"Indecent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... recently at Washington and launched a double-shotted anathema at the female bike fiend. The Leaguers attribute to the bicycle craze "the alarming increase" in the number of courtesans, and call upon ministers and respectable women everywhere to denounce cycling by the sex as "vulgar and indecent." Nor do they stop there. The bike, in their opinion, is irremediably bad. While destroying the morals of the maid, it wreeks the prospective motherhood of the matron. It is provocative of diseases ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... their community. They subscribed for their library from their own earnings, and the books are mostly of their own selection. "It is remarkable," said his lordship, "that of their own accord they decided to reject every profane, indecent, or immoral work. It showed," he said, "how strong are the influences of the surroundings in reforming or ruining the character." It should be remarked that all these advantages are enjoyed for the same price charged by the most ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you ain't overworked, and you'll find out you'll be overworked and have a whole raft of young ones, and not a cent of wages, except enough to keep soul and body together, and just enough to wear so you won't be took up for going round indecent. I've seen enough of ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of embarrassment. For Maddox considered the ceremony of marriage an ignoble and barbaric bond. It degraded the woman, he declared, in making her a slave, and the man in that he accepted such a sacrifice. Jeanne had not argued with him. Until she were free, to discuss it with him seemed indecent. But in her own mind there was no doubt. If she were to be the helpmate of Proctor Maddox in uplifting the world, she would be Mrs. Proctor Maddox; or, much as he was to her, each would uplift the world alone. But she did not see the necessity of explaining all this ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... Miser, and the form had become a Scottish convention before Burns produced his Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie. As important as any of these was the example set by Ramsay and bettered by Burns of refurbishing old indecent or fragmentary songs. Robert Fergusson (1750-1774) was regarded by Burns still more highly than Ramsay, and his influence was even more potent. In his autobiographical letter to Doctor Moore he tells that about 1782 he had all but given up rhyming: "but meeting with Fergusson's ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... had evidently only just jumped out of his grave; he was barely awake, and he had not yet realized himself or understood his condition. He was all dishevelled and in rags. His eyes were turbid. Curses and indecent words issued from his dead lips. He was angry because he had ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... the initiated merely the generative power in nature, or that strange law by which living organisms, animal and vegetable, are enabled to reproduce their like. But who shall say in what exact light he presented himself to the vulgar, who had continually before their eyes the indecent figures under which the painters and sculptors portrayed him? As impure ideas and revolting practices clustered around the worship of Pan in Greece and later Rome, so it is more than probable that in the worship of Khem in Egypt were connected similar excesses. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... wherein the King had just permitted his own kinsmen to go and win laurels for themselves. He was already a full colonel of dragoons, and one of the captains of the guard. The King, who till then liked him well enough, considered such a proposition indecent, and, gauging or not gauging his intentions, he postponed until a later period these aspirations of Lauzun to the post of prince ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... it was a little unjust, that all the great offices in this great office should be magnificent sinecures, while the unfortunate working-clerks in the cold dark room upstairs were the worst rewarded, and the least considered men, doing important services, in London. That perhaps it was a little indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all needful accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post (and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... thought given to the necessity for covering the body, for every part of the human anatomy was as commonplace as nose, fingers and toes. But now clothing is commanded as a means of hiding our bodily contour. Prudery has come in and branded the human anatomy as indecent and consequently ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... of Defoe and Cobbett for using your own name; but D.D.'s Weekly is unthinkable, and W.C.'s Weekly indecent. Your initials are not euphonious: they recall that brainy song of my ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... own innocence, which he had not always to plead, far from attempting to soothe her indignation, assumed the authority and prerogative of a husband, and sharply reprehended her for her credulity and indecent warmth. This rebuke, instead of silencing, gave new spirit and volubility to her reproaches, in the course of which she plainly taxed him with want of honesty and affection, and said that, though his pretence was love, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... this country displayed itself in all its glory. What scenes of infamy did the Society for the Suppression of Vice lay open to our astonished eyes! tradesmen's daughters dancing, pots of beer carried out between the first and second lesson, and dark and distant rumours of indecent prints. Clouds of Mr. Canning's cousins arrived by the waggon; all the contractors left their cards with Mr. Rose; and every plunderer of the public crawled out of his hole, like slugs, and grubs, and worms after a ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... warrant!" "You let Dondon cheat you!" "You tried to cheat Nincan!" "You want to build a watch-house!" "You have an old ewe at home now, that you did not come honestly by!" "You denied your own hand!"—with other ribaldry still more gross and indecent. But the most singular part of the scene was a number of little boys, dressed in black and white, who all wore badges of the parties to which they belonged, and were provided with a syringe, and two canteens, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... decide upon their title, because no part of this tribunal is competent to decide upon their title. You have not the parties before you; you have not the cause before you,—but are getting it by oblique, improper, and indecent means. You are not a court of justice to try that question. The parties are at a distance from you; they are neither present themselves, nor represented by any counsel, advocate, or attorney: and I hope no House of Lords will ever judge and decide upon the title of any human being, much ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... lady whom you don't know—a judicial separation, I'll warrant—it's indecent, upon my word it is. To think that there are people who come to me about judicial separations and bring their young ladies ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... called to show to the world, abroad and nigh by, the burnin' indignation this body felt, as a society, at the turrible sufferin's and insults bein' heaped onto their male brethren in England by the indecent and disgraceful doin's of the militant Suffragettes, and to devise, if possible, some way to help their male brethren acrost the sea. "For," sez he, "pizen will spread. How do we know how soon them very wimmen who had to be spit on and struck and ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... recreation of the judgment, the jubilee of reason. It was the result of a real good, suitably applied. It commenced upon the solidity of truth and the substance of fruition. It did not run out in voice or indecent eruptions, but filled the soul, as God does the universe, silently and without noise. It was refreshing, but composed, like the pleasantness of youth tempered with the gravity of age; or the mirth of a festival managed with the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... and remembering all his former woes, O lord, Vibhatsu, in consequence of his grief, felt such wrath rise within him the like of which he had never experienced before. It was for this that like a vulgar person, he addressed the preceptor's son who was worthy of every respect, in such unworthy, indecent, bitter, and harsh language. Addressed, from wrath, in such harsh and cruel words by Partha, O king, Drona's son, that foremost of all mighty bowmen, became highly angry with Partha and especially with Krishna. The valiant Aswatthaman, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... protested against the sculpture, rich and fantastic, but gloomy, it might be indecent, developed more abundantly than anywhere else in the churches of Burgundy, and especially in those of the Cluniac order. "What is the use," he asks, "of those grotesque monsters in painting and sculpture?" and almost certainly he had in mind ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... as purchasing a hen no indecent hurry is shown. Such a transaction may take days. For instance, you wish to buy a hen, and signify the same to a man, and ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... wanted to worship these sacred and holy things, and lo! he has, with doggish ritual, put them to his teeth for mutilation." While they were raging he quieted them with words which may give us the key to such otherwise indecent behaviour. Suppose they had been having a great Sacramental dispute, and some, as is likely, had maintained against the bishop that the grinding of the Host by the teeth of any communicant meant the grinding of Christ's very body, then ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... brutality which would do credit to a Mississippi slave-driver, or a renegade Yankee dealer in human cattle on the banks of the Potomac. His rhetoric has a flavor of the slave-pen and auction-block, vulgar, unmanly, indecent, a scandalous outrage upon good taste and refined feeling, which at once degrades the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... having seen a MS. copy of this play, found by Lord Bolingbroke among the sweepings of Pope's study, in which there occur several indecent passages, not to be found in the printed copy. These, doubtless, constituted the castrations, which, in obedience to the public voice, our author expunged from his play, after its condemnation. It is difficult to guess what could be the nature of the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... retorting a stroke of ridicule, of which there are several kinds; but at present it is not our business to specify them. It will not be amiss, however, to observe by way of caution, that the powers of ridicule are not to be employed too often, lest we sink into scurrility;—nor in loose and indecent language, lest we degenerate into wantonness and buffoonery; —nor with the least degree of petulance and abuse, lest we appear audacious and ill-bred;—nor levelled against the unfortunate, lest ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... golden hair, short figures of small build but with embonpoint, their nudity minutely represented and but thinly veiled; many such were produced in Flanders and in Italy. The illustrious masters, to whom those pictures appeared corrupt and indecent, doubtless wished to reproach Jeanne with having looked at them in the house of the treasurer of the Duke of Orleans. It is not difficult to divine what were the doctors' suspicions when they are found asking Jeanne whether Saint Michael wore clothes, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... then read, which abounded in vicious ideas, obscenities, and gross figures sketched with the pen. Miss B., then in tears, stated, that she had been shut up with Lord P. with her mother's knowledge, when indecent attacks were made by him upon her on a sofa; and that her mother urged her to become his mistress, saying she should have an allowance of 500L. a-year. The mother strongly denied these assertions, and, after the magistrate had animadverted on the alleged disgraceful conduct ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... last, I've seen rivers in my time," he said presently, "big and little, pretty and not, clean and soiled, decent and indecent. Yes, boy," said he, "you can take it from me that I've seen the world's darnedest in the matter of rivers, and I have liked them all from Ganges to the Sacramento and back again. There was a time when I didn't have that sort of personal feeling for 'em, but a little chap up ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... prohibition of these acts of folly, on to the prohibition of what I thought then were the maddest, most impossible, and most indecent things one could well imagine. A kind of rhythmic fervour fell on all of us; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing Law. Superficially the contagion of these brutes was upon me, but deep down ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... off de Luynes, and the valets who played cards on his coffin were hardly more indecent in their callousness than de Luynes' enemies. The Cardinal's Hat arrived with many gracious compliments to the Bishop of Lucon, who then gave up his diocese. Soon he rustled in flame-coloured taffeta at fetes and receptions, for wealth and all the rewards of office came to ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... dead men only,—have we produced any painter of reality like Manet or Millet, any writer like Flaubert or Maupassant, like Turgenev, or Tchekov. We are, I think, too deeply civilised, so deeply civilised that we have come to look on Nature as indecent. The acts and emotions of life undraped with ethics seem to us anathema. It has long been, and still is, the fashion among the intellectuals of the Continent to regard us as barbarians in most aesthetic matters. Ah! If they only ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... love of her foster-parents. One day they were reading aloud the report of a scandalous trial, while the child was in the room playing with her dolls, and to all appearance paying no attention to the reading. A few days later the foster-parents saw the little girl putting her dolls together in an indecent posture. In answer to earnest inquiries, the child said she was only doing what someone had once done to her; she then went on to make detailed and serious accusations against certain other persons. A clever and experienced physician was ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... saucy, impertinent, impudent, insolent. Importance, consequence, moment. Impostor, pretender, charlatan, masquerader, mountebank, deceiver, humbug, cheat, quack, shyster, empiric. Imprison, incarcerate, immure. Improper, indecent, indecorous, unseemly, unbecoming, indelicate. Impure, tainted, contaminated, polluted, defiled, vitiated. Inborn, innate, inbred, congenital. Incite, instigate, stimulate, impel, arouse, goad, spur, promote. Inclose, surround, encircle, circumscribe, encompass. Increase, grow, enlarge, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... incidents of the day for the benefit of his coreligionists. Those people were so absolutely free from superstition that they ascribed anything a little out of the common to agencies. As it was their business to know all about the agencies, they were on terms of almost indecent familiarity with manifestations of every kind. Their letters dropped from the ceiling—unstamped—and spirits used to squatter up and down their staircases all night. But they had never come into contact with kittens. Lone Sahib wrote out the facts, noting ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... carefully written, first in the English language and second in the language of the Hebrews, Frederick called his fellow- lodgers together earlier than usual on the evening before Thanksgiving Day. He explained to them, in the patois which they used together, that it would be indecent for them to carry this supply of food farther than next Monday for their own purposes. He told them that the occasion was one of exuberant thanksgiving to the God of heaven. He showed them that they all had great reason for thanksgiving. And, in short, he made ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... properly, writer of the Apostolic Letters, to a Pope who was a poisoner. John XXIII. was even worse than that: he was a most atrocious violator of laws, human and divine; and some crimes he committed were so heinous that it would be indecent to place them before the public. One can imagine how agreeable must have been the occupation to that Pope of a military rather than an ecclesiastic turn, and fonder of deeds of violence and bloodshed than of acts of meekness and Christianity, when he was presiding at Constance over that General ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... surviving children, and before the year was half-way through, on the 23rd of the following May, he was married a second time to Margaret Bentley. At the end of seventeen years Thomas Bunyan was again left a widower, and within two months, with grossly indecent haste, he filled the vacant place with a third wife. Bunyan himself cannot have been much more than twenty when he married. We have no particulars of the death of his first wife. But he had been married two years to his noble-minded second wife at the time of the assizes in 1661, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... one-sided. Thus Adam de Perseigne, an ecclesiastic, writes to the Countess du Perche to advise her how to live in a Christian manner; he counsels her to abstain from playing games of chance and chess, not to take pleasure in the indecent farces of actors, and to be moderate in dress. Then, as ever, preachers expressed their horror of the ruinous extravagance of women, their false hair, their rouge, and their dresses that were too long or too short. They also reprobated their love of flirtation. It was, however, in those days a young ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... the Colonists, by the circular letters of the Government, was one which had reference to the indecent flogging of the female slaves, and also a suggestive restraint upon corporal punishment in general. This called forth in a Colonial paper the following, which certainly has the merit of being ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... betting on horse races was a crime of indecent enormity; now it seemed absolutely excusable, justified, almost something to be eagerly approved of. Their ingress, though strenuous, was devoid of rapidity; so, beyond much bracing of muscles, there was little to take cognizance of ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... to this presentation, and severely did he reprehend it. Of the farce he wrote, "To keep up the character of these Generals, especially Prescot, they were obliged (I believe not to their sorrow) to indulge in very indecent and profane language." He states that many in the audience were much offended thereat, and says: "What adds to the illegality is that the actors not only were dressed agreeable to the characters they assumed as Men, but female apparell and ornaments were ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... disregarded all private and inferior concerns: and when we take into view the great work which we have gone through, and feel, as we ought to feel, the just importance of it, we shall then see, that the little wranglings and indecent contentions of personal parley, are as dishonorable to our characters, as they are injurious ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... fear of mockery from the womenkind. You would have thought I had now all the more reason to pursue my common practice, since I had met this young lady in the city street, seemingly following a prisoner, and accompanied with two very ragged indecent-like Highlandmen. But there was here a different ingredient; it was plain the girl thought I had been prying in her secrets; and with my new clothes and sword, and at the top of my new fortunes, this was more than I could swallow. The beggar on horseback could ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... astonishment at the unheard-of endearment came over Irene's face. The Madigans regarded demonstrative affection as pure affectation at its best; at its worst it was little short of indecent. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Donald, although his exasperation was directed rather at himself, than at her. "It's positively indecent the way she gets inside one. Judged by the standards of her class, Marion is a splendid girl—head and shoulders above the average—yet these unconsciously searching questions of Smiles' are ... Hang it all, I wish I had had sense enough not ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Statius and some other writers put flesh upon these grammatical dry bones. But as the masters of grammar at Oxford were expected to be guardians of morals as well, they were expressly forbidden to read and expound to their pupils Ovid's Ars amandi, the Elegies of Pamphilus, and other indecent books.[2] ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... laid beside them. Kingsley drew my attention to the cards. They were of a kind that my experience had never permitted me to see before. In place of ordinary kings and queens and knaves, these figures were represented in attitudes and costumes the most indecent—such as the prolific genius of Parisian bawdry alone could conceive and delineate. It seems to be a general opinion among rogues that knavery is never wholly triumphant unless the mind is thoroughly degraded; ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... at what she felt to be her indecent madness. "Oh! how—how——" And then seeing Nigel's furious start, his mother's glare and all the servants' alarmed stare at her, she rushed staggering to the only creature she felt she knew—her maid Hannah, clutched her and broke down ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... he is young and inexperienced. Often he pretends to know things he does not. Nearly every boy, at an early age, is thrown in contact with low-minded persons who think it amusing to persuade the youth to prove he knows indecent things. He thinks it a test of manhood to be acquainted with various vices and so in order to prove his knowledge is led into various indiscretions, which result in the contraction of vile ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... Lovelace also highly praised, he is the last person whose judgment I would take upon real modesty. For I observed, that, upon some talk from the gentlemen, not free enough to be easily censured, yet too indecent in its implication to come from well-bred persons, in the company of virtuous prople [sic], this young lady was very ready to apprehend; and yet, by smiles and simperings, to encourage, rather than discourage, the culpable freedoms of persons, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... twitch of the elbows and a bend of the legs. Tchertop-hanov, however, not only failed to respond to his greeting, but was even enraged by it; he was all on fire in a minute: a scurvy Jew dare to ride a magnificent horse like that!... It was positively indecent! ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... the service. "What particular business had you to do to-day when the duty was over?" asked the actor. "None." "Why," said Garrick, "I thought you must from the hurry in which you entered the desk. Nothing can be more indecent than to see a clergyman set about sacred service as if he were a tradesman, and wanted to get through it as soon as possible. But what books might those be which you had in the desk before you?" "Only the Bible and Prayer-Book," replied the preacher. "Only the Bible and Prayer-Book," ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... chivalry, we need not attribute his motives (as Camden himself, with the partial feelings of an author, does, and subsequent writers echo) to his envy at Camden's promotion to be Clarencieux King of Arms; for it appears that Brooke began his work before this promotion. The indecent excesses of his pen, with the malicious charges of plagiarism he brings against Camden for the use he made of Leland's collections, only show the insensibility of the mere heraldist to the nobler genius of the historian. Yet Brooke had no ordinary talents: his work is still ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... said Lady Anne, contemning the marriage so solemnized between her and the king, and bearing malice in her heart against the king, and following her frail and carnal lust, did falsely and traitorously procure, by means of indecent language, gifts, and other acts therein stated, divers of the king's daily and familiar servants to be her adulterers and concubines; so that several of the king's servants, by the said queen's most vile ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... by Lucian, that while a troop of monkeys, well drilled by an intelligent manager, were performing a tragedy with great applause, the decorum of the whole scene was at once destroyed, and the natural passions of the actors called forth into very indecent and active emulation, by a wag who threw a handful of nuts upon the stage. In like manner, the approaching crisis stirred up among the expectants feelings of a nature very different from those of which, under the superintendence ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... forms of endeavor, the status of woman was no better than the general conditions of the time. This Age of Faith is characterized by "the violence and knavery that covered the whole country, the plagues and famines that decimated towns and villages every few years, the flood of spurious and indecent relics, the degradation of the clergy and monks, the slavery of the serfs, the daily brutalities of the ordeal and the torture, the course and bloody pastimes, the insecurity of life, the triumphant ravages of disease, the check of scientific inquiry and a hundred other features ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... contrast to the one already stated, and is as full of encouragement as that is full of warning. Another of my playmates was a boy who was always noticed for being perfectly-correct and unexceptionable in all his conduct. I never heard him utter a profane or indecent word. I never knew him do a thing even of questionable propriety. He was bright and playful, but never mischievous. He was a good scholar, not because he had very remarkable talents, but because he made good use of his time—because he was taught to regard it as his duty to get his ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... But drunkards they often are. I should think as many people in proportion get drunk in Seville as in London, though it is only fair to add that their heads are not strong, and very little alcohol will produce in them an indecent exhilaration. ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... honorable leader of the Opposition was guilty of a gross offense against good taste, in opening this question again. Last session, the session before, and now this session, she has harped on this disagreeable theme. It has become positively indecent. ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... engaged in a criminal prosecution against a country schoolmaster, for indecent behaviour to his female scholars. There is no statute against such abominable conduct; but it is punishable at common law. I shall be obliged to you for your assistance in this extraordinary trial. I ever am, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... tranquillity; and for this purpose they mingled with the groups, joined in the dances, and familiarly accosted the women; pressing the hand of one, taking unwarranted liberties with others; addressing indecent words and gestures to those more distant, until some temperately admonished them to depart, in God's name, without insulting the women; and others murmured angrily; but the hot-blooded youths raised their voices so fiercely that the soldiers said to one another, "These insolent paterini ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... dance what is known as the "half time," or the "part time" waltz. This is a dance accompanied by a swaying and contorting of the hips, most indecent in its suggestion. It is really a very primitive form of the dance, and probably goes back to the pagan harvest and bacchic festivals. You may see traces of it in certain crude peasant dances in out-of-the-way corners of Europe. Now they teach it to immigrant girls in New York dancing academies ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... were extremely arbitrary, desired to establish it as a principle that the commands of the reigning sovereign ought to justify every enormity in those who paid obedience to them. But there is one circumstance not so easy to be accounted for: it is pretended that Richard, displeased with the indecent manner of burying his nephews, whom he had murdered, gave his chaplain orders to dig up the bodies, and to inter them in consecrated ground; and as the man died soon after, the place of their burial remained unknown, and the bodies could never be found by any ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... sea, out of a totally unknown little town in an island one has never seen before? What were (besides sugar) the interests of that crumb of the earth, its gossip, its topics of conversation? To draw him on business at once would have been almost indecent—or even worse: impolitic. All I could do at the moment was to keep on ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... asking for peace on the principle of "uti possidetis." The two monarchs parted with every manifestation of personal devotion; but on Alexander's return to his capital his elder sister was married with indecent haste to the Duke ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... were dull men, and by this time they very well understood one another. They knew what they meant just as well as though they had been indecent enough to say it. "Help us to turn out Medland, and you shall be Chief Justice," said Kilshaw, in the name of Sir Robert Perry,—"Chief Justice, and once more a persona grata at Government House." Chief Justice! Soon, perhaps, Sir Alfred! Would not that soften the Eynesford heart? Mr. ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... century and a half ago, there is less of the low and indelicate than in the plays we see posted at the doors of our theatres. The French of the time of Louis XIV. must have been a much more refined people than the contemporary English. At least, Thalia in Paris was a vestal, compared with her tawdry, indecent, and drunken London sister. One is ashamed to be seen reading the unblushing profligacy of Wycherley, Cibber, Vanbrugh, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... listen to another word," cried Abbie. "You're too indecent to talk to." And she slammed the ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... to be a mother could turn her back on another mother like that," said Mrs. Carey promptly. "We'll take a pint more milk, and I think you children will have to leave something in your plates now and then, you polish them until it really is indecent." ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... upright at a card-table, staring hideously; the birth of Christ; the trial of Christ; Abraham Lincoln, dead and ghastly, upon a bier; and other groups, all revolting beyond description. The only decently executed thing in this Sacred Museum was highly indecent; it was a young lady in wax, who, before lying down, had forgotten to put on her night-gown. There was a most miserable Happy Family; one or two monkeys, still and dejected; a dismal, tired rooster, who wanted to go to roost, but could not in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... students had contented themselves with ripping open the graves of strangers and negroes, about whom there was little feeling; but this winter they dug up respectable people, even young women, of whom they made an indecent exposure. ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... wig with a fox's tail dangling down his back. He bowed to those below, and began a mock oration. He called Samuel Adams, Doctor Warren, and John Hancock scoundrels, blackguards, knaves, and other vile names. His language was so scurrilous, profane, and indecent that Tom could not repeat it to his mother and Berinthia. Those who listened clapped their hands. Tom and Abraham came to the conclusion that most of the officers of the newly arrived regiments were too vile to be worthy the society of ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... permanent), had been invaded by numbers of starving vagabonds—the dregs that always rise to the surface in periods of political convulsion, ready for any villainy. When news came of the capture of Verdun, of the indecent joy of the courtiers, and that the road to Paris was open to the avenging army of Prussians, the horrors of the Armagnac massacres were renewed during four September days at the prisons of Paris, while the revolutionary ministry and the Assembly ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... and yet be a most objectionable person? You might smoke, drink, listen at doors, repeat private conversations, open other people's letters, pry amongst their papers, be vulgar and offensive in conversation, and indecent in dress—altogether detestable, if your code of morality were confined to the ten commandments. But why will you talk like this, Angelica? Why will you be so defiant, when your heart is breaking, as ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... I have musical taste, but Back and Belly Maker (piano) I consider vulgar—almost indecent, in fact. Such anatomical intimacy with the piano would destroy for me the ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... many means of concealment. A man shuts the door, he sets somebody before the chamber; if a person comes, say that he is out, he is not at leisure. But the Cynic instead of all these things must use modesty as his protection; if he does not, he will be indecent in his nakedness and under the open sky. This is his house, his door; this is the slave before his bedchamber; this is his darkness. For he ought not to wish to hide anything that he does; and if he ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... Hamlet, less than two months, she had married again, married his uncle, her dear husband's brother, in itself a highly improper and unlawful marriage, from the nearness of relationship, but made much more so by the indecent haste with which it was concluded, and the unkingly character of the man whom she had chosen to be the partner of her throne and bed. This it was, which more than the loss of ten kingdoms, dashed the spirits and brought a cloud over the mind ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... talk. A dance is sure to be suggested, and presently the fale po-ula, or dance-house, is lit up in preparation, as the dancers, male and female, hurry away to adorn themselves. Much has been said about the impropriety of Samoa dancing by travellers who have only witnessed the degrading and indecent exhibitions, given on a large scale by the loafing class of natives who inhabit Apia and its immediate vicinity. The natives are an adaptive race, and suit their manners to their company, and there are always numbers ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... wonderful blending within the limits of a short story of humor, pathos and tragedy—which, incredible as it may seem, met with but a cold reception from the local press, and was even branded as "indecent" ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... carrying across the world the message, 'Buy Bulgarian Rails.' They are probably the prompt communication between some two of the wealthiest and wickedest of His children with whom God has ever had patience. No; these telegraph poles are ugly and detestable, they are inhuman and indecent. But their baseness lies in their privacy, not in their publicity. That black stick with white buttons is not the creation of the soul of a multitude. It is the mad creation of ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... him. I left a director's meeting and vital engagements, with indecent firmness, to meet that ship. At crack of dawn on a raw morning in March I arose and drove miles to a freezing pier to meet it. And presently, as I stood muffled in a fur coat, an elderly, grizzled, small man, grim and unexhilarating—presently ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... but punishment for the personal insults to Major de Barner and his character; second, that Despin might pay the expenses of preparing and making out writings; and third, that the said Robin, the notary, may be equally punished for using expressions in his acts hurtful and indecent to persons of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... O'Flynn in his sanctum, busy with paste and scissors, in the act of putting in a string of advertisements—indecent French novels, Atheistic tracts, quack medicines, and slopsellers' puffs; and commenced with as much dignity ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... after dinner and we were sitting in the little courtyard of the hotel in the dark without our hats—that is, momma and I; the Senator was seldom altogether without his hat. I think he would have felt it to be a little indecent. The courtyard was paved, and there were flowers on the stand in the middle of it, natural palms and artificial begonias mixed with the most annoying cleverness, and little tables for coffee cups or glasses ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... haythen? Would ye lay contrivances against the enlightened races of the earth, ye instigator of illegal crimes? Would ye seek to persuade Martin Burney into the dirty tricks of an indecent Dago? Would ye be for murderin' your benefactor, the good man that gives ye food and work? Take that, ye ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... on. "To-day that he is out of our way we may as well confess that we always liked him a great deal. He took life and work seriously and never used an indecent weapon against us. And if the tactics of war had not forced us to represent his excellences as faults, we might have learned a ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... he had bought neckties he apprehended that neckties without shirts were like butter without bread, and he bought shirts. And then he surmised that shirts without collars would be indecent. And when he had bought collars a still small voice told him that the logical foundation of all things was socks, and that really he had been trying to build a house from the fourth story downwards. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... speech almost from infancy; that the playground, the street and the home have been steadily teaching, and that the minds of even primary children may be filled with not only loose forms of speech, but even with profane and indecent expressions. One of the natural correctives for such things is the reading and telling of attractive stories, full of dramatic power, calculated to stimulate right feeling, couched in clear and forcible English. Elsewhere ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... the West Indian station long enough to complete my time as a midshipman; and my old friend, the admiral, lived long enough to bestow upon me my post rank, which he did with almost indecent haste—at least, so said some of those who chose to feel jealous at my rapid advancement, which, however, the admiral stoutly ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... nothing but wheat as far as the eye could see, stunned her a little. The one-time writing-teacher of a young ladies' seminary, with her pretty deer-like eyes and delicate fingers, shrank from it. She did not want to look at so much wheat. There was something vaguely indecent in the sight, this food of the people, this elemental force, this basic energy, weltering here under the sun in all the unconscious nakedness of a sprawling, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... speak, entirely physical, and even at the noisy Sunday dinner-parties, sitting among five or six women, to all of whom her father spoke familiarly. There were actresses, dancers or singers, who, after dinner, would settle themselves down to smoke with their elbows on the table absorbed in the indecent stories so keenly relished by their host. Fortunately, childhood is protected by a resisting candour, by an enamel over which all impurities glide. Felicia became noisy, turbulent, ill-behaved, but without being touched by all that passed ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... the same editorial from the Whig, appears from the following. A portion, which we omit, is too foully indecent ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Menelaus. Love ... Greater men than Grimshaw had written of Priam's tragedy. His audacity called attention to his imperfect, colourful verse, his love of beauty, his sense of the exotic, the strange, the unhealthy. People read his book on the sly and talked about it in whispers. It was indecent, but it was beautiful. At that time you spoke of Cecil Grimshaw with disapproval, if you spoke of him at all, or, if you happened to be a prophet, you saw in him the ultimate bomb beneath the Victorian literary edifice. And so ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... of the act of urination for many people is indicated by the existence, according to Bloch, who enumerates various kinds of indecent photographs, of a group which he terms "the notorious pisseuses." It is further indicated by several of the reproductions in Fuch's Erotsiche Element in der Karikatur, such as Delorme's "La Necessite n'a point de Loi." (It should be added ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... altogether from those aspects of Mr. Choate's mind and character which he must have known could not be intelligently discussed in a book so swiftly and lightly executed. No such notion seems to have occurred to him. He has rattled off his "Reminiscences" with a confidence which may be justly called indecent and impertinent. The result is what might have been expected. We have so many pages of voluble, superficial, and exceedingly tedious talk about Mr. Choate,—and that is the whole of it. For our own part, we have been not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... declared in Espana—is that both the villages of your Majesty and those of encomenderos are places where the curacy is so ill-supplied with chalices and ornaments that it is a shame to see them. Many of the churches are so indecent that when I visited them, from pure shame I was obliged to command that they be torn down; they were not fit to be entered by horses. There are two principal causes for this: the first is that the encomenderos are penurious ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... if there was something brutally indecent in what he was doing and the knowledge of it sent a red flush to his cheeks. The girl read his name, smiled across the table at him, and with a pretty gesture, motioned him to bring his cup and share her tea with her. He returned to his ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... immediately afterwards—with an almost indecent haste—was of middle height, with a certain intrepid carriage of the head which appeals to such as take pleasure in the strength and endurance of men. His face, which was clean shaven, was the face of a hawk, with the contracted myope vision characteristic of that ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... "profane swearing, filthy conversation, and indecent behavior" are forbidden. The document indicates an obvious intention to effect a revolution by a restrained ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... her neck for him to see if she had the tokens upon her. There had been none when I put her to bed again, so that I had hoped it was but a colic or some such affection; but, alas, when I looked at his direction, there were the black swellings plainly to be seen. Forthwith he fled with indecent haste, and only stopped to say he would send a nurse and such remedies as should ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to implore his majesty's mercy." The commissioners indignantly rejoined: "In answer to a letter which concerns some of the most material interests of humanity, and of the two nations, Great Britain and the United States of America, now at war, we received the inclosed indecent paper, as coming from your lordship, which we return for your lordship's ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... William Waller, a noted justice of peace, and two persons more, behind the hangings, and gave them an opportunity of seeing and hearing the whole transaction. The libel, sketched out by Fitzharris, and executed partly by him, partly by Everard, was the most furious, indecent, and outrageous performance imaginable, and such as was fitter to hurt than serve any party which should be so imprudent as to adopt it. Waller carried the intelligence to the king, and obtained a warrant for committing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... purposes; in neither of them is discernible the least trace of a wish to seek their own gratification irrespectively of the will of Omniscience; they were in a sense passive, resigning themselves wholly to the disposal of God; they did not force a passage through intervening impediments with an indecent and impious resolution of spirit, as if they could not, or would not be happy excepting in their own way, but "waited patiently ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... seven dozen for my breakfast. As for Sir Hercules, he didn't know what to do; he did nothing but storm at everybody, for my lady, with her head under the clothes, was serving him out at no small rate. She wouldn't, she declared, allow any man to come into the cabin to hoist her up again. So indecent, so indelicate, so shocking,—she was ashamed of Sir Hercules,—to send for the men; if they didn't leave the cabin immediately, she'd scream and she'd faint—that she would—there was no saying what she wouldn't do! Well, there we waited just outside until at ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... instinctive taboo which rules the subject out altogether as indecent, has no age limit. It means that at no matter what age a woman consents to a proposal of marriage, she should do so in ignorance of the relation she is undertaking. When this actually happens (and apparently ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... talk about their nerves and the nerves of their relatives; and the little children must needs have their nerves attended to ere their milk-teeth are shed, and the middle-aged women and the middle-aged men have got them too, and the old men lose the dignity of their age in an indecent restlessness, and the advertisements in the papers go to show that this sweeping list is no lie. Atop of the fret and the stampede, the tingling self-consciousness of a new people makes them take a sort of perverted pride in the futile racket that sends up the death-rate—a child's delight ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... It would appear, however, that the Genoese have gathered head again, and his business with them may explain why Pascal Paoli has not answered the letter I addressed to him, these eight months since, notifying my son's claim upon the succession. Or he may have reckoned it indecent of me to address him in lieu of his Queen, who had returned to the island. I had not heard of her return. I heard of it to-day for the first time, and of her peril, which shall hurry us ten times faster than our pretensions. Prosper," my father concluded, "we must invade ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... burgesses were not satisfied with the remonstrance against the Stamp Act in December. Although he described the remonstrance as "very warm and indecent", he told the Board of Trade the original version was much more inflammatory and its language was "mollified" so that the Assembly could convey its opposition to the Stamp Tax without giving the "least offense" to crown and parliament. Fauquier also observed that economic ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... my drawing-room he was off duty, he had no longer to sit up and play a part; he would lean back and rest and draw a long breath, and forget that the day of his execution was fixed. There was to be no indecent haste about the marriage; it was not to take place till after the session, at the end of August It puzzled me and rather distressed me. that his heart should n't be a little more in the matter; it seemed strange to be engaged to ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... before summoned to defend it. And were slaves who knew nothing and cared nothing about religion, who were ready to fight for synodical government, for Episcopacy, for Popery, just as Mac Callum More might be pleased to command, fit allies for the people of God? The manifesto, indecent and intolerant as was its tone, was, in the view of these fanatics, a cowardly and worldly performance. A settlement such as Argyle would have made, such as was afterwards made by a mightier and happier deliverer, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as I was able to ascertain—it was. I felt convinced, for instance, that Laughing Water was a separate entity—that was why I asked her to pass me by. To me there is something indecent about an open seance. I have always felt that very strongly; and what happened that evening in the case of Mr. Burnaby ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... Paul speaks about it very plainly when he says, speaking of the things that should not be named amongst Christians, "neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor jesting, which are not convenient." Now, boys, all indecent words and conversations are wrong—they are sinful, unmanly, degrading. I know you cannot help hearing much that is wrong. Shame, be it said, to the men of England—yes, men who talk of advancement and freedom, men who are fathers of families, that they too often make or ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... men were forced to suffer no little abuse in relation to those visits,—not by fellow prisoners, understand. They were taunted in the most vulgar, low, indecent language. One day it went so far with one, that he became aroused beyond endurance, and replied, "You know that is a —— —— lie," filling the blanks with two most profane words as qualifying "lie." ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... their nature, followed. The Government were charged with a premeditated design to commit wide and indiscriminate slaughter, and the weakness, in which were shrouded deep national shame and guilt, was made matter of indecent boast. The Government, aware of the unexpected advantage, followed up the blow. Mr. O'Connell took shelter in the sacredness of the Hall, which, he imagined, he had guarded against the encroachments of arbitrary power, and thither they followed him. Having abandoned ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... "But you must see Lady Lufton first, of course," said Fanny, as soon as all this was settled. Mark would have avoided this if he could have decently done so, but he felt that it would be impolitic, as well as indecent. And why should he be afraid to tell Lady Lufton that he hoped to receive this piece of promotion from the present Government? There was nothing disgraceful in a clergyman becoming a prebendary of Barchester. Lady ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... blowed off if 'e looks up over the edge. I've 'ad enough o' dug-outs an' observin' from the trenches, an' Coal-Box dodgin' to last me a bit, an' it's a pleasant change to be ridin' a decent 'orse on a most indecent apology for a road, an' not a Jack Johnson in sight, even if they are ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... Whitbread asked for information about the proposed marriage of the Princess Charlotte to the Prince of Orange. Stephen instantly sprang up and rebuked the inquirer. Whitbread complained of the epithet 'indecent' used by his opponent. The Speaker intervened and had to explain that the epithet was applied to Mr. Whitbread's proposition and not to Mr. Whitbread himself. Stephen, thus sanctioned, took care to repeat the phrase; plenty of fire was introduced into the debate, and Field-Marshal Bluecher had ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that unearthly noise!" he exclaimed vehemently. "The thing seems to be gloating; it's indecent! When I think of that call it will bring back the long portage and this ghostly river! I wish I'd never made the journey, or that I could blot the whole ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... mentioned, it would be endless to enumerate such as arise from the excess of play or gaming: The cheats, the quarrels, the oaths and blasphemies among the men; among the women, the neglect of household affairs, the unlimited freedoms, the indecent passion; and lastly, the known inlet to all lewdness, when after an ill run, the person must answer the defects of the purse; the rule on such occasions holding true in play as it does in law; quod non habet in crumena, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... a low voice made some apology or explanation which I failed to catch. It was, of course, not right; it was indecent to laugh on such an occasion, for we were not of the ebullient sort who go to "The Stones" at three o'clock in the morning "for a lark"; but it was very natural in the circumstances, and mentally I laughed myself at the absurdity of the situation. However, the laugher had been rebuked for his ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... with inhabitants: som were scolding, others swearing, or singing indecent songs. What a sight for Mary! Her blood ran cold; yet she had sufficient resolution to mount to the top of the house. On the floor, in one corner of a very small room, lay an emaciated figure of a woman; a window over her head scarcely admitted any light, for the broken panes were stuffed with ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the rest, the grandeur of former days was marked by the most beautiful tapestry on some part of the walls, while other parts had been laid bare and daubed over with caps of liberty, and groupes of soldiers and guillotines, and indecent inscriptions. The nitches for statues, and the frames of pictures, were seen empty. The objects which formerly filled them were dashed to ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Have easily, as Spirits, evaded swift By quick contraction or remove; but now Foul dissipation followed, and forced rout; Nor served it to relax their serried files. What should they do? if on they rushed, repulse Repeated, and indecent overthrow Doubled, would render them yet more despised, And to their foes a laughter; for in view Stood ranked of Seraphim another row, In posture to displode their second tire Of thunder: Back defeated to return They worse abhorred. ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... unparalleled figure in the annals of mankind - unparalleled for three good reasons: first, because he was a man known to his contemporaries in a halo of almost historical pomp, and to his remote descendants with an indecent familiarity, like a tap-room comrade; second, because he has outstripped all competitors in the art or virtue of a conscious honesty about oneself; and, third, because, being in many ways a very ordinary person, he has yet placed himself before the public eye with such a fulness and such an intimacy ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as we live in days when our kings liberally reward learning that is virtuous and worthy; for learning without virtue is a pearl on a dunghill. He spends the whole day in settling whether Homer expressed himself correctly or not in such and such a line of the Iliad, whether Martial was indecent or not in such and such an epigram, whether such and such lines of Virgil are to be understood in this way or in that; in short, all his talk is of the works of these poets, and those of Horace, Perseus, Juvenal, and Tibullus; for of the moderns in our own language he makes no great ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... and walk softly before him. Avoid carelessness of demeanor, and let your deportment indicate the reverence due to the place where "God's honor dwelleth." "Keep thy foot, when thou goest to the house of God." But, above all, avoid that indecent practice of whispering and conversation in the house of God. Before service commences, it unfits the mind for the solemn employments in which you are about to engage. After the congregation is dismissed, it dissipates ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... however, quite certain as to this. Their songs are both cheerful and plaintive; but the latter predominate, and are mainly in the minor key. The subjects of their songs are generally sentimental love, and include ditties by young men about their sweethearts; and I believe that some of their songs are indecent, though I am not sure of this. They also have warlike songs; and, when a special event occurs, songs are often composed with reference to it. For example, not long ago a chief was taken by the authorities to Port ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... why should they be left to themselves? Their conversation is always the most lively, while their persons are generally the most agreeable objects. No: the plain truth is, that it is the love of the drink and of the indecent talk that send women from the table; and it is a practice which I have always abhorred. I like to see young men, especially, follow them out of the room, and prefer their company to that of the sots who ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... works which doth this world adorn, There is none more fair and excellent Than is man's body, both for power and form, Whilst it is kept in sober government, But none than it more foul and indecent, Distempered through misrules and passions base, It grows a monster and incontinent, Doth lose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... it did penetrate his mind that it was indecent to accept all this wild gratitude, but there was built within him no intention of positively declaring himself lacking in all credit, or at least, lacking in all credit in the way their praises defined it. In ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... presentation of the Mazengarb report the Government immediately took steps to give effect to those recommendations which called for special legislation. Three Bills were introduced, the first dealing with "indecent publications", the second dealing with child welfare, and the third ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie
... Treasury with rather indecent haste. L—— did not even look at the guard which turned out as we passed the entrance. When we had entered they had hurrahed him, and hoped that his health was good, in a chorus after their custom; and he had made a little ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the outlines of all the various systems of theology in Asia. The curious and ancient doctrine of the Creator being both male and female, mentioned on a preceding page, to be designated in Indian temples by a very indecent exhibition of the masculine and feminine organs of generation in union, occurs in the following passage: 'I am the Father and Mother of this world; I plant myself upon my own nature and create again and again this assemblage of beings; I am generation and dissolution, the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... for though Pelagie, Dorsan's erring and unpleasant wife, dies in the last chapter, I do not observe that an actual Hymen with Nicette "covers the fault" which, after long innocence, she has at last committed or permitted. But perhaps it would have been indecent to contract a second marriage so soon, and it is only postponed to the unwritten first chapter of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... And therefore phlegm and colics make a man A most indecent guest. The aliment Dress'd in my kitchen is true aliment; Light of digestion easily it passes; The chyle soft-blending from the juicy ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... fineness as the robe. As he stood back and the whole glorious beauty of the Queen was revealed, I felt a rush of shame sweep over me. It was not right that we should be there, gazing with irreverent eyes on such unclad beauty: it was indecent; it was almost sacrilegious! And yet the white wonder of that beautiful form was something to dream of. It was not like death at all; it was like a statue carven in ivory by the hand of a Praxiteles. There was nothing of that ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... out, and are running out again just after, you always have to take your hat off, and make a toilette for dejeuner; it does seem waste of time. The Baronne is considered quite eccentric because she keeps hers on sometimes. I had not even a parasol. Godmamma looked as if she thought it almost indecent. Presently Jean and the Marquis came out of the smoking-room and joined us. The Marquis at once began to pay compliments about the sun on my hair, and was really so clever in getting in little things, while he was talking to Godmamma, that I quite took ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... generation steeped in amorous casuistry and allegories. And if some scenes seem to us indelicate, yet after comparison with other authors of his times, Chretien must be let off with a light sentence. It is certain he intended to avoid what was indecent, as did the writers of narrative poetry in general. To appreciate fully the chaste treatment of Chretien one must know some other forms of mediaeval literature, such as the fabliaux, farces, and morality plays, in which courtesy imposed no restraint. For our poet's lack of sense of proportion, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... "Christian church," as you will—I take care not to hold mankind responsible for its lunacies. But my feeling changes and breaks out irresistibly the moment I enter modern times, our times. Our age knows better.... What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent—it is indecent to be a Christian today. And here my disgust begins.—I look about me: not a word survives of what was once called "truth"; we can no longer bear to hear a priest pronounce the word. Even ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... Martinique, the Mass was begun by a discharge of artillery, and after the Exaudiat and prayer for the King was closed by a loud "Vive le Roi!" from the throats of the buccaneers. A single incident, however, somewhat disturbed the devotions. One of the buccaneers, remaining in an indecent attitude during the Elevation, was rebuked by the captain, and instead of heeding the correction, replied with an impertinence and a fearful oath. Quick as a flash Daniel whipped out his pistol and shot the buccaneer through the head, adjuring God that ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... that pleasant undertone of laughter which endears. "You villain, have you been making love to Elsin Grey, that she should come babbling of Mr. Renault, Mr. Renault, Mr. Renault ere I had set foot in my own hallway? It was indecent, I tell you—not a word for me, civil or otherwise, not a question how I had 'scaped the Skinners at Kingsbridge—only a flutter of ribbons and a pair of pretty hands to kiss, and 'Oh, Cousin Coleville! ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... words, "Here is the unfortunate Mack." Then there filed out to the foot of the Michaelsberg 20,000 foot and 3,000 horse, who laid down their arms before the Emperor, some with defiant rage, the most part in stolid dejection, while others flung them away with every sign of indecent joy.[32] As if the elements themselves conspired to enhance the brilliance of Napoleon's triumph, the sun, which had been obscured for days by storm-clouds and torrents of rain, now shone brightly ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... him that three tables were arranged with almost indecent haste, cryptic remarks about "cutting in" were bandied about, and in less than five minutes he was sitting on the oak settle by the fire with Mrs Ffolliot, who talked to him so delightfully that the ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... confessing to a woman that he couldn't make a living. Such questions were none of their business (their business was simply to be provided for, practise the domestic virtues, and be charmingly grateful), and there was, to his sense, something almost indecent in talking about them. Mrs. Luna felt doubly sorry for him as she perceived that he denied himself the luxury of sympathy (that is, of hers), and the vague but comprehensive sigh that passed her lips as she took up her crochet again was unusually expressive of helplessness. She said ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... "Apollo"; and Irene, usually interested in her work, had a fit of the fidgets. The moment the bell sounded and the class was dismissed they bundled their pencils into their boxes, and left the studio with almost indecent haste. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... call the scandal of anarchy,—we did not establish "tutelage," or a protectorate, ourselves. We wisely left Venezuela to work out its destiny in its own way, and in the fullness of time. That policy was far-seeing, beneficent, and strictly American in 1895. Why, then, make almost indecent haste to abandon it ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... would seem that in this matter there are three points which require especial caution. The first and chief is that the pleasure in question should not be sought in indecent or injurious deeds or words. Wherefore Tully says (De Offic. i, 29) that "one kind of joke is discourteous, insolent, scandalous, obscene." Another thing to be observed is that one lose not the balance of one's mind altogether. Hence Ambrose says (De Offic. i, 20): ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas |
