"Decorum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Italian. Her natural language, Masson tells us, was 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 ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... unsuspicious rapture. Or, if you fancied he understood you, and no storm of despairing indignation came, think how easy it would be to persuade yourself you had done your duty by the facts, and might let the matter lapse! Why should not one woman once take advantage of the obscurities of decorum so many a man has found comforting to his soul during confession of sin, when pouring his revelations into an ear whose owner's experience of life has not qualified her to understand them. Think of the difficulty you ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... thought essential to social integrity elsewhere have always been largely relaxed in the tropics; and—excepting, perhaps, Santo Domingo—the moral standard in Martinique was not higher than in the other French coloniei. Outward decorum might be to some degree maintained; but there was no great restraint of any sort upon private lives: it was not uncommon for a rich man to have many "natural" families; and almost every individual of means had children of color. The superficial ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... outright too; but soon said with grave decorum, "Quite right. The excellent Dorothea was a treasure above all treasures for the convent. Ah, such chastity and virtue were rarely to be met with ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... and military discipline and regard for the Sabbath, and for the House of God as well, did not always make the well-equipped occupants of these soldiers' seats in New Haven behave with the dignity and decorum befitting such guardians of the peace and protectors in war. Serious disorders and disturbances among the guard were reported at the General Court on June 16, 1662. One belligerent son of Mars, as he sat in the meeting-house, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... means of making away with his nephews, whose deaths were considerably more essential to him. But can this accusation be allowed gravely? if Richard aspired to the crown, whose whole conduct during Edward's reign was a scene, as we are told, of plausibility and decorum, would he officiously and unnecessarily have taken on himself the odium of slaying a saint-like monarch, adored by the people? Was it his interest to save Edward's character at the expence of his own? Did Henry stand in his way, deposed, imprisoned, and now childless? The blind and indiscriminate ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... official judges, the superiors of the orders, the colleges, and the bureau of the Santa Misericordia—each one taking its proper place as regards precedence. All of them observed the courtesies and punctilious forms due to the decorum and seriousness of that function. After these had signified by the gravity of their words, and by the seriousness and sadness of their countenances, the heavy weight of the sorrow which oppressed their hearts for a loss so worthy of immortal lament, and after his Lordship had answered ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... hundred of the vanquished perished in the battle and pursuit; and the person of the king fell again into the hands of his own party. This weak prince was sure to be almost equally a prisoner whichever faction had the keeping of him; and scarce any more decorum was observed by one than by the other, in their method of treating him. Lord Bonville, to whose care he had been intrusted by the Yorkists, remained with him after the defeat, on assurances of pardon given him by Henry: but Margaret, regardless of her husband's promise, immediately ordered the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... disposed to make for the friendship of the eminent abbe, he spoke with the authority of personal knowledge, and at a time when the memories of the Hotel de Rambouillet were still fresh. It is true that those who belonged to this professed school of morals were not all patterns of decorum. But we cannot judge by the Anglo-Saxon standards of the nineteenth century the faults of an age in which a Ninon de L'Enclos lives on terms of veiled intimacy with a strait-laced Mme. de Maintenon, and, when age ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... this fair? Is this just? Are my ideas so scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease—too happy, too frank. I have erred against every commonplace notion of decorum. I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved, spiritless, dull and deceitful. Had I talked only of the weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this reproach ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... 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
... spinning and smoke his cigar on the forecastle during the dog-watches, but he also took Violet with him (he having noticed long before that the presence of a lady was always sufficient to ensure the strictest decorum on the part of the men); thus showing the crew, as clearly as he could, that he at least had no ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... exclaimed Rose, alive to her sire's unceremonious neglect of decorum—"think where you ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... its best encouragement in the drama itself. But I cannot ascertain that any such power was directed at the multitude, whether educated or uneducated, with natural mixture of character, under the restraints of decorum, until the use of it by two religious writers of the school called "evangelical," Hannah More and Rowland Hill.[437] The Village Dialogues, though not equal to the Repository Tracts, are in many parts an approach, and perhaps a copy; there is frequently humorous ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the auditors. As his song proceeded, it seemed to gain in expression and vigor, and as he repeated the refrain Mia bella Italia! for the last time, his compatriots were so carried away by their enthusiasm that, forgetful of decorum, all, even the most aged, ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... evenings the 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 his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... feeling, that it reveals but little of the real life of a London courtesan, and leaves the reader almost as ignorant as he was when he took up the book of what it is that makes the horror of such existence; all of which might have been imparted without any violation of the decorum proper to such a book, and which, therefore, should not have been withheld. The book, too, is much too goody-goody. There is too much preaching throughout it, and in certain parts a suddenness in the kneeling down to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... of the whole country" on the subject of Nepenthe and its evil-smelling waters. It was one of those scholarly, ponderous and yet helplessly straightforward jokes of the late Renaissance; a joke to which Monsignor Perrelli does not allude, both for reasons of local patriotism and of general decorum; some vulgar dictum, in short, connected with the name of the patron saint of Nepenthe who, he urged, was simply a ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... in the tropical climates, where putrefaction is so rapid. The following morning the men were up at daylight, washing the decks and putting the ship in order; they worked willingly, and yet with a silent decorum which showed what their feelings were. Never were the decks better cleaned, never were the ropes more carefully flemished down; the hammocks were stowed in their white cloths, the yards carefully squared, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Then a return to the 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, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... first-born. Her fine figure, the blown roses of her face, her grey-blue eyes which had a slight tendency to roll, as though amusement just touched with naughtiness bubbled behind them; were reduced to a queer, satirical decorum in Miltoun's presence. Thoughts and sayings verging on the risky were characteristic of her robust physique, of her soul which could afford to express almost all that occurred to it. Miltoun had never, not even as a child, given ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... three people of the world dining together, and the fact that there had been a murder in the house three days before and a funeral in the morning should not be allowed to impair their proper nonchalance. At the same time, decorum must be preserved; ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... 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
... or stupid enough to be found out. Her admirers were so indiscreet that they had not left her a shred of reputation, and in a court where a cardinal is the lover of a queen, a hypocritical appearance of decorum is indispensable to success. So Angelique had to suffer for the faults she was ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... are swayed by strong and wayward impulses; but to most the fetters imposed by social conventions, by inherited or implanted standards of seemliness and decorum, suffice to steady them in the path of outward propriety. Of how great and absorbing a passion Lord Nelson was capable is shown by the immensity of the sacrifice that he made to it. Principle apart,—and principle wholly failed him,—all else ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... ebony 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 ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... the fearful night which prepared the attack on the palace; but he was then in the haste and affected savageness of the rabble. He now played the part of leader of a political sect; and the commencement of his address adopted something of the decorum of public council. In this there was an artifice; for, resistless as the club was, it still retained a jealousy of the superior legislative rank of the assembly of national representatives, the Convention. The forms ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... part of the house it stood in. Maggie never had this, nor did she recognize it in me. Her fear was a perfectly simple although uncomfortable one, centering around the bedrooms where, in each bed, she nightly saw dead and gone Bentons laid out in all the decorum of the best linen. ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... said nothing. "I must confess that what I then understood to be your obstinacy,—and I must say also, if I tell the truth, your indifference to—to—to all prudential considerations whatever, not to talk of appearances and decorum, and I might say, anything like a high line of duty or moral conduct,—shocked me very much. It did, indeed, my dear. Taking it altogether, I don't know that I was ever more shocked in my life. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... in the very theory on which they are built. Liszt thenceforward cut loose from all classic restraints, and dared to fling rules and canons to the winds, except so far as his artistic taste approved them. The brilliant and daring coterie, defying conventionality and the dull decorum of social law, in which our artist lived, wrought also another change in his character. Liszt had hitherto been almost austere in his self-denial, in restraint of passion and license, in a religious purity of life, as if he dwelt in the cold shadow of the monastery, not ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... pleasure of Lord Fife and Mr. Ball Hughes; the grave regard directed by Lord Petersham towards that pretty little maid-a-mischief who is risking her rouge beneath the chandelier; the unbridled decorum of Mdlle. Hullin and the decorous debauchery of Prince Esterhazy in the distance, make altogether a quite enchanting picture. But, of the whole series, the most illuminative picture is certainly the Ball at Almack's. In the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... waistcoats with large metal buttons, black alpaca coats with the waists up between the shoulders. There were no speeches, there was but little talk, there were no frivolities; the Council filled themselves gradually, steadily, but surely, with beer, and conducted themselves with sedate decorum, as became men of position, men of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... possibilities of vagrancy. But he was also a Cockney, a lover of limit, civic tradition, the uniform of all ritual. He liked exceptions, because, in every other instance, he would approve of the rule. He broke bounds with exquisite decorum. There was in all his excesses ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... father talked, Jean, lest in the first moments of her delightful discovery she should clap her hands or cry or dance or in some other unconventional way outrage grave decorum, returned to her ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... commercial line. In the synagogue, situated in the Froggery, they still preserve the faint resemblance of the ancient worship, their whole apparatus being no more than the drooping ensigns of poverty. The place is rather small, but tolerably filled; where there appears less decorum than in the Christian churches. The proverbial expression, 'as rich as a Jew,' is not altogether verified in Birmingham; but, perhaps, time is transferring it to the Quakers. It is rather singular that the honesty of a Jew ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... tooth-ache, or is called to suffer in any other way, should be permitted, as a matter of course, to groan and bellow, and vent his feelings very much in the style of an animal not endowed with reason, while a woman similarly suffering must bear it in silence and decorum? Why, should men, as a class, habitually, and as a matter of right, boldly wear the coarsest qualities of human nature on the outside, and swear and fight, and beastify themselves, so that they are obliged to be put ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... offered to draw Effie back to a posture of more decorum, but Colville put his arm round the little girl. "Oh, let her stay! It doesn't incommode me, and she must be getting such a novel effect of ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... now? Art thou not mine? Am I not thine? There lives within my soul A lofty courage—'tis love gives it me! I ought to be less open—ought to hide My heart more from thee—so decorum dictates: But where in this place couldst thou seek for truth, If in my mouth thou didst not find it? We now have met, then let us hold each other Clasped in a lasting and a firm embrace. Believe me this was more than their intent. Then be our loves like some blest ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... any rate, there was quiet and decorum, while all that could be done for the poor sufferer (not much, from ignorance of how he was injured) was done. He was released from his pain in the afternoon of the second day after the accident, the end coming suddenly and peacefully. The same evening, at sunset, the body, neatly sewn ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... seated in the gallery, each side of 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, had of ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was an unheard-of thing for any girl to leave the tea-table without permission. Such a breach of school decorum had surely never been committed before at St. Chad's! There was a very complete code of etiquette observed at the house, and to break one of the laws of politeness was considered ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... 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 ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... housewives attain the climax of luxury by flavoring the compound with a link of sausage. The mother brings the dinner and her tawny brood of nestlings. A shady spot is selected for the feast. The father dips his wooden spoon first into the vapory bowl, and mother and babes follow with grave decorum. Idle loungers passing these patriarchal groups, on their way to a vapid French breakfast at a restaurant, catch the fragrance of the olla and the chatter of the family, and envy the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... listened with due decorum to a good deal of small talk on the old lady's part till dinner was announced, when she so contrived that he should take her daughter ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... very well intentioned, very grave, very respectable, but also rather dull. Their words are good, but about the joints their arguments are weak. They speak very well, but while they are speaking, the decorum is so great that everybody goes away. Such a man is no match for a couple of House of Commons gladiators. They pull what he says to shreds. They show or say that he is wrong about his facts. Then he rises ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper teakettle. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum; until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend, by a string from the ceiling, a large lump directly over the tea table, so that it could be swung from ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... in the course of a few decades some were destined to follow those which had died out in the eighteenth century. Converts not infrequently lent new force in the pulpit, but at the risk of substituting an eager missionary spirit for the usual staid decorum of the old families. In these the ideals of breadth, simplicity, and moral excellence were stronger than the desire, natural in a convert, to win ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... dropped the helpless man's wrist, then, with an effort, recovered herself sufficiently to rise, and, with an air of increased decorum, as if the spiritual character of their interview excluded worldly intrusion, adjusted the screen around his bed, so as partly to hide her own face and Pendleton's. Then, dropping into the chair beside him, she said, in her old ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... raced across the floor to the table where Miss Vilda and Samantha were seated. Gay's sun-bonnet trailed behind her, every hair on her head curled separately, and she held her rag-doll upside down with entire absence of decorum. Timothy's paleness, whatever the cause, had disappeared for the moment, and his eyes ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his lips drew themselves in, a symbol of meaning reticence. All this, moreover, not in such degrees as to make him patently ridiculous; by no means. Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw might exchange frequent glances, and have a difficulty in preserving decorum; but they were unsophisticated. Mrs. Lessingham smiled, indeed, when there came a reasonable pretext, but not contemptuously. Mr. Marsh's aspect, if anything, pleased her; she liked these avoidances of the ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... in their ruffs and fardingales in dimpled serenity, squaring their infantine stomachers at the spectator with an innocence, a dignity, a delightful grotesqueness, which make the picture a thing of close truth as well as of fine decorum. You might kiss their hands, but you certainly would think twice before pinching their cheeks—provocative as they are of this tribute of admiration—and would altogether lack presumption to lift them off the ground or the higher level or dais on which they stand so sturdily planted ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... matter as their manner. They show a sense of style in its larger meaning hitherto displayed by no English poet since Chaucer. Surrey had brought back from Italy a certain inkling of it, so far as it is contained in decorum. But here was a new language, a choice and arrangement of words, a variety, elasticity, and harmony of verse most grateful to the ears of men. If not passion, there was fervor, which was perhaps as near it as the somewhat stately movement ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... in the calm summer air, upon the stone fence. William Deer, Jr., was wandering about in front of the castle, endeavoring to get control of his under lip and keep his exuberant mirth within the limits of decorum; but every instant, to use a military figure, it would flash in the pan. Up on the bare rocks were the wretched, woe-begone, patched, and ragged log huts of poor Cuffee. The hour and the season were suggestive of ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... schoolroom, and as Miss Nelson looked just as usual, just as orderly, just as neat and prim as she did yesterday, and as she would again to-morrow, her presence had a certain calming effect upon the rioters. They ate their meal with some decorum, and not more than three children spoke at ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... ago 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 ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... Judgement'. Its position there shows how little we can draw the line between the different classes of subjects as they were handled by Watts. A courtier like Rubens could, after painting with gusto a rout of Satyrs, put on a cloak of decorum to suit the pageantry of a court, or even simulate fervour to portray the ecstasy of a saint. He is clearly acting a part, but in Watts the character of the man is always seen. Whether his subjects are drawn from the Bible or ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... the business of the spies to blacken the character of Charles; and there can be little doubt that, in spite of his poverty and loose morals, he was well liked by the citizens of Bruges, who, notwithstanding a great deal of outward decorum, have at no time been very strait-laced. 'Charles,' we learn from a local history, 'sut se rendre populaire en prenant part aux amusements de la population et en se pliant, sans effort comme sans affectation, aux usages du pays.' During his whole period ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... part of the whole that remains but little altered—amongst all the changes, then, which have taken place in the world, moral, political, and social, there has been none more extraordinary, perhaps, than the rise, progress, extension, and dominion of that strong power called Decorum. I have heard it asserted by a very clever man, that there was nothing of the kind known in England before the commencement of the reign of George III., and that decorum was, in fact, a mere decent cloak to cover the nakedness of vice. I think he was mistaken: the word was ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... do, with a vivacity and untiring spirit that could only be found in a land so especially devoted to the worship of Terpsichore as France. In all the ball rooms parties of the Municipal Guard are in attendance to preserve order, and should any of the guests transgress the ordinary rules of decorum, they are immediately consigned to the lock-up of the nearest corps-du-garde. The most prevalent dress at the balls is that of the Debardeur. It is a piquant costume, and consists of dark velvet pantaloons, with satin stripe down the side, ornamented with bright studs, a pink or white shirt, ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... for themselves and their servants. At first this was done with the consent of the viceroy, till such time as they might be able to procure and to furnish houses for themselves. After the dispute concerning Solar, the viceroy caused them to be informed, that it did not seem to him consistent with decorum that they should live at the expence of the citizens, which would be assuredly displeasing to his majesty, and therefore that they ought to look out for houses for their accommodation: And that, besides, he did not approve of their walking about the streets in company with the merchants ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... outer world by a, thick 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 cawed sermons at morning ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... is a sound preservative of social virtues. It places a proper emphasis on the judgments of our associates, it saves us from pitfalls of vanity and self-assurance, it lays the basis of that propriety and decorum of conduct upon which is founded the charm of intercourse among equals. And what it does for us individually, it does for us collectively. Our national apprehension of a jest fosters whatever grace of modesty we have to show. We dare not inflate ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... 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
... public celebration of our own and our country's freedom. All conducted themselves with the strictest propriety and decorum, retiring to their homes soberly ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... through and then eating by themselves in the usual Arab way, he would see the whole family seated together in a Christian, homelike manner, the Divine blessing asked, and the meal conducted with propriety and decorum. After breakfast the father and Katie go to the Seminary to give their morning lessons, Henry (named for Dr. De Forest) sets out for the College, in which he is a Sophomore, and the younger children go to their various schools. ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... happy now? Art thou not mine? Am I not thine? There lives within my soul A lofty courage—'tis love gives it me! 40 I ought to be less open—ought to hide My heart more from thee—so decorum dictates:[651:1] But where in this place could'st thou seek for truth, If in my mouth thou ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... few plain cakes were sold, but nothing more substantial. Evidently the beer was the great attraction. Ben could not help observing, with some surprise, that, though everybody was drinking, there was not the slightest disturbance, or want of decorum, or drunkenness. The music, which was furnished at intervals, was of very good quality, and was listened to ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... apologising for the kept-mistress, and even the prostitute? Nay, the former of these may (if she confine herself to one man) plead more boldly in her defence; and even the latter may plead that hunger, which knows no law, and no decorum, and no delicacy. These unhappy, but justly-reprobated and despised parties, are allowed no apology at all: though reduced to the begging of their bread, the world grants them no excuse. The sentence on them is: 'You shall suffer every hardship; you shall ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... grew up without much check from his elders. It is the child who sees hypocrites. These preposterous grown-up people, who, if they are well-mannered, do not seem to enjoy their food, who are fussy about meaningless employments, and never give way to natural impulses, must surely assume this veil of decorum with intent to deceive. Charles Dickens was hard driven in his childhood, and the impressions that were then burnt into him governed all his seeing. The creative spirit in him transformed his sufferings into delight; ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... order to disguise himself, exchanged his clerical garb for a friend's blue coatee bedizzened with metal buttons; and also had erected a very tasteful and sharp coxcomb on his head, out of hair usually reposing sleek and quiet in the most saint-like decorum; and then, at the bid from the pulpit-stump, out stepped Mr. Sprightly from the opposite spice-wood grove, and advanced with a step so smirky and dandyish as to create universal amazement and whispered demands—"Why! who's that?" And ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... freely with all classes and sexes in the daily walks of life, and to travel on foot or horseback from one town to another, without escort and without fear, they had acquired manners more frank and independent than those of women in other lands, while their morals were pure and their decorum undoubted. The prominent part to be sustained by the women of Holland in many dramas of the revolution would thus fitly devolve upon a class, enabled by nature and education to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one prejudiced or ignorant or both. English justice cannot be bought, they say, and if it is dear, excessively dear even, they rather like to feel they have paid a long price for a good article. Yet it may be that here, as in other things, they take outward propriety and decorum for the inward and ineffable grace. That a judge should be incorruptible is not so important as that he should be wise ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... reproach me with not having said enough about our little stranger. When I wrote last I was not sufficiently acquainted with him to give you his character. I may now assure you that your daughter, when she sees him, will not consult you about her choice, or will only do it in respect to the rules of decorum. He is truly a very fine young gentleman, the most agreeable in conversation and manners of any I ever knew, nor less remarkable for his intelligence and sweetness of temper. You are not to imagine by my beginning with his mental ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... streets. It is scarcely necessary to say that this was none other than Prince Julian who had taken a notion to join the watch—his head being crazed by the fire of the sweet wine. He attended to the directions left by Philip, and went his rounds, and called the hour with great decorum, except that, instead of the usual watchman's verses, he favored the public with rhymes of his own. He was cogitating a new stanza, when the door of a house beside him opened, and a well-wrapped-up girl beckoned to him, and ran into the shadow ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... the Little Missouri Stock Association held its semi-annual meeting. Roosevelt presided, "preserving," as he wrote to Lodge a day or so later, "the most rigid parliamentary decorum." He was elected a representative of the Association at the meeting of the Montana Stock growers' Association in Miles City, to be held a day or two later, and, after a hurried trip to Elkhorn Ranch with Merrifield, started west for Miles City, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... directions, until each pair of stockings or pocket-handkerchief was disposed according to her ideas of neatness. They might chafe and fret inwardly at the delay, but outwardly they were obliged to behave with due decorum. ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... the aristocratic enclosure belonging to the mansion, the gate had been boarded up to a height of six feet. True, the planks were not so closely adjusted but that a hasty peep might be obtained through their interstices; but the strict decorum and rigid propriety of the inhabitants of the house left no grounds for apprehending that advantage would be taken of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... upon his hands. I saw Plinny—who all this while had sat silent, content to listen—rise, her face twitching, and put out a hand to touch the captain's shoulder. I saw her hand hesitate as her sense of decorum overtook her pity and seemed to reason with it. And with that I heard the noise ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... two little anecdotes that please me. Madame Pompadour's husband has not been permitted to keep an opera-girl, because it would too frequently occasion the reflection of his not having his wife— is not that delightful decorum? and in that country! The other was a most sensible trait of the King. The Count Charolois(350) shot a President's dogs, who lives near him: the President immediately posted to Versailles to complain: the King promised him justice; and then sent to the Count to desire ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... His grace, it seems, for many months has kept one Nancy Parsons,(663) one of the commonest creatures in London, one much liked, but out of date. He is certainly grown immoderately attached to her, so much, that it has put an end to all his decorum. She was publicly with him at Ascot races, and is now in the forest;(664) I do not know if actually in the house. At first, I concluded this was merely stratagem to pique the Duchess; but it certainly goes further. Before the Duchess laid in, she had a little house on Richmond-Hill, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... in proportion as he advanced in fluency of speech in their mother tongue. And during the following year, 1859, not a few tokens for good were granted him. In some parts of the camp open drunkenness and profligacy were diminishing, and the comparative quiet and decorum consequent on this made a great impression on the rest. In March a meeting of chiefs was held at Legaic's house, at which Mr. Duncan's arguments against many of their most degrading customs were discussed, and ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... Congress, by sheer dexterity of management when numbers were against him, added intense bitterness to the natural chagrin felt by the defeated faction. Men like Jefferson and Madison were subject to traditions of behavior that required them to maintain a certain style of public decorum no matter how they might rage in private. But new men with new manners were coming on the scene, and among them the opposition to Hamilton had found a new leader— William Branch Giles of Virginia. He was a Princeton graduate of the class of 1781, had studied ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... convict and was known to numerous people as an old offender in many ways. He was therefore typical of the exact thing the Vigilance Committee had been formed to prevent. By eleven o'clock the trial, which was conducted with due decorum and formality, was over. Jenkins was adjudged guilty. There was no disorder either before or after Jenkins's trial. Throughout the trial and subsequent proceedings Jenkins's manner was unafraid and arrogant. He fully expected not only that the nerve of the ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... the deep and obstinate silences of another, to stop the incoming tide of aggressive novel-writing. We are going to write about it all. We are going to write about business and finance and politics and precedence and pretentiousness and decorum and indecorum, until a thousand pretences and ten thousand impostures shrivel in the cold, clear air of our elucidations. We are going to write of wasted opportunities and latent beauties until a thousand new ways of living open to men ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... floppy straw hat had a big lilac bow. She began to tell Claude about her father's several attacks of erysipelas. He listened but absently. He would never have believed that Enid, with her severe notions of decorum, would come into his room and sit with him like this. He noticed that his mother was quite as much astonished as he. She hovered about the visitor for a few moments, and then, seeing that Enid was quite at her ease, went downstairs to her ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... while we on the contrary urge on you to enjoy more fully the splendour of your youth and vitality. We desire to see you dance and sing and laugh and bubble over with the delicious inexhaustible flow of vital energy; we know that it need not interfere with the refinement of perfect manners and decorum, and we know too that there is the force which will sober down and do good work, and there is the health-giving exercise, the geniality, and the joy that will make you stronger and pleasanter, more patient and more persuasive to good in years ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... left to invest Koenigsberg, and East Prussia was overrun with the enemy. The report as to the behavior of these troops met with great indignation in Germany; but better information insists that they behaved with decorum and discretion. The peasantry of East Prussia, remembering wild tales of the Cossacks of a hundred years before, fled in confusion with stories of burning ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... 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 strictly adhering to this system we ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Love Apologia pro Poemate Meo The Show Mental Cases Parable of the Old Men and the Young Arms and the Boy Anthem for Doomed Youth The Send-off Insensibility Dulce et Decorum est The Sentry The Dead-Beat Exposure Spring Offensive The Chances S. I. W. Futility Smile, Smile, Smile Conscious A Terre Wild with ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... qualities, he had every prospect before him of a splendid career, but he was destined to fall in his first fight. He was curiously fond of quotations, and the last words he uttered were 'Dulce et decorum ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... followed! From the pool at once there rose A frog, the sphere of rubber balanced deftly on his nose. He beheld her fright and frenzy, And, her panic to dispel, On his knee by Miss Mackenzie He obsequiously fell. With quite as much decorum As a speaker in a forum He started ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... toward him now and then, conscious of a warmer heart-beat. George, who boasted of being ten—quite an advanced age, in his estimation—might almost be called a thorn in the flesh to Aunt Grace, whose nice sense of propriety and decorum he daily outraged by rudeness and want of order. George was boy all over, and a strongly-marked specimen of his class—"as like his father, when at his age, as one pea to another," Aunt Grace would say, as ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... Should you light a cigarette, mine host will touch you on the "arrum" and remind you that the proprieties are menaced. "Antonio" entices and beguiles from fiery legend without, but "O'Riley" teaches decorum within. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... full of rancorous indignation against the woman who could look like this at one. This look probed him; it tampered with him. It was dangerous to one as would be a hint of unbelief whispered by a priest in the august decorum of a temple; and at the same time it was impure, it was disturbing, like a cynical consolation muttered in the dark, tainting the sorrow, corroding the thought, poisoning the heart. He wanted to ask her furiously: "Who do you take me for? How dare you look ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... in breathless suspense. What was he to say to them? It went against him to reel off compliantly the usual patriotic phrases that forced themselves on one's lips as though dictated by an outside power. For months he had carried about the defiant resolve not to utter the prescribed "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," whatever the refusal might cost. Nothing was so repulsive to him as singing the praises of the sacrifice of one's life. It was a juggler's trick to cry out that some one was dying while inside the ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... soul." [15] On receiving the extreme unction, she refused to have her feet exposed, as was usual on that occasion; a circumstance, which, occurring at a time when there can be no suspicion of affectation, is often noticed by Spanish writers, as a proof of that sensitive delicacy and decorum, which distinguished her through life. [16] At length, having received the sacraments, and performed all the offices of a sincere and devout Christian, she gently expired a little before noon, on Wednesday, November 26th, 1504, in the fifty-fourth year of her ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... military, including the commandant, and were strictly amenable to martial law. Of course that soul of domestic and social comfort, punctuality, reigned paramount; every meal was regulated by beat of drum, subordination carefully preserved, and decorum, to the most minute particular, insisted on. No dishabille could appear, in the cabin or on deck; no litter, not an article of luggage visible. All the sick people, all the cross people, and all the whimsical people were ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... gaudy tints on the covers of paper novels they look well enough; and they make a better appearance in punts, I admit, than we do. But is that a reason why they should be allowed to disturb the decorum of tables, and interrupt with their giggles and squeaks our ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... front of the house, hemmed in by high hedges and trees from what seemed to be a public road beyond, were fairly spacious, but the sleek decorum of their arrangement, while it pleased him, was scarcely interesting. He liked better to study the house itself, which in the daylight revealed itself as his ideal of what a historic English country-house of the minor ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... familiar old tumult about the reanimated rooms of Casa Grande. Then Poppsy—I beg her ladyship's pardon, for I mean, of course, Pauline Augusta—has to duly inspect her dolls to assure herself that they are both well-behaved and spotless as to apparel, for Pauline Augusta is a stickler as to decorum and cleanliness; and Dinkie falls to working on his air-ship, which he is this time making quite independent of Whinnie, whose last creation along that line betrayed a disheartening disability for flight. But even this second effort, I'm afraid, is doomed to failure, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... me in broken English. It was no slight misfortune to have an example of bad grammar, false metaphors and similes, with all the usual errors of feminine diction, placed before a female writer. But if, disdaining the construction of sentences,—the precise decorum of the cold grammarian,—she has caught the spirit of her author,—if, in every altered scene,—still adhering to the nice propriety of his meaning, and still keeping in view his great catastrophe,—she has agitated her audience with all ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... master entered the door, 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 had ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... mass, the work of removal would perhaps present too much difficulty. To obtain the Mouse I place my friends and neighbours under requisition; they laugh at my whim but none the less proffer their traps. Yet, the moment a Mouse is needed, that very common animal becomes rare. Braving decorum in his speech, which follows the Latin of his ancestors, the Provencal says, but even more crudely than in my translation: "If you look for dung, the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... whom to address in such an assemblage, Ursula was relieved from her perplexity by an officer attired in a suit of crimson and gold, who, with a grave and formal decorum, which indeed reigned throughout the whole retinue, demanded, respectfully, whom she sought? "The Signora Nina!" replied Ursula, drawing up her stately person, with a natural, though somewhat antiquated, dignity. There was something foreign in ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... marked by a quiet, grave dignity, and a peculiar reticence, at variance with the prevailing type of young ladyhood, now alas! too dominant; whose premature emancipation from home rule, and old-fashioned canons of decorum renders "American girlhood" synonymous with flippant pertness. Moulded by two women who were imbued with the spirit of Richter's admonition: "Girls like the priestesses of old, should be educated only in sacred places, and never hear, much less see, what is rude, immoral or violent"; the pate ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... expected, on things in general, for B. B. loved his joke and was full of anecdote—anecdote, perhaps, not always of the most refined character. But what could you expect at such happy times from a man brimful of human nature, who had to pose all life under the double weight of decorum imposed on him, in the first place as a Quaker, and in the second place as a ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... having been the first to observe the impression the mignonne maid-of-honour had made on the King's susceptible fancy, had little hesitation in attaching to his diplomatic office the very undignified one of Sir Pandarus, and therefore with a brave defiance of decorum bent all his efforts to overcome the scruples, if any there might be, lingering in the mind of Louise with regard to transferring herself to the service of the Queen of England, poor Catherine of Braganza. As she was then placed through the death of the Duchess of Orleans, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... brought coasting parties down the mountains, skating, snow-balling, the clumsy snow-man, and that most active of mortals, the dancing-master, who not only instructed us in the art of Terpsichore, but also gave us rules of decorum which were an abomination to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that had listened to the sobs of Madame d'Houdetot at the death-bed of Saint-Lambert, appeared to Adrienne to exude ennui, strangling and inevitable ennui, solemn, official, absolute ennui, nothing but ennui in the very decorum of the place, and isolation in the midst ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... it. And however the religion of Isis may, like any other, have been often worn as a cloak by men and women of loose life, her rites appear on the whole to have been honourably distinguished by a dignity and composure, a solemnity and decorum, well fitted to soothe the troubled mind, to ease the burdened heart. They appealed therefore to gentle spirits, and above all to women, whom the bloody and licentious rites of other Oriental goddesses only shocked and repelled. We need ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... drink some of this brandy." She obeyed without comment, but after a pause she opened her eyes again and looked down at the new garment which clad her. She had that moment turned back from the door of death, but her first breath was used to set the scene for a return to a decent decorum. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... upon him so strangely drawn and haggard a countenance, that Vanstone with difficulty repressed an exclamation. He looked in quick inquiry at the valet, who so far departed from his usual decorum as to nod his head in assent to the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... cathedral town society, and had solicited to be taken beside her on the box of the cool coach of ceremony to which that team was harnessed. His proposal of marriage being accepted by the lady, the commissary took his seat behind the proprieties with great decorum, and Mrs General drove until the commissary died. In the course of their united journey, they ran over several people who came in the way of the proprieties; but always in a high ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... from the kitchen, Miss Grierson, by way of an introductory lesson, made an august function, almost diagrammatic in its educational details. After the dinner, with Miss Grierson's slow and formal aid, which consisted mainly in passages impressively declaimed from her private book of decorum, Maggie spent two hours in unpacking her suitcase and trunk, and repacking her scanty wardrobe in drawers of the chiffonier and dressing-table; a task which Maggie, left to herself, could have completed ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... gentleness, all gayety, Her pranks the favorite theme of every tongue. But now the day was come, the day, the hour; Now, frowning, smiling, for the hundredth time, The nurse, that ancient lady, preached decorum: And, in the luster of her youth, she gave Her hand, with her ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... finest in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand; but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled.—Poetry and the stage do not agree well together. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The ideal can have no place upon the stage, which is a picture without perspective: everything there is in the fore-ground. That which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, immediately becomes an unmanageable reality. Where all is left to the imagination (as is the case ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He and he only knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest appearance. Some great decorum, some fetich[62] of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up[63] by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds are ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Jerusalem without open flouting of the masters—: not to go about alone; not to enter mosques or step over graves; not to insult Saracens when at prayer or by touching their beards; not to return blow for blow, but to make formal complaints; not to drink wine openly; to observe decorum and not rush to be first at the sacred sites; and generally to be circumspect in presence of the infidels, lest they mark what was done amiss and say, 'O thou bad Christian', a phrase which was familiar to them in both Italian and German. ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... sobbed, and clung pitifully to O'olo, and pressed his head to her bosom, unmindful of decorum, and so consumed by misery she was like a person in a fit. O'olo, too, was suffocated with sadness, for it seemed a dreadful thing to die and be cast blood-stained into a pit, he that was so handsome, and in the flood of his youth, with perhaps his dissevered head tossing in the air amid ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... built home Against the void and indolent disgrace Of unresponsive space; Little, sequester'd pleasure-house For God and for His Spouse; Elaborately, yea, past conceiving, fair, Since, from the graced decorum of the hair, Ev'n to the tingling, sweet Soles of the simple, earth-confiding feet, And from the inmost heart Outwards unto the thin Silk curtains of the skin, Every least part Astonish'd hears And sweet replies to some like region of the spheres; Form'd for ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... Kirkoswald that the Bachelor's Club was founded, and here could Burns again exercise his debating powers and find play for his expanding intellect. The members met to forget their cares in mirth and diversion, 'without transgressing the bounds of innocent decorum'; and the chief diversion appears ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... ever bachelor, and there are no women folk in the house. Outwardly he buttons—it is expected of him—but in his more vital privacies, in the matter of braces for example, he still turns to string. He conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. His movements are slow, and he is a great thinker. But he has a reputation for wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village, and his knowledge of the roads of the South ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... appearance of modesty be any thing else than the custom of the country; and allege that, notwithstanding so much decency and decorum, they have their peculiar modes of intriguing, and embrace every possible opportunity of putting them in practice; and that, in these intrigues, they frequently scruple not to stab the paramour they had invited ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... the Sutras and Sastras, spoke: "Yourself using wisdom is the expedient; but I will further dilate on this a little; first by removing from the crowd and leading a hermit's life, depending entirely on alms for food, extensively practising rules of decorum, religiously adhering to right rules of conduct; desiring little and knowing when to abstain, receiving whatever is given in food, whether pleasant or otherwise, delighting to practise a quiet life, diligently studying all the Sutras and Sastras; observing the character ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... tire-women, herself a damsel of gentle blood, and gifted with rare beauty, had attracted the attention of a retainer in the palace, who fell desperately in love with her. For a long time the strict rules of decorum by which she was hedged in prevented him from declaring his passion; but at last he contrived to gain access to her presence, and so far forgot himself, that she, drawing her poniard, stabbed him in the eye, so that he ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... neither courted nor shunned observation. He sat at dinner-time at a retired table, and found himself watching the people with a stir of pleasure. Afterwards he went round to a famous club, of which he had once been made a life member, but towards midnight he was wearied of the dull decorum of his surroundings, and returning to the hotel, sought the restaurant once more. The stream of people coming in to supper was greater even than at dinner-time. He found a small table, and ordered some oysters. The sight ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was a very handsome Collation. The Ladies made a brilliant Appearance, and the Company expressed the highest Pleasure and Satisfaction on the Occasion, and broke up about two in the Morning. The whole was conducted with the greatest Order, Elegance and Decorum. ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... concerned with 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 ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... other place, and into one expression throw such a concentration of scorn, hate, fury, or exultation as is absolutely stunning to a man of ordinary nerves. Talk of their being bridled! They never had a bit in their mouths. Before the war they ran wild, and now they ride rough-shod over decorum, decency, and Davis himself. But the dictator endures it like a philosopher. "He lets it pass," said Judge Ould to me, "like the idle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... he should simply indicate his own views or desire. One characteristic of General Lee I noted then and have often recalled: I never saw him take an ungraceful posture. No matter how long or fatiguing a faculty meeting might be, he always preserved an attitude in which dignity, decorum, and grace were united. He was a very well built man, with rounded body and limbs, and seemed without the slightest affectation of effort to sit or stand or walk just as a gentleman should. He was never in a hurry, and all his gestures ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... indifferent to what the putana did or 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 was straight ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus |
