stockbroker when world-wars did not happen to be in progress—but G.J. greatly liked him because, with all his crudity, he was such a decent, natural fellow, so kind-hearted, so fresh and unassuming. And Craive on his part had developed an admiration for G.J. which G.J. was quite at a loss to account for. The one clue to the origin of the mysterious attachment between them had been a naive phrase ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... what is the matter with him so I can cure him. We don't want our herd spoiling the feeding grounds and the water-holes and giving their diseases to all the flocks that graze after them. If we are let graze on the range the least we can do is to be decent about it—that's the ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... said: "When the money is found, please take charge of it, and see that every decent arrangement is made. I mean, spare nothing. I am a Protestant, but I believe in any man's prayers when they are not addressed to a heathen image. I promised Torrini to send his wife and children to Italy. This pitiful, miserable gold, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... own dinner she had too little time to do anything but go straight, though it must be added that for a real certainty she would joyously have omitted the repast. She had made up her mind as to there being on the whole no decent pretext to justify her flitting casually past at three o'clock in the morning. That was the hour at which, if the ha'penny novels were not all wrong, he probably came home for the night. She was therefore reduced to the ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... Jargon; nor is the offence to be excused by pleading, as I have heard it pleaded, that Mr Lloyd George was not using his own phraseology but quoting from a paper supplied him by some permanent official of the Treasury: since we select our civil servants among men of decent education and their salaries warrant our stipulating that they shall be able, at least, to speak ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... There arose the less cause why he should be, perhaps, since Mr. Harley was sure of being popular with himself in spite of any conduct that could be his. His ideals were not lofty, his moral senses not keen, and what original decent point the latter might have once possessed had long been dulled away. True, Mr. Harley was shaken of an ague of fear; but his tremblings were born of the practical. He was agitated by thoughts of what havoc, in his own and in Senator Hanway's affairs of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... as to the public demonstration of it, to the laws of the country: There shall be given, moreover, liberty, when any subjects or inhabitants of either party shall die in the territory of the other, to bury them in the usual burying-places, or in decent and convenient grounds to be appointed for that purpose, as occasion shall require; and the dead bodies of those who are buried shall not in any wise be molested. And the two contracting parties shall provide, each one in his jurisdiction, that their respective subjects and inhabitants ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... toilette, and to sit in a decent position. The cousin came up to us, and Don Diego, after making a few remarks, left us on the balcony, wishing us a good night. I might have begun over again, but I clung to my system of repression, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Grenville Leigh!" said Sally, quite carried away by that historic combination. "That's better than Amyas," she went on, reflectively. "Is he decent? But never mind. I'll marry ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... for a guide," began Shelby, as soon as decent greetings had been made. "He's just been let loose by Sir Somebody of Somewhere, and I nailed him. Name o' Joshua,—but we can stand that. He really knows it all,—without continually proclaiming ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... his enumeration of the works of Bordeaux; but its Roman origin, of whatever age, is undoubted. It stands in a state of squalid neglect and dirt, sharing the fate of most of the antiquities of Bordeaux. If the space were cleared, and the surrounding huts removed, a decent walk made, and the whole enclosed, this monument of former days might form an attractive object: as it is, the struggle to escape entanglement in every sort of dirt, while fighting one's way to the ruined amphitheatre, is almost too disheartening. When these circumstances accompany a visit ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the brethren eulogized were moving up the rift at his feet, he was able to observe them calmly. They were in long gowns of heavy gray woollen stuff, with sleeves widening from the shoulders; their cowls, besides covering head and visage, fell down like capes. Cleanly, decent-looking men, they marched slowly and in order, their hands united palm to palm below their chins. The precentor failed to inspire them with ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the four-room apartment for five years. Cora declared it was getting beyond her. "You can't get any decent help. The washwoman acts as if she was doing me a favour coming from eight to four, for four dollars and eighty-five cents. And yesterday she said she couldn't come to clean any more on Saturdays. I'm sick ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... blankets to keep it warm. Let none think this swathing of the infant is needless to set down, for it is necessary it should be thus swaddled, to give its little body a straight figure, which is most proper and decent for a man, and to accustom him to keep upon his feet, who otherwise would go upon all fours, as ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... nearly 100 pairs of dice were found, which had dropped, on different occasions, through the chinks or joints of the boards. They were very small, at least one-third less that those now in use. Certainly the benchers of those times did not keep the floor of their magnificent hall in a very decent condition. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Georges was actually trembling. At length the Mayor came in by a little door and appeared before us, awkward and podgy in his dress-coat, which was too large for him, and which his scarf caused to rise up. He was a very respectable man who had amassed a decent fortune from the sale of iron bedsteads; yet how could I bring myself to think that this embarrassed-looking, ill-dressed, timid little creature could, with a word hesitatingly uttered, unite me in eternal bonds? Moreover, he had a fatal ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... avoided Paulina since her return, and she had made no effort to see me. But after Trant's death I wrote her a few lines, to which she sent a friendly answer; and when a decent interval had elapsed, and I asked if I might call on her, she answered at once that ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... forward, but seemed to take just the proper interest and proper part in the flow of conversation, and not once during the meal was he offensive in the slightest degree. But for his first unpleasant impression of the fellow, Merry might have fancied him quite a decent chap. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... proof that attention is not drawn vainly to such scenes, that, upon Dickens going over them a dozen years later when he wrote a paper about them for his Household Words, he found important changes effected whereby these human dens, if not less dangerous, were become certainly more decent. On the night of our earlier visit, Maclise, who accompanied us, was struck with such sickness on entering the first of the Mint lodging-houses in the borough, that he had to remain, for the time we were in them, under guardianship of the police ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... plan of dress, down to the very material of their gloves, was an instance of this spirit. For, when we come to analyse it, what does it really signify to us how our servants dress, so long as they are clean and decent, and do not let their garments damage our goods? Fashion is almost always ridiculous, and women as a rule care more for dress than they care for anything else; and if the kitchen apes the parlor, and Phyllis gives as ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... you are decent, keep from drinking, and don't get me into trouble at the school, you may stay and take what ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... out of their mind with four-in- hand barouches. They do not understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other. They are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... he mused. "I DO love a chat with a man when he is a good sort. With a man of that kind I am always hail-fellow-well-met, and glad to drink a glass of tea with him, or to eat a biscuit. One CAN'T help respecting a decent fellow. For instance, this gentleman of mine—why, every one looks up to him, for he has been in the Government's service, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... full vigor of life; and that, while Henry could take and execute all his resolutions in person, he should now be reduced, both in counsel and in action, to rely on the talents and exertions of other men. Having thus grown old before his time, he wisely judged it more decent to conceal his infirmities in some solitude than to expose them any longer to the public eye, and prudently determined not to forfeit the fame or lose the acquisitions of his better years by struggling, with a vain obstinacy, to retain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the other servants then promptly told her the various reasons. "She's just bent," they proceeded, "upon finding a few weighty concerns in order to establish, at the expense of any decent person who might chance to present herself, a precedent of some kind or other so as to fix upon a mode of action, which might help to put down expenses to their proper level, and afford a lesson to the whole household; and why are you people the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... recovered himself; his tone became once more quick and incisive. "Ye're right; I'm gone daffy. We'll get this business over in a decorous and decent manner. And, Mr. O'Brien—lest I have nae time to speak of it later—should ye get ashore, and ever find yourself in the neighborhood o' Piccadilly, be so gude as to drop into the admiralty office and say Captain Macpherson sends ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... just before been taking a survey of his clothes, which, in spite of all sorts of contrivances, he had no small difficulty in keeping about him. He wished to look tolerably decent, though he had considerable misgivings on that score. He felt very thin, and not so strong as he used to be, which is not surprising, considering the small amount of sustenance he took. The little ones at home were certainly fatter than ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston
... God who giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord!" They were the last words. As the golden sun rose once more to light the towers and temples of the city, he sent one rich beam into that humble chamber. The Christian was alone with the dead now. He had composed the body in decent order with his own hands, and reverently covered it over. The face was still visible, but no distortion was there; the lips were gently closed, and the eyes, as if in slumber; the white locks fell quietly ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... trout. I found I had him fast on the hook, so I jested with his new proposal, and put him off. I told him he knew little of me, and bade him inquire about me; I let him also go home with me to my lodging, though I would not ask him to go in, for I told him it was not decent. ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... find, an' the Padre found it. Wal!" But as no reply was forthcoming he hurried on, turning his tongue loose in the best abuse he could command at the moment. "You're a rotten sort o' skunk anyway, an' you ain't got a decent thought in your diseased head. I'd like to say right here that you hate seein' a sixty-ounce lump o' gold in any other hands than your own dirty paws. That's your trouble, so jest shut right up while better folks handles a matter wot's a sight too delicate ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... decent folk. Travellers trust them nightly with their property, with their lives even. There is no discredit in innkeeping. You know, Monsieur d'Argenton, I do not hold that honesty and honour are the prerogatives of the nobility. This Saxe, now, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... regular and respectable branch of public industry which was carried on by the highwaymen of England, and all the parties to it moved upon decent motives and by considerate methods. In particular, the robbers themselves, as the leading parties, could not be other than first-rate men, as regarded courage, animal vigour, and perfect horsemanship. Starting from any lower standard than this, not only had they no chance of continued success—their ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Especially if we were very well off and successful, and thought ourselves of some consequence (as we now very often are, I beg to say), and showed it (as, I'm afraid, we sometimes do). He preferred the commonest artisan to M. Jourdain, the bourgeois gentilhomme, who was a very decent fellow, after all, and at least clean in his habits, and didn't use bad ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... all about it by tomorrow night, because the last knot will have been untied by then, and everybody notified to come out to the meeting. Then beginning on next Monday afternoon, hard practice for the lucky ones, to be continued every decent day during the week, with a game against a picked nine ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... cutting out my heart," said the poor Aunt. "But what can we do? I am not able to give the child proper food even, or decent clothes. If we keep her she must grow up in ignorance. These English strangers offer every thing; we have nothing to offer. If we could count on the bare necessaries of life,—no more than those,—I would never, never give up Annie. As ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... a bit too strict in his views of life, a bit narrow in many things. Nevertheless, he was changed. He was less harsh in his opinions of others since he had seen and heard how thousands who were not of his religious faith had gone forth to lay down their lives that the world might be made a decent place in which to live. He, Phares Eby, preacher, had formerly denounced all that pertained to actors and the theatre, yet tears had coursed down his cheeks as he had read the account of a famous comedian who had given his only son for ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... in a very, very small way in the East-End to people connected with the docks, stevedores, minor barge-owners, ship-chandlers, tally clerks, all sorts of very small fry. He made his living at it. He was a very decent man I believe. He had enough influence to place his only son as junior clerk in the account department of one of the Dock Companies. 'Now, my boy,' he said to him, 'I've given you a fine start.' But de Barral didn't start. He stuck. He ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... extended on the decent bier, Convey the corse in melancholy state, Through all the village spread the tender tear, While pitying maids ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... due regulation and domestic order of the Kingdom, whereby the inhabitants of a State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their general behavior to the rules of propriety, of neighborhood and good manners, and to be decent, industrious, and ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... never kept but just what clothes were comfortable for common days, and perhaps I would have a garment or two which I did not have on at all times, but as for superfluous finery I never thought it to be compared with a decent homespun dress, a good supply of money and prudence. Expensive gatherings of my mates I commonly shunned, and all kinds of luxuries I was perfectly a stranger to; and during the time I was employed in cutting the aforementioned quantity of ...
— A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of • Venture Smith
... drawing-rooms with prize upholstery, and writing accounts of our handsome warehouses to the country papers. Don't think I use my words vaguely or generally: I speak of literal facts. Giotto's frescoes at Assisi are perishing at this moment for want of decent care; Tintoret's pictures in San Sebastian, at Venice, are at this instant rotting piecemeal into grey rags; St. Louis's chapel, at Carcassonne, is at this moment lying in shattered fragments in the market-place. And ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... isn't a comfortable or decent room in it, from the garret to the cellar. Not one. It's a horrid place to live in; and such a neighbourhood to bring ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... Florence by the year and the week.[7] We are even told that in the month of July 1280, 40,000 loads of melons entered the gate of San Friano and were sold in the city. Nor are the manners and the costume of the Florentines neglected: the severe and decent dress of the citizens in the good old times (about 1260) is contrasted with the new-fangled fashions introduced by the French in 1342.[8] In addition to all this miscellaneous information may be mentioned what we learn from Matteo ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... poor little Nell in rags, All her good, decent clothes she sold; She scarcely gave her daily bread, And kept her shivering in ...
— My Dog Tray • Unknown
... three times before the court of session and won each time. I knew your father, who was a decent shoemaker in Cupar, and when he sent you to learn to be a lawyer he little thought he was making a tool for those he despised. Pick a man from the plow, clap on his back a black coat, send him to college, and in five years he is a Conservative, and puckers his mouth at anything so vulgar ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... cringing servility, but with an open, decent freedom in his manner, which expressed that he had been obliged, but that he knew his young benefactor was not thinking of the obligation. He made as little distinction as possible between his ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... proof of any sort, and must be interpreted by the commonsense consideration that a neutral Belgium was a defensive bulwark for France and England. To have tampered with her neutrality would have been motiveless folly. How much more decent and moral than Prof. Burgess's meticulous weighing of national reincorporation as a means of evading national obligations is Chancellor Hollweg's robust plea of national necessity! Prof. Burgess's whole moral and mental attitude in this case seems to be that of a corporation ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... not obscured, but exalted, by experience and age; and with humble reverence, I feel it my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of the people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me, in any degree, to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two houses shall not ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... my own mind," he answered. "These other awfully decent fellows don't, that's all—if you except Mahommed Gunga. That chap's a wonder. 'Pon my soul, it seems he knew this was coming and picked me from the start to take charge over here. Seems, owing to my dad's reputation, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... halfbreeds, and all used to the moving picture work, down to the very toddlers clinging to their mothers' blankets. The Osage princess was inclined to look scornfully at this hybrid crew at first. Finally, however, she found them to be very decent sort of folk, although none of ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... clergy and laity by replacing the altars in their proper positions again. He asks, therefore, Bishop Brian Duppa (1638-1641), in the questions put during the first visitation of parish churches, "Is your communion-table, or altar, strong, fair and decent? Is it set according to the practice of the ancient Church,—upon an ascent at the east end of the chancel, with the ends of it north and south? Is it compassed in with a handsome rail to keep it from profanation according to an order made in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... one meal a day. I accepted. The next day being Sunday, I commenced the arduous duties of a bar-maid in a low drinking house. My pourboires amounted sometimes to five or ten francs; I had my board and lodging free; and at the end of three months I had been able to provide myself with some decent clothing, and was commencing to accumulate a little reserve, when the lodging-house keeper, whose business had unexpectedly developed itself to a considerable extent, concluded to engage a man-waiter, and urged ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... own abundance. I once heard a young girl, about to take her summer outing, when asked by her grandmother if she had all the dresses she needed, reply, "Oh, yes! I was oppressed with a constant sense of guilt, when packing, to see how much I had, while so many girls have nothing decent to wear." ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... prayer; Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam, Writing a cheque for a million, driveling feebly of home; Lost like a louse in the burning... or else in the tented town Seeking a drunkard's solace, sinking and sinking down; Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world, Lost 'mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled; In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare, Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare; Crimped with ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... obeying, and called again without obedience; what troops sent out to quell resistance, and, on meeting that resistance, recalled; what shiftings, and changes, and jumblings of all kinds of men at home, which left no possibility of order, consistency, vigor, or even so much as a decent unity of color, in anyone public measure—It is a tedious, irksome task. My duty may call me to open it out some other time; on a former occasion[12] I tried your temper on a part of it; for the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... incredible. Even his sons, as they grew up to man's estate, advised him to ask for an increase, but he would not. Seven shillings a week he had always had; and that small sum, with something his wife earned by making highly finished smock-frocks, had been sufficient to keep them all in a decent way; and his sons were now all earning their own living. But Caleb got married, and resolved to leave the old farm at Bishop to take a better place at a distance from home, at Warminster, which had been offered him. He would ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... rancorous grievance. He did not apprehend Truesdale's attitude towards the town at large, and the young man's manner in his own house (regardless of his insolent utterance) seemed to have carried a half-contemptuous curiosity beyond all decent bounds. "That young cockerel—I'll soon find a way to quiet his crowing. What does all his singing and painting and fencing amount to, after all? He couldn't post an item into a ledger; he couldn't even tie up a pound of tea. He ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... clear frosty morning in March, that one of the watchful guardians of the peace and quiet of the city, connected with the police establishment, did me the unexpected honor of a visit. He stated that a poor but very decent sort of a man had fallen into the hands of the watch during the preceding night, and had been committed to Bridewell by the sitting magistrate, on a charge of assault and battery. According to the report of Dogberry, the man was "quite down-in-the-mouth about it, and," (he added,) "he contests ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... nothing of the kind? If one half of this country claims the right to disown the Union, the claim in the eyes of every true guardian among us must be a cause for war, unless we hold the Union to be a false thing instead of the public consent to decent principles of life that it is. If we withdraw from Fort Sumter, we do nothing to destroy that cause. We can only destroy it by convincing them that secession is a betrayal of their trust. Please God ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... might be made to take the place of the drivellings and botcheries of Tennyson and Browning; of Dickens and Thackeray; of Ruskin and Carlyle. To these persons Bel-Ami was a sweet content, a really "shady boon." The hero never does a decent thing and never says a good one; but he has good looks and insinuating manners of the kind that please some women, whence his name, originally given to him by an innocent little girl, and taken up by her by no means innocent mamma and other quasi-ladies.[485] ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... equilibrium. At the same time that the executioner was dragging the bodies of his friends through the streets of the capital, he had sought to save the life of the blood-stained Fimbria, and, when the latter died by his own hand, had given orders for his decent burial. On landing in Italy he had earnestly offered to forgive and to forget, and no one who came to make his peace had been rejected. Even after the first successes he had negotiated in this spirit with Lucius Scipio; it ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen |
