"Respectability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... camp, with a promise from his sovereign of speedy assistance. Encouraged by this promise, congress, who had recently neglected Washington's army, probably from the feelings of despair, made an extraordinary effort to give his troops some appearance of respectability before the arrival of their French allies. These allies arrived in July at Rhode Island, and they amounted to 6000 veteran troops. They were commanded by the Count de Rochambeau, an experienced officer, who had fought in the battle of Minden; but in order to obviate all quarrels ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... yourself! If I can see any choice of respectability between kids and lambs, may I turn to a thoroughbred Southdown, and take the blue ribbon at the next Fair. Beasts of the field, all of them. The always-wide-awake-contrariness of womankind is a curious and fearful thing. If I had called our beloved towheads, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... honest livelihood and solicited vote, adopt any portion of a habit not familiar to you, and go marching about with a banner and a band. Two children may be standing at the first street corner, to whom your respectability and your property may at once become illusion and ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... wiles. For many years the wildest stories were afloat concerning her and her enchantments. And the fact that two or three of her most ardent worshippers ended their lives for her sake only added to the interest and the horror with which the world of respectability and morality looked upon this strange woman. She had broken once for all with the world of conventionality, and was free to follow whatever inclination seized upon her, unrestrained by aught but conscience,—for we are far from thinking that she ever parted permanently ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... had wanted me to be a school-teacher, in her eyes the acme of respectability. But as it happens, there are two things I wouldn't be: one's a school-teacher, the other a minister's wife. If I had to marry the average minister, I should infallibly hate all church-goers; if I had to teach the average school-child and wrestle with the average school-board, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... her lodgers for wasting gas; but Jacky was smothered with kisses even before his howls ceased, and the lodgers were placated with cookies the very next day—but that, too, was "good business"! Her "respectability" had become a deep satisfaction to her. She occasionally referred to herself as "a perfect lady." Her feeling about "imperfect" ladies was of most virulent disapproval. But she had no more spirituality than a hen. Her face was ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... denied that in some few instances persons have been chosen for the office of missionaries who have proved themselves unworthy; but that must and will ever be the case where human agents are employed. But it argues no more against the general respectability and utility of the missionaries as a body, than the admission of the traitor Judas amongst the apostles. To the efficacy of their works, and their zeal in the cause, I myself, having visited the stations, have no hesitation in bearing testimony. Indeed I cannot but ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... early summer of 1951 Lieutenant Cummings "fought the syndicate" trying to make the UFO respectable. All the time I was continuing to get my indoctrination. Then one day with the speed of a shotgun wedding, the long-overdue respectability arrived. The date was September 12, 1951, and the exact ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... conversation with Decatur in which the latter declared his hostility to the practice of duelling, but that he was "controlled by the omnipotence of public sentiment." "Fighting," said he, "is my profession, and it would be impossible for me to keep my station and preserve my respectability without showing myself ready at all times to answer the call of any one who ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... and indissoluble mystery. The state sanctioned the family, and made it an instrument for regulating political and property rights. Formal society proclaimed the family and made it the standard for respectability. ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... Morton's ground that that pirate has bought; just above the mills. If Paul Charteris can get that, he will know what use to put it to. That will do, my dear, I dare say. I am awfully obliged for your care of my respectability.' ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... then running in favor of the North, led a small band of men into western Virginia. The object was to start a slave insurrection and in the end set free all the negroes of the South. Brown received or was promised $25,000 and was supported by men of the first respectability. On October 16, 1859, Brown seized the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry and called upon the slaves to rise against their masters. In the fighting which ensued Colonel Washington, a grand-nephew of General ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... he had lived in lodgings; always within the narrow range of Islington respectability, yet never for more than a twelvemonth under the same roof. This peculiar feature of Mr. Jordan's life had made him a subject of continual interest to local landladies, among whom were several lifelong residents, on friendly terms of old time with the Jordan family. To them it seemed ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... excitement. Mr. Barnard Langden, a well-known teacher at the Appolinian Institute, was found, etc., etc. The vital spark was extinct. The motive to the rash act can only be conjectured, but is supposed to be disappointed affection. The name of an accomplished young lady of the highest respectability and great beauty is mentioned in connection ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... given practical expression to romantic longings and had behaved with all the passionate freedom normally stifled by social duty, conjugal ethics and family morals. From this point of view, Krishna the prince was a mere pillar of boring respectability. Nothing in his conduct could arouse delight for everything he did was correct and proper. Krishna the cowherd on the other hand, was spontaneous, irresponsible and free. His love for the cowgirls had had a lively freedom. The ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... that of a gentleman, we are prone to infer that he is also a man of upright principles and honorable feelings. But we are very often mistaken in this inference; the nice garment proves to be little better than a nice disguise; and the robe of respectability may cover the heart of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Everybody who lays any claim to respectability should be in his bed," Dill remarked placidly. "You say you start at sunrise? H-m-m! You will have to call me so that I can go over to the hotel and get the money to refund what you used of your own. I left my cash in the hotel safe. ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... prospects of our public affairs. The recent accession of the important state of North Carolina to the Constitution of the United States (of which official information has been received), the rising credit and respectability of our country, the general and increasing good will toward the government of the Union, and the concord, peace, and plenty with which we are blessed are circumstances auspicious in an eminent degree ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... honour. He was a thin stately man of law, garbed as one who gave audience to acred bishops, and carrying on his countenance the stamp of paternity to the parchment skins, and of a virtuous attachment to Port wine sufficient to increase his respectability in the eyes of moral Britain. After congratulating Sir Austin on the fortunate issue of two or three suits, and being assured that the baronet's business in town had no concern therewith, Mr. Thompson ventured to hope that the young heir was all his father could desire him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the Bohemian. Willis was the only noted literary figure that ever mistook Boston for a seaport in Bohemia, and he early discovered his error. The fraternity which has given to Boston its literary primacy has been always distinguished not only for propriety of life and respectability in its true sense of worthiness and respect, but for the possession of the virtues of fidelity, industry, and good sense, which have carried so far both the influence and the renown of New England. Nowhere has the Bohemian tradition been more happily ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... humble endeavours to be of use to you; and, indeed, most of my principal friends are returned. Leake from Joannina, Canning and Adair from the city of the Faithful, and at Smyrna no letter is necessary, as the consuls are always willing to do every thing for personages of respectability. I have sent you three, one to Gibraltar, which, though of no great necessity, will, perhaps, put you on a more intimate footing with a very pleasant family there. You will very soon find out that a man of any consequence has very little occasion for any ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... whatsoever. A' this I thocht o' doin, I say; but, on reflection, I changed my mind, an' determined no to gie mysel ony such trouble, but just to let things tak their course, an' trust to my ain conduct, an' the weel-kent respectability o' my faither, for the guid opinion o' the warld. Anent the rumour o' oor bankruptcy, however, I thocht there could be nae harm in puttin in an advertisement or twa, contradictory o't; an' this was accordingly done, in the following ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... is to be, not only the medium of mental intercourse with others for them and their children, but the vehicle of all they value, in the reversion of ancestral honour, or in the transmission of their own. It is even impertinent, to tell a man of any respectability, that the study of this his native language is an object of great importance and interest: if he does not, from these most obvious considerations, feel it to be so, the suggestion will be less likely to convince him, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... quite Conversant with the French, German, and Italian Languages, and well acquainted with Botany and Entomology, is desirous of obtaining some permanent Employment. The most satisfactory References as to competency and respectability of family and connexions can ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... woman here, who bears unabashed the burden of a hideous past. A merit is peculiar to this guilty, world-defying pair. They seek no friends, obtrude on no external circles, and parade no lying sham before local respectability. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Pennroyal was an excellent reason. He had passed through the unsteady period of his life; he had lived down the vaguely discreditable reports which had once been circulated at his expense; he had shown himself a thrifty landlord; and the very fact of his being a widower invested him with a certain respectability not always appertaining to unmarried gentlemen of his age. Finally, he belonged to a noble and distinguished family, and though there was no likelihood of his acceding to the title, who was better qualified than he to illustrate the substantial virtues ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... felt much offended by my reflection. Unfortunately, she knew German enough to understand me, and spoke it just as much as was necessary to scold. She abused me violently. Who was I, she would like to know, that had a right to doubt the family and respectability of this young man? At all events, she would be bound he was as good as I; and his talents might probably procure him a fortune, of which I could not even venture to dream. This moral lecture she read me in the crowd, and made ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... was said, was not said in her hearing, Mrs Jones's bills were paid every Saturday with admirable punctuality; and as long as this was done everybody about the house treated the lady with that deference which was due to the respectability of her possessions. When a recently bereaved widow attempts to enjoy her freedom without money, then it behoves the world to speak aloud;—and the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... I do, set it down as a weakness. But there is so much foolish talk about wealth and fashion, (which, of course, draw a good many heartless and essentially vulgar people into the glare of their candelabra, but which have a real respectability and meaning, if we will only look at them stereoscopically, with both eyes instead of one,) that I thought it a duty to speak a few words for them. Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... slightly bald heads, from which the right ears, long used to pen-holding, had an odd habit of standing off on end. I observed that they always removed or settled their hats with both hands, and wore watches, with short gold chains of a substantial and ancient pattern. Theirs was the affectation of respectability;—if indeed there be ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Auditor was fixed at $500. What wonder that Mr. Hempstead "felt disposed to make a motion that no gentleman or man of respectability should be appointed to any office under the Government of the State ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... procured you consideration and respect by making you my singer and companion, and allowing you to play upon the harp at my improvisations? How has not all Rome admired you when you sang the canzones I wrote for you, thereby procuring you honor and respectability, and making you a popular man from a low beggar? Go, you cannot leave me, for you are ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... school at the time, and had never seen anything of the kind before, my father being an exceptionally quiet and sober-minded individual, associating only with men of similar temperament to himself. With my new companions, however, 'respectability' was voted old-fashioned and out of date, sobriety of conduct a bore. They were fine, dashing, high-spirited young fellows, fearing nothing and nobody, and they didn't care who knew it. They drank freely, constituted themselves authorities on all kinds of sport, gambled, ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... their industry, when the invention of this machine at once opened views to them which set the whole country in active motion. From childhood to age it has presented to us a lucrative employment. Individuals who were depressed with poverty, and sunk in idleness, have suddenly risen to wealth and respectability. Our debts have been paid off. Our capital has increased, and our lands have trebled themselves in value. We cannot express the weight of the obligation which the country owes to this invention. The extent of it cannot ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... planned in their honor. All the notable people of the neighborhood were represented at it. The scandalized divine returned to partake of it, and, seeing Sir Robert in a dress-suit, dignified, polished, of preternatural respectability, not to say distinction, looking the pillar of Church and State that he was, and talking with due gravity of the tariff, free trade, and the like ponderous subjects, concluded to overlook the mad behavior of the morning, and, joining him, gave him a long account ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... cow-house or pig-sty; and the whole scene reminds one forcibly of a fable, which I am surprised has never been recorded, of an aspiring snail who abandoned his humble habitation, which he had long filled with great respectability, to crawl into the empty shell of a lobster, where he would no doubt have resided with great style and splendor, the envy and the hate of all the painstaking snails in the neighborhood, had he not perished with cold in one corner of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... was to set aside out of his earnings enough to make him independent, and then to give up "this mountebank business," as he called it. He had a great respect for scholarly culture and personal respectability, and thought that if he could get time and health he might do something "in the genteel comedy line." He had a humorous novel in view, and a series of more aspiring comic essays than ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... have had no hesitancy in completing the attributes of the place had he been asked. The fact that the aegis of marriage vows spread its protecting mantle over the proprietor, and its shadow over the permanent residents, would never have caused a wavering doubt, or certified to the moral respectability of the contracting parties. Firmstone was not the first to ask if any good thing could come out of Nazareth, or if untarnished purity could dwell in the tents of the Nazarenes. It occasionally happens that a stork is caught among cranes and, even innocent, is compelled to share ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... I can understand, the line of respectability lies between that which is useful and that which is useless. If women do that which is of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, it is dishonorable. That our young women may escape the censure of doing dishonorable work, I shall particularize. You may knit a tidy for ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... moderate pay? I would have had a kingdom an I could. I would have ruled, ay, by God, and ruled well! The great wheel will not have it so. Down, then, that action! and up this. The King is dead: long live the King!—alias the Law, Respectability, Virginia, and the Union!" He tossed in a ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... domesticated dragon who guarded the cave of a devouring hydra, whom you benevolently loosed? Why did you not see that the end of all your devotion was to shift man's responsibility for himself from his shoulders? Do you, because you clothed yourselves in the shreds of a moral respectability which you had not the time (or was it the courage?) to analyse, dare to denounce us because our teeth are set on edge by the sour grapes which ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... perceived on my part to concede to the opinions of Congress in a matter which may conduce to the good of the country and the stability of its institutions, upon which my own opinion is not clear and decided. But it seemed to me due to the respectability of opinion against the constitutionality of the bill, as well as to the real difficulties of the subject, which no one feels more sensibly than I do, that the reasons which have determined me ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... taken so much delight in feeling the strong honesty of the other people to be on her side! She would have talked to her friends about Mr. Camperdown and the people at Garnett's with so much satisfaction! But ease, security, and even respectability may be bought too dearly. Ten thousand pounds! Was she prepared to surrender such a sum as that? She had, indeed, already realised the fact that it might be very difficult to touch the money. When she had suggested to Mr. Benjamin that he should buy the jewels, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... there prevails on many farms, especially those which belong to the real farmer aristocracy—i.e., those which have for a long time been handed, down in the same family, so that family customs have been established and family respectability is cherished—the very pleasant custom of causing absolutely no quarrel, no violent scene, which could attract the neighbors' attention in any way. In proud calm the house stands amid the green trees; with calm, grave demeanor its indwellers move about and in it, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... a desirable spot; it was quiet and retired, and the houses were well-built and substantial looking. They were chiefly inhabited by solicitors in good practice, and retired army men who had private means of their own. The very air was redolent of respectability and prosperity. No one with a small income would have thought of ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... such being the lot of humanity that nations will not always reciprocate peaceable dispositions, it is our firm belief that effectual measures of defense will tend to inspire that national self-respect and confidence at home which is the unfailing source of respectability abroad, to check ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... care. After evidence had been adduced, Mr Wire requested that Captain Tune should be remanded for a week, and stated that the directors being anxious that he should receive as much accommodation as might be consistent with the respectability of his character and the nature of the difficulty in which he was at present involved, were desirous that bail should be taken for his appearance on the next day of investigation.—Alderman Gibbs: I shall require two respectable securities for 500l. each, and ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... delicately warm, beside his. "So, even if you can not comprehend mine, be generous to them. I'm sincere. I try to be honest. If you differ from me, do it kindly, not contemptuously. For there is no such thing as 'noble contempt!' There is respectability in anger and nobility in tolerance. But none in disdain, ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... too old to play the smuggler's game. And I've got a hankerin' for respectability—want the firm to stand well with the new settlers. Legitimate business from now on. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... They do not quite join the hotel, so we covered a good deal of absence, in the way of dress, by our faithful mackintoshes and trotted across. On the steps we met de Tournelle just coming out from the baths; he laughed when he saw us, and said he had never before realised that garments of so much respectability could have such possibilities! Oh! how nice to have a real ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... evidently a man who had seen cities and knew countries as well. And while he was dressed with the comfortable simplicity of a Californian mounted traveler, her inexperienced but feminine eye detected the keynote of his respectability in the carefully-tied bow of his cravat. The Sierrean throat was apt to ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... great city, for the intelligence just communicated to the reader was at that time totally unknown to him. The strange appearance, also, of every creature he now met, contributed to abash him; for every one who had any pretensions to respectability wore over the coats with which nature had provided them, clothes of a cut that looked wonderful in the eyes of the untutored Bruin. His own aspect was, meanwhile, not less odd in the opinion of the more civilised animals. His untrimmed hair and beard, his ragged ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... Palace drive. The sight of that old, red, thick-set building with its square comfortable windows, its bell-tower, its dovecots, its graceful, stolid, happy lines, its high old doorway, its tiled roof rosy-red with age, respectability and comfort, its square solemn chimneys behind and between whose self-possession the broad branches of the oaks, older and wiser than the house itself, uplifted their clustered leaves with the protection of their conscious dignity— this ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... riding. My, the brazen hussies! It ain't so many years ago. Up to that time any female over the age of nine caught riding a horse cross-saddle would have lost her character good and quick. And these pioneers lost any of theirs that wasn't cemented good and hard with proved respectability. I remember hearing Jeff Tuttle tell what he'd do to any of his womenfolks that so far forgot the sacred names of home and mother. It was startling enough, but Jeff somehow never done it. And if he was to hear Addie or one of ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... for comfort and respectability is, that all the household economy should be uniform, not displaying a parade of show in one thing, and a total want of comfort in another. Besides the contemptible appearance that this must have to every person of good sense, it is often productive of fatal consequences. How common ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... with wine, seasoned by temperance and a cheerful disposition; and no serious cares were permitted to enter this recess of enjoyment. His household was magnificent; the splendor of a numerous retinue, the number and respectability of those who surrounded his person, made his habitation resemble the court of a sovereign prince. A sumptuous hospitality, that master-spell of demagogues, was the goddess of his palace. Foreign princes and ambassadors found here a fitting reception and entertainment, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Ernescliffe's home was at Stoneborough, driving the Doctor had been his privilege, and the old gig had been held together by diligent repairs; but when Maplewood claimed him, and Adams was laid aside by rheumatism, Flora would no longer be silenced, and preached respectability and necessity. Dr. May did not admit the plea, unless Adams were to sit inside and drive out of window; but then he was told of the impropriety of his daughters going out to dinner in gigs, and the expense of flies. When Flora talked of propriety in that voice, the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Dowson, the new nurse, was a sublimated respectability far superior to smartness. She had been mystically produced by Benby and her bonnets and jackets alone would have revealed her selection from almost occult treasures. She wore bonnets and "jackets," not hats ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was no God. I was an unbeliever. It was not that I sought after or desired atheism. I longed to be a Christian, and fought against unbelief. I asked the Christians around me for help. Unsophisticated fool! I might as well have announced that I was a harlot. My respectability vanished in one slap. Some said it was impossible to disbelieve in the existence of a God: I was only doing it for notoriety, and they washed their hands of me ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Braxton's first book appeared fauns had still an air of novelty about them. We had not yet tired of them and their hoofs and their slanting eyes and their way of coming suddenly out of woods to wean quiet English villages from respectability. We did tire later. But Braxton's faun, even now, seems to me an admirable specimen of his class—wild and weird, earthy, goat-like, almost convincing. And I find myself convinced altogether by Braxton's rustics. I admit that I do not know much ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... but not until that talk with him did I see it. I looked about me in Wall Street; in my mind's eye I all in an instant saw my world as it really was. I saw the great rascals of "high finance," their respectability stripped from them; saw them gathering in the spoils which their cleverly-trained agents, commercial and political and legal, filched with light fingers from the pockets of the crowd, saw the crowd ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... coincidence! He had an interest, a very personal, vital interest in that article on the front page now, in this combine of those who were frankly of the dregs of the criminal world and those of a blacker breed who hid behind the veneer of respectability ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... at home there. Renoir takes his place quite simply in the great tradition; and when Cezanne, who is still too cheap to be within the reach of a national collection, has attained a price that guarantees respectability he, too, will be seen to fit neatly into that tradition of which he is as much a part as Ingres or Poussin, Raphael or ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... concerned, the lucrative profession it has since become, and I have a dim remembrance of their paintings—for in this respect the Stricklands, like my own mother, were very accomplished—being sold at the Soho Bazaar, a practice which helped to maintain them in the respectability and comfort becoming their position in life. But in London they never forgot the old home, and wrote so much about it in their stories, that there was not a flower, or shrub, or tree, or hedge, or mossy bank redolent in early spring of primroses and violets, to ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... our country; they are said to exhibit a State tyranny which is already blossoming under paternalistic legislation; they emphasize, it is claimed, the fact,—"That all the majority wishes is the sanction of law to make its crimes against the minority assume a show of respectability. All that retards persecution is the limit of the sanction of law; and I submit that, in the light of history, and in the face of the wrongs of the present, all increase in governmental power menaces the liberty, the happiness, and the growth ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... two studies: you are my study for the success, the credit, and the respectability of a quiet, tranquil character; Mary is my study for the contempt, the remorse, the misconstruction which follow the development of feelings in themselves noble, warm, generous, devoted, and profound, but which, being too freely revealed, too frankly bestowed, are not estimated ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... conditions, considered as aerial hieroglyphs of the most regal pomp and magnificence, would more consistently fit,—we cannot thus easily set aside those other outward conditions of affluence and respectability, which, by their presence or absence, so materially shape and mould the life, and particularly in its earliest tendencies and impulses,—in that season of immature preparation when the channels of habit are in the process of formation, and while yet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cellar, the walls being thickly stuccoed and white-washed, and the ceiling arched; but, although plain, the place was reasonably clean and eminently quiet. The drinkers did not dispute. Conversation flowed in an undertone, and an air of respectability pervaded the ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... carried a small bible, round which was folded her pocket handkerchief, and in the other a bunch of southernwood and rosemary. She wore a black silk gown, a white shawl, and a great straw bonnet with yellow ribbons in huge bows, and looked the very pattern of Sunday respectability; but her black eyebrows gloomed ominous, and an evil smile shadowed about the corners of her mouth as she passed without turning her head or taking the least notice of them. Duncan shuddered, and breathed yet harder, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... had adventured unwillingly along many of the more dubious channels of life. They had surrendered to temptation; they had sown and reaped and suffered, and become weary of it. They had struggled slowly yet stoically up towards respectability; they had fought for fair-dealing; they had entered a compact to stand by each other through that long and bitter effort to be tardily ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... collected to assist in the work of searching the debris was totally inadequate to the occasion. Many instances of distress I can vouch for as authentic, as the victims were intimate friends of my own, and all the individuals I am about to mention were persons of the highest respectability, the upper classes having suffered more than the lower, who, living in huts such as I have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... the cleanliness, the beauty of everything connected with the materiel employed; the massive solidity and apparent indestructibility of the various structures erected and afloat; the method everywhere observable; the perfect organisation and the steady respectability of the light-keepers—observe and note all these things, we say, and it will be impossible to return from the investigation without a feeling that the management of this department of our coast service is in pre-eminently ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... amplitude of his knowledge, his industry, his unflagging zeal, his biting sarcasm, his power to sting and destroy without himself showing passion, made a combination of qualities as rare as it was formidable. His previous career had been one of eminent respectability, to be coldly admired and forgotten. His service in the House gave him a name as enduring as the Republic whose ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... boy she had left so unceremoniously; he was a man now, standing on his own feet, and with a recognized position in the community. The little fretful baby was a well-brushed young person who attended kindergarten and Sunday School. A new era of respectability and prosperity had set in. Hetty, his newly awakened sense of justice and his newly aroused ambition told him, must somehow share it. Not that there could ever be a complete reconciliation between them, but there could be good-will, there could be a readjustment ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... faded dress which had once rustled in Versailles. I forget the new roaring suburbs with their out-going manufactures and their incoming wealth, and I live in the queer health-giving old city of the past. The wave of fashion has long passed over it, but a deposit of dreary respectability has been left behind. In the High Street you can see the long iron extinguishers upon the railings where the link-boys used to put out their torches, instead of stamping upon them or slapping them on the pavement, as was the custom in ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... finest city in the world for the tourist who desires liberty as wide as the wind, and who wishes to live cheaply and live well. In New York, if you want lodgings at a moderate price, you must throttle your pride and forsake respectability; but they do things different in Lunnon, you know. From Gray's Inn Road to Portland Place, and from Oxford Street to Euston Road, there is just about a square mile—a section, as they say out West—of lodging-houses. Once this part of London was given up to the homes of the great and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... character, and my qualifications. This was a fatal impediment, and one that had never occurred to me; yet the request was a reasonable one, even essential. What could be more suspicious than a girl of my age without a friend to give a guarantee of her respectability? There seemed no hope whatever of my entering into the ill-paid ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... man of respectability, a tradesman, and a freeholder, in such a serious case as yours, had better have recourse to a ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... left the price of his work to the judgment, generosity, and means of the person who employed him. It was a lasting disgrace to any one to have it said that he paid his carpenter shabbily. It branded him as a person of no rank or respectability, and was disreputable, not merely to himself, but to the whole family or clan with which he was connected. The entire tribe or clan was his bank. Being connected with that particular tribe, either ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... woman, sensible and amiable; whose judgement and conduct, if they might be pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence afterwards.—She had humoured, or softened, or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for seventeen years; and though not the very happiest being in the world herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her children, to attach her to life, and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to quit them.—Three girls, the two eldest sixteen and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... a rather shabby young man of the ready-made black coat school of costume. He had watery gray eyes, and a complexion appropriate to the brother of one in a Home for the Dying. Euphemia did not fancy him very much, even at the beginning. His eminent respectability was vouched for by an alpaca umbrella, from which he never ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... "Respectability's austere restraint Rules them relentlessly; smiles forced and faint And joyless facial spasms Their meetings and their mutterings attend. Jerky approximations quickly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... various sections of this country. It is somewhat a question if, at the present time, the race is not doing itself more injury by its use of tobacco than it is with alcohol, because of its more universal use, particularly by youth, and because of the respectability of the habit, which comes of its use by a certain intelligent part of the race, including teachers of morals and physics, and even temperance reformers. There is a widespread sentiment in existence that it is not a respectable thing to be even partly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... were granted in writing by the governor-general, and at first were given only to persons of respectability; to gentlemen of broken fortunes; to old officers of the army who had families to provide for; or to their widows. Each license permitted the fitting out of two large canoes with merchandise for the lakes, and no more than twenty-five licenses were to be issued ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... stood before him, gasping, coloring, trembling. For both of them it was horrible. All their lives they had been women who had held up their heads high in point of respectability and more. None was above them in Banbridge, no shame of wrong-doing or folly had ever been known by either of them, and now both their finely bonneted heads were in the dust. They stood before this handsome, courteously smiling gentleman and were conscious ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... replied the youth; "it is not God, but Satan that prompts thy mind to my murder, and with God I hope for refuge from the accursed: but know, that I am from the glorious Medina, the seat of religion, virtue, respectability, and honour, descended of the race of Bin Ghalib, and family of Ali, son of Abou Talib, whom God has glorified and approved, and will protect all his posterity, which you would extirpate; but you cannot root it out, for it will flourish even to the last day of the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... Now one noted a poor old woman with a shameful battered straw hat awry over her drowsing face, now a young clerk staring before him at despair; now a filthy tramp, and now a bearded, frock-coated, collarless respectability; I remember particularly one ghastly long white neck and white face that lopped backward, choked in some nightmare, awakened, clutched with a bony hand at the bony throat, and sat up and stared angrily as we passed. The wind had a keen edge that night even for us who had ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... its yellow velveteen collar turned high up, and one of those modest round hats to which she was addicted. For then you were aware only of the pale-gold hair fluffing round her school-mistress eye-glasses, her gentle air of respectability, and her undistinguished littleness. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... a woman, whose dress was somewhat above her mien and air, which, though not without a certain respectability, were very homely, entered the room; and seeing the young man standing thus thoughtful by the window, paused. She was used to his habits; and since his success in life, had learned to respect them. So she did not disturb his revery, but began softly to arrange the room, dusting, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ennui do eight times the work of a sleek, contented man. Anything but a large chair by the fireside, and a family circle! Oh! the bore of going every day over the same exhausted subjects, to the same dull persons of respectability; yet that is the doom of all domesticity. Then pleasure! A wretched play—a hot opera, under the ghostly fathership of Mr. Monck Mason—a dinner of sixteen, with such silence or such conversation!—a water-party to Richmond, to catch cold and drink bad sauterne—a flirtation, which fills all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... him a poor outcast, whose errors would be first condemned by his professed friends. That which seemed worthy of praise was forgotten, his errors were magnified; and the seducer made himself secure by crushing his victim, compromising the respectability of his parents, making the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... smiles, half musing, was like the sunshine of a calm late afternoon. They were happy. For they knew that, as soon as they should have debated and worried and planned and fussed in a manner appropriate to the great event, they would run away from the overheated respectability of ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... Catron would say, "and we all sympathize with her deeply; Walker always regards her as a sister." What was this dark history never came out, but its very mystery always thrilled the visitor, and seemed to indicate plainly the respectability of the hostess. An American family without a genteel skeleton in its closet could scarcely add to that gossip which keeps society from forgetting its members. Nor was it altogether unnatural that ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... parochial notices posted on the oaken door,—his first obtrusive intimation of the combination of church and state,—and hesitated. He was not prepared to find that this last resting-place of his people had something to do with taxes and tithes, and that a certain material respectability and security attended his votive sigh. God and the reigning sovereign of the realm preserved a decorous alliance in the royal arms that appeared above the official notices. Presently he pushed open the door gently and entered the nave. For a moment it seemed to him as if the arched ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... and bacon, so I shook hands, and thus ended my second morning call. I was in good time at Mr Tomkins', who received me with great kindness. He was well pleased with his new situation, which was one of respectability and consequence, independently of profit; and I met at his table one or two people who, to my knowledge, would have considered it degrading to have visited him when only head clerk to Mr Drummond. We talked over old affairs, not forgetting ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... however, if your telegram casts me to the Dragon, that I shall be in danger of getting eaten up. His Dragonship, among other stodgy defects, has that of eminent, well-nigh repulsive, respectability. He is as respectable as a ramrod or a poker, and very elderly, Ellaline says. From the way she talks about him he must be getting on for a hundred, and he is provided with a widowed sister, a Mrs. Norton, whom he has dug up ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... hundred citizens of Alamance and Caswell were arrested and imprisoned by Kirke and his subordinates. In some instances persons thus seized were hung up by the neck, or otherwise treated with great brutality. Among there prisoners were many men who had been for years of the first respectability as citizens, and were known and honored in every portion of ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... fine mature lady of the old school, showed by her teeth and other lineaments her age and respectability. In autumn she would have weighed four or five hundred pounds. We weighed her in installments with our spring scales; she registered three hundred and five pounds. She was in poor condition and her pelt was not suitable ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... police have enough evidence to hang me. And what is my defence? The story of my visit to No. 219. And who would believe that cock-and-bull story? Fancy a drama like that being played out in the house of such a pillar of respectability as Gilead Gates." ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... schoolmaster, he enjoyed rent free. It stood in the heart of a small but well-stocked kitchen garden. His salary was L40 per annum, and on this, with perhaps L5 a year more derived from church fees, he brought up five children in the greatest respectability, all of whom did well in life. They regarded their father with absolute veneration. By the side of the labourer who only knew what he had taught him, or of the farmer who knew less, he was a giant among ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... if she asked herself what part he had had in the disappearance of the Valley House heirlooms. She would loathe him more intensely, if possible, could she know how her presence with him on that public "show day" had helped to cloak with respectability his secret mission. How mean he had been in distracting her attention from the two Fragonards and from the cabinets containing the miniatures and the carved Chinese gods of jade while he "marked" the prizes for the eyes of ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... a planter of respectability, who by tacit consent is representing the stern terrible judge spoken of. "Suppose the Court to be in session. Tell ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... he spoke, of sundry breakneck gallops and mahlstrom waltzes danced in gardens and saloons, the very existence whereof was ignored by or unknown to respectability; and then thought, "If I were safely planted on the other side of the world with her for my wife, it would cost me no more to cut all that kind of thing than it would to throw away ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... as well as Mr. Yocomb's horses. They evidently feel they have the family name and respectability to keep up. Mr. Yocomb, what is it that ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... entering or departing, poured over the broad flagstones of its marble colonnades. This concourse, although composed in some parts of the same class of people as that assembled before the palace, presented a certain appearance of respectability. Here and there—chequering the dusky monotony of masses of dirty tunics—might be discerned the refreshing vision of a clean robe, or the grateful indication of a handsome person. Little groups, removed as far as possible from the neighbourhood ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... supplanted by complacency in their goodness, and pity and sympathy for their disabilities. If the friends of the blacks had quietly set themselves to work to increase their intelligence, their usefulness, their respectability, their meekness, gentleness, and benevolence, and then had appealed to the pity, generosity, and christian feelings of their fellow citizens, a very different result would have appeared. Instead of this, reproaches, rebukes, ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... followed, watchfully, through the circling, red dust cloud created by her hasty feet. The truth is, Mr. Hampton possessed troubles and scruples of his own in connection with this contemplated call. He had never met the lady; indeed, he could recall very few of her sex, combining respectability and refinement, whom he had met during the past ten years. But he retained some memory of the husband as having been associated with a strenuous poker game at Placer, in which he also held a prominent place, and it would ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... implied, that Mr. Edward Covey was a poor man. He was, in fact, just commencing to lay the foundation of his fortune, as fortune is regarded in a slave state. The first condition of wealth and respectability there, being the ownership of human property, every nerve is strained, by the poor man, to obtain it, and very little regard is had to the manner of obtaining it. In pursuit of this object, pious as Mr. Covey was, he proved himself to be as unscrupulous ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... merchants of New York have no confidence in him; and the record of his relations to the government such that, until cleared up, he ought to hold no place of trust under it."[1250] Yet Murphy bore endorsements from men of the highest respectability. "Of those who in writing recommended his appointment or confirmation," said Conkling, "are Edwin D. Morgan, George Opdyke, Henry Clews, John A. Griswold, Charles J. Folger, Matthew Hale, George Dawson, and others. Their ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... submit to this abominable custom. Our emigrant acquaintance was, we found, an intimate friend of the celebrated Abbe de Lisle: and from the large fortune which he possessed under the monarchy, had rescued sufficient not only for independence, but for respectability. He had offended some of his fellow-emigrants in London, whom he had obliged with considerable sums, by a refusal to make further advances, and in consequence of their intrigues had received an order to quit the kingdom. I thought it one proof of his innocence, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of charity, from whom, or from our parents, he could expect nothing. He has had his reward in the satisfaction of having discharged his duty, in the pleasurable consciousness of having advanced the respectability of that institution to which, both man and boy, he was attached; in the honors to which so many of his pupils have successfully aspired at both our Universities; and in the staff with which the Governors of the Hospital, at the close of his hard labors, with the highest expressions of the obligations ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... sleep-walker; but I presume that "The Record" thought it was only the difference of an l. What I chiefly complain of, however, is that the London editor prefaced my paper with these words:—"The following is an article communicated to the Columbian Magazine, a journal of respectability and influence in the United States, by Mr. Edgar A. Poe. It bears internal evidence ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... inconsistency, they cherished, to a wonderful degree, national prejudices almost extinct in the mother land, even to the disparagement of those of their own darling faith. I spoke of the English -, of their high respectability, and of the loyalty which they had uniformly displayed to their sovereign, though of a different religion, and by whom they had been not unfrequently subjected to ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... fashion's vests by thee be all unworn. Soon luxuries become necessities, But self-denying thrift more joy affords Than all the pleasures of extravagance. A cottage, free from clamorous creditors, Is better than a mansion dunned; a coat, However darned, if paid for, hath an ease, And a respectability beside: Gay, ill-afforded vests can ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... this congregation got suddenly rich, and, with wealth, self-conceit and pride entered his heart. He considered it necessary, to preserve his respectability, to separate himself from the humble society he hitherto frequented, and cease to be a member of the Congregation of the Madonna, composed of industrious and virtuous youths who labored honestly for ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... his name into the manager, and was at once admitted. The manager was a solid man, semi-bald, with side whiskers, and an air of old English business respectability delightful in these new and pushing days, he received the phantom of the Earl of Rochester with the respect due ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Te-Deum Fauchet; the same who preached on Franklin's Death, in that huge Medicean rotunda of the Halle aux bleds. He here, this winter, by Printing-press and melodious Colloquy, spreads bruit of himself to the utmost City-barriers. 'Ten thousand persons' of respectability attend there; and listen to this 'Procureur-General de la Verite, Attorney-General of Truth,' so has he dubbed himself; to his sage Condorcet, or other eloquent coadjutor. Eloquent Attorney-General! He blows out from him, better or worse, what crude or ripe thing he holds: not without ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... council, don't ask us, whom you have scorned, to surround you with the protection of the society you would overthrow in bloodshed. Now, go—get out of here," he cried, with all the fire and fury that an outraged respectability could muster. But Grant, turning, twisted his hook in the Judge's coat, held him at arm's length, and leaning toward the crowd, with the Judge all but dangling from his steel arm, cried: "I shall speak ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... "What a dear, fat old rotter of a respectability it is, to be sure," said she—and strode from the room, and from ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... the victuals were simply unlimited, and where the back door was left open all night. But about the banker's (he was also a churchwarden, and his wife never smiled at anything less than a joke by the bishop) there was an atmosphere of solid respectability that I felt would be comforting to my nature. My dear child, you will come across cynics who will sneer at respectability: don't you listen to them. Respectability is its own reward—and a very real and practical reward. It may not bring ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... that we are still rich, for our hearts are yet warm, and our honor is not yet lost. But we have not yet learned to bear the indigence of our outer life, We have covered our poverty with the gloss of respectability; we have been ashamed to appear in the streets in coarse clothes; we have not yet learned to distinguish the necessary from the superfluous; we have endeavored to be poor, and yet happy, in a city. That has been our mistake. The happiness ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... its price, if bought at such a cost. He pictured her exposed to the slights of those whose position was still unassailable, waiting drearily at Continental watering-places till the decree absolute should be pronounced, and finally, restored to respectability in so far as marriage with him could make it possible, but always liable to be unpleasantly reminded, as she went through life, that there had been a time when she had outraged convention. It was unthinkable! It ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... were clad with neatness and propriety; and in the stern sat a number of comely looking musicians, consisting of several drummers and a trumpeter, whilst the young men, who had the management of the boat, were not inferior to their companions either in decency of apparel or respectability of appearance. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... sometimes employed such peculiar language as this. And he was very excited. He had done a great deal of rushing about. The upraising of the Cotterill family from the social Hades of the steerage to the respectability of the second cabin had demanded all his energy, ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... spliced the tiller-ropes and steered from the pilot-house. They would have sacrificed the schooner, too, for Amos complained bitterly of the load on the engines; but Elisha would not hear of it. She was the last evidence in their favor now, their last connection with respectability. ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... will leave you in the lurch—the end of every eternal passion—in three, five, or seven years—after exhausting your last physical and intellectual powers, you turn your back on the sacred Hearth, on the Rue des Lombards, on a political career, on thirty thousand francs per annum, on respectability and respect!—Ought that to be the end of a man who has ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the sex which is best attained by practising at home. Your mother may sometimes require this attention, your sisters still oftener. Do not require calling, or teasing, or even persuading to go abroad with them when their safety, their comfort, or their respectability require it. It is their due; and stupid or unkind is he who does not esteem it so. In performing this service, you are only paying a respect to yourself. Your sister could, indeed, come home alone, but it would be a ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... worries me about her. What the blazes are we going to do with her after this voyage? No doubt she would like to keep on going round and round Africa for the rest of her life. But I can't go with her. I must get back and begin to earn my living. And I don't see her settling down to afternoon tea and respectability again. I think I'll have to set her up as a gipsy with a caravan and a snarling tyke for company. How a creature with her physical energy has managed to lie listless for all these months I can't imagine. It shews strength of character anyway. But I don't see her putting ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... plate away from him in uncontrollable disgust. He was really too upset to eat his breakfast. The utterance of the two words which summed up Walter's blind, infatuated stampede from respectability brought back all the poignant feelings with which he had first read his letter. For the moment he was quite beside himself with anger and disgust, and unless relief had been brought to him he would have left his breakfast unfinished and ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... great many abuses and disorders. To a certain extent, this counsel was well worthy of attention. He was doubtless much grieved at the want of decency apparent in one section of that society, or, to use a modern expression, at its absence of respectability; but he consoled himself by thinking, like Abraham the Jew in the 'Decameron,' that no better proof can be given of the truth of the religion professed by Rome than the fact of its ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... "family of respectability," or a gentleman of position, with a large number of servants, a nice wife, and a few children sprinkled about the domestic picture, I doubt not I should have enjoyed the contemplation of that glowing fire, and rejoiced in the idea of finding myself ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... him a severe penalty, which interferes with his privileges as a citizen, affects his respectability and standing in the community, degrades him in the estimation of his fellow-men, and reduces him below the level of those who constitute the great body of the people of which the Government is composed. It moreover inflicts a penalty which, by the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in his connection with Addison, by the more dignified and consistent career, the greater social respectability, and the more elegant and scholarly style of his friend; and yet in much that they jointly accomplished, the merit of Steele is really as great, and conduces much to the reputation of Addison. The one husbanded and cherished ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Soon others were affected, and the terrible mania spread rapidly. Committees of examination were appointed and courts of trial convened. The most improbable stories were credited. To express a doubt of witchcraft was to indicate one's own alliance with the evil spirit. Persons of the highest respectability, clergymen, magistrates, and even the governor's wife were implicated. At last, after fifty-five persons had been tortured and twenty hung, the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... as graceful as goddesses and as yellow as guineas wore robes of flaming feathers and sang lullabies in soft, impossible tongues; lands of coral and ivory and all the glories of the earth, where life was full of golden possibilities and a world away from the drab respectability of a mercer's life ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... so violent was the current of their respectability, so persistent was Aunt Bessie in running to her with their blabber, that she was embarrassed when she took Hugh to play with Olaf. She hated herself for it, but she hoped that no one saw her go into the Bjornstam shanty. She hated herself and the town's indifferent cruelty ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... had her car brought round to the door. There was nothing surprising about that. Women had given up the ancient pretense that their respectability was something that must be policed by a male relative or squire except in broad daylight. Neither vice nor malaria was believed any longer to come from exposure to the night air; nor was virtue regarded ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... pretensions, it is fair to call it an imposition; whether an expressly fraudulent contrivance or not, some might be ready to question. Everything historically shown to have happened concerning the mode of promulgation, the wide diffusion, the apparent success of this delusion, the respectability and enthusiasm of its advocates, is of great interest in showing to what extent and by what means a considerable part of the community may be led into the belief of that which is to be eventually considered' ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... respectability of that house," said I. I felt that I was again alone in the world, and that it was necessary that I should support myself. Mahmoud al Ackbar had separated himself from me for ever. Of that I had ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope
... Captain Stubber's tongue. Captain Stubber was a tall thin gentleman, probably over sixty years of age, with very seedy clothes, and a red nose. He always had Berlin gloves, very much torn about the fingers, carried a cotton umbrella, wore—as his sole mark of respectability—a very stiff, clean, white collar round his neck, and invariably smelt of gin. No one knew where he lived, or how he carried on his business; but, such as he was, he had dealings with large sums of money, or at least with bills professing to stand for large sums, and ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... houses whereof the outward aspect is sealed with the seal of respectability—houses which inspire confidence in the minds of the most sceptical of butchers and bakers—houses at whose area-gates the tradesman delivers his goods undoubtingly, and from whose spotless door-steps the vagabond children of the neighbourhood recoil as from a shrine ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... standing. For twenty years this delightful old place, which was once General Barlow's residence, has been a select school for young ladies of the best families. Gran'pa Jim says it's an evidence of good breeding and respectability to have attended ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... self-slaughter. Alas, the world is deceived, and covetousness brings it under its dominion. Deprived of understanding by covetousness, wrath, and fear, one knows not one's own self. Filled with joy at one's own respectability of birth, one is seen to traduce those that are not high-born. Swelled also with pride of wealth, one is seen to contemn the poor. One regards others to be ignorant fools, but seldom takes a survey ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... formed a deep attachment to a young lady of infinite beauty and virtue. She is above me in everything, especially in fortune. Yet she deigns to love me. I can't ask her hand as a pauper; and by my own folly, now deeply repented, I am little more. Now, all depends on you—my happiness, my respectability. Sooner or later, I shall be able to repay you all. For God's sake come to the assistance ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... victim of these learned ways. But these are the exceptional cases, which prove the existence of a better state of things. The great masses of society among us are not thus deserted; there are few families of respectability, from the shopkeeper in the next street to the nobleman whose mansion dignifies the next square, which do not contain among their dependents attached and useful servants; and where these are absent altogether, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... extremity of the mode, with all that pedantry of dress which marks the man of questionable pretensions to style. They kept entirely by themselves, eying every one askance that came near them, as if measuring his claims to respectability; yet they were without conversation, except the exchange of an occasional cant phrase. They even moved artificially, for their bodies, in compliance with the caprice of the day, had been disciplined into the absence of all ease and freedom. Art had done everything to accomplish ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... fancy paints her, but why should your mother be asked to leave her home, her duties, and pleasures for a year? To subject herself to bad weather and sickness and loneliness and fatigue of all kinds in order that she may throw the mantle of her social respectability over an equivocal situation. I do not blame the girl, but I feel more keenly and bitterly than I can tell you the humiliation and discomfort you would gladly put upon me in order to give yourself the satisfaction of Miss Lugur's company. Harry, you are the most selfish creature ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... denounce the continental Sunday as an orgy of noisy and godless pleasures. She says: "I had a thousand opportunities of noticing that the religious life did not mean a deep life-sanctifying belief, but simply one of those formulas that are a part of 'respectability,' as they understand it both in the family and in society." Nothing proves this better than their truly shocking way of keeping holy the Sabbath day, which is the very reverse of holy, inasmuch as it paves the way to the heaviest ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... like a man who knows minutely what is the matter with us, but from whom the rack should not wring the secret. In the prosaic "season," he has distinctly the appearance of a man conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking his stand on his respectability with both feet. At that time it is as impossible to associate him with relaxation, or any human weakness, as it is to meet his eye without feeling guilty of indisposition. In the blest Arcadian time, how changed! I have seen him, in a ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... life. Whether they leave behind them a reputation for flagrant selfishness, meanness, and dishonesty, or for a commendable prudence and judicious regard for self,—whether they always keep within the precincts of a decent respectability, or run into disreputable courses,—depends mostly on chance and fortune. This intimate association of the saint and the sinner in the same individual, common as it is, is a stumbling-block to moralists and legislators. The abnormal element is entirely overlooked, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... as he would, could not disguise from him that this was what he had done. Because of Ranny's wife, Respectability, the enduring soul of the Randalls and the Ransomes, could never lift up its head superbly any more. All infamies and all abominations that could defile a family were summed up for John Randall in the one word, adultery. It was worse than robbery or forgery or bankruptcy; ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... conjunction with his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, one of the principal rulers of this country. He was a man of some ability, and a tolerable speaker. The vacillations, the absurdity, the foolish jealousy of the duke, greatly injured the stability and respectability of Mr. Pelham's administration. Mr. Pelham was born in 1696, and died ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... this outburst. He knew his uncle was the black-sheep, the youngest, the darling of his mother's family. He knew him to be at outs with respectability, mixing with the looser, sporting type, all betting and drinking and showing dogs and birds, and racing. As a critic of life, however, he did not know him. But the young man felt curiously understanding. 'He uses words like ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... that gloves were a kind of passport, or perhaps a skeleton key guaranteed to open principals' doors. It was Mr. Smith who first made me feel that there was a connection between morals, respectability, and cold baths. To miss the morning tub, as Mr. Smith saw it, was not merely a calamity but also a disgrace; a thing to make one ashamed; a lapse calculated seriously to affect character. How oddly ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson |
