"Indecency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Marsh Level; Holt Hill—Oxton; Wallasey Pool; Birkenhead Priory; Tunnel under the Mersey; Tunnel at the Red Noses—Exploration of it; The Old Baths; Bath Street; The Bath Woman; The Wishing Gate; Bootle Organs; Sandhills; Indecency of Bathers; The Ladies Walk; Mrs. Hemans; the Loggerheads; Duke Street; Campbell the Poet; Gilbert Wakefield; Dr. Henderson; Incivility of the Liverpool Clergy; Bellingham—His Career and History, Crime, Death; Peter Tyrer; ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... might not, as he had heard was the case at other executions, "roll about the scaffold and be mangled and disfigured." "For I would not," he added, "though it may be but a trifling matter, that my remains should appear with any needless indecency after the just sentence of the law is satisfied." He spoke calmly and easily on all these particulars, nor did he even shrink when told that his head would be held up and exhibited to the multitude as that of a traitor. "He knew," he said, "that it was usual, and it ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... prosperous and happy. Such was the situation of Sujah Dowlah, the Nabob of Oude, and such the condition of Oude under his government. With his pedigree, I believe, your Lordships will think we have nothing to do in the cause now before us. It has been pressed upon us; and this marks the indecency, the rancor, the insolence, the pride and tyranny which the Dows and the Hastings, and the people of that class and character, are in the habit of exercising ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... {16} The new century was not long in, the Regent Philip of Orleans had not long been in power, before France showed that Versailles had ceased to control her literature. A new Rabelais with an 18th century lisp, Montesquieu, by seasoning his Lettres Persanes with a sauce piquante compounded of indecency and style, succeeded in making the public swallow some incendiary morsels. The King of France, he declared, drew his power from the vanity of his subjects, while the Pope was "an old idol to whom incense is ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... Stephens attempts to show existed once in Yucatan,[149-4] rests entirely by his own statement on a fancied resemblance of no value whatever, and the arguments of Lafitau to the same effect are quite insufficient. There is a decided indecency in the remains of ancient American art, especially in Peru (Meyen), and great lubricity in many ceremonies, but the proof is altogether wanting to bind these with the recognition of a fecundating principle ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... clinging like damp linen, revealed the delicate outlines of her shape; over this she wore a red drapery, numerous folds of which, gradually lengthening as they fell by her side, took the graceful curves of a Greek peplum. This voluptuous garment of the pagan priestesses lessened the indecency of the rest of the attire which the fashions of the time suffered women to wear. To soften its immodesty still further, Marie threw a gauze scarf over her shoulders, left bare and far too low by the red drapery. She wound ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... must do it with indecency. You will have the goodness to remember that if I don't look after your interests, no one else will. It's perhaps fortunate for you that I have a good deal of the man of business about me. Dolomore thought I was a dreamy, literary fellow. I don't say ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... life would be, if every rogue was found out, and flogged coram populo! What a butchery, what an indecency, what an endless swishing of the rod! Don't cry out about my misanthropy. My good friend Mealymouth, I will trouble you to tell me, do you go to church? When there, do you say, or do you not, that you ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... occasion, when offered her full value? It could not be from ignorance of her character, for the circumstance which he adduces as a proof of her shameless depravity, and which I have omitted on account of its indecency, occurred, it would appear, not less than ten years ago. Yet, notwithstanding her alleged ill qualities and habits of gross immorality, he has not only constantly refused to part with her; but after thirteen long years, brings her to England as an attendant ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... to the pitch of your Voice) but with this caution, that you reckon how many Notes you have above or below it, that your Voice in its pitch may be so managed as to reach them both without Squeaking or Grumbling, or any harsh or rough Indecency of Sound. ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... do I mean? That's the worst of music! I want to dance, laugh, eat pink cakes, yellow cakes, drink thin, sharp wine. Or an indecent story, now—I could relish that. The older one grows the more one likes indecency. Hah, hah! I'm laughing. What at? You said nothing, nor did the old ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... express himself on this occasion have become memorable. "Where the devil, Master Lodovick," said the reverend personage, "have you picked up such a parcel of trumpery?" The original term is much stronger, aggravating the insult with indecency. There is no equivalent for it in English; and I shall not repeat it in Italian. "It is as low and indecent," says Panizzi, "as any in the language." Suffice it to say that, although the age was not scrupulous in such matters, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... How can we fancy a lie told by a gentleman in golden uniform, or a lady in a lace dress? But if the defenders of the civilization of Rossia and of the noble manners of its aristocracy knew all the cruel judgments of Rossian masters, the lewdness, recklessness, indecency, and shallowness often concealed beneath their artificial good breeding and apparent courtesy, they would learn that laces may cover coarse tissues, and gold hide corroded brass. The gaudy dress and uniform serve but to permit ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the dance are sometimes in imitation of those of animals,[218] sometimes spontaneous, and sometimes from our point of view indecent. The indecency and obscenity originated and has continued in a period when no moral element entered into such performances—they simply follow animal instincts and impulses, are controlled by them, and appear usually not to affect the customs relating to marriage and chastity (so in the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... does that band play for here to-day? She has been dead and I so short a time!... Her little hands are hardly cold as yet; But they can show such cruel indecency As to let ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... "When indecency formed the staple of our plays, and a drunken debauch formed the inevitable sequence of every dinner-party, a fool and a fox-hunter were synonymous. Squire Western was the representative of a class, which, however, was not more ridiculous ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... Captain Cook wrote, "that our friends in the South Seas have not even the idea of indecency, with respect to any object or any action, but this was by no means the case with the inhabitants of New Zealand, in whose carriage and conversation there was as much modest reserve and decorum with respect to actions, which yet in their opinion were not criminal, as are to be found among the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... occurred. The captain broke loose upon the dead man like a thunderclap. Oaths rolled from his lips in a continuous stream. And they were not namby-pamby oaths, or mere expressions of indecency. Each word was a blasphemy, and there were many words. They crisped and crackled like electric sparks. I had never heard anything like it in my life, nor could I have conceived it possible. With a turn for literary expression myself, and a penchant ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... inoffensive modern variety to which we are accustomed, but of the fierce, aggressive early type,—instead of proceeding against them for their overt offenses against the state, disorderly behavior, public indecency, contempt of court, sedition, they proceeded against them distinctly as Quakers, thus putting themselves in the wrong and conceding to their adversaries that crown of martyrdom for which their souls were hankering and to which they were not ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... surely say that it ought not to be permitted. Yet the number of people who attach themselves to this life continually increases, for year by year the prison commissioners tell us that the number of persons imprisoned for vagrancy, sleeping out, indecency, etc., continues to increase, and that short terms of imprisonment only serve as periods of recuperation for them, for in prison they are healed of their sores and cleansed from ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... hater of law, order, and "free-men." What he might have been before mattered not. He was now a prisoner, and—thrust into a suffocating barracoon, herded with the foulest of mankind, with all imaginable depths of blasphemy and indecency sounded hourly in his sight and hearing—he lost his self-respect, and became what his gaolers took him to be—a wild beast to be locked under bolts and bars, lest he should break out and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... imperviousness to a joke with which he was credited; because he could not take in all the little infinity of homely facetiae in which the Madigans lived and had their being. Besides, it was pleasant and exciting, being leagued with Kate against Aunt Anne, who was known to have positively had the indecency to speak openly upon the subject, and in favor of ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... keeps this great end in view, it answers a valuable purpose to the community. The poet should use his pen to reform, not to indulge a corrupt age, as was the case in the days of Charles the Second, when indecency was brought on ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... the Restoration, the influence of French standards in literature is obvious. The drama declined, partly from the earlier antagonism of the Puritans, and partly from the rage for indecency which infected the dramatic writers,—even those of much ability, as Congreve,—and defiled the stage. The Pilgrim's Progress of Bunyan (1628-88) is written in a plain, unaffected style, and is the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Napoleon but by those whose fall had been his own rise; for Godoy was sent to Bayonne by Murat, and the old King and Queen hurried after their son in order to witness his humiliation. Ferdinand's parents attacked him with an indecency that astonished even Napoleon himself; but the Prince maintained his refusal until news arrived from Madrid which terrified him into submission. The irritation of the capital had culminated in an armed conflict between the populace and the French ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... that piece of writing entire in our extract. We are informed that the circulation in England of the works of Rabelais, in translation, has been interfered with by the English government, on the ground of their indecency. We are bound to admit, that, if any writings whatever were to be suppressed on that ground, the writings of Rabelais are certainly entitled to be of the number. It is safe to say that never, no, not even in the boundless license of the comedy of Aristophanes, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... without having any data to guide her. In all my life I never heard a conversation resembling that of the farrier and the rest in the remotest degree. In the first place, one element of public-house talk—the overt or sly indecency—is left out. In an actual public-house parlour the man who can bring in a totally new tale of a dirty nature is the hero of the evening. Then the element of scandal is missing. When men of vulgar mind meet together, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... afterwards to the Boers and General Louis Botha? For accepting the principle of popular government, that the majority must rule, Bagot was assailed with an inhuman vehemence, which astounds the reader of the present day by its venom and its indecency. Because the governor was a just man and loyally followed constitutional usage, he was abused as a fool and a traitor not only in the colony but in England. It is small wonder that his health began to give ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... but I must enter a loud, a screeching protest against the Arab brutes—the schieks being the very worst of the brutes—who have these monuments in their hands. Their numbers, the filthiness of their dress—or one might almost say no dress—their stench, their obscene indecency, their clattering noise, their rapacity, exercised without a moment's intercession; their abuse, as in this wise: "Very bad English-man; dam bad; dam, dam, dam! Him want to take all him money to the grave; but no, no, no! Devil hab him, and money too!" This, be it remembered, from ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... carrion and lock him up!" said De Launay, calmly. "I accuse him of public indecency, spreading scandal and criminal slander. He has said that I, the General de Launay, was kicked out of the army for unmentioned crimes. I will prefer charges against him in ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... or working hours. Few parents have any conception of the power of the playground over moral character. Perhaps a smaller number realize how dangerous are some of the elements at work there. Play of itself is immensely valuable, but play means playfellows, and some of these are simply purveyors of indecency and moral contagion in conversation and act. We are required to send our children to school; we have a right to demand freedom from moral contagion. Do you know what goes on in secret places on the grounds? Do you know that the vilest ideas and phrases are current in pictures, cards, on ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... spiritual sister then; faith, she is a pretty little rogue." I was so bashful. I asked Monsieur Fortin what a spiritual sister was, and he told me that they used formerly to call women so who lived with priests. They say that all had two or three spiritual sisters. What indecency! I ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... paths of gentility I could hope to tread. Ralph Limbert, who belonged to nobody and had done nothing—nothing even at Cambridge—had only the uncanny spell he had cast upon her younger daughter to recommend him; but if her younger daughter had a spark of filial feeling she wouldn't commit the indecency of deserting for his sake a deeply dependent and intensely ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... stream of its complex vision through this fantastic casement. It knows how to respond to the "diablerie" of the abysses with a reciprocal gesture. It is able to answer irony with irony; and to the appalling grotesqueness and indecency of the universe it has the power of retorting with an equally ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... fortune mellowing in the wintry smiles of Mrs. Tabitha Bramble. This is the best-preserved and most severe of all Smollett's characters. The resemblance to Don Quixote is only just enough to make it interesting to the critical reader, without giving offence to any body else. The indecency and filth in this novel are what must be allowed to all Smollett's writings.—The subject and characters in Count Fathom are, in general, exceedingly disgusting: the story is also spun out to a degree of tediousness in the serious ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... venture on indecencies herself, yet she had an amazing faculty for looking knowing and indecent beyond words, rolling her eyes and pitching her eyebrows in a certain way—oh, it was quite sufficient for her companions! And yet, if they had ever actually demanded a dirty story or a really open indecency from her, she ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... publicly exposed, without much private injury to the individuals who partake of them. It is, however, not a little remarkable, that till lately, on the very opposite side of the road, the neighbourhood has exhibited scenes of vice, immorality, and indecency, which it is the great object of this Charity if possible to prevent, by an endeavour to reclaim the miserable and deluded wretches from their evil ways. I remember the late John Home Tooke related in the House of Commons a curious anecdote, in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... French and English literature;" and of whose "brightness and felicity of genius there can be but one opinion," is disgraced, as the same writer tells us, by "a sceptical bias and great indifference of temperament;" and "has led the way" as an habitual offender, "to the indecency ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... ingenious world to correspond with us by letters, we hope they will not take it ill, that we say beforehand, no letters will be taken notice of by us which contain any personal reproaches, intermeddle with family breaches, or tend to scandal or indecency of any kind." ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Court, if it were questioned. He liked to recite his old triumphs. He especially plumed himself on his sagacity in dealing with one case which came before him. A complaint was made of a book well known at that time, the memoirs of a dissolute woman, which was full of indecency, but in which there could not be found a single, separate indecent sentence or word. The Major was at a loss for some time what to do in indicting it. If he set forth the whole book, it would give it an immortality on the records of the court ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... power to describe, being such as to make me feel as if I had broke into Bedlam. Their faces were all red and blotched with drink, and their heads covered with extravagant ringlets, which might never have seen a comb, while their dress was disordered to indecency, and the whole table was covered with a confusion of tankards and bottles and tobacco-pipes, not to mention playing-cards and dice. The huge man at their head bore a most terrifying aspect. He had an immense head set on a neck so short and thick ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... particular to be avoided is indecency. We are not only to forbear the repeating of such words as would give an immediate affront to a lady of reputation, but the raising of any loose ideas tending to the offence of that modesty which, if a young woman hath not something more than the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... indecency of any language held on your side of the water cannot exceed that of the universal tone of Opposition within these last four or five days. So long as they considered the case as desperate, they were affecting a ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... flesh, once he hears the Voice of God, and all eternity cleaves the earth at his feet with a glare of truth. Once in her loathsome life, that woman, brazen with sin and shame, flaunting on the pavement, the scorn and jest of decency and indecency, the fearful index of corrupt society,—even she has her hour of softness, when the tiny grass that creeps out from the stones comes greenly into a spring sunshine, and as with a divine whisper recalls to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... nothing can be more absurd, than to plead the difference of custom in different countries, in defence of these usages which cannot fail giving disgust to the organs and senses of all mankind. Will custom exempt from the imputation of gross indecency a French lady, who shifts her frowsy smock in presence of a male visitant, and talks to him of her lavement, her medecine, and her bidet! An Italian signora makes no scruple of telling you, she is such a day to begin a course of physic for ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Banneker looked up in the Sunday advertising the leading theater display, went to the musical comedy there exploited, and presently devoted a column to giving it a terrific and only half-merited slashing for vapid and gratuitous indecency. The play, which had been going none too well, straightway sold out a fortnight in advance, thereby attesting the power of the press as well as the appeal of pruriency to an eager and jaded public. Zucker left a note on the editorial desk warmly thanking ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... warlike action or exploit, when they again give themselves up with rapture to the pleasures of the dance, the females in particular, whose actions and shew of luxuriant pleasure are highly offensive to delicacy, exhibiting all the gradations of lascivious attitude and indecency. At this period of unusual delight, they are applauded by the men with rapturous ardour; but suddenly a feeling of shame strikes the minds of the young creatures with a humiliating sense of their display, and amidst these plaudits they hastily retire to the matrons, who ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... nothing save the payment. Cummings said frankly that the transaction was illegal from end to end, and that any assurance as to the bank's ceasing to pursue Clayte would amount to compounding a felony. Yet we all signed solemnly, the lawyer and I as witnesses. A financier's idea of indecency is something about money which hasn't formerly been done. The directors got sorer and sorer as Worth ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... that of Vincennes. "The common cemetery of Paris, hard by the Church of the Holy Innocents, opposite the street of St. Denis, had remained up to that time open to all passers, man and beast, without anything to prevent it from being confounded with the most profane spot; and the king, hurt at such indecency, had it enclosed by high stone walls, with as many gates as were judged necessary, which were closed every night." At the same time he had built, in this same quarter, the first great municipal market-places, enclosed, likewise, by a wall, with gates shut at night, and surmounted by a sort ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... my child," I interrupted. "In society you are scarcely respectable unless you go about half naked at night; but to do so in the daytime would be the grossest indecency. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... dromedary of inlaid silver-work with ruby eyes, which kept company, upon her mantelpiece, with a toad carved in jade, she would pretend now to be shrinking from the ferocity of the monsters or laughing at their absurdity, now blushing at the indecency of the flowers, now carried away by an irresistible desire to run across and kiss the toad and dromedary, calling them 'darlings.' And these affectations were in sharp contrast to the sincerity of some of her attitudes, notably her devotion to Our Lady of the Laghetto who had once, when ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... admirable than the different manifestations of meanness which take place among the travellers of the stage-coach, in the oft-quoted chapter where Joseph, having been robbed of everything, lies naked and bleeding in the ditch. There is Miss Grave-airs, who protests against the indecency of his entering the vehicle, but like a certain lady in the Rake's Progress, holds the sticks of her fan before her face while he does so, and who is afterwards found to be carrying Nantes under the guise ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... with a lowering hostility. The indecency of anyone being cheerful at such a time struck him forcibly. He would have liked mankind to have preserved till further notice a hushed gloom. He glared ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... he was as well a Whig and was running a Review that was Whig from the front cover to the back. Leigh Hunt was not merely a poet, for he was also a radical, and therefore in the opinions of Tories, a believer in immorality and indecency. No matter how innocent a title might appear, it was held in suspicion, on the chance that it assailed the Ministry or endangered the purity of England. William Gifford was more than merely the editor of the Quarterly Review, for he was as well a Tory editor whose duty it was to pry ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... the household and master of the ceremonies. His character is pointedly defined by St. Evremond, as "a lover whom the Precieuse is to love without enjoyment, and to enjoy in good earnest her husband with aversion." The scene offered no indecency to such delicate minds, and much less the impassioned style which passed between les cheres, as they called themselves. Whatever offered an idea, of what their jargon denominated charnelle, was treason and exile. Years passed ere ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... profaneness aimed at the negro man, and outrage every sense of decency in foul language addressed to the negro woman; but if one of the helpless creatures, goaded to resistance and crazed under tyranny, should answer back with impudence, or should relieve his mind with an oath, or retort indecency upon indecency, he did so at the cost to himself of one dollar for every outburst. The agent referred to in the statute was the well-known overseer of the cotton region, who was always coarse and often brutal, sure to be profane, and scarcely knowing the border-line between ribaldry and decency. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... strong Cockney accent, and without an aspirate in its place. But it was all richly acceptable to the audience, who laughed and cheered and joined in the chorus when asked. Here, as everywhere, the crowd delighted equally in songs of the sloppiest sentimentality and of humor nighest indecency. ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... brow, and consequently only by lawful rapine and injustice. If these young females could devote as much time from their amusements, as would be necessary for reflexion; or was there any person of humanity at hand who could inculcate the indecency of this kind of extravagance, I am persuaded that they have hearts good enough to reject with disdain, the momentary pleasure of making a figure, in behalf of the rational and lasting delight of contributing by their forbearance to the happiness ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... Don't we manage well! the original day was not once put off: lawyers and milliners were all ready canonically. It was as sensible a wedding as ever was. There was neither form nor indecency, both which generally meet on such occasions. They were married at my brother's in Pall-Mall, just before dinner, by Mr. Keppel; the company, my brother, his son, Mrs. Keppel, and Charlotte, Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Lady Betty Waldegrave, and I. We dined there; the Earl and new Countess got into ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... beside him, "ye're ower particular, I'm thinking. And it would be a verra hungry shark that wad hae the indecency to eat such a puir chicken-hearted creature as yourself, ye miserable cur! Are ye no ashamed to be whining before ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... The indecency of the whole place struck Mrs. Chailey forcibly. There were no blinds to shut out the sun, nor was there any furniture to speak of for the sun to spoil. Standing in the bare stone hall, and surveying a staircase of superb breadth, but cracked and carpetless, she further ventured the ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Prayer in the vulgar tongue. One would think it was something written by a realist. The adjectives would apply to the productions of George Moore, which are boycotted by Smith on account of their want of style or something of the sort. If George Moore could only learn the subtle art of indecency he might be tolerable. As it is, he is, like Miss Yonge, merely tedious and domesticated. He ought to associate more with educated people, instead of going perpetually to the dependent performances of the independent theatre, whose motto seems to be, 'If I don't shock you, I'm a Dutchman!' How ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... possibilities—literally enormous possibilities; but upon this dazzling vista, after one stare of amazement, he resolutely shut his eyes, even as a conscientious "scientist" should. After that, the Food of the Gods sounded blatant to the pitch of indecency. He was surprised he had used the expression. Yet for all that something of that clear-eyed moment hung about him and broke out ever ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... He was called upon to explain what He meant by a neighbour, selected as an example a heretic and an alien. Last year, we remember, it was represented by a pious writer in the John Bull newspaper, and by some other equally fervid Christians, as a monstrous indecency, that the measure for the relief of the Jews should be brought forward in Passion week. One of these humorists ironically recommended that it should be read a second time on Good Friday. We should have had no objection; nor do we believe that the day could be commemorated in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... little of the idolatry of India; and that little, though excessively absurd, is not characterised by atrocity or indecency. There is nothing of the sort at Ootacamund. I have not, during the last six weeks, witnessed a single circumstance from which you would have inferred that this was a heathen country. The bulk of the natives here are a colony ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... wife that day. I never hear the love of a man for his wife misnamed by the new disillusioned thinkers of our times that I do not recall the charming testimony of this husband against the injustice and indecency of ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... gave her satisfaction. Philip laughed savagely as he thought of her gentility and the refinement with which she ate her food; she could not bear a coarse word, so far as her limited vocabulary reached she had a passion for euphemisms, and she scented indecency everywhere; she never spoke of trousers but referred to them as nether garments; she thought it slightly indelicate to blow her nose and did it in a deprecating way. She was dreadfully anaemic and ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... came, the first febrile excitement of anticipation was succeeded by the apathy of an immense fatigue, and at the back of it all a loathsome sense of the positive indecency of his going. It was hunger that was driving him, the importunate hunger of many months, apparent in his lean face and shrunken figure. And after all could any dinner be worth the pain of dressing for it? ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the state. Above all he exhorted her to restrain her munificence, by which not only the Treasury fund, but also the revenues of the country could not fail ere long to be dangerously affected; representing to her the indecency of those who, profiting by the calamity with which France had so suddenly been stricken, were endeavouring to build up their own fortunes upon the misfortune of the nation, and who were aspiring to honours suited only to such as by their high birth and princely ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... omissions to be otherwise than conspicuous. Since the commencement of the Session there had been a series of articles in the "People's Banner" violently abusive of the Prime Minister, and in one or two of these the indecency of these exclusions had been exposed with great strength of language. And the Editor of the "People's Banner" had discovered that Sir Orlando Drought was the one man in Parliament fit to rule the nation. Till Parliament should discover ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Richard Edwardes, was acted at Court in 1566, and a second piece, called 'Palamon and Arsett' (also lost), was purchased by Henslowe in 1594. The non-Shakespearean residue of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' is disfigured by indecency and triviality, and is ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... canvas, exceeded even old Catherine's courage, though for a moment she had weighed the possibility. "Why, they might take a photograph of my child AND PUT IT IN THE PAPERS!" Mrs. Welland exclaimed when her mother's last plan was hinted to her; and from this unthinkable indecency the clan recoiled with a collective shudder. The ancestress had had to give in; but her concession was bought only by the promise that the wedding-breakfast should take place under her roof, though (as the Washington Square connection said) with the Wellands' house in easy reach ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... premeditation. I owned that I was hurried on by the violence of a youthful passion, and by a sudden impulse, which few other persons, in the like situation, would have been able to check: that I withdrew, at her command and entreaty, on the promise of pardon, without having offered the least indecency, or any freedom, that would not have been forgiven by persons of delicacy, surprised in an attitude so charming—her terror, on the alarm of fire, calling for a soothing behaviour, and personal tenderness, she being ready to fall into fits: my hoped-for happy day ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... opposed to the ministerial policy in America, Franklin had shown himself anxious to maintain the tie between Great Britain and her colonies. This attack upon his character made him one of England's enemies, and, as it proved, one of the most dangerous of them. His conduct is not palliated by the indecency of his opponents. It has been urged in his defence that, as Whately had shown the letters to certain English politicians, it was fair that Boston politicians should also see them, that as agent he was bound to do the best for his province, and that governments did intercept and use correspondence ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... you believe that out of regard to scruples he should omit in his operations those portions of his subject which might offer corrupted minds occasions to draw sallies out of an ill regulated imagination? It is not the essence of things that causes indecency; it is not the words, or even the ideas, it is the intent of him who utters them, and the depravity of him who listens. Madame de La Fayette was certainly the last woman in the world whom I would have suspected of reproaching me in that ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... indecency is this!" she cries commandingly. "How many times must it be repeated to you, that you must not jump out on the street during the day, and also—pfui!—only in your underwear. I can't understand how you have no conscience yourselves. Decent girls, who respect themselves, must not demean ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... temperance is a difficult question in which the enthusiastic women and ministers, backed by the well justified fears of psychiatrists, will hardly be on the same side as the sober judgment of scientists, unprejudiced physicians, and historians. In any case the saloon and its humiliating indecency must disappear and every temptation to intemperance should be removed. Above all, from early childhood the self-control has to be strengthened, the child has to learn from the beginning to know the limits to the gratification of his ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... King, one of the most accomplished of dilettanti, worst of poets, and silliest of men, had latterly put the coping-stone to a life of folly by engaging in a most bare-faced intrigue with the notorious Lola Montez. The indecency and infatuation of this last liaison—far more openly conducted than any of his former numerous amours—had given intense umbrage to the nobility whom he had insulted by elevating the ci-devant opera-dancer to ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... reason of the infidelity of Protestantism, its recognition of divorce and its indifference to a "thus saith the Lord," come forth as the defender of the Bible, the champion of the home and the guardian of the sacredness of marriage, concentrating all its thunders against the shame and indecency of divorce? ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... to listen to a vile diatribe against him delivered by the coarse and brutal Wedderburn, while members of the Privy Council who were present, with the single exception of lord North, "lost all dignity and all self-respect. They laughed aloud at each sarcastic sally of Wedderburn. 'The indecency of their behaviour,' in the words of Shelburne, 'exceeded, as is agreed on all hands, that of any committee of elections;' and Fox, in a speech which he made as late as 1803, reminded the House how on that memorable occasion 'all men tossed up their hats and clapped their ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... let matters rest on suspicion. He soon gave open proofs of his interest with the Confessor in procuring an office of some importance for one Rollo, a Roman of mean extraction and very despicable parts. When I represented to the king the indecency of conferring such an honor on such a fellow, he answered me that he was the archbishop's relation. 'Then, sir,' replied I, 'he is related to your enemy.' Nothing more passed at that time; but I soon perceived, by the archbishop's behavior, that the ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... the profane, the spendthrift, the drunkard, and the lowest prostitute of the street. They are found in all parts of the house; they crowd the gallery, and together should aloud the applause, greeting that which caricatures religion, sneers at virtue, or hints at indecency." Not only the actors and the onlookers of the average theater are vile, but all of the immediate associations of the playhouse must correspond with it. If not in the same building with the theater, in adjoining ones, ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... effeminacy and cowardice of the proconsul. After this pretended parade of his prisoner through the streets of the town, Surenas called a meeting of the Seleucian senate, and indignantly denounced to them the indecency of the literature which he had found in the Roman tents. The charge, it is said, was true; but the Seleucians were not greatly impressed by the moral lesson read to them, when they remarked the train of concubines that had accompanied Surenas himself in the field, and thought ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... the Lord's sake] [i.e. to beg for the rest of their lives. Warburton.] I rather think this expression intended to ridicule the puritans, whose turbulence and indecency often brought them to prison, and who considered themselves as suffering ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... embroidery, sewing; men reading papers; and, in fact, people doing every thing they would do in their own parlors. And all were graceful, kind, and obliging; not a word nor an act of impoliteness or indecency. No wonder the French adore Paris, thought I; in no other city in the world is a scene like this possible! No wonder that their hearts die within them at thoughts of exile ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... use, and the various shapes into which it might be transformed. The redemption of the abstracted person was then to become complete. The minister, a sensible man, argued with his parishioner upon the indecency and absurdity of what was proposed, and dismissed him. Next Sunday, the banns being for the first time proclaimed betwixt the widower and his new bride, his former wife, very naturally, took the opportunity of the following night to make him another visit, yet more terrific than the former. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... Judge's procedure, from the time of his arrival in the Province down to his departure therefrom. To the serious grounds of complaint which had unquestionably been given were added numerous delinquencies of the most petty and trifling nature. It was stigmatized as "a great indecency" that Judge Willis had been seen in a dress "but little according with his situation."[113] In view of the interests involved, and of the grave nature of the questions to be decided, it seems ludicrous that the appellant should have been called upon to reply to an accusation ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... smelling obtrusively of cigarettes, interposed, and declared it "would be indecent" to accept the Clause without further discussion. Nothing House shrinks from just now more abjectly than from charge of indecency. Accordingly debate stood over, and Thursday may, if the SAGE and his Party please, and the Closure is not invoked, be appropriated for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... let me quote from a well known anthropologist. "There is nothing more difficult for us to realize, civilized as we are, than the mental state of the man far behind us in cultivation, as regards what we call par excellence 'morality.' It is not indecency; it is simply an animal absence of modesty. Acts which are undeniably quite natural, since they are the expression of a primordial need, essential to the duration of the species, but which a long ancestral and individual education has trained us to subject to a rigorous restraint, and to the ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... see, and to my mind its size bordered on indecency. I like a box to look sufficiently large to take all I think a woman ought to need for a night's stay. Pauline often assures me it does hold everything, squashed tight, of course. I say it must be squashed very ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... in January when the theatres were offering an unusual variety of attractions. Dan had been obliged to refuse—more harshly than was agreeable—to take Marian to see a French farce that had been widely advertised by its indecency. Her cool announcement that she had read it in French did not seem to Harwood to make an educational matter of it; but he was obliged finally to compromise with her on another play. Her mother was quite comfortable, she averred; there was no reason ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... consider one matter of special importance in the book- -its turpiloquium. This stumbling-block is of two kinds, completely distinct. One is the simple, naive and child like indecency which, from Tangiers to Japan, occurs throughout general conversation of high and low in the present day. It uses, like the holy books of the Hebrews, expressions "plainly descriptive of natural situations;" and it treats in an unconventionally free and naked manner of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... telling a funny story, so laugh! People will think you are grieving over Rosalind.... But why in heaven's name isn't Jimmy at home this very moment,—with a wife and carpet-slippers and a large-size bottle of paregoric on his mantelpiece,—instead of here, grinning like a fool over some blatant indecency? He ought to marry; every young man ought to marry. Oh, you futile, abject, burbling twin-brother of the first patron that procured a reputation for Bedlam! why aren't you married—married years ago,—with a home ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... ear of an old father, unreasonable, despotic, but fondly loving, indecent in his own expressions of preference, and blind to the indecency of his appeal for protestations of fondness! Blank astonishment, anger, wounded love, contend within him; but for the moment he restrains ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... do for three men. Evidently Johnny Turk could not understand the Australian disregard for conventionality and his taking to nakedness when it meant comfort and there were no women within hundreds of miles to make him conscious of indecency. Clothes that couldn't be washed wouldn't keep one's body clean and became the home of an army that had no interest in the fight for democracy. The Australian showed his practical common sense in discarding as much as possible—but, say, ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... stands dim-lighted by pale lanterns; "Anda pulque!" Within the car was more politeness—or perhaps, more exactly, more unconscious consideration for others—than north of the Rio Grande. There were many women among us, yet all the night through there was not a suggestion of indecency or annoyance. Indian blood largely predominated, hardy, muscular, bright-eyed fellows, yet in conduct all were caballeros. Near me sat a family of three. The father, perhaps twenty, was strikingly handsome in his burnished copper skin, his heavy black hair, four or five inches long, hanging down ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... prostibulis veterum, if one of his relations had not charitably committed it to the flames. Before the sentence of banishment had been pronounced he wrote an apology, professed penitence, and was allowed to remain at Utrecht, where he composed several pamphlets. Being exiled on account of the indecency of his writings, he came to England, where he affected decorum, and his friend and countryman Isaac Vossius, who enjoyed the patronage of Charles II. and was Canon of Windsor, obtained for him a pension charged upon ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... party to assail this great prince's reputation during his life; but the joy which they and all his enemies in Europe showed at his death, is a proof of the terror in which they held him. Young as Esmond was, he was wise enough (and generous enough too, let it be said) to scorn that indecency of gratulation which broke out amongst the followers of King James in London, upon the death of this illustrious prince, this invincible warrior, this wise and moderate statesman. Loyalty to the exiled king's family was ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sheets, some in rugs, some little other than naked, or so loose that what covering they had fell from them in the shooting out of the cart, and they fell quite naked among the rest; but the matter was not much to them, or the indecency much to any one else, seeing they were all dead, and were to be huddled together into the common grave of mankind, as we may call it; for here was no difference made, but poor and rich went together. ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... That is the way of simple candor and naturalness. Treat the sex question as you would any other question. Don't treat it reverently; don't treat it rakishly. Treat it naturally. Don't insult your intelligence and lower your moral tone by thinking about either the decency or the indecency of matters that are familiar, undeniable, and unchangeable facts of life. Don't look on woman as mere female, but as human being. Remember that she has a mind and a heart as well as a body. In a sentence, don't join in the prurient clamor of "purity" ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... demanding a toll and money for passage, those who were with him were out of all patience at the indignity and shame it would be for a proconsul of Rome to pay tribute to a crew of wretched barbarians. But he little regarded their censure, and slighting that which had only the appearance of an indecency, told them he must buy time, the most precious of all things to those who go upon great enterprises; and pacifying the barbarous people with money, he hastened his journey, and took possession of Spain, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... door, for she could not bring herself to witness Mildred Caniper's betrayal of her decay to one who had never loved her: there was an indecency in allowing Miriam to see it. Helen leaned against the door and heard faint sounds of voices, and in imagination she saw the scene. Mildred Caniper sat in her comfortable chair by a bright fire, though it was now late June of a triumphant summer, and Miriam stood near, answering questions ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... bay as he spoke. The sun was setting. The water was exquisitely calm. It was a moment for the most luscious sentiment. Even Gorman, to whom sentiment is an abhorrent kind of indecency, ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... their wordings or their incidents, are always sung in a plaintive minor which goes oddly with the large-moulded virility of the singers. Some are sentimental, or religious, to the last degree, while others reek with an indecency of speech that would shroud the Tenderloin in blushes. Both kinds are equally popular in the camps, and both are of the most astounding naivete. Of the worst of them, even, the simple-minded woodsmen ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Emu hunting, is also displayed(3) at certain Mysteries of a given tribe, and that Baiame is spoken of as the hero of this ballet, no more deprives the Australian moral and religious teaching (at the Mysteries) of sacred value, than the stupid indecency whereby Baubo made Demeter laugh destroys the sacredness of the Eleusinia, on which Pindar, Sophocles and Cicero eloquently dwell. If the Australian mystae, at the most solemn moment of their lives, are shown a dull or dirty divine ballet d'action, what did Sophocles see, after taking a swim ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... but if [unless] a man have good will thereto, and but it be enforced by patience and by charity, and that men do it for God's sake, and in hope to have the bliss in heaven. The fellows of abstinence be temperance, that holdeth the mean in all things; also shame, that escheweth all dishonesty [indecency, impropriety], sufficiency, that seeketh no rich meats nor drinks, nor doth no force of [sets no value on] no outrageous apparelling of meat; measure [moderation] also, that restraineth by reason the unmeasurable appetite ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... eyes. But all these faces gaped with good-natured wonder, except the faces of his two guardians, and these expressed a state of conscientious worry. They were ridiculously anxious to suppress his sudden contortions, as one would some gross indecency. In the scuffle they hissed and swore under their breath. They were scandalized and ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... speaking, in his company, of the avarice with which the late Duke of Marlborough had been charged, some examples whereof being given, the Lord Bolingbroke was appealed to (who, having been in the opposite party, might perhaps, without the imputation of indecency, have been allowed to clear up that matter): "He was so great a man," replied his lordship, "that ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... Zinzendorf's sermons, but also from certain German hymn-books which had been published at Herrnhaag during the "Sifting Time"; and as he gave chapter and verse for his statements, he succeeded in covering the Brethren with ridicule. He accused them of blasphemy and indecency. They spoke of Christ as a Tyburn bird, as digging for roots, as vexed by an aunt, and as sitting in the beer-house among the scum of society. They sang hymns to the devil. They revelled in the most hideous ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... he does his best to make posterity hate him; and in private life he must have been constantly, like one of those strange self-lacerating persons in Dostoievsky, bringing to the front, with shameless indecency, his vanities and jealousies, his weakness and his manias. When he couldn't enjoy the society of some friendly lady—and his friends were nearly always uneasy under the infliction—he poured forth his childish petulances ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... glean any sense from them, as the Editor mixes up Nipperwick's view with Sidgeley's reasoning and Spreckendzedeutscheim's surmise with Donnerundblitzendorf's conjecture in a way that seems to argue a thorough unsoundness of mind and morals, a cynical insanity combined with a blatant indecency. He occasionally starts in a reasonable manner by giving one view as (1) and the next as (2). So far everyone is happy and satisfied. The trouble commences when he has occasion to refer back to some former view, when he will say: 'Thus we see (1) and (14) that,' etc. ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... 450, perhaps later. Suidas, who alone calls him Statius, says that he became a Christian and eventually a bishop—like Hellodorus, whom he imitated—but there is no evidence of this. Photius, while severely criticizing his lapses into indecency, highly praises the conciseness and clearness of his style, which, however, is artificial and laboured. Many of the incidents of the romance are highly improbable, and the characters, except the heroine, fail ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had accumulated there during her father's illness. There had been a going and coming of her maid, a thumping about of boxes, an ordering of four-wheelers; it appeared to old Mrs. Tramore that something of the objectionableness, the indecency, of her granddaughter's prospective connection had already gathered about the place. It was a violation of the decorum of bereavement which was still fresh there, and from the indignant gloom of the mistress of the house you might have inferred not so much that the daughter was about ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... others." The other case was that of a man who, "after that he had fallen into that frantic heresy, fell soon after into plain open frenzy besides." The man was confined in Bedlam, and when discharged went about disturbing public service in churches, and committing acts of great indecency. Devout, religious folk besought the Chancellor to restrain him, and accordingly, one day when he came wandering by Mores door, he caused him to be taken by the constables, bound to a tree in the street before the whole town, "and there they striped him with rods till he waxed weary, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... more flagrant infringements of propriety. In the whole of the Elizabethan drama there was no piece which presented so liberal a mass of indelicacy as Fletcher's Custom of the Country. Dryden, who was innocent of prudery, declared that there was "more indecency" in that drama "than in all our plays together." This was one of the pieces which Pepys twice saw performed after carefully reading it in his study, and he expressed admiration for the rendering of the widow's part by his pretty friend, Mistress Knipp. One has to admit that Pepys condemned the play ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... wish I could name him, but it would be an indecency to do so, for part of his charm is his complete unconsciousness of the affection, and even adoration, of the little group of younger men who call themselves his "fans"—I suppose that B——'s talk ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... does Comstockery conjure decency into the stomach and indecency into the bowels? But how rejoiced we should be that it is no worse than indecent to speak of the receptacle of the intestines by its common name. By some hocus pocus of which Comstockery is easily capable it might have been ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... our time is the cause of the temporal and eternal damnation of a multitude of men. There is a shamelessness among many in what is called high life that calls for vehement protest. The strife with many seems to be how near they can come to the verge of indecency without falling over. The tide of masculine profligacy will never turn back until there is a decided reformation in womanly costume. I am in full sympathy with the officer of the law who, at a levee in Philadelphia last winter, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... fellow countrymen of Africa. Above all the Golden Ass has kept his name alive to our own day. Even those who know nothing of the work as a whole, or who would relegate it to obscurity for its occasional gross indecency, know and love the story of Cupid and Psyche, if not in the original at least in many a work of art, and in the pages of La Fontaine, Walter Pater, or ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... from the taint which is to be detected in nearly all French fiction. The mark of the beast is set on not a little of the work done by the strongest men in France. M. Meilhac is too clean and too clever ever to delve in indecency from mere wantonness: he has no liking for vice, but his virtue sits easily on him, and though he is sound on the main question, he looks upon the vagaries of others with a gentle eye. M. Halevy, it seems to me, is made of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... magnificent, and most appalling. A man does not change as he crosses the threshold of the larger room. His personality remains the same, although the expression of it may be altered. Here we have material bodies in a material world—there, perhaps, ether bodies in an ether world. There is no indecency in reasonable speculation and curiosity about the life to come. One end of the thread is between our fingers, but we are haunted for the most part by the ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... was like some imp of Satan to drop into his ear the suggestion that princes, ere this, had been known to have two wives— one of them unofficial. He could have struck himself in the face for the iniquity of the suggestion; he flushed from the indecency of it; but so have sinners ever flushed as they set forth on the garish road to Avernus. Yet—yet somehow he must carry on the farce of being single until the adoption and the succession ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... self-command; therefore it has been honoured from a very early period in the moral history of civilised man. As a consequence of this, the senseless practice of celibacy has been ranked from a remote period as a virtue. (38. Lecky, 'History of European Morals,' vol. i. 1869, p. 109.) The hatred of indecency, which appears to us so natural as to be thought innate, and which is so valuable an aid to chastity, is a modern virtue, appertaining exclusively, as Sir G. Staunton remarks (38. 'Embassy to China,' vol. ii. p. 348.), to civilised life. This is shewn ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... applied lancet, to do you out of your property, and place you in such an awkward position that you cannot find a single article in that thick code of laws of yours which will enable you to bring an action against your uncle, because he had the indecency not ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... the old gentleman. "I hope you value his friendship sufficiently not to marry him. The man's a fraud—a flimsy, sickening fraud, like his poetry, begad, and that's made up of botany and wide margins and indecency in about equal proportions. It ain't fit for a woman to read—in fact, a woman ought not to read anything; a comprehension of the Decalogue and the cookery-book is enough learning for the best ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... inward. Do you see nothing that causes you to feel ashamed and foolish? Do you—you—fail to recognize the indecency of a woman of your mental age permitting herself to fancy that she is experiencing the authentic passions of youth? Are you capable of creating life? Can you love with unsullied memory? Have you the ideals of youth, the plasticity, the hopes, the illusions? Have you still even that power ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Denmark, writes as follows: "Whether it be the relation of cause and effect, or only what logicians call a "mere coincidence," the fact remains that in Rome, Russia, France, and England, political corruption, cruelty of government, sexual immorality—nay, downright, impudent, open, boastful indecency—have culminated, for the most part, in the eras of the influence of viragints ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... for instance, ever for a moment turn out her toes in walking. It is considered immodest to do so. Their code is, however, not so whimsical as this bit of etiquette might suggest. The intent is with them the touchstone of propriety. In their eyes a state of nature is not a state of indecency. Whatever exposure is required for convenience is right; whatever unnecessary, wrong. Such an Eden-like condition of society would seem to be the very spot for a something like the modern French school of art to have developed in. And yet it is just that study of ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... an awkward result. 'Leading the public life they did, in which they were exposed to every sort of society, the natural morality of the birds was so far lost, that they had become fluent in every term of reproach and indecency; and thunders of applause were elicited among the crowd of passengers by the aptness of their repartees.' In India, the taste is the same, but the habits different; a sketch of which we furnish from our Old Indian. The carpenter, she tells us, while planing the plank, which he ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... the biggest of which was that bathroom without water that had sent Annalise out on strike, was the information that a remittance would oblige. A remittance! Poor Fritzing. He crushed the paper in his hand and made caustic mental comments on the indecency of these people, clamouring for their money almost before the last workman was out of the place, certainly before the smell of paint was out of it, and clamouring, too, in the face of the Shuttleworth countenance and ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... to have his cake and eat it, if he might use so homespun a simile for a woman who had persistently lived for him and in him and then had made clear spaces about him by going away in the dignity of death. He wanted to breathe in the space she had left, and he also wanted to be spared the indecency of recognizing his relief. But Nan, studying the fire persistently, to allow his eyes all possible liberty of searching her face while she generously avoided his, was going on in what was evidently a preconceived task ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... ourselves, as you so well expressed it, to be passive subjects of public discussion. And these discussions, whether relating to men, measures, or opinions, were conducted by the parties with an animosity, a bitterness, and an indecency, which had never been exceeded. All the resources of reason and of wrath were exhausted by each party in support of its own, and to prostrate the adversary opinions; one was upbraided with receiving the anti-federalists, the other the old tories and refugees, into their bosom. Of this ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... a bitter imprecation, vowed, that he had not offered the least indecency; that he was frightened at the terrible manner I was taken with the fit: that he should desist from his attempt; and begged but to see me easy and quiet, and he would leave me directly, and go to his own bed. O then, said I, take with you this most wicked woman, this ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... artists of the two operas sing in private; was regaled with information concerning the remarkable decency or indecency of their private careers. She saw fashionable plays which instructed the public about squalor, murder, and men's mistresses, which dissected very skilfully and artistically the ethics of moral degradation. And ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... "Restrained within due limits of propriety; free from indecency or lewdness; not excessive or extreme; moderate." A Christian's apparel should be modest in cut, that is, in the way it is made; it should cover the body as a modest person would cover it, not displaying those parts that the prevailing standards of modesty require to ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... last the generous and genial fruit of English snobbishness. And it requires battery and barricade, songs in the streets, and ragged men dead for an idea, to produce and justify the terrible flower of French indecency. ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... of the growing vice of the age, and such a one, that as bad as I had been myself, it shocked my very senses. I began to nauseate the place I was in and, about all, the wicked practice; and yet I must say that I never saw, or do I believe there was to be seen, the least indecency in the house the whole time ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... Demetrius and Leontius staying in the midst of a routed army, to hear the cold mirth of the Lieutenant; and Demetrius afterwards appearing with a pistol in his hand, in the next age to Alexander the Great[3]. And for his Shepherd, he falls twice into the former indecency of wounding women. But these absurdities, which those poets committed, may more properly be called the age's fault than theirs. For, besides the want of education and learning, (which was their particular unhappiness) they wanted ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... one object from the beginning has been to force Meynell into the open. For his own sake—for the parish's—the situation must be brought to an end, in some way. The indecency of it at ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it again.—Fibi, put yourself into the attitude of Fame.—Young ladies, you have too much on. Take off those jackets. Replace stuff by gauze. The public like to see the female form exposed. Let the moralists thunder. A little indecency. Devil take it! what of that? Look voluptuous, and rush into wild melodies. Snort, blow, whistle, flourish, play the tambourine.—What a number ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Always. When it is prosecuted in the centre of a great crowd, in a dusty hall, on a warm midsummer day, it is also a disgusting dance. Night is its only appropriate time. The blinding, dazzling gas-light throws a grateful glare over the salient points of its indecency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl that dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the honour of it all, whose sweet, natural, and easy modesty, in person, behaviour, and conversation, forbid indecency, even in thought, much more in word, to approach you: insomuch that no rakes can be rakes in your presence, and yet they hardly know to what they owe ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... incurable diseases. If he is a true pastor, he will strive to keep the boys pure through expert instruction to parents, through personal advice, through wholesome activity and recreation, through courses on sexual hygiene in the public schools, through war on indecency in billboard, dance, and theater, through absolute chastity of speech, and, in general, through an ideal of life and service which shall lift the boys' ambitions out of the low and unhealthy levels of sense gratification. ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... Towns the impression that the dog had forgotten an essential part of its attire and was outraging decency. The ball of hair which had been allowed to grow on the dog's tail, and the circles of hair which ornamented its ankles, only served to intensify the impression of indecency. A pink ribbon round its neck completed the outrage. The animal had absolutely the air of a decked trollop. A chain ran taut from the creature's neck into the middle of a small crowd of persons gesticulating ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... accompaniment to the over-bold words—Peter saw a half-crown, a round, solid, terrible half-crown, pressed into Urquhart's unsuspecting hand. Oh, horror! Which was the worse, the invitation or the half-crown? Peter could never determine. Which was the more flagrant indecency—that he, young Margerison of the lower fourth, should, without any encouragement whatever, have asked Urquhart of the sixth, captain of the fifteen, head of his house, to come and stay with him; or that his near ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... her with I do not know what pretences. The affair was quite too much for me, and I made a feint of having heard the children calling me, and I went out into the hall. I felt that there was a sort of indecency in my witnessing that poor young thing's emotion; women might see it, but a man ought not. Perhaps old Hasketh felt the same; he followed me out, and when we were beyond hearing, even if he had spoken aloud, he dropped his voice to a thick murmur and said, "This has all been a mistake. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... heart threatens to break. Three short months and she has developed to the point of breaking off relations with a husband who has given her all the picture-palaces she wanted, but has also committed the unpardonable indecency of marrying her with the object of getting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... shapes of things within the room, with a weird distinctness that rent from them all likeness to the purpose they were made for, bereaved them of utility, of their matter-of-factness, presented them as skeletons, abstractions, with indecency in their appearance, like the naked nerves and sinews of a leg preserved in, spirit. The sound of the rain against the house stunned his power of thinking, he rose to shut his windows; then, returning to his bed, threw himself down again. He stayed there till the storm ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have very depraved ideas of what is true decency. We will here give an authentic newspaper account of a scene which all the pure in heart consider a public indecency, moral degrading, Christian disgracing and ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr |
