"Immodest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happened to others, and how perfectly lovely and romantic it all was, they are ready for the wiles of the first gay deceiver. Waiting in vain for their god-like ideal, they are finally content to look a little lower, and favorably receive the immodest addresses of some clerk in their own store, or succeed in ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... close confinement; And the pallid seamstress sitteth For a long and tedious twelve hours Stitching, while her life is ebbing In a rapid current from her. Now awhile we see the playhouse, And the giddy hall of music, And the scenes exposed therein, Oft immodest and immoral. Next the nest of thieves and robbers, With their heaps of spoil and plunder, And their hidden laws and customs. Then we seek the house of prayer, Which is only weekly opened, Or which day to day inviteth Weary souls into its shadow, There to hold a sweet communion With the God who made ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... may be by the man, yet the other is the most common. The squaws are generally very immodest in their words and actions, and will often put the young men to the blush. The men commonly appear to be possessed of much more modesty than the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... complete a list of peers and peers' sons who had fallen in the war—a thing that will, of course, be done, just as a similar list will be compiled of the House of Commons, of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. But one peer after another objected vigorously lest such a list appear immodest. "We are but doing our duty. Let ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... the coming season that suitable shoes would be built for street wear and mountain climbing, for the sands of the sea and the sands of the desert, and the sheer face of canyons. The extremely long, dirt-sweeping skirts were coming up; the extremely short, immodest skirts were coming down. A sane and sensible wave seemed to be sweeping the whole country. Under the impetus of Donald Whiting's struggles to lead his classes and those of other pupils to lead theirs a higher ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and imprisonment against those who amuse themselves by celebrating bacchanals in churches, masked, disguised, and crowned "with leaves or flowers"; all this about 1250. The statutes of University Hall, 1292, prohibit the fellows from fighting, from holding immodest conversations together, from telling each other love tales, "fubulas de amasiis," ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... straight, heeding nothing, for at first my senses were all confus'd: but in a while the walking clear'd my wits, and I could think: and thinking, I could weep: and having wept, could fortify my heart. Here is the upshot, sir—tho' 'tis held immodest for a maid to ask even far less of a man. We are both bound for Cornwall—you on an honorable mission, I for my father's estate of Gleys, wherefrom (as your tale proves) some unseen hands are thrusting me. Alike we carry our lives in our hands. ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... in a cooler moment, I hasten to blab the whole simplicity of it, to blab on Roscoe and the other navigators and the rest of the priesthood, all for fear that I may become even as they, secretive, immodest, and inflated with self-esteem. And I want to say this now: any young fellow with ordinary gray matter, ordinary education, and with the slightest trace of the student-mind, can get the books, and charts, and instruments and teach ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... entered the model's mind, and she went back to her easel to paint the rounded limbs and marble huelessness of fair Dian, chastest of all Olympia's deities, wondering if, after all, what is called modesty does not come as much of habit as of nature—if the veiled face of the Oriental is not as immodest as the unclothedness of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Who ever thought of biology meaning themselves? I didn't, anyway. I never think things in books refer to me. Fancy a skeleton meaning oneself! Mustn't a skeleton feel immodest? Louis, when I'm dead, do find some way of disintegrating me, will you? I couldn't bear to look as immodest as ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... defence contented itself with arguments that did at least aim to rebut the indictment. The decisions of all the established men in the world were notoriously in conflict. However great was the gross wisdom of the ages the net wisdom was remarkably small. Was it after all so very immodest to believe that the Liberals were right in what they said about Tariff Reform, and the Tories right in their criticism of ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... so sweetly innocent a face I should never have suspected her of being an immodest wanton, were it not for the evidence of my own eyes. 'T is a strange world, senor. Yet I have often heard this is the way with ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... think you're the most immodest—I'm ashamed that you're my daughter. If your another had ever carried ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... dark reality of his past conduct, of his present situation. Lucia, the charming siren of the previous evening, appeared in her real colors, as the immodest, passionate wanton; Catiline as the monster that ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... affectedly particular people who place heaven in the foreground in order to conceal themselves behind it. But if she refuses to tell a falsehood,—as she will expose herself to the jests of the whole court, as she will have annoyed the king by a confession as ridiculous as it was immodest,—Mademoiselle la Baume le Blanc de la Valliere will think it but proper I should send her back again to her pigeons in the country, in order that, in Touraine yonder, or in Le Blaisois,—I know not where it may be,—she may at her ease study ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the bride's festival. The bridegroom hardly counts. Nay, love, you need fear no immodest fooling when you bid good night to the company; nor shall there be any scuffling for garters at the door of your chamber. There was none of that antique nonsense when Lady Sandwich married her daughter. All vulgar fashions of ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... comments really horrible stories, without caring in the slightest degree whether a woman's ear is within reach of their voices. Yesterday, on the beach, I was forced to leave the place where I was sitting in order not to be any longer the involuntary confidante of an obscene anecdote, told in such immodest language that I felt just as humiliated as indignant at having heard it. Would not the most elementary good-breeding teach them to speak in a lower tone about such matters when we are near at hand. Etretat is, moreover, the country of gossip and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... that's been trained the way girls were trained in my day? No. You go and make fools of yourselves over these short-skirted little hussies all powdered up like a box of marshmallows. And as long as they're spry enough and immodest enough to do all these new bunny dances and what not, you think that's a sure sign they'll make good wives and mothers. ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... a certain dreadful innocence about them too, as though each would protest, "In spite of our tasks, our often immodest tasks, our ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... her tone to repel him. Mr. Prendergast at once felt that he was on the right scent, and that it behoved him at any rate to make his way into that house; for if ever a modest-looking daughter was like an immodest-looking father, that young woman was like ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... o'clock. All I could discern distinctly by the moonlight was a colourless, youthful face, meagre and sharp to look at about the cheeks and chin; large, grave, wistfully attentive eyes; nervous, uncertain lips; and light hair of a pale, brownish-yellow hue. There was nothing wild, nothing immodest in her manner: it was quiet and self-controlled, a little melancholy and a little touched by suspicion; not exactly the manner of a lady, and, at the same time, not the manner of a woman in the humblest rank of life. The voice, little as ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Columbia answered in a very faint tone of voice, and Miss Anthony remarked that "this was through mortification because even the men there had no more rights than women." When another delegate could not be heard she said: "Women have always been taught that it is immodest to speak in a loud voice, and it is hard for them to get out of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Commandment is continency and chastity; against the same is lasciviousness, immodest ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... Gibbon, Hume, Grote, Prescott, and the other thick historians; that he could repeat pages from them—and did. When Dr. Westlake whispered to her, "Yes, Lym is a very well-informed man, but he's modest about it," she felt uninformed and immodest, and scolded at herself that she had missed the human potentialities in this vast Gopher Prairie. When Dr. Westlake quoted the "Paradiso," "Don Quixote," "Wilhelm Meister," and the Koran, she reflected that no one she knew, not even her father, had ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the proximity of so many bright and moving objects taxes the eyes; the splash of gaudy and gross advertisements creates a fevered imagination; slang, profanity, and vulgarity lend a smart effect; the merchant's tempting display often leads to theft, and the immodest dress of women produces an evil effect upon the mind of the overstimulated adolescent boy; opportunities to elude observation and to deceive one's parents abound; social control weakens; ideals become neurotic, flashy, distorted; the light and allurement of the street encourage ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... This proverb being somewhat immodest, Mr Ray says he would not have inserted it in his collection, but that he met with it in a little book, intitled, the Quakers' Spiritual Court Proclaimed; written by Nathaniel Smith, Student in Physic; wherein ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... way in which they trumpeted their praises; and I have known one woman set everybody against herself by the way in which she published her husband's faults. I find it difficult to believe either sort. To praise one's husband is so like praising one's self, that to me it seems immodest, and subject to the same suspicion as self-laudation; while to blame one's husband, even justly and openly, seems to me to border upon treachery itself. How, then, am I to discharge a sort of half duty my father has laid upon me by what he has said in "The Seaboard ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... the latter of whom made the famous fine cotton cloth, known as abrawan, or 'running water,' which was supplied to the imperial Zenana at Delhi. On one occasion a daughter of Aurangzeb was reproached on entering the room for her immodest attire and excused herself by the plea that she had on seven folds of cloth over her body. [80] In Bengal Brahmans will take water from Tantis, and it seems clear that their higher status is a consequence of the lucrative and important ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... simple rural folk a decollete gown was considered immodest. In order to be correct the collar must cover the throat, as nearly to the chin and ears as possible. Sukey's dresses were built upon this plan, much to her regret; for her throat and bosom were as white and plump—but never ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... at Aph-Lin, expecting, at least, that he would indignantly reprove his daughter for expressions of anxiety and affection, which, under all the circumstances, would, in the world above ground, be considered immodest in the lips of a young female, addressed to a male not affianced to her, even if of the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pursued him with her love, refused to let him go ... and all the other things she had done—changing for his sake from her decent ways ... breaking the Sabbath, taking off her neck-band. She had been getting irreligious and immodest, and now she was unhappy, ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... with him, an immodest little fellow; made so by his father, who it seemed spent most of his time boasting of the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... to know that they are only going through an inevitable physical readjustment. What is happening is that sexual desire—it may be in vague, unconscious, and very general forms—is asserting itself. Nothing could be more absurd than to suggest that there is anything wrong or immodest in that fact. It is quite inevitable. Indeed, the first step out of the trouble lies in accepting the fact and then in considering how it is to ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... examined her toilette. He thought it startling—audacious in its display of shoulders and back—until he got over his dazed, dazzled feeling, and noted the other women about. Wild horses could not have dragged it from him, but he felt that this physical display was extremely immodest; and at the same time that he eagerly looked his face burned. "If I do pick one of these," said he to himself, "I'm jiggered if I let her appear in public dressed this way. Why, out home women ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... approached her on the train, said he knew her relatives, they were rather a bad lot of people, and he wanted to protect her from them. Then came a long account of being driven in a carriage, changing her clothes in a hotel, having her picture taken in an immodest costume, signing a paper at police headquarters, and, at last, safely returning home, all guided by the mysterious gray haired man. Another trip led to an encounter with a man who took her in an automobile ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... fountain, not of high, pure thoughts to young men, but a spring of low temptations and impure suggestions, I do not blame the young girls here; but surely the severest blame is due to the criminal folly, or worse, of their mothers, who must know what the consequences of immodest dressing necessarily are to ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... must be difficult for a man like you to speak of your own achievements. But for once you are going to be immodest," she laughed. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... other women delegates entered the convention of the Sons of Temperance, they looked forward proudly, if a bit timidly, to taking part in the meetings, but when Susan spoke to a motion, the chairman, astonished that a woman would be so immodest as to speak in a public meeting, scathingly announced, "The sisters were not invited here to speak, but to ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... were still heathens, although he has not made all the remaining circumstances to coincide learnedly with the time which he has chosen. From this point of view we must judge of many coarsenesses in expression and manners; for instance, the immodest manner in which Gloster acknowledges his bastard, Kent's quarrel with the Steward, and more especially the cruelty personally inflicted on Gloster by the Duke of Cornwall. Even the virtue of the honest Kent bears the stamp of an iron age, in which the good and the bad display the same uncontrollable ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... and clan systems were devised solely to prevent international decadence and fraternal strife; their secret societies were not sinister; their festivals and dances not immodest; their priesthood not ignoble. They were sedentary and metropolitan people—dwellers in towns—not nomads; they had cattle and fowls, orchards and grain-fields, gardens for vegetables, corrals for breeding stock. They had many towns—some even of two hundred houses, of which dwellings many were ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... helpful to many, especially the poor, and an ornament to his calling. She was a young widow when he married her, and had been a merchant's wife by whom he had a good estate, and was a godly woman; and because she wore such apparel as she had been formerly used to, which were neither excessive nor immodest, for their chiefest exception were against her wearing of some whalebone in the bodice and sleeves of her gown, corked shoes and other such like things as the citizens of her rank then used to wear. And although, for offence sake, she and he were willing to reform the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... of them are; but, as a class, they are much abused. They work hard, and do not have much leisure time, and deserve more sympathy than reproach. Men, especially, think that, because they appear on the stage in a state of semi-nudity, they are immodest and of easy virtue; and in New York there is a class of men, of nominal respectability, who appear to regard ballet-dancers as their legitimate prey. They exert all their arts to lead these poor ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... in loud, ostentatious voices. Some women were there, fat and garish for the most part, liberally powdered and painted, and crowned with hats at which Paris would have stared almost in fear. There were also children, dark, even swarthy, with bold eyes, shrill voices, immodest bearing, who looked as if they had long since received the ugly freedom of the streets, and learned lessons no children ought ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... he had been almost immodest to show his sacred sorrow to the public; and though he did not foresee the anger his article would provoke, he knew the lack of comprehension, the coarse comments, which ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... that is all he asks; and in the meantime, while you continue to associate, he would rather not be reminded of your baser origin. Compared with the grand, tree-like self-sufficiency of his demeanour, the vanity and curiosity of the Scot seem uneasy, vulgar, and immodest. That you should continually try to establish human and serious relations, that you should actually feel an interest in John Bull, and desire and invite a return of interest from him, may argue something more awake and lively in your mind, but it still puts ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... infringe, she displayed her hair, which was brown and cut short over the ears. It was possibly the first time that some of those young monks seated behind their elders had ever seen a woman's hair. She wore hose like a youth. To them her dress appeared immodest and abominable.[2212] She exasperated and irritated them. Had the Bishop of Beauvais insisted on her appearing in hood and gown their anger against her would have been less violent. This man's attire brought before their minds the works performed by the Maid in the camp of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... reputation. Thus we find him writing in January 1546 to the engraver Enea Vico, bestowing high praise upon a copper-plate which a certain Bazzacco had made from the Last Judgment, but criticising the picture as "licentious and likely to cause scandal with the Lutherans, by reason of its immodest exposure of the nakedness of persons of both sexes in heaven and hell." It is not clear what Aretino expected from Enea Vico. A reference to the Duke of Florence seems to indicate that he wished to arouse suspicions among great and influential persons regarding the religious ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... period this scene came to be immodest. But at this time, amidst the calamities of the fourteenth century, in the terrible days of the Black Plague, and of so many a famine, in the days of the Jacquerie and those hateful brigands, the Free Lances,—on a people thus surrounded by danger, the effect was ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... desirous that his daughter, who has reached years of discretion, should from time to time correspond with her fiance. The letters all being sent to the girl's father, he forwards them to me, and the fear lest any fellow-student should know of so immodest a proceeding always leads the girl to read them in my room, and place them in my hand for safe keeping. It was enlightening to receive a request on one occasion that I would, at the close of term, return "those ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... than Mr. Willard or the Old Testament. Other "provoking evils" show that not all the breaches in the walls were due to outside attacks. A list of twelve such evils was drawn up in 1675, and the crimes which were condemned, and which were said to be committed chiefly by the younger sort, included immodest wearing of the hair by men, strange new fashions of dress, want of reverence at worship, profane cursing, tippling, breaking the Sabbath, idleness, overcharges by the merchants, and the "loose and sinful habit of riding from town to town, men and women together, under pretence of going to lectures, ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... despised herself. Even in the excitement of pleasure she could not entirely forget and lose herself. The image of mademoiselle always arose before her, with her stern, motherly face. Germinie did not become immodest in the same degree that she abandoned herself to her passions and sank lower and lower in vice. The degrading depths to which she descended did not fortify her against her disgust and horror of herself. Habit did not ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... married after a very long engagement, and Rose still trembled from the excitement of that occasion, still debated fearfully with herself on the bride's chances of happiness. Her own marriage was an event so inconceivable that merely to glance at the thought appeared half immodest and ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... we call it to-day. I ran across it in a recent trip East. A big, barnlike structure had been erected which was called "the tabernacle." Its floor was of sawdust sprinkled on the ground. Here for about a month a professional evangelist had harangued the curious crowds in immoderate, and oftentimes immodest language. Wit and sarcasm and slang and emotion had been freely used in his efforts to make sinners "hit the sawdust trail," to use his own spectacular language, as well as to extort money from the pockets of the attendants. He left the town $5,000 richer than when he entered and also carried ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... think of me—in this immodest gown, with this paint on my face, and at this hour of night?" pleaded Helene, as he started toward the door ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... dashing young man passed by the counter. The clerks all seemed to know him, and several of the prettiest girls in the department smiled at him openly in a way that Faith thought very immodest. As he caught sight of the new packer he stopped ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... escaped prisoner who calmly confronts him. As Pentheus begins to threaten, Dionysus advises him first to hear the messenger even now entering from Cithaeron. An elaborate Messenger's Speech describes the miraculous life of the Maenads as they lie on the mountains, careless but not immodest. At the touch of their thyrsus the rock yields dew and the soil wine; their fingers lightly scraping the soil draw streams of exquisite milk, and honey distils from their ivied staffs. A city-bred agitator stirred up the herdsmen to confront them, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... looked upon to be unlucky to talk of Dreams at Table, and it is immodest to bring forth before so many Men; but this Dream, or this Conception of thy Mind, be it what it ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... pilgrims, that is to say, Polynices and Tydeus, the virgins grew pale and blushed rosy-red, and their eyes shunned the glance of any other person, and they kept them fixed on the paternal face alone, as if there were safety. This modesty—how many errors does it bridle in, or repress? On how many immodest questions and impure things does it impose silence! How much dishonest greed does it repress! In the chaste woman, against how many evil temptations does it rouse mistrust, not only in her, but also in him who watches over her! How many unseemly ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... seeing my hesitation, and perceiving the cause, was so pleased, that she cried out—"No, my dear Peter, not that, nor all the force on earth, shall ever part me from you. But I conceive you are afraid you shall discover something in me you may not like. I fear not that; but an immodest appearance before you I cannot suffer myself to be guilty of, but under your own command."—"My lovely Youwarkee," says I, "delay then my desires no longer; and since you require a warrant from me, I do command you to do it" Immediately her graundee flew open (discovering her ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... daughter Gertrude attended my Sunday-school class. She has received and still enjoys divine favour. If you were to entrust your case to me, you would be entering upon a righteous, wholesome career. I am always looking out for some one. To tell the truth, and not wishing to appear immodest, I ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... not immodest in urging thy friend to discover his secrets; lest an accidentall discovery of them work ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... "Well, immodest or not, I hold to it," replied Betsey in as amiable a manner as if there had been no reflection upon her refinement. "Abel stands a good chance for the legislature now, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... to be likely to "arouse a libidinous passion ... in the mind of a modest woman." (I quote exactly! The court failed to define "modest woman.")[57] Yet further, it is held that any book is obscene "which is unbecoming, immodest...."[58] Obviously, this last decision throws open the door to endless imbecilities, for its definition merely begs the question, and so makes a reasonable solution ten times harder. It is in such mazes that the Comstocks safely lurk. Almost any printed allusion to sex may be argued ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... hand, a nation whose morals are pure has fit terms for everything, and these terms are always right because they are rightly used. One could not imagine more modest language than that of the Bible, just because of its plainness of speech. The same things translated into French would become immodest. What I ought to say to Emile will sound pure and honourable to him; but to make the same impression in print would demand a like purity of ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... she lay on his breast, her face upturned to his, her eyes, glowing with woman's tender passion and woman's glad surrender, meeting his fearlessly and yet with a little pleading in them, as if she were begging him not to think her immodest. ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... damned in hell when they behold in their companions in misery those who aided and abetted them in sin, those whose words sowed the first seeds of evil thinking and evil living in their minds, those whose immodest suggestions led them on to sin, those whose eyes tempted and allured them from the path of virtue. They turn upon those accomplices and upbraid them and curse them. But they are helpless and hopeless: it is ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... flooded with obscene pictures and immodest representations which corrupt our youths? If the agents of Satan employ means so vile for a bad end; if they are cunning enough to pour through the senses into the hearts of the unwary the insidious poison of sin, by placing before them lascivious portraits, in God's name, why ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... corrupted by their company, the kept women, the milliners, the shop girls, saleswomen, actresses, singers, the girls of the opera, the ballet-dancers, upper servants, chambermaids, etc. Most of these creatures excite the passions of many people, but they would consider it immodest to inform a lawyer, a mayor, an ecclesiastic or a laughing world of the day and hour when they surrendered to a lover. Their system, justly blamed by an inquisitive world, has the advantage of laying upon them no obligations towards men in general, towards ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... of Men, went in unto them, and that from such a Conjunction, Giants were Born, so we may infer that if Angels can mix Amorously with Women, and engender Children, the Devils who only differ from Angels by their Fall, may also draw Women into immodest Pleasures, and Defile them with their Embraces: But it is highly inconsistent to suppose that our Creator who is all Purity, would permit the worst of Spirits to propogate ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... ladies seem convinced, though puzzled; but that is because they don't detect your fallacy. You confound the woman and the fashion. An immodest woman may be modestly dressed; and if it is the fashion to be so, she most certainly will, unless she is able herself to set a fashion more suited to her taste. For usually a woman's care of her costume is in inverse proportion to that she takes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... her on dress reform! Her one chance for social success is her beauty. She simply terrifies me the way she says right out the first thing that comes into her mind. It will take me months to teach her the first lesson in society, that the most immodest thing in the world is ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... that it is immodest to use I is a superstition. Undue repetition of I is of course awkward; but entire avoidance of it ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... who would join us, whereof there were as many as could sit comfortably to the long table. This feast was very joyous and merry, and except that the parson would be facetious over his bottle, nothing unseemingly or immodest was said. So we stayed at table in exceeding good fellowship till the candles were lit, and then the parson, being very drunk, we made a pretext of carrying him home to break up our company and leave the happy ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... accepted his reproaches humbly. It was easy for her to believe that she had been immodest and forward in her solicitude. Probably Mr. Roberts—and everybody else, for that matter—thought she could not be a nice girl, since ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... account as hatred of the Christians. Now, then, if the hatred be of the name, what guilt is there in names? What charge against words? Unless it be that any word which is a name have either a barbarous or ill-omened, or a scurrilous or an immodest sound. If the Tiber cometh up to the walls, if the Nile cometh not up to the fields, if the heaven hath stood still, if the earth hath been moved, if there be any famine, if any pestilence, 'The Christians to the lions' is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the depths of qualities and things. Cleaving and circling here swells the soul of the poet: yet is president of itself always. The depths are fathomless, and therefore calm. The innocence and nakedness are resumed— they are neither modest nor immodest. The whole theory of the special and supernatural, and all that was twined with it or educed out of it, departs as a dream. What has ever happened, what happens, and whatever may or shall happen, the vital laws enclose all: they are sufficient ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... garment, is all their covering. But it must be remembered that the great aim of this people seems to be simplicity, therefore we wont too minutely scrutinize their deficiencies of costume; there is much to be said in its favour, it is neither immodest nor suggestive. The feet are clothed in a short sock, with a division at the great toe for the passage of the sandal strap. These sandals or clogs are the most ungainly articles in their wardrobe. A simple lump of wood, the length and breadth of the foot, about ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... off-key tenor while dressing in the morning. She had also discovered that his bed must run along the same wall against which her bed was pushed. Gertie told herself that there was something almost immodest about being able to hear him breathing as he slept. He had tumbled into bed with a little ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... But no more like her oriental red Than brick to coral, or live things to dead. {245b} Why did he then thus counterfeit her looks? If she did blush, 'twas tender modest shame, Being in the sacred presence of a king; If he did blush, 'twas red immodest shame To vail his eyes amiss, being a king; If she looked pale, 'twas silly woman's fear To bear herself in presence of a king; If he looked pale, it was with guilty fear To dote ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... her that gave aim to all thy oaths, And entertain'd 'em deeply in her heart. How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root! O Proteus, let this habit make thee blush! Be thou ashamed that I have took upon me 105 Such an immodest raiment, if shame live In a disguise of love: It is the lesser blot, modesty finds, Women to change their shapes than ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... imposes upon them—to the neglect of all discipline, and to the disregard of the penalties. Those that have been transported to this country live in a manner which does not in any thing show that they have made a vow to God of even trifling privations. Their lives are so free and immodest that it might be suspected, with reason, that they had renounced only that which they could not, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... physician, Giambattista della Porta, and finally was acquired by Doctor Fludd. In reply to this attack, the latter published a vigorous refutation, under the following caption: "The Squeezing of Parson Foster's Spunge, wherein the Spunge-bearer's immodest carriage and behaviour towards his brethren, is Detected; the Bitter Flames of his slanderous reports are, by the sharp Vinegar of Truth, Corrected and quite Extinguished, and lastly, the virtuous validity of his Spunge in wiping away the Weapon-Salve, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... poison, nor advise its use. I will never give a criminal draught to a woman. I will maintain the purity and integrity of my art. Wherever I go, I will abstain from all mischief or corruption, or any immodest action. If ever I hear any secret I will not divulge it. If I keep this oath, may the gods give me success in life and in my art. If I break this oath, may all the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Wild the Great there is enough of sustained intellectual effort to furnish forth a hundred modern novels; but you only think of Fielding reeling home from the Rose, and refuse to consider him except as sitting down with his head in a wet towel to scribble immodest and ruffianly trash for the players! A consequence of all these exercises in sentiment and imagination has been that, while many have been ready to deal with Fielding as the text for a sermon or the subject of an essay, as the point of a moral or the adornment of ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... could not forget that," replied the maiden. As she spoke, she hastily withdrew her eyes from an immodest picture, on which they had accidentally rested; and, blushing deeply, she added, "But there is something so life-like in that slumbering marble, that for a moment I almost feared Eudora would ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... are seen: the women wear a short striped skirt sarong-wise, but bare the bosom. However, they are beginning to cover it, just as a few of them had regular umbrellas. They leave the navel uncovered; to conceal it would be immodest. The men are naked save the gee-string, unless a leglet of brass wire under the knee be regarded as a garment; the bodies of many of them are tattooed in a leaf-like pattern. A few men had the native blanket hanging from their shoulders, but leaving the body bare ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... end of the honeymoon that I think it can hardly be immodest if I emerge from private life and write you a letter, more particularly as I want to know something. I went yesterday on an expedition to see the remains of a forest which exists between tidemarks at a place called Amroth, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... in a house near by, a middle-class, flamboyant, jerry-built affair. How its owner would have gasped if he could have seen the Field-Marshal conducting the British share of the great battle in his immodest "salle a manger!" ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... and have been therefore regarded immoral. And herein lies an important point to be considered. Anything which is radically unlike prevailing standards or styles to which we have become accustomed will impress most persons as being immodest or indecent. The unusual in dress is usually denounced as immoral because we are all prone to allow our prejudice to obscure our reason and o'ersway our judgment. This point must be recognized before any real reform ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... postnuptial between the sexes are of the strictest kind. All evil conduct from adultery down to immodest gazing is punished with appropriate fines and even with death. The fines vary from the equivalent of three slaves down to the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... character puzzles you. You invited me to drink a cocktail to try me. Don't protest, for really I do not wonder at it, or blame you in the least. How could you think otherwise? My position was a strange one, bound to awaken suspicion; my conduct immodest. Yet you must accept my explanation, for I shall tell the truth. I was never guilty of such an act before—never! Perhaps because I was never tempted. There is a home I could return to, and a mother, but they ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... men. The visits of male acquaintances were continually received in their bed-rooms, and that, also, before they had risen in the morning. This, perhaps, was too much, though certainly far less indecent than the other most revolting of all immodest practices which I have just mentioned. Others, again, admitted no visitors further than their dressing-room, and thought themselves very scrupulous; but there were others, as there must be at all times, who, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... [FOOTNOTE: An expression from Schiller's William Tell, Act IV, Scene 3.] to drink, that it will lie down quiet and forgotten, in its old corner.—One ought to learn anew about cruelty, and open one's eyes; one ought at last to learn impatience, in order that such immodest gross errors—as, for instance, have been fostered by ancient and modern philosophers with regard to tragedy—may no longer wander about virtuously and boldly. Almost everything that we call "higher culture" is based upon the spiritualising and intensifying of CRUELTY—this is ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... his eye showed that he was not so profoundly shocked as his penitent appeared to be. "But go to graver matters. Immodesty, said you? I shall be very sorry, if this is so. You did not use to be immodest." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... special praise that women were excluded from among their number: "Our players are not as the players beyond sea, a sort of squirting baudie comedians, that have whores and common curtezans to play womens parts, and forbeare no immodest speech or unchast action that may procure laughter; but our sceane is more stately furnisht than ever it was in the time of Roscius, our representations honorable and full of gallant resolution, not consisting like theirs of a Pantaloun, a whore ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... of the sight were redeemed; lascivious looks, immodest curiosity, the pride of spectacles, unwholesome readings, tears shed ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... that his most brilliant theatrical successes were won. For the next few years he continued to produce comedies and farces with great rapidity, both under his own name, and under the pseudonym of Scriblerus Secundus. Most of these show manifest signs of haste, and some are recklessly immodest. We shall confine ourselves to one or two of the best, and do little more than enumerate the others. Of these latter, the Coffee-House Politician; or, The Justice caught in his own Trap, 1730, succeeded ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... had the good taste not to mention names, and I had been brazenly forward, deliberately calling attention to myself when there was no need. Oh, it was sickening! I hated myself, I hated with all my heart the girls who had prompted me to such immodest conduct. I wished the ground would yawn and snap me up. I was ashamed to look up at my friends on the platform. What was Miss Dillingham thinking of me? Oh, what a fool I had been! I had ruined my own triumph. I had disgraced myself, and my friends, and poor Mr. Swan, and ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... those who fled from persecution became the most bitter persecutors. Those who were found dancing or drunk were ordered to be publicly whipped, in order to deter others from such practices. The custom of wearing long hair was deemed immodest, impious and abominable. All who were guilty of swearing rashly, might purchase an exemption from punishment for a schilling; but those who should transgress the fourth commandment were to be condemned to banishment, and such as should worship images, to death. Children were to ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... modest, childishly pure confession which she, kneeling in the confessional, was whispering in my ears; because I felt her breath upon my cheeks and in every trembling nerve of my being. And one day, overcome by his glowing passion, the monk so far forgot his sworn duty as to confess his immodest and insane love for the wife ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... bit taller," she admitted carefully. "It isn't dreadfully immodest, is it, for one to hold converse with her captor? I am ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... arranged. It wasn't possible for us to be introduced by any one who knew us both, so I had either to break off your acquaintance after that first conversation, or conduct myself as I have been doing. I think it's a very hard position. My sisters would call me an immodest girl, but I don't think it is true. I may perhaps come to feel you as a girl ought to when she marries, and how else can I tell unless I meet you and talk with you? And your position is just the same. I don't blame you for a moment; I think it would be ridiculous to blame ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... they appear to mix with the other foliage; or else they should be seen at some distance. Other varieties of the common white poplar or abele are occasionally useful, although most of them sprout badly and may become a nuisance. But the planting of these immodest trees is so likely to be overdone that one scarcely dare recommend them, although, when skillfully used, they may be made to produce most excellent effects. If any reader has a particular fondness ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... law of 1634 against "new and immodest fashions" is too remarkable to be omitted. It reads as follows: "Moreover, it is agreed, if any man shall judge the wearing of any the forenamed particulars, new fashions, or long hair, or anything ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back that he had a full view high up above her knee where no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... and that the Business at Church is a meer idle Ceremony. Who knows not that the Difference between obscene and modest Words expressing the same Action, consists only in the accessary Idea, for there is nothing immodest in Letters and Syllables. Fornication and Adultery are modest Words: because they express an Evil Action as criminal, and so as to excite Horrour and Aversion: Whereas Words representing the Pleasure rather than the Sin, are for this Reason indecent and dishonest. Your Papers ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Balonda men consists of the softened skins of small animals, as the jackal or wild cat, hung before and behind from a girdle round the loins. The dress of the women is of a nondescript character; but they were not immodest. They stood before us as perfectly unconscious of any indecorum as we could be with our clothes on. But, while ignorant of their own deficiency, they could not maintain their gravity at the sight of the nudity ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... quite too much. You surely remember that awful scarlet dress? Well, all her clothes have arrived, or remained, at a simplicity and vividness that is—well—immodest." ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... respiration, and is cheering because of rhythm. One wishes that it could be unqualifiedly commended. But when we take into account the late hours, the heated rooms, the promiscuous company, the late unwholesome suppers, the improper dress, the dangers of taking cold, the immodest freedom of the round dance, and the not infrequent evils resulting therefrom, it would seem unwise to commend an exercise so surrounded by objectionable concomitants. It is observed that young church members ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... sat the ladies; and on the second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them. They walked and moved with the same majestic grace, which Milton describes our general mother with. There were many amongst them, as exactly proportioned as ever any goddess was drawn by the pencil of a Guido or Titian,—and most of their skins ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... grave cause, subject to writing. At the very outset Monseigneur Hierome Cornille, a man approaching eighty years, of great sense, justice, and sound understanding, suspected some spitefulness in this cause, although he was not partial to immodest girls, and had never been involved with a woman in his life, and was holy and venerable, with a sanctity which had caused him to be selected as a judge, all this not withstanding. As soon as the depositions were completed, and the poor wench heard, it remained clear that although ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... head of the household came to the door in his shirt and rubbed his eyes as if only half awake. His legs trembled with the cold while he waited for our explanations, and it was not till we were admitted that he thought of his immodest exposure. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... that in Europe would have been accounted perfect, which is to say that she was a thought too slender for Oriental taste; she moved along beside her lord with a sinuous, languorous grace, gently stirring her fan of ostrich plumes. She was unveiled; indeed it was her immodest habit to go naked of face more often than was seemly, which is but the least of the many undesirable infidel ways which had survived her induction into the Faith of Islam—a necessary step before Asad, who was devout to the point of bigotry, would consent to make her his wife. He ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... which luxury and appetite reached their climax, was in mid-current. The strong wines of Messina and Cyprus had already done their work. The hall resounded with ribald joke and merriment. Towards the end of such a feast it was the custom for immodest women to be introduced, who, by their gestures, imitated scenes in certain well-known mythologies, and still further inflamed the passions of the banqueters. But instead of the usual troupe, which Herod probably kept for such ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... language, and then go blandly about their business without suggesting any remedy. I am not that kind of person. I have shown that the German language needs reforming. Very well, I am ready to reform it. At least I am ready to make the proper suggestions. Such a course as this might be immodest in another; but I have devoted upward of nine full weeks, first and last, to a careful and critical study of this tongue, and thus have acquired a confidence in my ability to reform it which no mere superficial culture could ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fined, imprisoned, pilloried, and had his ears cropped. Coleridge said that Shakspere was coarse, but never gross. He had the healthy coarseness of nature herself. But Beaumont and Fletcher's pages are corrupt. Even their chaste women are immodest in language and thought. They use not merely that frankness of speech which was a fashion of the times, but a profusion of obscene imagery which could not proceed from a pure mind. Chastity with them is rather a bodily accident than a virtue ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... as I recall it, a-makin' eyes and kickin' up her heels that immodest you wouldn't b'lieve. Looked right at me, too. ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... personal taste, in a rich gown of black lace, which came up to her throat; and she did not subject me to that embarrassment I always feel in the presence of a lady who is much decolletee, when I sit next her or face to face with her: I cannot always look at her without a sense of taking an immodest advantage. Sometimes I find a kind of pathos in this sacrifice of fashion, which affects me as if the poor lady were wearing that sort of gown because she thought she really ought, and then I keep my eyes firmly on hers, or avert them altogether; but there are ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... "The immodest sex, taking advantage of Moli'ere's decease without heirs of his brains, set to work in public to teach ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... been turned into the pastoral Arcadia, so full is it of shepherds and sheep-folds; nor is there a spot in it where the name of the fair Leandra is not heard. Here one curses her and calls her capricious, fickle, and immodest, there another condemns her as frail and frivolous; this pardons and absolves her, that spurns and reviles her; one extols her beauty, another assails her character, and in short all abuse her, and all ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... think I should like to live here," she continued; and then there came to her a thought of Grey, who would probably one day be master of the place, and she blushed guiltily, as if she had said some immodest thing. ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... clergy, to reprove him: and whilst a numerous assembly of the ecclesiastics and laity were in consultation, the weak king ordered his daughter to appear before them, and in the presence of all to present her son to St. Germanus, and declare that he was the father of the child. The immodest* woman obeyed; and St. Germanus, taking the child, said, "I will be a father to you, my son; nor will I dismiss you till a razor, scissors, and comb, are given to me, and it is allowed you to give them to your carnal ...
— History Of The Britons (Historia Brittonum) • Nennius
... than his lady had been; and the king jested, and said it was only the court fashion; to which Sir Walter returned for answer, that, however it might be the court fashion, it was scarce courtly to present an immodest to a modest woman. With that the king chafed, and said he supposed Lady Constantia's friendship for Dame Frances Russell was stronger than her loyalty, for she regarded Cromwell's daughter, both ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... pertaining to the sexual life is talked over very freely among boys, so that by the time the boy is of a marriageable age he is pretty well posted. With girls it is quite different. It would be considered very immodest for a girl to discuss such matters. She does not feel free even to talk with her mother or other adviser, and so she goes to the altar ignorant of many things she should know. Then during the first few days of married life this knowledge so overwhelms her and often gives her such a severe shock ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... love-letters,—Mr. Burgess has written to me once. I don't think that there can be anything immodest in opening a letter when it comes by the post. And as soon as I had it I determined to shew it to you. As for what happened before, when Mr. Burgess spoke to me, which was long, long after all that about Mr. Gibson was over, I told him that it couldn't ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Rome in the rise and practice of the hierarchy (too well known to require any further illustration) is far more immodest. ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... pointing out the path of duty; teaching respect for the opinion of the world, for tradition, decency and order. It is thanks to conscience that a man is true and a woman modest. Not that Thumbeline could be called immodest, unless a baby can be so described, or an animal. But could I be called 'true'? I greatly fear that I could not—in fact, I know it too well. I meant no harm; I was greatly interested; and there was always before me the real difficulty of making Mary understand that something was ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... this? Do I love her, that I desire to hear her speak again, and feast upon her eyes? What is it I dream on? The cunning enemy of mankind, to catch a saint, with saints does bait the hook. Never could an immodest woman once stir my temper, but this virtuous woman subdues me quite. Even till now, when men were fond, I smiled, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of, want of sense —, emblems right meet of Deed, so shines a good —without a name Deeds, ill done —, we live in Deep, vasty, spirits from the —yet clear —, in the lowest, a lower Deer, let the strucken, go weep Defence, immodest words admit of no Defer, 'tis madness to Degrees, fine by Deliberation sat and public care Delight to pass away the time —in this fool's paradise Delightful task Democraty, wielded at will that fierce Den, beard the lion in his Denied, lie comes too near who comes to be Denmark, something ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... Mrs. Alderman Head,' said Purcell sarcastically. 'Lucy knows very well what I think of an unchristian and immodest amusement. Other people must decide according to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
