"Immodest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought he could put the coarsest and most vicious matter before his reader, and reasonably expect him to profit by the moral, without being hurt by contact with the vice. "All possible care," he says, "has been taken to give no lewd ideas, no immodest turns in the dressing up of this story. * * * To this purpose some of the vicious part of her life, which could not be modestly told, is quite left out, and several other parts very much shortened. ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... himself at liberty to assume your championship in a private dispute, unasked, in view of the fact that you are quite well able to take care of your matters of that sort yourself and are not in need of any one's help. No, a volunteer could not make such a venture. It would be too immodest. Also too gratuitously generous. And a shade too self-sufficient. No, he could not venture it. It would look too much like anxiety to get in at a feast where no plate had been provided for him. In fact he could not get in at all, except by the back way, and with a false ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... progress in that important work which they professed to have so much at heart, the settling of a new model of representation, and a bill was introduced into the house against painting, patches, and other immodest dress of women; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... ladies and gentlemen locked in each other's arms, began to whirl in the giddy waltz, these Chinese gentlemen were so shocked that they covered their faces with their fans, occasionally peeping out each side and expressing their surprise to each other. They thought us the most immodest women on the face of the earth. Modesty and good taste are questions of latitude and education; the more people know, the more their ideas are expanded, by travel, experience, and observation; the less easily they are shocked. The narrowness and bigotry of women, are the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... think me immodest in my demands," she went on in hasty exculpation. "I'm not even aiming my remarks at you ... I'm only thinking aloud.... But you see, I can't get any real foothold in society until—until my affairs are more clarified.... ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... write a play without dresses at all, A plan, which I'm sure will be perfectly new. Yet opposed to convention, why merely the mention Of a thing so immodest will startle a few; And, although it's a pity, I shrewdly suspect The Lord Chamberlain might deem ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them. They walked and moved with the same majestic grace, which Milton describes our general mother with. There were many amongst them, as exactly proportioned as ever any goddess was drawn by the pencil of a Guido or Titian,—and most of their skins shiningly ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... black of the other men, and at first sight it does seem too odd to see evening dress consist of black trousers and a bright-red coat which stops off short at the waist. But if you think that looks odd, what will you say to the officers of the Highland regiments? Their full dress is almost as immodest in a different way as that of some women, and one of the most exquisite paradoxes of British custom is that a Highland undress uniform consists of the addition of long-trousers—more clothes than they wear ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... known each other such a very short time, and I have allowed myself to become so very, very well acquainted with you. It has all been so delightfully sudden, and strange, and I am—just as happy as I can be. You don't think it is immodest for me to say these things to my husband, John—even if I have only ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... said it, for here again she was forced to pause while another pair of immodest legs appeared over the eaves, much fatter and shorter than the preceding pair. These belonged to Nickey's boon-companion, the gentle Oliver Wendell Jones. The rest of O. W. J. followed in due time; and, quite ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... strike you that one of them women without anything on would have a hard time if she tried to be daring—or did it? No woman can be daring without the proper clothes for it,' I says firmly, 'and as for you, I tell you plain, get into the most daring and immodest thing that was ever invented for woman—which is the ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the eminent Italian physician, Giambattista della Porta, and finally was acquired by Doctor Fludd. In reply to this attack, the latter published a vigorous refutation, under the following caption: "The Squeezing of Parson Foster's Spunge, wherein the Spunge-bearer's immodest carriage and behaviour towards his brethren, is Detected; the Bitter Flames of his slanderous reports are, by the sharp Vinegar of Truth, Corrected and quite Extinguished, and lastly, the virtuous validity of his Spunge ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... labouring classes all over the north of Africa. They roll up the clothes into a round flat heap, and then with their heels keep up a continual round of treading, using for soap a peculiar sort of clay. Some of the girls are very impudent and immodest when a stranger passes by; but as a rule they are not so. The wells at Mourzuk are not all good; some are fresh, others salt. In many places will be found a well of very sweet, delicious water; and running nearly to the surface, at twenty ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... thrusting up their breasts in order that they might show them half-naked." It was not only at balls and in chambers of entertainment, he avowed, they appeared in this manner, but likewise at church, where their dress was "not only immodest, but sometimes impudent and lascivious;" for they braved all dangers to have the satisfaction of being seen, and ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... members of the doctor's household. This document had long been the lawyer's eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more. It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes; ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... pretext of killing the tedium of October evenings in a country-house, got up a burlesque wedding, in which Louise de Querouaille was the bride and the King the bridegroom, with all the immodest ceremonies which marked, in the good old times, the retirement of the ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... boys and girls in this matter is very different. Knowledge pertaining to the sexual life is talked over very freely among boys, so that by the time the boy is of a marriageable age he is pretty well posted. With girls it is quite different. It would be considered very immodest for a girl to discuss such matters. She does not feel free even to talk with her mother or other adviser, and so she goes to the altar ignorant of many things she should know. Then during the first few days of married life this knowledge so overwhelms her and often ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... together promptly at midnight. After midnight these casino dance halls change their character. Often professional "pace makers" are introduced, men and women of the lowest class, who are paid to inspire the other dancers to lewd conduct. These wretched people are immodestly clothed, and they perform immodest or very tough dances. They are usually known as "Twisters," a descriptive title. When they make their appearance the self-respecting dancers go home, and a much looser element comes in. The pace becomes a rapid one. Manners are free, ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... had inherited and been told made me sure that I was horridly immodest; I wouldn't, if it could be helped at all, let anyone see inside me; I couldn't have men touch me; and whenever I began to like one I ran. It was disgusting, I was brought up to believe; I thought there was something ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... as she recalled the amazing folly that had induced her to tell the secret feelings of her inmost soul to this man almost a stranger. Whence came this miracle of influence about him, this gift of intimacy? She felt a shock as if she had been immodest. She was in an agony of doubt as to what he was thinking of her, and dreaded to meet ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... and the despair of the older generation. Nothing like her has ever been seen or heard before. Alike in drawing-rooms and the amusement places of the people, she defies conventions in dress, speech, and conduct. She is bold, yet not immoral. She is immodest, yet she is chaste. She has no ideals, yet she is kind and generous. She is an anomaly ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Gardens," Bessie exclaimed, as she entered the gate and looked around her. "I think I should like to live here," she continued; and then there came to her a thought of Grey, who would probably one day be master of the place, and she blushed guiltily, as if she had said some immodest thing. ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... the presence of the other sex, and behaving in such fashion as to restrict sexual demonstration. There is a natural coyness in women which has been socially emphasized by restrictions in dress, conduct and speech to a ridiculous degree. Thus it was immodest in our civilization for women to show their legs, and the leg became the symbol of the femaleness of the woman or girl, as also did the breast.[1] The body became taboo, and at present, when women are commencing to dress so that the legs are shown, the arms are bare, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... fortune, and so, reading what happened to others, and how perfectly lovely and romantic it all was, they are ready for the wiles of the first gay deceiver. Waiting in vain for their god-like ideal, they are finally content to look a little lower, and favorably receive the immodest addresses of some clerk in their own store, or succeed in making ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... Plato. Subtle corruption and covert licentiousness are utterly absent; we find more real"vice" in many a short French roman, say La Dame aux Camelias, and in not a few English novels of our day than in the thousands of pages of the Arab. Here we have nothing of that most immodest modern modesty which sees covert implication where nothing is implied, and "improper" allusion when propriety is not outraged; nor do we meet with the Nineteenth Century refinement; innocence of the word not of the thought; morality of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... wait then, while Diana completed her preparations for the hunt; but when Kitty Bonnair, fully apparelled, finally stepped through the door Creede reeled in the saddle, and even Rufus Hardy gasped. There was nothing immodest about her garb—in fact, it was very correct and proper—but not since the Winship girls rode forth in overalls had Hidden Water seen its like. Looking very trim and boyish in her khaki riding breeches, Kitty strode ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... arguments that did at least aim to rebut the indictment. The decisions of all the established men in the world were notoriously in conflict. However great was the gross wisdom of the ages the net wisdom was remarkably small. Was it after all so very immodest to believe that the Liberals were right in what they said about Tariff Reform, and the Tories right in their criticism of ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... without caring in the slightest degree whether a woman's ear is within reach of their voices. Yesterday, on the beach, I was forced to go away from the place where I sat in order not to be any longer the involuntary confidant of an obscene anecdote, told in such immodest language that I felt as much humiliated as I was indignant at having heard it. Would not the most elementary good-breeding have taught them to speak in a lower tone about such matters when we are near at hand? Etretat is, moreover, the country of gossip and scandal. From five to seven ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... thou wert suffering. Thou art blessed with more than common good sense, and thou knowest how to make thyself agreeable. I earnestly advise thee to guard well thy thoughts. Never allow thyself to use an immodest word, or to be guilty of an unbecoming action. On all occasions, show thyself worthy of the regard of those who feel an interest in thy welfare. 'There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons that ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... that Joel was undoubtedly in the secret of that errand. After forty years in a world where birth is the one inevitable human experience, aside from death, she had never been able to rid herself of the impression that it was essentially immodest. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... so coarsely built, that you can never appreciate a shade of meaning. You are yourselves rapacious, violent, immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least thought for the future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience with such stuff. You would despise in a common banker the imbecility that you expect to find ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... persecution became the most bitter persecutors. Those who were found dancing or drunk were ordered to be publicly whipped, in order to deter others from such practices. The custom of wearing long hair was deemed immodest, impious and abominable. All who were guilty of swearing rashly, might purchase an exemption from punishment for a schilling; but those who should transgress the fourth commandment were to be condemned to banishment, and such ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... wedding is the bride's festival. The bridegroom hardly counts. Nay, love, you need fear no immodest fooling when you bid good night to the company; nor shall there be any scuffling for garters at the door of your chamber. There was none of that antique nonsense when Lady Sandwich married her daughter. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... head and accepted his reproaches humbly. It was easy for her to believe that she had been immodest and forward in her solicitude. Probably Mr. Roberts—and everybody else, for that matter—thought she could not be a nice girl, since she had ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... passion; but as soon as she had yielded to it she despised herself. Even in the excitement of pleasure she could not entirely forget and lose herself. The image of mademoiselle always arose before her, with her stern, motherly face. Germinie did not become immodest in the same degree that she abandoned herself to her passions and sank lower and lower in vice. The degrading depths to which she descended did not fortify her against her disgust and horror of herself. Habit did not harden her. Her defiled conscience ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... national, tribal, sept, and clan systems were devised solely to prevent international decadence and fraternal strife; their secret societies were not sinister; their festivals and dances not immodest; their priesthood not ignoble. They were sedentary and metropolitan people—dwellers in towns—not nomads; they had cattle and fowls, orchards and grain-fields, gardens for vegetables, corrals for breeding stock. They had many towns—some ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Tiberius, and in which luxury and appetite reached their climax, was in mid-current. The strong wines of Messina and Cyprus had already done their work. The hall resounded with ribald joke and merriment. Towards the end of such a feast it was the custom for immodest women to be introduced, who, by their gestures, imitated scenes in certain well-known mythologies, and still further inflamed the passions of the banqueters. But instead of the usual troupe, which Herod probably kept for such an occasion, Salome herself came in and danced a wild ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... not, Either by poison or some other plot, Send you to death where, by his providence, God hath preserved you by that wond'rous miracle? Nay, after death, hath he not scandalis'd Your place with an immodest courtesan? ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... those days. From a worldly point of view it would have been considered, no doubt, very neat and consistent. But on several occasions I had good crying fits over it. Not only did I instinctively feel it to be immodest, because people could see through it, but I thought it was not such as a ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... standing served our purpose. All Indians smoked[6]—men and women. No boy was allowed to smoke until he had hunted alone and killed large game—wolves and bears. Unmarried women were not prohibited from smoking, but were considered immodest if they did so. Nearly ...
— Geronimo's Story of His Life • Geronimo
... years ago that the old custom of racing for the bride's garter on wedding days was given up. In the early years of last century an improvement in public morals showed itself in a frequently expressed opinion that the custom was immodest, and gradually the practice was dropped the bride merely handing a ribbon to the winner of ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... design against Peter. She was an adventuress, a Cyprian, a seductress attempting to snare Peter in the brazen web of her comeliness. For to the old gentleman's eyes there was an abiding impudicity about Cissie's very charms. The passionate repose of her face was immodest; the possession of a torso such as a sculptor might have carved was brazen. The girl was shamefully ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... oneself so many points occur which cannot be passed over till they have been wrestled with and vanquished. Now yesterday, for instance, some very stiff problems occurred to me—as thus: Can a man justly lay claim to merit for the talents he possesses, and is it immodest of him to let others perceive by his conversation that he is quite aware he possesses them? Or, on the contrary, is not the fact that he is talented purely a piece of good fortune, and would it not be the merest humbug on his part to pretend ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... and mourning of the women, and took away everything that was either unbecoming or immodest; when they walked abroad, no more than three articles of dress were allowed them; an obol's worth of meat and drink; and no basket above a cubit high; and at night they were not to go about unless in a chariot with a torch before them. Mourners tearing themselves to raise pity, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... took up too much of my time, for I loved riding in the first place, running, and all active pastimes; in short, I was that which we graver people call a hoyting girl; but to be just to myself, I never did mischief to myself or people, nor one immodest word or action in my life, though skipping and activity was my delight, but upon my mother's death, I then began to reflect, and, as an offering to her memory, I flung away those childnesses that had formerly possessed me, and, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... in which she was confined. It was a large room, very elegantly furnished, containing a piano, and a profusion of paintings. On examining one of these, Fanny turned away with a burning cheek—for it was one of those immodest productions of the French school, which show how art and talent can be perverted to the basest uses. She looked at no more of the pictures, but went to a window and looked out. The view from thence was not extensive, but merely included a garden ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... the skies above them. Some memory of awful bitterness distorted for a moment his features, but he said nothing. Like all strong men, he drove down his emotions to the depths of his heart; thinking perhaps, as simple characters are apt to think, that there was something immodest in unveiling griefs when human language cannot render their depths and may only rouse the mockery of those who do not comprehend them. Monsieur d'Albon had one of those delicate natures which divine sorrows, and are instantly sympathetic to ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... entered. The little room was flooded with a mellow light from the pink-globed lamp on the table, and in the soft, shadowy radiance she was as beautiful as a dream. She wore a dress of crepe, cut low in the neck. Estella had never seen anyone dressed so before. To her it seemed immodest. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that at the auspicious moment when Dink Stover led the apparently scantily-clothed Finnegan and the procession of immodest banners around to the Esplanade of the Upper, the Doctor suddenly appeared through the shrubbery that screens Foundation House from the rest of the campus, with a party of ladies, relatives, as it unfortunately happened, of one of the ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... convinced, though puzzled; but that is because they don't detect your fallacy. You confound the woman and the fashion. An immodest woman may be modestly dressed; and if it is the fashion to be so, she most certainly will, unless she is able herself to set a fashion more suited to her taste. For usually a woman's care of her costume is in inverse proportion to that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... occasioned. By these means, however, I came to the knowledge of their condition, their lives and conversation, of which the latter were the most deplorable—habitual profanation of the Sabbath-day, drunkenness, rioting, immodest dancing, revellings, fightings, an improper state of females on their marriage, and an absence and ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... keep your hands off? Why surely, sir, if you were sane or had a particle of sense about you, when you think your wife is immodest and tell her so yourself, you wouldn't hold any conversation with her at all in jest or earnest, unless you were the silliest ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... ball, the glamour suddenly departed. Her appearance had altered and corresponded no longer to my imaginary picture of her. When we met in the dance she pressed my hand, which made me indignant, as though it were an immodest thing. She was no longer a fairy. She had broad shoulders, a budding bust, warm hands; there was youthful coquetry about her—something that, to me, seemed like erotic experience. I soon lost sight of her. But I retained ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... obscene, tainted, defiled, gross, indelicate, polluted, tarnished, dirty, immodest, lewd, stained, unchaste, filthy, impure, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the ballad from "Le COurt Mantel," an old French piece and Mr. Evans (Specimens of Welsh Poetry) from an ancient MS, of Tegan Earfron, one of Arthur's mistresses, who possessed a mantle which would not fit immodest women. See also in Spenser, Queen Florimel's Girdle (F.Q. iv. 5,3), and the detective is a horn in the Morte d'Arthur, translated from the French, temp. Edward IV., and first printed in A. D. 1484. The Spectator (No. 579) tells us "There was a Temple upon Mount Etna which was guarded by ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... pallid seamstress sitteth For a long and tedious twelve hours Stitching, while her life is ebbing In a rapid current from her. Now awhile we see the playhouse, And the giddy hall of music, And the scenes exposed therein, Oft immodest and immoral. Next the nest of thieves and robbers, With their heaps of spoil and plunder, And their hidden laws and customs. Then we seek the house of prayer, Which is only weekly opened, Or which day to day inviteth Weary souls into its shadow, ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... senmakula. Immaterial negrava. Immature nematura. Immediate tuja. Immediately tuj. Immense vasta. Immense (size) grandega. Immerge trempi. Immerse subakvigi. Immigrate enmigri. Immigrant enmigranto. Imminent minaca. Immobility senmoveco. Immoderate malmodera. Immodest nemodesta. Immolate oferbucxi. Immoral malbonmora. Immorality malbonmoreco. Immortal senmorta. Immortality senmorteco. Immovable senmova, nemovebla. Immutable nesxangxebla. Imp diableto. Impair difekti. Impart komuniki, sciigi. Impartial senpartia. Impartiality ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... immodest conversation, unchaste words, vile stories, and shameless jests. [Eph. 5:3-4, Eph. 4:29] Such things are not smart, as many think, but vile and despicable. We should never take part in nor listen to a conversation which we would be ashamed to have ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... so near the end of the honeymoon that I think it can hardly be immodest if I emerge from private life and write you a letter, more particularly as I want to know something. I went yesterday on an expedition to see the remains of a forest which exists between tidemarks at a place called Amroth, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... necessity an impure woman. Too many of them are; but, as a class, they are much abused. They work hard, and do not have much leisure time, and deserve more sympathy than reproach. Men, especially, think that, because they appear on the stage in a state of semi-nudity, they are immodest and of easy virtue; and in New York there is a class of men, of nominal respectability, who appear to regard ballet-dancers as their legitimate prey. They exert all their arts to lead these poor girls ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... enterprise, often stopped to inquire for employment. A few days after the sham duel, Harrison determined to play a trick on another emigrant, a shrewd, tolerably well-informed young man, who had evinced a great deal of self-complacency and immodest pertinacity. He told the pertinacious emigrant, who inquired for a place, that he had not, himself, anything that could engage his attention, but that he had a friend (alluding to me) who was now in ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Manufacturers were promising for the coming season that suitable shoes would be built for street wear and mountain climbing, for the sands of the sea and the sands of the desert, and the sheer face of canyons. The extremely long, dirt-sweeping skirts were coming up; the extremely short, immodest skirts were coming down. A sane and sensible wave seemed to be sweeping the whole country. Under the impetus of Donald Whiting's struggles to lead his classes and those of other pupils to lead theirs a higher ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of Rabbi Shiman, which was in a beautiful, cool, and shady spot. There we found numbers of people. Some groups were having a lively time singing and clapping their hands, while the men were dancing; but none of the women or girls danced, as it would be thought immodest of them, but they helped by singing and clapping their hands. Then other folks came to pray at the saint's grave for the health of some of their children that were ailing. Others dropped letters or pieces of paper ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... rounded limbs and marble huelessness of fair Dian, chastest of all Olympia's deities, wondering if, after all, what is called modesty does not come as much of habit as of nature—if the veiled face of the Oriental is not as immodest as the unclothedness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the editor?—no other than John Phillips, Milton's youngest nephew! It is as if nature, in reasserting herself, had made deliberate selection of its agent. The pure poet of Comus, the man who had publicly boasted his chastity, had trained up a pupil to become the editor of an immodest drollery! Another and more original production of John Phillips, the Satyr against Hypocrites, was an open attack, with mixed banter and serious indignation, on the established religion. "It affords," ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... in life was tyranny? But, as the divine Plato says, as long as his chin was beardless, he was beloved by all; but, when he passed from boyhood to manhood, when his imperfect intelligence had reached its maturity, he was hated by all. Why, then, giving modest names to immodest sentiments, do men call personal beauty virtue, being in reality lovers of youth rather than lovers of wisdom? However, it is not my intention to speak evil of distinguished men. But, to descend from graver topics to the mere question of enjoyment, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... "villainy is no bad weapon against villainy"[667] taught people the bad practice of standing on one's defence against vice by imitating it; but to get rid of those who shamelessly and unblushingly importune us by their own effrontery, and not to gratify the immodest in their disgraceful desires through false modesty, is the right and proper ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... of them, I am ashamed to say, the son of a candidate for office, a boy wearing the golden boss, a lad not less than twelve years of age. He was jingling a pair of castanets and dancing a step which an immodest slave could not dance with decency." [57] Such might have been the reflections of a puritan had he entered a modern dancing-academy. We may be permitted to question the immorality of the exhibition thus displayed, but there can be no doubt as to the social ambition which it reveals—an ambition ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the most immodest—I'm ashamed that you're my daughter. If your another had ever carried on as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... coarseness of structure, indiscriminate hardihood, is at least a point of some unworthiness in a plant. That it should have no choice of home, no love of native land, is ungentle; much more if such discrimination as it has, be immodest, and incline it, seemingly, to open and much-traversed places, where it may be continually seen of strangers. The tormentilla gleams in showers along the mountain turf; her delicate crosslets are separate, though constellate, as the rubied daisy. But the king-cup—(blessing be upon it always ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humour, of honour, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men. How few persons discuss superfluous bachelors, or whether the male arm or leg is an immodest sight, or whether men should vote. ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... it is looked upon to be unlucky to talk of Dreams at Table, and it is immodest to bring forth before so many Men; but this Dream, or this Conception of thy Mind, be it what it will, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... amongst other trees, so that they appear to mix with the other foliage; or else they should be seen at some distance. Other varieties of the common white poplar or abele are occasionally useful, although most of them sprout badly and may become a nuisance. But the planting of these immodest trees is so likely to be overdone that one scarcely dare recommend them, although, when skillfully used, they may be made to produce most excellent effects. If any reader has a particular fondness for trees of this class (or any others with woolly-white foliage) and if he has only an ordinary ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... "enlightened," "pure," became a term of horror and scorn, a reproach of heresy. Saint Epiphanius, in the third century, claimed that they used first to tickle each other, the men and the women; that then they gave each other very immodest kisses, and that they judged the degree of their faith by the voluptuousness of these kisses; that the husband said to his wife, in presenting a young initiate to her: "Have an agape with my brother," and ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... which is to say that she was a thought too slender for Oriental taste; she moved along beside her lord with a sinuous, languorous grace, gently stirring her fan of ostrich plumes. She was unveiled; indeed it was her immodest habit to go naked of face more often than was seemly, which is but the least of the many undesirable infidel ways which had survived her induction into the Faith of Islam—a necessary step before Asad, who was devout to the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... made the famous fine cotton cloth, known as abrawan, or 'running water,' which was supplied to the imperial Zenana at Delhi. On one occasion a daughter of Aurangzeb was reproached on entering the room for her immodest attire and excused herself by the plea that she had on seven folds of cloth over her body. [80] In Bengal Brahmans will take water from Tantis, and it seems clear that their higher status is a consequence of the lucrative and important ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... making a parade of it, in making a look speak and speak profoundly, without childish exaggeration or effeminate effusiveness, to those who can grasp the half-spoken thought, to men. Modern music, which is so loquaciously introspective, dragging in indiscreet confidences at every turn, is immodest and lacking in taste. It is like those invalids who can think of nothing but their illnesses, and never weary of discussing them with other people and going into repulsive petty details. This travesty of art has been growing more and more prevalent for the last century. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... the long-awaited gymnasium and athletic field. In contrast to the modern student journals, the earliest files of the Chronicle are distinguished by their exceedingly rare references to athletic events, and then only in a very occasional modest item giving the immodest score of some class contest, such as the baseball game between '71 and '72 on May 29, 1869, when the score ran 50 to 36. Shortly after this time came the first student athletic organization, informally known as the "Baseball ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... said to herself, quietly, that she would write to David Richie, and tell him she had 'thought it over'; and that neither she nor her money was his, or any further concern of his. "He needn't trouble himself; there would be no more 'imprudence.' Oh, fool! fool! immodest fool! to have told him he 'could have her for the taking,' and he said it was 'long' for her to wait!" It was an unbearable recollection. "His," she had said; "soul and body." She saw again the written words that she had kissed, and she had an impulse to tear the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... whose writing is art, and whose art is unworthy his writing. To him and his example do we owe the outrage of proffered assistance from the unscientific—the meddling of the immodest—the intrusion of the garrulous. Art, that for ages has hewn its own history in marble, and written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still, and stammer, and wait for wisdom from the passer-by?—for guidance from the hand that holds neither brush nor ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... evening gown of some sort, even though a shabby sort? Not that Miss Brooke to-night was shabbily attired: she was much otherwise; from some mysterious source of wardrobe she had conjured wraps, furs, and a dancing frock as fresh and becoming as it was, oddly enough, not immodest. And with whatever cares preying upon her secret mind, she entered with the light step and bright countenance of any girl of her age ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... it results in the following monstrous figment:—that the fruit of Herod's incestuous connexion with Herodias had been a daughter, who was also named Herodias; and that she,—the King's own daughter,—was the immodest one[48] who came in and danced before him, 'his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee,' as they sat at the birthday banquet. Probability, natural feeling, the obvious requirements of the narrative, History itself—, for Josephus expressly informs us that 'Salome,' not 'Herodias,' ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... in a cooler moment, I hasten to blab the whole simplicity of it, to blab on Roscoe and the other navigators and the rest of the priesthood, all for fear that I may become even as they, secretive, immodest, and inflated with self-esteem. And I want to say this now: any young fellow with ordinary gray matter, ordinary education, and with the slightest trace of the student-mind, can get the books, and charts, and instruments and teach himself ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... the three girls darted to and fro. The telltale spelling and copy-books were flung into the drawer of the chiffonier, and the key was turned on them. Polly, her immodest sampler safely hidden at the bottom of her workbox, was the most composed of the three; and while locks were smoothed and collars adjusted in the adjoining bedroom, she remained behind to look out thimbles, needles and strips ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... so," said she, "will you tell me why they find such an overwhelming attraction in the immodest of ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... takes its place as a respectable and legitimate business. In England and America Christianity is fashionable, in Turkey, Mohammedanism, and 'the crimes of Clapham are chaste in Martaban.' In Japan a woman dresses down to the knees, but would be considered immodest if she displayed bare arms. In Europe it is legs that no pure-minded woman is supposed to possess. In China we worship our mother-in-law and despise our wife; in England we treat our wife with respect, and regard our mother-in-law as the ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... intellectual routine, her first taste of life. All the pedantry of her daily toil slipped away like a cumbrous garment; she was clad only in her womanhood. Once or twice a shudder of strange self-consciousness went through her, and she felt guilty, immodest; but upon that sensation followed a surge of passionate ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Milwaukee a gray haired man approached her on the train, said he knew her relatives, they were rather a bad lot of people, and he wanted to protect her from them. Then came a long account of being driven in a carriage, changing her clothes in a hotel, having her picture taken in an immodest costume, signing a paper at police headquarters, and, at last, safely returning home, all guided by the mysterious gray haired man. Another trip led to an encounter with a man who took her in an automobile under the promise of ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... hall; and (as I have found in many an election) will endure the most unendurable taunts rather than come forward. The English are a modest people; that is why they are entirely ruled and run by the few of them that happen to be immodest. In theatrical affairs the fact is strangely notable; and in most playhouses we find the bored people in front and ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... imprisonment against those who amuse themselves by celebrating bacchanals in churches, masked, disguised, and crowned "with leaves or flowers"; all this about 1250. The statutes of University Hall, 1292, prohibit the fellows from fighting, from holding immodest conversations together, from telling each other love tales, "fubulas de amasiis," and from singing ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... nature; he clung almost passionately to the alternative that she was the victim of those gathering forces of discontent, of that interpretation which can only be described as decadent and that veracity which can only be called immodest, that darken the intellectual skies of our time, a sweet thing he held her still though touched by corruption, a prey to "idees," "idees" imparted from the poisoned mind of her sister, imbibed from the carelessly edited columns of newspapers, from all too laxly ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... lesson, that the very pleasures they enjoy in the society of their wives are reproachable if immoderate, and that a licentious and riotous abuse of them is a fault as reprovable here as in illicit connections. Those immodest and debauched tricks and postures, that the first ardour suggests to us in this affair, are not only indecently but detrimentally practised upon our wives. Let them at least learn impudence from another hand; they are ever ready enough ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... "Well, immodest or not, I hold to it," replied Betsey in as amiable a manner as if there had been no reflection upon her refinement. "Abel stands a good chance for the legislature now, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... of going on and being an Englishman, that is all he asks; and in the meantime, while you continue to associate, he would rather not be reminded of your baser origin. Compared with the grand, tree-like self-sufficiency of his demeanour, the vanity and curiosity of the Scot seem uneasy, vulgar, and immodest. That you should continually try to establish human and serious relations, that you should actually feel an interest in John Bull, and desire and invite a return of interest from him, may argue something ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this field that his most brilliant theatrical successes were won. For the next few years he continued to produce comedies and farces with great rapidity, both under his own name, and under the pseudonym of Scriblerus Secundus. Most of these show manifest signs of haste, and some are recklessly immodest. We shall confine ourselves to one or two of the best, and do little more than enumerate the others. Of these latter, the Coffee-House Politician; or, The Justice caught in his own Trap, 1730, succeeded the Author's Farce. The leading idea, that of ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... refuse their appearing; but I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the dandy plates, the names of contributors poked up into your eyes in first page, and whisked through all the covers of magazines, the barefaced sort of emulation, the immodest candidateship. Brought into so little space,—in those old "Londons," a signature was lost in the wood of matter, the paper coarse (till latterly, which spoiled them),—in short, I detest to appear in an Annual. What a fertile genius (and a quiet good soul withal) is Hood! He has fifty things ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... trumpeted their praises; and I have known one woman set everybody against herself by the way in which she published her husband's faults. I find it difficult to believe either sort. To praise one's husband is so like praising one's self, that to me it seems immodest, and subject to the same suspicion as self-laudation; while to blame one's husband, even justly and openly, seems to me to border upon treachery itself. How, then, am I to discharge a sort of half duty my father has laid upon me by what he has said in "The Seaboard Parish," concerning ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... tone jarred upon him. It was not immodest, but it revealed a mind accustomed to view the facts of life, not one nourished on pretty fancies, like those of ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... that from such a Conjunction, Giants were Born, so we may infer that if Angels can mix Amorously with Women, and engender Children, the Devils who only differ from Angels by their Fall, may also draw Women into immodest Pleasures, and Defile them with their Embraces: But it is highly inconsistent to suppose that our Creator who is all Purity, would permit the worst of Spirits to propogate ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... Christian camp, the outskirts of which she entered immediately. The Frenchmen all flocked to see her, wondering who she was, and who could have sent them so lovely a messenger. Armida passed onwards, not with a misgiving air, not with an unalluring, and yet not with an immodest one. Her golden tresses she suffered at one moment to escape from under her veil, and at another she gathered them again within it. Her rosy mouth breathed simplicity as well as voluptuousness. Her bosom was so artfully draped, as to let itself be discerned without seeming ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... rises in a flat plain, having its first birth in a lakelet in approximate longitude 82 deg. 47' E. and latitude 30 deg. 33' N. I gave the Northern source my own name, a proceeding which I trust will not be regarded as immodest in view of the fact that I was the first European to visit both sources and of all the circumstances of ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... new Rome in the rise and practice of the hierarchy (too well known to require any further illustration) is far more immodest. ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... vile, And of an inclination so ignoble, That I must hide me from your eyes for ever. Be witness, gods, and strike Jocasta dead, If an immodest thought, or low desire, Inflamed my breast, since ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... entertained by virtue of prevailing fashions, and have been therefore regarded immoral. And herein lies an important point to be considered. Anything which is radically unlike prevailing standards or styles to which we have become accustomed will impress most persons as being immodest or indecent. The unusual in dress is usually denounced as immoral because we are all prone to allow our prejudice to obscure our reason and o'ersway our judgment. This point must be recognized before any real reform can be accomplished. When humanity has grown sufficiently wise to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... poem, it is edifying, in these days of coarser thinking, to notice the nature, refinement, and exquisite delicacy which pervade it; banishing every gross thought, or immodest expression, and presenting female loveliness, clothed in all its chivalrous attributes of almost supernatural ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... she had made love to him, thrown herself at him, pursued him with her love, refused to let him go ... and all the other things she had done—changing for his sake from her decent ways ... breaking the Sabbath, taking off her neck-band. She had been getting irreligious and immodest, and now she was unhappy, and it ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... fear that they will be corrupted by their company, the kept women, the milliners, the shop girls, saleswomen, actresses, singers, the girls of the opera, the ballet-dancers, upper servants, chambermaids, etc. Most of these creatures excite the passions of many people, but they would consider it immodest to inform a lawyer, a mayor, an ecclesiastic or a laughing world of the day and hour when they surrendered to a lover. Their system, justly blamed by an inquisitive world, has the advantage of laying upon them no obligations towards men in general, towards the mayor or the magistracy. As these ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... his handkerchief, thrust the handkerchief through the broken pane and waved it violently to spread the smell. It was cheap, immodest stuff, blatant with its own advertisement. Then he set the jorum down on the end of the table farthest from the wall, to the best of his judgment out of reach from ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... stagnates. Further, the women must repair to the house of one of their gossips who has given birth to twins, and must drench her with water, which they carry in little pitchers. Having done so they go on their way, shrieking out their loose songs and dancing immodest dances. No man may see these leaf-clad women going their rounds. If they meet a man, they maul him and thrust him aside. When they have cleansed the wells, they must go and pour water on the graves of their ancestors in the sacred grove. It often happens, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... to-day. I ran across it in a recent trip East. A big, barnlike structure had been erected which was called "the tabernacle." Its floor was of sawdust sprinkled on the ground. Here for about a month a professional evangelist had harangued the curious crowds in immoderate, and oftentimes immodest language. Wit and sarcasm and slang and emotion had been freely used in his efforts to make sinners "hit the sawdust trail," to use his own spectacular language, as well as to extort money from the pockets ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... the breaches in the walls were due to outside attacks. A list of twelve such evils was drawn up in 1675, and the crimes which were condemned, and which were said to be committed chiefly by the younger sort, included immodest wearing of the hair by men, strange new fashions of dress, want of reverence at worship, profane cursing, tippling, breaking the Sabbath, idleness, overcharges by the merchants, and the "loose and sinful habit of riding from town to town, ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... the best possible use of the various quarries to which they had access is unlikely. Even if they credited themselves with having done so, it would be immodest of them to say it. Better material than any that their researches brought to light may still be lying near the surface, somewhere close at hand, waiting to be unearthed. Certainly this paper will not have been ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... certain dreadful innocence about them too, as though each would protest, "In spite of our tasks, our often immodest tasks, our minds are ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... and idle look in the meeting-house; and, pointing with his cane to my hair, he said I did render myself liable to presentment by the Grand Jury for a breach of the statute of the General Court, made the year before, against "the immodest laying out of the hair," &c. He then went on to say that he had lived to see strange times, when such as I did venture to oppose themselves to sober and grave people, and to despise authority, and encourage rebellion and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... I, particularly, are pretty much upon a par. The difference between us is only, what they think, I act. But the immodest ones out-do the worst of us by a bar's length, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... bent on rounding-up the three boys and Kathleen, he was impressed by the slim, graceful figure and the manner in which she carried herself. Nothing ordinary or common about THAT girl, said he; nothing bold or immodest. Out of the goodness of her heart she had proffered assistance, as any gently born person would have done. His heart warmed toward her. It wasn't often that one encountered a pretty girl who was considerate, sweet-natured and polite to her elders, especially in New York City. He almost forgot ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... whole dark reality of his past conduct, of his present situation. Lucia, the charming siren of the previous evening, appeared in her real colors, as the immodest, passionate wanton; Catiline as the monster ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... through an inevitable physical readjustment. What is happening is that sexual desire—it may be in vague, unconscious, and very general forms—is asserting itself. Nothing could be more absurd than to suggest that there is anything wrong or immodest in that fact. It is quite inevitable. Indeed, the first step out of the trouble lies in accepting the fact and then in considering how it ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... Immodest words admit of no defence; For want of decency is want of sense. What moderate fop would rake the park or stews, Who among troops of faultless nymphs may choose? Variety of such is to be found: Take then ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... so well. And Sir Walter was even more high on the matter than his lady had been; and the king jested, and said it was only the court fashion; to which Sir Walter returned for answer, that, however it might be the court fashion, it was scarce courtly to present an immodest to a modest woman. With that the king chafed, and said he supposed Lady Constantia's friendship for Dame Frances Russell was stronger than her loyalty, for she regarded Cromwell's daughter, both as RICH and RUSSELL, more than she did his favour. And Sir Walter, making a low bow, replied that ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... scruples not to declare, that he never saw any appetite, hunger and thirst excepted, gratified in public. It is too true, that for the sake of gaining our extraordinary curiosities, and to please our brutes, they have appeared immodest in the extreme. Yet they lay the charge wholly at our door, and say, that Englishmen are ashamed of nothing, and that we have led them to public acts of indecency never before practised among themselves. Iron here, more precious than gold, bears down every barrier ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... theatre to the stage of the mountebank, and whose humor, coarse but pungent, seemed a drunken echo of the laughter of Moliere. The clown exerted his low talent, throwing out at each moment some low jest, some immodest pun, to which his master, simulating a prudish indignation, responded by thumps on the head. But the adroit clown excelled in the art of receiving affronts. He knew to perfection how to bend his body like a bow under the impulse of a kick, and having received on one cheek a full-armed ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... always been the custom for the Asika to do as I did at feasts and sacrifices, but perhaps that is not the fashion among your women; perhaps they always remain veiled, as I have heard the worshippers of the Prophet do, and therefore you thought me immodest. I am very, very sorry, Vernoon. I pray you to forgive me who am ignorant and only do what I ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard |
