"Decorum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then, bending down the table towards the offender, said in his shrillest tone—"Shall we continue this conversation in the drawing-room?" and rose from his chair. It was really a stroke of genius thus both to terminate and to rebuke the impropriety without violating the decorum due from ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... a tidy overcoat, rather short trousers, grey doeskin gloves, and two neckties—a black one outside, and a white one below it. There was an air of decorum and propriety in everything about him, from his prosperous countenance and smoothly brushed hair, to his low-heeled, noiseless boots. He bowed first to the lady of the house, then to Marfa Timofyevna, and slowly drawing off his gloves, he advanced to take ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... forebears and so throws his more original, independent side into stronger relief. Our author is, not unexpectedly, an invariable moralist; is throughout a stickler for dignity; is sensitive to absurdities, improprieties, and 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 ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... over, and easily carried her point with Louis, who had, indeed, wrongs of his own to resent. His feelings were not quick; but contempt, says the Eastern proverb, pierces even through the shell of the tortoise; and neither prudence nor decorum had ever restrained Frederic from expressing his measureless contempt for the sloth, the imbecility, and the baseness of Louis. France was thus induced to join the coalition; and the example of France determined the conduct ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Assembly, and though all his resolutions were passed, on each vote there was a resolute minority. Yet the debate, though hot, was on a high level, and does credit to the political capacity and the sense of decorum ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... enquired into. In a Letter to R. L. (London, 1670), published anonymously, is stuffed full with Attic salt and humour. He has even been censured for a jocosity (at his brethren's expense) beneath the decorum of the cloth. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... young women, or women in the prime of life. They are carefully chosen for their beauty and charms, and are frequently persons of education and refinement. They are required to observe the utmost decorum in the parlors of the house, and their toilettes are exquisite and modest. They never make acquaintances on the street, and, indeed, have no need to do so. The women who fill these houses are generally of respectable ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... we want a lift," cries a brisk voice, and the couple of great steeds—they might have been Flanders mares or Clydesdale horses, so powerful were they over the shoulders, so mighty in the flanks—almost swerved out of their direct line and their decorum. Two fellows suddenly started up from a couch where they had lain at length on a hay-stack, slid down the height, crashed over an intervening bit of waste land, and arrested the waggoner in his smock-frock ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Thou knowest the spirit of each - whose spirit is proud, and whose spirit is meek; whose spirit is patient and whose spirit is restive; mayest Thou set over Thy community a man who is gifted with strength, with wisdom, with beauty, and with decorum, so that his conduct may not give offense to the people. [823] O Lord of the world! Thou knowest each man's views, and knowest that each man has a view of his own, hence, as I am about to depart from this ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... had at first observed the strictest decorum; but his passion for Madame Marneffe had ere long become so vehement, so greedy, that he would never quit her if he could help it. At first he dined there four times a week; then he thought it delightful to dine with her every day. Six ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... To preserve order and decorum at these public dinners, and to prevent crowding and jostling at the door of the dining-hall, the steward, or some other officer of the house of some authority, is always present in the hall during ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... proceedings were conducted with due decorum. As, however, the speakers grew accustomed to the presence of the Padishah, the spirit of dissension began to work. One evening it led to an uproar; learned men reviled each other before the Padishah. No doubt Abul Fazl did ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... made his way to them, greeted Miss Sewell with as much apparent cordiality as he showed to anyone else. He had received George's news of the marriage with all decorum, and had since sent a handsome wedding-present to the bride-elect. Letty, however, was never at ease with him, which, indeed, was the case ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... instructions, instead of standing in a respectful attitude with his hands at his side in a state of rest; enters a room with his shoes down at heel, or without socks; omits to rise at the approach of his master, mistress, or their friends, and commits numerous other petty breaches of decorum which would ensure his instant dismissal from the house of a Chinese gentleman. We ourselves take a pride in making our servants treat us with the same degree of outward respect they would show towards native masters, and we believe that by ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... the dinner-table, to which all were summoned with all proper ceremony to the exhilarating tune of the "Roast beef of old England," Jocko, who had a chair alongside of Tom, behaved with the utmost decorum. ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... leave; and, though my curiosity was a little awakened, a sense of decorum would not suffer me to endeavour to see her visitor. I therefore shut the door, and, as soon as all was silent on the stairs, I took my hat and walked out; that by changing the scene I might dissipate a part of the melancholy ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... by the Injins. They had their impulses, too, and the first thing they did was to assist Mr. Warren and his daughter to alight from their wagon. This was done, not without decorum of manner, and certainly not without some regard to the holy office of one of the parties, and to the sex of the other. Nevertheless, it was done neatly and expeditiously, leaving us all, Mr. Warren and Mary, my uncle and myself, with a cluster of some fifty Injins around us, standing ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... I think the widows ought to raise a statue to my honor, for having done my possible to prove that, for the sake of decorum, morals, and order, they ought to have ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... addition to a variety of commodious offices, it contains two handsome chambers; in one the House of Representatives of the State hold their meetings: in the other, the Senate. Such proceedings as I saw here, were conducted with perfect gravity and decorum; and were certainly calculated to inspire ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... this occasion, was turtle, of which, in accordance with immemorial custom, each guest was allowed two platefuls, in spite of the otherwise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed, judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised that there was no practical limit, except the appetite of the guests and the capacity of the soup-tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I partook ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... as I spoke of the uncertain duration of this life, and of our ignorance as to the time of CHRIST'S return, a degree of deep seriousness prevailed that I had never previously witnessed in China. I engaged in prayer, and the greatest decorum was observed. I then returned to my boat with a Buddhist priest who had been in the audience, and he admitted that Buddhism was a system of deceit that could give ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... conditions; and there is about a hoary institution a saving grace which cannot be transferred to parvenus. Practised in a modern Cis-Atlantic seat of learning, as I have seen it done, without the historical background, the same disregard of normal decorum becomes undraped rowdyism—boxing without gloves. The scene and its concurrences at Oxford have been witnessed by too many, and too often described, for me to attempt them. I shall narrate only my particular experiences. I had been desired to appear in full uniform—epaulettes, cocked ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... every Irishman rebellious and schismatical. On this head he was inclined to be disputatious. His prejudices did not prevent him from passing the claret, nor from laughing, as heartily as a plethoric asthma and sense of the decorum due to the occasion would permit, at the quips and quirks of the Irishman, who, he admitted, notwithstanding his heresies, was a pleasant fellow in the main. And when, in addition to the flattery, a pipe had been insinuated by the officious Titus, at the precise moment that Small ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The little girl, who would fain exercise her young limbs by manifold rude sprawlings and rushing hither and thither, and single combats with her brothers, is tricked out in ribbons and gay frocks, and bid sit still in solemn decorum. With every year of her growth this principle of attention to outside trickeries and fineries is more rigidly pursued. Less and less every year are the nerves and muscles, the restless activities of arms and legs, exercised and made to purvey new vigor to ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... occupied by a man who had invented a hygienic bootjack; but the unfathomable sentimentalism of the English people insisted in regarding the Inn, the seat and the sitter in it, as alike parts of a pure and marmoreal antiquity. And in the Valencourt Arms festivity itself had some solemnity and decorum; and beer was drunk with reverence, as it ought to be. Into the principal parlour of this place entered two strangers, who found themselves, as is always the case in such hostels, the object, not of fluttered curiosity ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... scene, he would have found fresh material for the sarcasms which a hundred and fifty years before he had lavished on the Variations of the Protestant Churches. Yet this curious movement, bleak and squalid as it may seem to men nurtured in the venerable decorum of ecclesiastical tradition, was at bottom identical with the yearning for stronger spiritual emotions, and the cravings of religious zeal, that had in older times filled monasteries, manned the great orders, and sent wave upon wave of pilgrims and crusaders to holy places. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... the Corsican patois. In order to gratify his ambition, all considerations based on morality were cast to the winds. "I am not like any other man," he told Madame de Remusat; "the laws of morality and decorum do not apply to me." Acting on this principle he did not hesitate to plunge the world into a series of wars. Saevit toto ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... out of Betty's lips; she became as silent as the most rigid decorum could have demanded, and applied herself to listen, and of course those around her were becomingly silent also. What was the astonishment of them all, to hear the notes of a hymn, and then the hymn itself, sung by a sweet voice with very clear accent, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... would have been useless to have opposed these impulses by barriers, which would only have driven those actuated by them to more pernicious indulgencies. The theatres were open and thronged; dance and midnight festival were frequented—in many of these decorum was violated, and the evils, which hitherto adhered to an advanced state of civilization, were doubled. The student left his books, the artist his study: the occupations of life were gone, but the amusements remained; enjoyment might be protracted to the verge of the grave. All factitious colouring ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of St. George's registry office, Charles Clare Winton strolled forward in the wake of the taxi-cab that was bearing his daughter away with "the fiddler fellow" she had married. His sense of decorum forbade his walking with Nurse Betty—the only other witness of the wedding. A stout woman in a highly emotional condition would have been an incongruous companion to his slim, upright figure, moving with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a while, when the talk and laughter about the table threatened to become too hilarious, the girls were conscious of Miss Cora's voice reminding them that the table was the "place for decorum—not for rioting." ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... the ball into the air, as [58] high as he might, along the vaulted roof of the central aisle to be caught by any boy who could, and tossed again with hand or foot till it passed on to the portly chanters, the chaplains, the canons themselves, who finally played out the game with all the decorum of an ecclesiastical ceremony. It was just then, just as the canons took the ball to themselves so gravely, that Denys—Denys l'Auxerrois, as he was afterwards called—appeared for the first time. Leaping in among the timid children, he made the thing really a game. The boys played ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... times at once, but the principles possess in themselves a power of progression. The generosity of one time will be but justice in another; the temperance that brings respect and distinction in one age, will be but decorum in one more civilized, yet the principles are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... its fold an original idea is dangerous; it carries regimentation, in dress, in social customs and in political and even religious doctrines, to the last degree. In the American cities the fashionable man or woman must not only maintain the decorum seen among civilized folks everywhere; he or she must also be interested in precisely the right sports, theatrical shows and opera singers, show the right political credulities and indignations, and have some sort of connection with the right church. Nearly always, because ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... who came to gaze at us. A new deerskin was spread for me, and Dunn having found a corner for himself, we all lay down to sleep, not, however, until our host, his wife, their little son, and a dog, had turned in beside me, under cover of a fine warm skin, all naked except the lady, who, with the decorum natural to her sex, kept on a part of her clothes. At ten A.M. we started, and found the sledge on a beach near the southern ice. Four men were to accompany us on this vehicle, and the good-natured fellows volunteered ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... which were notoriously unruly, as if aware that they had a minister's wife aboard, behaved with becoming decorum under Tom's ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... Rome, Venetian action and Venetian management of shade, the dignified color of Lombardy—that is of Leonardo da Vinci—the terrible manner of Michael Angelo, Titian's truth and nature, the sovereign purity of Correggio's style and the just symmetry of a Raphael, the decorum and well-grounded study of Tibaldi, the invention of the learned Primaticcio, and a little of Parmigianino's grace; but without so much study and weary labor let him apply himself to imitate the works which our Niccolo—dell Abbate—left us here." Kugler calls this ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... the room all was gravity and decorum, but the merriest dances went on in corners. An Irish quadrille was played, and an unmistakable Paddy regaled himself with a most beautiful jig. He got on by himself for a figure or two, when, remembering, no doubt, that "happiness was born a ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... evils. By comparison with that, the earl's succumbing or surviving was a trivial matter; and the concern they had manifested in Sir James' news—when the important, well-nourished physician who had bled his lordship came to inform them that there was hope—was outward only, and assumed for pure decorum's sake. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... point that the maharajah grew so exasperated at the thought of another's knowledge of a secret that he considered rightly his own by heritage, that his language exceeded not only the bounds of decorum but the limits of commonplace blasphemy as well. Turning his back on the priest he rushed from the room, slamming the door behind him. And, being a ruminant fat mortal, the priest sat so still considering on which side of the ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... omitted, to what anybody omitted or did. But anybody by no means included his daughter. At the thought of anything amiss with her, presto! his sad eyes flamed. Very needlessly too. Cassy was as indifferent to other people's conceptions of decorum as he was himself. The matter did not touch her. Clear-eyed, clean-minded, she ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... entertaining list of the phrases which the Germans employ "to clothe in a tolerable garb of decorum that dreamy condition into which Bacchus frequently throws his votaries," is given in Howitt's Student Life of Germany, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... each other, rarely in couples, with all their faces turned one way—namely, to the south-east, or (if you want precision) precisely to Hyde Park Corner. I have remarked upon the silence: that was really surprising; so also was the order observed, and what you may call decorum. There was no ribaldry, no skylarking, no shrill discord of laughter without mirth in it to break the solemnity of the gracious night. These people just stood or squatted about; if any talked together it was in secret whispers. It is true that they were under the watch of a tall ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... of the remainder of my days. Too many of them have been wasted, too great a portion of my span has been sacrificed to vanities. One must not forget one is in a fair way to become a grandfather; it is plainly an urgent duty to reconcile oneself to that estate and cultivate its proper gravity and decorum. Yet a little while and one must bid adieu to that Youth which one has so heedlessly squandered, a last adieu to Youth with its days of high adventure, its carefree heart, its susceptibility to ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... was disfigured by none of the isolation and squalor which so often attend the confirmed celibate. His home life was a model of order and decorum, his home as unchallenged as a bishopric, its hospitality, though select, profuse and untiring. An elder sister presided at his board, as simple, kindly and unostentatious, but as methodical as himself. He was a lover of books rather ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... upon this work of art, began to realize the importance of the occasion. Rosetta Muriel was making a call. "Will you walk in?" Peggy repeated, this time with proper decorum, and the caller entered and was presented to each of the ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... measure—mark it, Orthodox reader—was a Letter to the Chief Jesuit, Father Latour, Head of one's old College of Louis le Grand. A Letter of fine filial tenor: 'My excellent old Schoolmasters, to whom I owe everything; the representatives of learning, of decorum, of frugality and modest human virtue:—in what contrast to the obscure Doggeries poaching about in the street-gutters, and flying at the peaceable passenger!' [In—Voltairiana, ou Eloges Amphigouriques,—&c. (Paris, 1748), i. 150-160, the LETTER itself, "Paris, 7th February, 1746;" omitted ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... for tastes, seeing that these tumultuous walks were the delight of May's days, and that even Dora, with her inveterate sympathy, enjoyed them, though they deranged somewhat her sense of maidenly dignity and decorum. It was to be hoped that as Tray grew in years he would grow in discretion, and would show a little forbearance to the friends who were ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... generally to modern literature, but especially to English literature. In the midst of the far profounder passion which distinguishes the English from all literatures on the modern European continent, it is singular that a fastidious decorum never sleeps for a moment. It might be imagined that this fastidiousness would be in the inverse ratio of the passion: but it is not so. In particular the French, certainly the literature which ranges at the lowest elevation ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... fed them and comforted them, nursed them and buried them, always new ones coming to take the places of those who were gone. Chief mourner at over threescore funerals, nevertheless was Mother Daly's voice always for peace and decorum; and what good she did may one day be discovered when the spurred ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... in which Laelius and Scipio unbent in his company, mere youth as he was compared to them, gives us a pleasing notion of his social gifts; he who could make the two grave statesmen so far forget their decorum as to romp in the manner Horace describes, must at least have been gifted with contagious light-heartedness. This genial humour Horace tried with success to reproduce, but he is conscious of inferiority ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... any of the qualities of fitness to fill a high post, always believed that his presence on earth was an act of supreme Providence. Philip, in proclaiming his glorious advent for the good of mankind, explained it with a decorum that had a fascinating flavour. Unlike some imitators of great personalities, he was never vulgarly boastful in giving expression to the belief that his power came from above and would be sustained by the mystery that gave him it in such abundance, but, in fact, he never ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... copper teakettle which would have made the pigmy macaronis of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with 5 great decorum; until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea table by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth—an ingenious expedient, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Miss Gryll confined herself to quadrilles, and Mr. Falconer did not even propose to walk through one with her. When dancing brought into Miss Nipher/s cheeks the blush-rose bloom, which had more than once before so charmed Lord Curryfin, it required little penetration to see, through his external decorum, the passionate admiration with which he regarded her. Mr. Falconer remarked it, and, looking round to Miss Gryll, thought he saw the trace of a tear in her eye. It was a questionable glistening: jealousy construed it into a tear. But why should it be there? Was her mind turning to Lord ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... while German Evangelical Protestantism was more schismatic and further removed from the medieval church than it pleased him to deem the Church of England to be. He had an exceedingly high sense of the duty of purity of life and of the sanctity of domestic relations, and his rigid ideas of decorum inspired so much awe that it used to be said to a person who had told an anecdote with ever so slight a tinge of impropriety, "How many thousands of pounds would you take to tell that to Gladstone?" When living in the country, it was ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... constituted and organized, but was demonstrated to possess a decided majority in the Territory. Still following out the policy agreed upon, the delegates chosen met at Topeka on the 23d of October, and with proper deliberation and decorum framed a State constitution, which was in turn submitted to a vote of the people. Although this election was held near midwinter (Dec. 15, 1855), and in the midst of serious disturbances of the peace arising from other causes, it received an affirmative ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... devils, to whom he has delivered them, could not have suggested anything worse." Chief-Justice Willes, admitting Lord Coke to be a great lawyer, then proceeds in very strong terms, and with marks of contempt, to condemn "his narrow notions"; and he treats with as little respect or decorum the ancient authorities referred to in defence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... carving—that is all the satisfaction his ravenous greed brings him—; when the wine is in, singing and dancing are delights not fierce enough; he must brawl and rave. He has plenty to say in his cups—he is then at his best in that kind—upon temperance and decorum; he is full of these when his potations have reduced him to ridiculous stuttering. Next the wine disagrees with him, and at last he is carried out of the room, holding on with all his might to the flute-girl. Take him sober, for that matter, and you will hardly find his match at ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... had taken place, that did not merit corporal punishment, being anxious to prevent any ill behaviour, which might render such a step necessary, I read the following orders for the preservation of regularity and decorum. ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... he ought to pay me in the same money, I was afraid of his ruining his health for me, and that idea made me very unhappy. Having no love for each other, we allowed a foolish feeling of regard to make both of us uncomfortable. We lavished, for the sake of a well-meaning but false decorum, that which belongs to love alone. Another thing troubled me greatly. I was afraid lest people might suppose that I was a source of profit to him. That idea made me feel the deepest shame, yet, whenever I thought of it, I could not help ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... soon acknowledge it?) of what would be becoming for herself on a like occasion, wherein she was to bear a principal part, and the too-fascinating Master Prout another. Let not the solemn pretender to decorum, who, in proportion to his demureness, is apt to be worse than others, with owlish visage quote, "frailty, thy name is woman," or, "e'er those shoes were old," or whatever musty apothegms besides, as stale and ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Most of my income will vanish. Even unbelieving biological demonstrators must respect decorum; and besides, you see—you were a student. We shall have—hardly ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the door of the sitting room and announced to the family Gray Stoddard's disappearance, Lydia Sessions had been, as it were, a woman at war with herself. Her first impulse was of decorum—to jerk her skirts about her in seemly fashion and be certain that no smirch adhered to them. Then she began to wonder if she could find Shade Buckheath, and discover from him the truth of the matter. Whenever she would have made a movement toward this, she winced away ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... things like that to her, because she had promised Selina, who made a great point of this, that she would never be too familiar with her. Selina was not without her ideas of decorum—very far from it indeed; only she erected them in such queer places. She was not familiar with her children's governess; she was not even familiar with the children themselves. That was why after all it was impossible to address much ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... stately old synagogue which has always been illuminated by candles and still refuses all modern light. The Spanish Jews had a more ancient snoga, but it was within a stone's throw of the "Duke's Place" edifice. Decorum was not a feature of synagogue worship in those days, nor was the Almighty yet conceived as the holder of formal receptions once a week. Worshippers did not pray with bated breath, as if afraid that the deity would overhear ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... or to bury, as the case may require. Never were better or kinder people than his host and hostess; and there is a reflection of clerical importance about them since their connection with the Church, which is quite edifying—a decorum, a gravity, a solemn politeness. Oh, to see the worthy wheeler carry the gown after his lodger on a Sunday, nicely pinned up in his wife's best handkerchief!—or to hear him rebuke a squalling child or a squabbling woman! The curate is nothing to him. ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... preference given to the one more than the other, occasioned many bitter taunts and fleers, which sometimes rose to blows and bloody noses; so that the good people with whom they were, had enough to do, to keep them in any tolerable decorum. ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... the organ. As this was the Sunday appropriated to the exercise, all three of the creeds were read—the Apostles', Athanasian, and Nicene; all which the little things repeated after the archbishop, with great decorum, and probably with the same amount of understanding that we, when children, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... boon companions—appeared as bitter enemies. Hortensius Martius, the perfumed exquisite, was now like an angry cockbird on the defence, whilst Escanes, taller and stronger than he, was clenching his fists, trying to keep up that outward semblance of patrician decorum which the dignity of his caste demanded in ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Sophia, and she lectured him roundly for his loose habits. She told him that he could have a good position in the neighboring town, and society more in keeping with the ancestors of the Pipers, should he so desire. But he always answered her with a laugh that echoed strangely through the quiet decorum of Cousin Jim's big house, then he kissed ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... thinking of the mighty consequences which would result from his journey. Everyone at Port Jackson was struck with the handsome presence and dignified manners of the New Zealander. He was received by the governor into his house at Parramatta; he went regularly to church, where he behaved "with great decorum;" and loved nothing so much as to talk to the chaplain about the white man's God. His enquiries met with ready sympathy, for the chaplain was no other than ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... rapport with it and even with those who sought his humiliation. He never—as an instance—disguised his philosophical distrust of Samuel Clarke; yet during any debate he planned "most certainly [to] outdo him in civility and good manners."[2] This decorum in no way compromised his pursuit of what he considered objective truth or his denunciation of all "methods" or impositions of spiritual tyranny. Thus, during the virulent, uneven battle which followed upon the publication of the Discourse of Free-Thinking, he ignored his own wounds ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... and nod as if he alluded to some Familiarities between them in another Place. But now I happen to speak of Salutation at Church, I must take notice that several of my Correspondents have importuned me to consider that Subject, and settle the Point of Decorum in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... went. Down stairs, men were playing, coat off and cigar in mouth; while others waited their turn, with feet distributed in various directions. Above, all was decorum; the second story being appropriated to the ladies and their cavaliers. And very fond of the game the ladies were, for it afforded them an opportunity of showing off a handsome arm, and sometimes a neat ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... see how it well could, when thou wert all head o'er ears o' love with some gallant or other— the saints know whom. I reckon it undecent, in very deed, Clarice, to meddle up a love-tale with matters of religion. I do wonder thou hast no more sense of fitness and decorum." ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... softening and humanizing effect of modern civilization, led by such men as Carlyle, and joined in by a multitude whose intellectual and moral fibre is too much unstrung to be excited by anything less pungent than paradox. Protestants against the religion which sacrifices to the polished idol of Decorum and translates Jehovah by Comme-il-faut, they find even the divine manhood of Christ too tame for them, and transfer their allegiance to the shaggy Thor with his mallet of brute force. This is hardly to ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... letter by Dinah's plate also, but she had not opened it. Her downcast face was very pale. She ate but little, and that little only when urged thereto by Billy, whose appetite was rampant notwithstanding the decorum ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... wish did I hear expressed in those thirty days that his predecessor, Colonel Martin, were still in command. Confidence in his bravery before the enemy, was universal; but many things necessary to the decorum, discipline, health, &c., of the regiment devolve duties finally upon the colonel, for whose discharge other qualities than ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... or a hundred minds forming a portion of the great body politic, of which we ourselves are a part, and are they not entitled to their opinion and modes of expressing it, providing it be done with decorum and with a proper respect for the opinions of their adversaries? Why then do we or they employ, through the press and in rhetorical bombast, opprobrious epithets, fit only for the pot-house or the shambles? Shall we men and citizens, each of us a pillar upholding ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... invited the bystanders to take their places, each on his couch: accordingly the men reclined with the patriarchs and apostles, and the women with their wives: and they ate and drank with much festivity, but with due decorum. When the repast was ended, the patriarchs and apostles retired; and then were introduced various sports and dances of virgins and young men; and these were succeeded by exhibitions. At the conclusion of these entertainments, they were again ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... desolate to see so many empty chairs. It made us think of the empty chair at home. So we got up and walked down Piccadilly. Jonathan was holding me by the arm, the way he used to in the old days before I went to school. I felt it very improper, for you can't go on for some years teaching etiquette and decorum to other girls without the pedantry of it biting into yourself a bit. But it was Jonathan, and he was my husband, and we didn't know anybody who saw us, and we didn't care if they did, so on we walked. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... was something she had meant to say. In spite of decency, in spite of feminine decorum, she had intended to give him a little shove into the path that should lead him, still innocently, to her own blazonment as a woman who could have her little triumphs like the rest. "If you should ever feel to tell Lizzie Ann I was a good housekeeper," she meant to say, "I should be obliged to ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... gathering the grey sky into their white arms. Mr. Gregg, at the back of the stand, forgetting for once decorum, white and trembling, ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... attended to in the celebration of particular festivals and sacrifices, which are observed with circumspection and attended with decorum. ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... had been but a few minutes with the Chief when the orderly was again startled out of his military decorum by the bursting open of the Superintendent's door and the sharp ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... different epochs. He exerted himself to convince them of the utility, justice, and necessity of this war; but one[9] of them, in particular, often interrupted him with impatience; for when a discussion had once commenced, Napoleon submitted to all its little breaches of decorum. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... passing away, and out of the ashes of its decay is springing forth the young and vigorous new. Change, transition, every where and in all things: how can society fail to be disrupted, and who can speak, write, or think with the calm decorum of by-gone days? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... in the middle of the church was full of such sunburnt men as could not be mistaken for any but mariners, even if their torn and worn garments had not revealed that they must be the very men about whom we had been so much interested. Not only were they behaving with perfect decorum, but their rough faces wore an aspect of solemnity which I do not suppose was by any means their ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... had no more frivolity to complain of. We finished our stage and came to the inn-door with decorum, to find the house still alight and in a bustle with many late arrivals; to give our orders with a prompt severity which ensured obedience, and to be served soon after at a side-table, close to the fire and in a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... minutes had passed when the quiet of the lower floor was torn by wild shrieks and on-rushing footsteps, with voices vainly commanding silence and decorum: commands all unheeded. Then came a final rush up the stairs and Minervy distraught and dishevelled burst into Mrs. Harold's room, and without pausing to see whom she was falling upon, flung her arms about that ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... obstinacy to deny. So it had been with the Bishop of Princhester; not of cunning or design but in simple good faith he had accepted all the inherited assurances of his native rectory, and held by Church, Crown, Empire, decorum, respectability, solvency—and compulsory Greek at the Little Go—as his father had done before him. If in his undergraduate days he had said a thing or two in the modern vein, affected the socialism ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... anything wrong, he certainly had only good intentions. He had cared for her as if he occupied the place of her own brother who fell in the battle of Marchfield. It would have given him most pleasure—he had said so himself—to dance everything with her, but decorum and the royal dames who kept him in attendance would not permit it. However, he came to her in every pause to exchange at least a few brief words and a glance. During the longest one, which lasted more than an hour and was devoted to the refreshment ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the Nightly shore;— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore." Quoth the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... it was the fashion at Harvard, as well as at other colleges, for professors to cultivate an austere dignity of manner for the purpose of preserving order and decorum in the recitation-room; but this frequently resulted in having the opposite effect and served as a temptation to the students to play practical jokes on their instructors. The habitual dryness of the college exercises in Latin, Greek, ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... apud Glastoniam oriundi Viri summo ingenio en quae restant: Stylo quo non alius unquam Intima qui potuit cordis reserare mores hominum excolendos suscepit Virtuti decorum, vitio foeditatem asseruit, suum cuique tribuens; Non quin ipse subinde irritaretur evitandis Ardensin amicitia, in miseria sublevanda effusus Hilaris urbanus et conjux et pater adamantus. Aliis non sibi vixit Vixit sed mortem victricem vincit dum natura durat dum saecula currunt Naturae prolem ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... he believed less calculated to interest others. And if sometimes his singular penetration of the human heart called forth mockery, it sprang more frequently from seeing fine sentiments put forth in flagrant contradiction with conduct, or morality looked upon as a mere thing of outward decorum, speedily to be set aside, if once the actors were removed from the eyes of the world. He would not grant his esteem to fine sentiments expressed by writers who could be bribed; to the promises of heroes ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... always been the fashion to class him with the first named of the trio as a writer of "occasional verse" or "vers de societe." These titles, like other parts of the nomenclature of the poetic art, are not satisfying. Why "smoothly written verse, where a boudoir decorum is or ought always to be preserved: where sentiment never surges into passion, and where humour never overflows into boisterous merriment" should be conventionally called "society verse," or "occasional verse," is not very clear. To write "society ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... suitable object) towards this great lord, which argued a non-perpetuity; the second was a fault in the object of her grace, my lord himself, who drew in too fast, like a child sucking on an over uberous nurse; and had there been a more decent decorum observed in both, or either of these, without doubt, the unity of their affections had been more permanent, and not so in and out, as they were, like an instrument well tuned, and ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... returning to normal conditions almost as painful as a slow recovery from drowning. A jacquerie, even if carried out with the most respectful of intentions, cannot fail to leave some traces of embarrassment behind it. By lunch-time, however, decorum had reasserted itself with enhanced rigour as a natural rebound from its recent overthrow, and the meal was served in a frigid stateliness that might have been framed on a Byzantine model. Halfway through its duration Mrs. Sangrail was solemnly presented with an envelope lying on a silver salver. ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... cepes a' l'italienne and pineapple fritters a la Pompadour were being mangled. The champagne, however, which had been drunk ever since the soup course, was beginning little by little to warm the guests into a state of nervous exaltation. They ended by paying less attention to decorum than before. The women began leaning on their elbows amid the disordered table arrangements, while the men, in order to breathe more easily, pushed their chairs back, and soon the black coats appeared buried between the light-colored bodices, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... disappointment occasioned by a behaviour so slighting and unnatural was necessarily stifled in her breast, as decorum and her sex's pride obliged her to appear as if she disregarded it; but when, after taking leave, all of them left the boat, the anguish of her mind, which she had hitherto suppressed, could no longer be restrained, and, labouring for vent, it stopped her respiration, and forced ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... studied his graces, and female hands had a great part in the applause that greeted his arising. Applause different in kind from that hitherto bestowed; less noisy, but implying, one felt, a more delicate spirit of commendation. With perfect self-command, with singular facial decorum, with a walk which betokened elegant athleticism and safely skirted the bounds of foppery, Mr. Chilvers discharged the duty he was conscious of owing to a multitude of kinsfolk, friends, admirers. You would have detected something clerical in the young man's air. It became the son of ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... officina gentium has, when left to its own instincts—may I not call them hereditary instincts?—assumed a more or less thoroughly democratic form. This would seem to show, what I believe to be the fact, that the British Constitution, under whatever disguises of prudence or decorum, is essentially democratic. England, indeed, may be called a monarchy with democratic tendencies, the United States a democracy with conservative instincts. People are continually saying that America is in the air, and I am glad to think it is, since this means only that a clearer conception of human ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... think so then. The birds were singing in the sunshine, and the rural aspect was dear to the hearts of the older people. They rose and walked about in the fragrant air. Now and then some one bowed gravely to Stephen. There was a Sunday decorum over all. ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... love to see a man plunge from a lofty trapeze into a narrow tank, with a reasonable chance of breaking his neck. It is a strange contradiction with other Roman attitudes when we find that they objected to the Greek wrestling or running on grounds of decorum, because it was innocently nude. On the athletic sports, although they were never wanting in the "games" at Rome, we need not therefore dwell. It may be sufficient to show by an illustration what sort of notion the ancient world entertained of interesting pugilism. It is only ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... In a Love-song where the Lover declines a Physician for the wound which the Wind (Love) has caused, he says 'For only he who has hurt can cure me.' 'N.B. The masculine pronoun is always used instead of the feminine in Poetry, out of decorum: sometimes even in conversation.' {69b} (It being as forbidden to talk of women ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... indulgence of the same, were proverbial among her acquaintances, but no one—not even prudish and fearsome maidens of altogether uncertain age, and prudent mammas, equally alive to expediency and decorum—had ever labelled her "Dangerous," while with young people she was a universal favorite. Although, with an eye single to her hobby, she regarded a man as an uninteresting molecule of animated nature, unless circumstances warranted her ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... of the participants, and though no scandal attended it, and all decorum usual on such occasions was observed, it was at the time the subject of much severe criticism through the press, from the pulpit, and by people generally. General Carr and his good wife were adepts in social affairs, and are entitled to the distinction ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... of the Customs of the Manor of Ashton-under-Lyne, in the fifteenth century, it is stated at the manorial festivals, "in order to preserve as much as possible the degree of decorum that was necessary, there were frequently introduced a diminutive pair of stone stocks of about eighteen inches in length, for confining within them the fingers of ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... their napkins and southernwood or tansy between the leaves. The road was dry and sandy; they cast off their shoes, as was their custom, and walked barefoot, carrying them in their hands till they came to the plane-tree at the cross-roads, and put them on again to enter the town with fit decorum. The men followed, unhappy in their unaccustomed suits of broad-cloth or hodden, dark, flat-faced, heavy of foot, ruminant, taming their secular thoughts as they passed the licensed houses to some harmony with the sacred nature of their mission. The harvest fields lay half-garnered, smoke ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... a menacing flicker of them almost across her eyeballs, so close they lay to her experience, and yet how she could laugh when Getaway made a feint toward the one on her beat, straightening up into exaggerated decorum as the eye of the law, noting his ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... did Cooke deviate from his resolution of not apologizing to a provincial assembly, and that was at Liverpool. A previous breach of decorum was visited one night by the fury of an offended audience; confusion was at its height; the people were the actors, and Cooke the audience: yet the sturdy tragedian remained callous to the bursts ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... scene I think you might like, and please on the wall have a hatchment with "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (excuse my bad Latinity if ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... meeting-place was a tavern in Essex Street, known as the Essex Head, of which the host was an old servant of Mr. Thrale's. Boswell, as in duty bound, seeing he was a member, declared there were few societies where there was better conversation or more decorum. And he added that eight years after the loss of its "great founder" the members were still holding happily together. But it was founded too late in the day to gather around it many notable Johnsonian associations, and after his death it was, on Boswell's showing, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... must have meant you." In Joe Miller this story would read, perhaps, sufferably. Joe has a privilege; and we do not look too narrowly into the mouth of a Joe-Millerism. But Mr Gillman, writing the life of a philosopher, and no jest-book, is under a different law of decorum. That retort, however, which silences the jester, it may seem, must be a good one. And we are desired to believe that, in this case, the baffled assailant rode off in a spirit of benign candour, saying aloud to himself, like the excellent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... eux, and, in fact, something spicy about this strangely assorted couple; for Poet ALFRED will do well to remember and act upon his own dictum when, in the preface to The Satire, he observed, and with truth, that had he originally "written with the grave decorum of a secluded moralist, he would" by this time "have gone down into ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... The friends of each naturally claimed the victory for their own champion. The speeches were listened to by tens of thousands of eager auditors; but absorbing, indeed unprecedented, as was the interest, the vast throngs behaved with moderation and decorum. The discussion from beginning to end was an amplification of the position which each had taken at the outset. The arguments were held close to the subject, relating solely to the slavery question, and not even incidentally referring to any ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... or, as is yet more ungallantly expressed by other authorities, all of whose barbarous names he delighted to quote at full length, because a woman could not serve the superior, or feudal lord, in war, on account of the decorum of her sex, nor assist him with advice, because of her limited intellect, nor keep his counsel, owing to the infirmity of her disposition. He would triumphantly ask, how it would become a female, and that female a Bradwardine, to be seen employed in, SERVITIO EXUENDI, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... leaving this wonderful staff behind, what should it do but immediately spread its little wings, and go hopping and fluttering up the door-steps! Tap, tap, went the staff, on the kitchen floor; nor did it rest until it had stood itself on end, with the greatest gravity and decorum, beside Quicksilver's chair. Old Philemon, however, as well as his wife, was so taken up in attending to their guests, that no notice was given to what the staff ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... those pastry delicacies with which the New Englander is prone to decorate his table. The party become seated as Franconia graces the festive board with her presence, which, being an incentive of gallantry, preserves the nicest decorum, smooths the conversation. The wine-cup flows freely; the Elder dips deeply-as he declares it choice. Temperance being unpopular in the south, it is little regarded at Marston's mansion. As for Marston himself, he is merely preparing the way to play facetious jokes on the Elder, whose arm ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... prisoner's head was hung an account of his misdeeds, placed there by some of his cronies. These crimes were in the nature of certain breaches of public decorum and decency, the details of which the bystanders were discussing with ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... it reached the second edition, that preface was discontinued, and the title somewhat altered. The only copy of this first edition yet discovered is in the royal library at the British Museum. It appears to have belonged to Charles II, who, with more wit than decorum, has bound it up, as a supplement, to an extremely licentious book, as if it was intended to say, 'Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chamber of death'; or that a licentious life endeth in 'sighs ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Syria, and Cappadocia. The whole time that the Caliphs of the Saracens reigned with a temporal dominion at Damascus and Bagdad together, was 300 years, viz. from the year 637 to the year 936 inclusive. Now locusts live but five months; and therefore, for the decorum of the type, these locusts are said to hurt men five months and five months, as if they had lived about five months at Damascus, and again about five months at Bagdad; in all ten months, or 300 prophetic days, ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... the very robber, except in those moments when he is engaged in his occupation, and then no one is more sanguinary, pitiless, and wolfishly eager for booty, is a being who can be courteous and affable, and who takes pleasure in conducting himself with sobriety and decorum. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... if I was fixed for a day, it was in the guardroom, a barrack, or an inn." Even worse were the drinking and late hours; sometimes in "rustic" company, sometimes in company in which joviality and wit were more abundant than decorum and common sense, which will surprise no one who hears that the famous John Wilkes, who was colonel of the Buckingham militia, was not unfrequently one of his boon companions. A few extracts from his journal will be enough. ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... stern dignity, the burlesque humour of which delighted all those lively revellers. And when with adroit mimicry their slight arms and mincing steps mocked that grand and masculine measure so associated with images of Spartan austerity and decorum, the exhibition became so humorously ludicrous, that perhaps a Spartan himself would have been compelled to laugh at it. But the merriment rose to its height, when the Egyptian, who had withdrawn for a few minutes, reappeared with a Median robe and mitred cap, and calling out in his barbarous ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... hedge of tall trees and an ivy-covered porter's gate, through which they who travelled to London on the top of the Clapham coach could only get a glimpse of the bliss within. It was a serious paradise. As you entered at the gate, gravity fell on you; and decorum wrapped you in a garment of starch. The butcher boy who galloped his horse and cart madly about the adjoining lanes, on passing that lodge fell into an undertaker's pace, and delivered his joints and sweetbreads silently at the servant's entrance. The rooks in the elms ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... forget that I was connected with a Review established on Oxford principles, the editor of which had translated Quintilian. All the publications which fell under my notice I treated in a gentlemanly and Oxford-like manner, no personalities—no vituperation—no shabby insinuations; decorum, decorum was the order of the day. Occasionally a word of admonition, but gently expressed, as an Oxford undergraduate might have expressed it, or master of arts. How the authors whose publications ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... with the greatest effort my companion now clung to her cautious decorum, for she was palpitating violently as she held to ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... place at the wharf after all, with every one in imminent danger of going through the rotten planks into the lake. It was a rather informal affair. J. P. Thornton and Archie Blair tried to preserve some dignity, but Lawyer Ed was in a towering rage and cared not for decorum. He shook his fist at the Old Boys and told them they were howling idiots and had lost what little manners they had learned in Algonquin. Then he stood up on the carriage seat, his face red, his eyes blazing, and called Captain Jimmie an old blind mole and an ostrich ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... classical of the Empire; and finally, since the beginning of this century, to a conglomerate, lawless imitation of forms and styles, utterly meaningless and uninteresting, as well as wanting in ecclesiastical dignity and decorum. We are glad to believe that we are ourselves striving to reconstruct some sort of style that shall be able to express poetical and religious ideas, especially in our church decorations. At any rate, it must be of some use to understand the hidden springs which once raised ecclesiastical ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... ideas have exercised a still greater influence over me in all that relates to the rules of morality. I should have looked upon it as a lack of decorum if I had made any change in my austere habits upon this score. The world at large, in its ignorance of spiritual things, believes that men only abandon the ecclesiastical calling because they find ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... said, seeking to diminish the tension so often felt by a journalist, even at the moment of a highly appreciated occasion, "to break into graceful license after so long a life of decorum; therefore you must excuse me if my egotism doesn't run very free or my complacency find quite the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... old governments in America, both prior to and at the breaking out of hostilities, I was struck with the order and decorum with which everything was conducted, and impressed with the idea that a little more than what society naturally performed was all the government that was necessary, and that monarchy and aristocracy were frauds and impositions ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... ii. 229.] Afterward, at Cambridge, she exhorted the people to repentance in the streets, [Footnote: "Repentance! Repentance! A day of howling and sad lamentation is coming upon you all from the Lord."] and for this crime, which is cited as an outrage to Puritan decorum, [Footnote: As to Roger Williams, p. 133.] she was once more apprehended and "imprisoned in a close, stinking dungeon, where there was nothing either to lie down or sit on, where she was kept two days and two nights without bread or water," and then sentenced to be whipped through three ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... played this prank with the wig, you can't suppose that Pen could have been very ill upstairs; otherwise, though she had grown to care for him ever so little, common sense of feeling and decorum would have prevented her from performing any ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pleased to give. While he was speaking, she took off a string of pearls which she wore round her neck, and gave it to Juan Ortiz the interpreter to present it in her name to Soto, as she could not deliver it with her own hands without transgressing the rules of decorum[160]. Soto stood up and received it with much respect, and presented her in return with a ruby which he wore on his finger. Thus peace was ratified with this princess, who now returned to the other side of the river, all the Spaniards admiring her ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... the circle to where she stood beside the altar. I did not prostrate myself. At the prescribed distance I made the salutation which she herself had ordered when she made me her chief minister, and then hailed her with formal decorum as Empress. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... they weare mo then one or two;" whiche, me thinkethe, nedeth not. For the wearinge of their myters is included in these woordes, And myters more then one or two. W{hi}che wordes are curteyled for the verse his cause, that the same mighte kepe an equall proport{i}one and decorum in the verse, whiche would be lengthened one foote or sillable moore than the other verses, yf your readinge shoulde stande. But yf yo{u} saye, that in this and other thinges I am overstreyghte laced and to obstinatlye bente to defende the former printed editione, in that I woulde ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... glittering veil of verse thrown over the features of nature and of old romance. The deep incisions into character are "skinned and filmed over"—the details are lost or shaped into flimsy and insipid decorum; and the truth of feeling and of circumstance is translated into a tinkling sound, a tinsel common-place. It must be owned, there is a power in true poetry that lifts the mind from the ground of reality to a higher sphere, that penetrates ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... are of the same religion as the Russians, and, like that nation, have monks and nuns. Great decorum is visible in their churches, the females being excluded from the sight of the males by means of lattices. Their bishops lead a life of great simplicity, as will be seen from the following account of a dinner given by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... rules and time-tables. The girls wore a school uniform, were well fed and taught, strictly looked after, taken out for walks and excursions, allowed a private correspondence, shown how to mend their clothes, made to keep their rooms tidy, encouraged in piety and decorum. In these strenuous times it sounds a little old-fashioned, and as a matter of fact a school of this kind fits a girl for a sheltered home but not for the open road. For everyone concerned about the education of women the interesting spectacle in Germany ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... descend to the level of the ignoble vulgus; and we are glad that in wishing "Vanity Fair" long life and prosperity we have to censure it only for some slight violations of good taste, not for any offence against modesty or decorum. It deserves admission to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... her mirror aloe that told her she was fairer than all the ladies around, for none durst invade the serene decorum of her manners, with so light a whisper. Such was her state, when she first heard of the rise of Sir William Wallace, and when she thought that her husband might not only lose his life, but risk the forfeiture of his family honors, by ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... an Orinoco Indian, though quite regardless of bodily comfort, will yet labour for a fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith to make himself admired; and that the same woman who would not hesitate to leave her hut without a fragment of clothing on, would not dare to commit such a breach of decorum as to go out unpainted. Voyagers find that coloured beads and trinkets are much more prized by wild tribes than are calicoes or broadcloths. And the anecdotes we have of the ways in which, when shirts and coats are ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the pleasure he derived from his delusion. Sticking his glass firmly in his eye, he watched like a cat for those playful little endearments which his cynical mood—he was, like many of us, not at his best in the morning—led him to anticipate. He watched in vain. The young people were decorum itself; more than that, they showed signs of preoccupation; they spoke only occasionally, and then with a ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... Rowland, I am confounded with confusion at the retrospection of my own rudeness,—I have more pardons to ask than the pope distributes in the year of jubilee. But I hope where there is likely to be so near an alliance, we may unbend the severity of decorum, and dispense with ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... evening we attended the European Synagogue, which was beautifully illuminated, while the floor was thickly strewn with flowers. The building was crowded, and the utmost decorum prevailed during the service. Subsequently the representatives of the community were invited to join our dinner party, on which occasion many excellent speeches, in various Oriental and European languages, were made, referring principally to the ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... would she, aware as she undoubtedly was of the meaning of my look or smile, hesitate to respond to them by some legitimate bit of coquetry. In short, we often held converse in that language of smiles, glances, blushes, pauses, gestures, which is the gesture language of sex across the barrier of decorum. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... business was conducted with a decorum and order worthy the importance of the cause. Cap^t. Ayres being present at this meeting, solemnly and publicly engaged that he would literally comply with the sense of the city, as expressed in ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... walk out one Sunday afternoon to the little trellis-covered house, a mile and a half away from the town, and discovered the junior partner in his shirt-sleeves rolling the gravel of the back-garden. Boult, a strict Sabbatarian, was more than a little shocked to observe that breach of decorum. The fact that the back-garden was not overlooked, set his mind at rest, however. "We've got to be careful about such things. Customers are often ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... in the last years of the Emperor Augustus, when, in spite of the general decorum and amiability of their ruler, people began to see clearly that nothing was left of liberty except the name. His youth and early manhood were spent during those three-and-twenty years of the reign of Tiberius, that reign of terror, during which the Roman world was reduced to a ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar |
