"Indelicacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... author of The Soul of a People. But there may be a war of sex with sex scarcely less tragic than the wars of men with men (or brutes). The author shows us an oldish husband—a civil servant—who surmounts, with not too much indelicacy, the primary difficulty of his young wife's ingenuousness in relation to the sacrament of marriage. But a further and worse difficulty is waiting for him when he comes to deal with the incompatibility of the sexes in the matter of moral standards. The thing, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... sense of shame has begun to invade the privacy of our brain. We feel that to answer that letter now would be an indelicacy. Better to pretend that we never got it. By and by Bill will write again and then we will answer promptly. We put the letter back in the middle of the heap and think what a fine chap Bill is. But he knows we love him, so it doesn't really matter ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... their back." In "Honoria and Memoria," 1652, Shirley has again repeated this humorous and graphic description of the land and water pageants of the good citizens of the day; he has, however, abridged the general detail, and added some degree of indelicacy to his satire. He alludes to the wild men that cleared the way, and their fireworks, in these words: "I am not afeard of your green Robin Hoods, that fright with fiery club your pitiful spectators, that take pains to be stifled, and adore the wolves ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... take immediate possession of the works which had been abandoned. The whole army crossed the east passage, and landed on the north end of Rhode Island. This movement gave great offence to the Admiral, who resented the indelicacy supposed to have been committed by Sullivan in landing before the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... down stairs, is set apart for the gentlemen, where, in some houses, cigars and brandy and effervescent waters are furnished. If this provision be not made, it is the height of indelicacy for gentlemen ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... as this inquiry could only be. My presumptuous dream of taking him into my own service had died away: my service wasn't worth his being taken into. My offer could only be to help him to find another place, and yet there was an indelicacy, as it were, in taking for granted that his thoughts would immediately be fixed on another. I had a hope that he would be able to give his life a different form—though certainly not the form, the frequent result ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... and disclosed the lightly-clad crowd behind. The skipper's eyes grew large and his jaw dropped, while inarticulate words came from his parched and astonished throat; and the mate, who was by this time awake, sat up in his bunk and cursed them roundly for their indelicacy. ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... point. I could not commit the gross indelicacy of saying: "My poor friend, where do you come in?" or words to that effect. Nor could I possibly lay down the proposition that a living second husband—stretching the imagination to the hypothesis ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... with some complaint, and it affects her nerves and spirits; or else she has—she is—what inexperienced young people call 'in love.' You need not look so frightened, child; nobody in their senses suspects you of imprudence or indelicacy; and therefore I feel quite sure that your constitution is at a crisis, or your health has suffered some shock—pray Heaven it may not be a serious one. You will have the best advice, and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... last person made acquainted with this interesting intelligence was the Honourable Miss Delmar, and her nephew took upon himself to make the communication. At first the honourable spinster bridled up with indignation, wondered at the girl's indelicacy, and much more at her demeaning herself by marrying a private marine. Captain Delmar replied, that it was true that Ben was only a private, but that every common soldier was a gentleman by profession. It was true that Bella Mason might have done better—but she was his aunt's servant, ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... ejaculating "Mad, mad!" than which nothing could be more eloquent of his complete mental inversion. In his paroxysms the Countess di Morno persuades him to "lead her to the altar," but on the way (with a certain indelicacy they go to church in the same conveyance) she lets slip a little secret. So Di Sorno jumps out of the carriage, "hurling the crowd apart," and, "flourishing his drawn sword," "clamoured at the gate of the Inquisition" for Margot. The Inquisition, represented by the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... manifests the usual superfluous anxiety of her kind not to be called strong-minded. She is prettily indignant at the thought of female physicians: there is nothing improper in having diseases, but to cure them would be indelicacy indeed. Girls out of work, who wish for places in shops, are only "patriotic young ladies who desire to fill all the lucrative situations at present occupied by young men." She would even banish Bridget from the kitchen and substitute unlimited Patricks, which will interest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... law for every gallant to keep to his partner, for the night especially, and even till he relinquished possession over to the community, in order to preserve a pleasing property, and to avoid the disgusts and indelicacy of another arrangement, the company, after a short refection of biscuits and wine, tea and chocolate, served in at now about one in the morning, broke up, and went off in pairs. Mrs. Cole had prepared my spark and me an occasion field-bed, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... never gracefully adjusted. Occasionally, indeed, the very same persons who appeared ready to faint at the idea of a statue, would utter some unaccountable sally that was quite startling, and which made me feel that the indelicacy of which we were accused had its limits. The following anecdote is hardly fit to tell, but it explains what I mean too well to ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... of Sir Roger de Coverly. It ought, indeed, to be remembered, that every species of wit written in distant times and in dead languages, appears with many disadvantages to present readers, from their ignorance of the manners and customs alluded to and exposed; but the grosness, the rudeness, and indelicacy of the ancients, will, notwithstanding, sufficiently appear, even from the sentiments of such critics as Cicero and Quintilian, who mention corporal defects and deformities as proper objects ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... house room and food and social support, as it were under false pretences. I would have liked to have separated our financial affairs altogether. But I knew that to raise the issue would have seemed a last brutal indelicacy. So I tried almost furtively to keep my personal expenditure within the scope of the private income I made by writing, and we went out together in her motor brougham, dined and made appearances, met politely at breakfast—parted at night with a kiss upon her cheek. The locking of her door ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... however, that one was actually sent rolling off the table; and as Phutatorius sat straddling under—it fell perpendicularly into that particular aperture of Phutatorius's breeches, for which, to the shame and indelicacy of our language be it spoke, there is no chaste word throughout all Johnson's dictionary—let it suffice to say—it was that particular aperture which, in all good societies, the laws of decorum do strictly ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... estimate of the poet's art, and that estimate will probably not be high. Monotony, lack of proportion, vain repetitions, insufficient motivation, wearisome subtleties, and threatened, if not actual, indelicacy are among the most salient defects which will arrest, and mayhap confound, the reader unfamiliar with mediaeval literary craft. No greater service can be performed by an editor in such a case than to prepare the reader to overlook these common faults, and to set before ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... confess even to herself, but every circumstance in her training dissuaded her from a free approach. Her mother treated religion with a reverence that was almost indistinguishable from huffiness. She never named the deity and she did not like the mention of His name: she threw a spell of indelicacy over religious topics that Ellen never thoroughly cast off. She put God among objectionable topics—albeit a sublime one. Miss Beeton Clavier sustained this remarkable suggestion. When she read ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the subject quickly. The mystery—as we persisted in believing it—was heightened when another member deposed that he had seen "Tom," the Western waiter, coming from Manners's office. As Manners had volunteered no information of this, we felt that we could not without indelicacy ask him if Tom was a client, or a messenger from Tournelli. The only result was that our Club dinner was even more constrained than before. Not only was "Tom" now invested with a dark importance, but it was evident that the harmony of the Club was destroyed by these singular ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... independent in her choice of life, so was her modest pride proportionably vigilant and easily alarmed. The falsehood of the Egyptian was invented by a deep knowledge of her nature. The story of coarseness, of indelicacy, in Glaucus, stung her to the quick. She felt it a reproach upon her character and her career, a punishment above all to her love; she felt, for the first time, how suddenly she had yielded to that ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... judge accurately of the feelings of others. Mr Harding, as he came to close the letter, in his heart condemned his daughter for indelicacy, and it made him miserable to do so. She was not responsible for what Mr Slope might write. True. But then she expressed no disgust at it. She had rather expressed approval of the letter as a whole. She had given it to him to read, as a vindication for herself and also for him. The father's spirits ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Tatyana down from their pedestals, but Pushkin remains unhurt. Pisarev is the grandfather and father of all the critics of to-day, including Burenin—the same pettiness in disparagement, the same cold and conceited wit, and the same coarseness and indelicacy in their attitude to people. It is not Pisarev's ideas that are brutalizing, for he has none, but his coarse tone. His attitude to Tatyana, especially to her charming letter, which I love tenderly, seems to me simply abominable. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... remorse. Besides insulting Burdovsky with the supposition, made in the presence of witnesses, that he was suffering from the complaint for which he had himself been treated in Switzerland, he reproached himself with the grossest indelicacy in having offered him the ten thousand roubles before everyone. "I ought to have waited till to-morrow and offered him the money when we were alone," thought Muishkin. "Now it is too late, the mischief is done! Yes, I am an idiot, an absolute idiot!" he said to himself, overcome ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... by indispensably softening down the incidents, he has killed the spirit of that humour, gross and farcical, that pervades the original. When the work was first mentioned to me, I protested as strongly as possible against admitting any coarseness and indelicacy, so that my conscience is clear of countenancing aught of that kind. So great is my admiration of Chaucer's genius, and so profound my reverence for him. . . for spreading the light of Literature ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... good manners and politeness are spread through all conditions; and that the "rough way of talking to and living with each other, characteristic of the lower classes of society in England, is not found there." Not many centuries ago, the intercourse of the highest orders in Europe was sullied by indelicacy and fierceness; but time has worn out these stains, and the same cause is now removing what is repulsive among those who toil with their hands. I cannot believe that coarse manners, boisterous conversation, slovenly negligence, filthy customs, surliness, indecency, are to descend ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... them). They are frequently stitched together in tolerably thick volumes, and such I have read; some of the contents, though not often religious, very good; others objectionable, either for the superstition in them, such as prophecies, fortune-telling, &c., or more frequently for indelicacy. I have so much felt the influence of these straggling papers, that I have many a time wished that I had talents to produce songs, poems, and little histories that might circulate among other good things in this way, supplanting partly the bad ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... pointedly at her husband as she spoke, it being one of her late habits to openly refer to their ante-nuptial acquaintance as a natural reaction from the martyrdom of her first marriage, with a quiet indifference that seemed almost an indelicacy. But her husband only said: "As you like, dear," vaguely remembering Dona Rosita as the alleged heroine of a forgotten romance with some earlier American adventurer who had disappeared, and trying vainly to reconcile his wife's sentimental description of her with ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... Might she not, very probably, fall in with them? And would not that be exceedingly disagreeable? Would she not have all the appearance of having followed them purposely from motives of jealousy? Would not her presence be unwelcome? Would there not be something of indelicacy even in thus following one who evidently preferred ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... gone out, and Jonathan his servant says that he is gone to stretch his legs upon the Mall.—Stretch his legs! what an indelicacy of diction! ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... rude; he is so without knowing it. His indelicacy would be astounding in a man born on the steps of the throne, if the Princes of this royal house were not all ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... troop, having immediately surrounded the houses, and set a guard upon every door and window, as well as an outpost, or spy, upon an adjoining eminence, immediately proceeded with the search—a search conducted with the most brutal incivility, and even indelicacy; subjecting every child and servant to apprehensions of the most horrid and revolting character. It would be every way improper to mention even a tithe of the oaths and blasphemy which were not only permitted, but sanctioned and encouraged, by their impious ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Senior year, not many this year. What's a man going to do on twelve a week?" She noticed the indelicacy of this, since he spoke in the house of his employer. But the next sentence from him was ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... out of vogue. The luxury of forks, it is true, had not yet been invented; but when it is remembered that the hands were washed publicly, before and after meals, not as a fashionable form, but in absolute earnest, it will not be feared that any indelicacy in the feasters contrasted with the taste and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... deep sombre eyes to the three men. "Un beau regard—it carries well." Madame Carre further commented. But even as she spoke Miss Rooth's fine gaze was suffused again and the next moment she had definitely begun to weep. Nick Dormer sprung up; he felt embarrassed and intrusive—there was such an indelicacy in sitting there to watch a poor working-girl's struggle with timidity. There was a momentary confusion; Mrs. Rooth's tears were seen also to flow; Mr. Nash took it gaily, addressing, however, at the same time, the friendliest, most familiar encouragement to ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... which, sent to the duke of Buckingham, have particular merit, both for the archness of the turns, and the acuteness of the observations. He gives his lordship a humorous description of some of the Germans, their excessive drunkenness; their plodding stupidity and ostensive indelicacy; he complains that he has no companion in that part of the world, no Sir Charles Sedleys, nor Buckinghams, and what is still worse, even deprived of the happiness of a mistress, for, the women there, he says, are so coy, and so narrowly watched by their relations, that there is no possibility ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... misunderstand again. General Harrington is incapable of unkindness. As for indelicacy, a more perfect gentleman never lived. His sensitive honor was touched. You are his ward, beautiful, young, rich. James is his step-son, without a dollar of his own, wholly ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... adorned with vigorous portraits and sensational pictorial comments. Even the eavesdroppers who write this stuff strike the personal note, and their heavily muscular portraits frown beside the initial letter. Murders and crimes are worked up to the keenest pitch of realisation, and any new indelicacy in fashionable costume, any new medical device or cure, any new dance or athleticism, any new breach in the moral code, any novelty in sea bathing or the woman's seat on horseback, or the like, is given copious and moving illustration, stirring headlines, and eloquent reprobation. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... at which no consideration shall ever induce him to look. But Mr. Watson reflects upon people who have been human enough to read them when he compares such a proceeding on his own part (were he able to be guilty of it) to the indelicacy of 'listening at a keyhole or spying over a wall.' This is not a just illustration. The man who takes upon himself the responsibility of being the first to open such intimate letters, and adds thereto the infinitely greater responsibility of publishing them in so attractive a form that he who ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... the indelicacy comes in. She went out riding with me, which was entirely her own suggestion, and as we were coming home through some meadows she made a quite unnecessary attempt to see if her pony would jump a rather ...
— Reginald • Saki
... she scarcely understood it. He explained that it was prompted by the intense interest he felt in Miss Verena; but that scarcely made it more comprehensible, such a sentiment (on his part) being such a curious mixture. He had a sort of enamel of good humour which showed that his indelicacy was his profession; and he asked for revelations of the vie intime of his victims with the bland confidence of a fashionable physician inquiring about symptoms. He wanted to know what Miss Chancellor meant to do, because ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... they took away all these arms; but could they have had the indelicacy to leave some behind in order to be able to justify the impious and sacrilegious robbery they were meditating. This would be odious but not impossible ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... on the verge of disapproval; and Mrs. Plinth protested: "I understood there was to be no indelicacy!" ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... today between the smoking room and the drawing room are shadowy things, and she knew very well that he was held in a somewhat curious respect by men, as a person to whom it was impossible to tell a story in which there was any shadow of indelicacy. The ways of the so-called man of world seemed in his presence as though they must be the ways of some creature of a different and a lower stage of existence. A young man whom he had once corrected had christened him, half jestingly, Sir Galahad, and certainly his life in ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cut, and possessed the advantage of fitting any variety of size or figure, completed the attire. The buttons that should have confined the dress in front were generally absent, and the ladies were not bashful at their loss, but exposed their bosoms without any consciousness of indelicacy. There was no peculiarity in the arrangement of the hair, but each head was tied up in a cloth, either white or some gaudy colour, which, once gay, had been sobered in its hues by dirt. In spite of this neglected exterior, the women had remarkably good manners; they seldom approached my wife without ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the female associates, among whom Mrs. Uhler unfortunately found herself thrown, were loud talkers about woman's rights and man's tyranny; and to them, with a most unwife-like indelicacy of speech, she did not hesitate to allude to her husband as one of the class of men who would trample upon a woman if permitted to do so. By these ladies she was urged to maintain her rights, to keep ever in view the dignity and elevation of her sex, and to let man, ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... Melvyn received Mr Morgan's hand and name with all the fortitude she could assume; but her distress was visible to all, even to Mr Morgan, who was so little touched with it that it proved no abatement to his joy; a symptom of such indelicacy of mind as increased his bride's grief ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... by the managers, who regard the existence of the Censor as valuable to them, because it frees them from responsibility and enables them to gratify the taste of the prurient prude, the person who revels in and blushes at the indelicacy of his own thoughts. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... a fatiguing day's ride, and reposed more comfortably than on a bed of down in a spacious mansion. All the family of both sexes, with all the strangers who arrive, often lodge in the same room. In that case the under garments are never taken off, and no consciousness of impropriety or indelicacy of feeling is manifested. A few pins stuck in the wall of the cabin display the dresses of the women and the hunting shirts of the men. Two small forks or bucks-horns fastened to a joist are indispensable articles for the support ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... his truth, straightforwardness, and sincerity. He delights in the society of men of the world and in a life of gaiety and pleasure. He is very easily amused, and particularly with jokes full of coarseness and indelicacy; the men with whom he lives most are tres-polissons, and la polissonnerie is the ton of his society. But his aides-de-camp and friends, while they do not scruple to say everything before and to him, always treat him with attention and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... that neither in feature or dress, neither in manners or morals, did she "imitate" any of the heroines of Beaumont and Fletcher. But even as a critic we must differ from Professor Thorndike; he accuses Miranda of unpardonable indelicacy, and says she "proposed" to Ferdinand! He gives her language from "Tempest," and remarks with satisfaction that it sounds "very much like one of Beaumont and Fletcher's heroines," meaning of course Arethusa, and so draws the obvious conclusion that Shakspere in this remarkable instance ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... you marry him?" he asked. The sincerity of him was excuse enough for the seeming indelicacy of the question. Besides, he felt himself somehow responsible. He had given back to her the gift of life, which she had rejected. Surely, he had the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... that, although I had my anxieties, I had none about my personal hold upon heart-sustaining truth. It was emphatically a year of prayer, if I may without presumption or indelicacy say so. Humbly and earnestly I sought to the God of wisdom and light to guide me; and I never felt for a moment that I was perilling my salvation. I had a foundation of repose, stronger than mere theology can give, deep and sure beneath me. I had indeed my anxieties. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Yes, it was really a scream, an explosion, too, if the indelicacy may be excused. But the opportunity for a come-back struck her so keenly, so swiftly, that she just could not contain her eagerness to ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... incense never hid from him the sight of his ideal. And as the comparison was not favorable to realities, disenchantment took place on his side, without a corresponding result on the other. THENCE many heart-breakings. Nevertheless there was no ill-nature, no indelicacy, none of those proceedings that the world readily forgives, but which his feelings as a man of honor would have condemned. Calantha, in despair at being no longer loved, resolved on vengeance. She invented a tale, but what does she say when the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... attracted as much by the daughter as repelled by the mother, he could move no farther. The mother's masculine boldness heightened, by contrast, the charms of the daughter's soft sentimentality. The Lady Isabel seemed to shrink from the indelicacy of her mother's manners, and seemed peculiarly distressed by the strange efforts Lady Dashfort made, from time to time, to drag her forward, and to fix upon her the attention of gentlemen. Colonel Heathcock, who, as Mrs. Petito had informed Lord Colambre, had come over with his regiment to ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... modern reader, on account of the grossness of the forms under which it was exhibited. Some modern Egyptologists endeavor to excuse or palliate this grossness; but it seems scarcely possible that it should not have been accompanied by indelicacy of thought or that it should have failed to exercise a corrupting influence on life and morals. Khem, no doubt, represented to 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 ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... Crespigny positively gasped. There was an indelicacy about the General's speech, to her ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... of the indelicacy of Burke's image, it was one eminently adapted to penetrate through the thick hide of the minister of state at whom it was aimed, and it shamed him as far as a profligate politician like Dundas was capable of feeling the sensation of shame. But there are also flashes, or rather ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... thought—the fact is, when Raglan was at school, he had to learn 'Excelsior,' and I happened to glance over it. I was slightly acquainted with the piece, but I had quite forgotten that it contained what seems to me very gross indelicacy—very gross indeed. Do you remember a verse beginning (I must ask your pardon for quoting ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... making it creak, an uneasy feeling coming over him. Close as Isom was, and hard-handed and mean, Joe felt that there was a certain indelicacy in his wife's discussion of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... before her face, and so made a private interview of it between the rich Englishman and herself. With regard to the dinner, I shall only report that it justified Captain Peterkin's boast, in some degree at least. The wine was good, and the conversation became gay to the verge of indelicacy. Usually the most temperate of men, Romayne was tempted by his neighbors into drinking freely. I was unfortunately seated at the opposite extremity of the table, and I had no opportunity ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... came from her, would be deemed expedient by him. That she would be right in all this, was her great resolve; that she might after all be wrong, her constant fear. She, too, had heard of public censors, of the girl of the period, and of the forward indelicacy with which women of the age were charged. She knew not why, but it seemed to her that the laws of the world around her demanded more of such rectitude from a woman than from a man, and, if it might be possible to her, she would comply with these laws. She had convinced herself, forming ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... I should meet his Royal Highness at his apartments, in the disguise of male attire. I was accustomed to perform in that dress, and the prince had seen me, I believe, in the character of the Irish Widow. To this plan I decidedly objected. The indelicacy of such a step, as well as the danger of detection, made me shrink from the proposal. My refusal threw his Royal Highness into the most distressing agitation, as was expressed by the letter which I received on the following morning. Lord Malden again lamented that he had engaged himself ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... blackguard, and the other a buffoon. In my eyes, the "Lutrin," the "Dispensary," and the "Rape of the Lock," are standards of grace and elegance, not to be paralleled by antiquity; and eternal reproaches to Voltaire, whose indelicacy in the "Pucelle" degraded him as much, when compared with the three authors I have named, as his "Henriade" leaves Virgil, and even Lucan, whom he more resembles, by far ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... schooner fell into the hands of the savages, few words had passed between them, and these had reference merely to the position in which they found themselves, and whenever Sir Everard felt he could, without indelicacy or intrusion, render himself in the slightest way serviceable to her. The very circumstances under which they had met, conduced to the suppression, if not utter extinction, of all of passion attached to the sentiment with which he had been inspired. A new feeling had quickened in ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... one of the loyal things a friend can do, sometimes when it would be impossible for a man himself to do himself justice with others. Some things, needful to be said or done under certain circumstances, cannot be undertaken without indelicacy by the person concerned, and the keen instinct of a friend should tell him that he is needed. A little thoughtfulness would often suggest things that could be done for our friends, that would make them ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... but the bedroom fairly shocked with the very indelicacy of untidiness. Jerome felt an actual modesty about entering this room, in which so many disclosures of the closest secrets of the flesh were made. The very dust and discolorations of the poor furnishings, the confined air, made one turn one's face aside as from too coarse a betrayal of ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I spoke to her as we were leaving Boston, to go on with the history of my acquaintance with this gentleman; and yet now, unexpectedly, she appeared to imply—it was doubtless one of the disparities mentioned by Mrs. Nettlepoint—that he might be glanced at without indelicacy. ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... remotely touching on sex. All those questions seemed to Puritan Sutherland in any circumstances highly indelicate; in relation to Susan they seemed worse than indelicate, dreadful though the thought was that there could be anything worse than indelicacy. At fifteen she remained as unaware of even the existence of the mysteries of sex as she had been at birth. Nothing definite enough to arouse her curiosity had ever been said in her hearing; and such ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... married, you know. Can there be a greater difference between any two men in the world, than there often is between the same man, a lover, and a husband?—And now, my generous advisers, be pleased to continue silent. You cannot answer me fairly. And besides, wot ye not the indelicacy of an early present, which you are ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... and seizing the card: "Mrs. Arthur J. Gibby! Well, upon my word, this is impudence. It's not only impudence, it's indelicacy. And I had always thought she was the very embodiment of refinement, and I've gone about saying so. Now I shall have to take it back. The idea of a lady sending a bath-robe to a gentleman! What next, I wonder! What right has Mrs. Gibby ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... horrible thing to have said it, he felt now that he had spoken; a sense of the indelicacy, the shamefulness, seemed to alienate him from all high concern in the matter, and to leave him a mere self- convicted eavesdropper. His face flamed; the wavering hopes, the wavering doubts alike died in his heart. He had fallen below the dignity ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... with feeling. But when I thought to myself what must actually have been the rude greeting (which, she made out, had been so charming), I, who knew my father's coldness and reserve, was shocked, as though at some indelicacy on his part, at the contrast between the excessive recognition bestowed on it and his never adequate geniality. It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... sculptured from stone could almost as truly be considered that of the lamented dead as this. Moreover, indefinite preservation of the dead is not desirable, and is not desired. The uses to which the Egyptian Pharaohs and their humbler subjects have been put in these days of indelicacy and unscrupulousness in the pursuit of science or sordid gain are not such as to make many eager to be preserved for a similar disposition when the present shall have become a similarly ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... violating what should be sacred in our nature. How finely is the true Shakspearian scene contrasted with Dryden's vulgar alteration of it, in which a mere ludicrous psychological experiment, as it were, is tried—displaying nothing but indelicacy without passion. Prospero's interruption of the courtship has often seemed to me to have no sufficient motive; still ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... I accused her of indelicacy. She made the same accusation against me, and the dispute broke out. In her words, in the expression of her face, of her eyes, I noticed again the hatred that had so astonished me before. With a brother, friends, my father, ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... successful issue that difficult case in the family of the Sultan of Mingrelia (you will observe that I use a fictitious name). I can assure you, Lord Embleton, that polygamy presents problems almost insoluble; problems of extreme delicacy—or indelicacy.' ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... the morning upon an empty stomach, with his coachman, at a grog-shop on the corner. When the pretty Baroness des Nenuphars blushed up to her ears because someone spoke the word "tea-spoon" before her, and she considered it to be an unwarrantable indelicacy—nobody knows why—it is assuredly not our young friend who will suspect that, in order to pay the gambling debts of her third lover, this modest person had just sold ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... pale, and her apparent age ten years more than I had given her on the previous evening. She was a lamplight beauty, I supposed. But her dress satisfied. It was a long indoor gown which indicated without indelicacy the natural lines of her slender figure, and she was innocent of the shocking vulgarity of the small waist, a common enough deformity at that time, although now, it is said, affected by third rate actresses and women of indifferent character only. The waist is an infallible index to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... by the papers, a vote is to be taken as to the post-office. Could you not set up Lizzie and beat them all? She, being here, need know nothing of it, so therefore there would be no indelicacy ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... and would keep to anything except the point. That, whatever its nature, she avoided as she would an indelicacy. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... you'll pardon the indelicacy and hand me my pants—" he found he was still puffing a little and paused until he could go on—"I've got an appointment I simply ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the holy state with either reluctance or lukewarm indifference? when every body, with half a head, knows that matrimony is the "hoc erat in votis," the grand object of all your wishes. Strange! that the laws of female modesty should decree it absolute indelicacy for a girl candidly to show her preference for a particular individual before the rest of his sex. Strange! that modern mothers should uniformly caution their daughters against marrying for love, as the most dangerous rock in their voyage through life. Solomon could ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... it! Certainly she must have understood his meaning, and there was nothing left for him to do but to acquaint Bradley with his intentions to-night, and press her for a final answer in the morning. There would be no indelicacy then in asking her for an interview more free from interruption than this public veranda. Without conceit, he did not doubt what the answer would be. His indecision, his sudden resolution to leave her, had been all ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... how he could obtain this pleasure (as the ladies seldom or never saw company, and were fond of a recluse life) was the question. At length he bethought himself of a method the most likely to answer the purpose, without the appearance of forwardness or indelicacy. He sent his servant with the following verbal message:—'Lord Fingal, travelling in this neighbourhood, sends his respectful compliments to Miss Butler and Miss Ponsonby, and informs them that he sets ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... the storm to last more than a day or so. They seldom did, at this time of the year. He had drawn the gloomy picture merely in an attempt to force Miss Wharton to realize the indelicacy of her position. He had thought she would have exhibited perturbation. Instead, she ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... ignorance and prejudice, Mrs. Davis used to relate that when she uncovered her manikin some ladies would drop their veils because of its indelicacy, and others would run from the room; sometimes ladies ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... pay, every body pays for this." Nothing they got from me; and the wife of the Marabout came afterwards, imploring me to say nothing to her husband. It is thus these rude women will act for money, as many who are better taught, in the streets of London. But acts of indelicacy are nevertheless very rare amongst the mountain tribes. I have seen Arab women at other occasions, on a cold day, standing athwart a smoking fire, with all the smoke ascending under their clothes. This may ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... handling is so original and natural, that they are in no sense a plagiarism. Without the rippling brilliancy of The Rivals, The School for Scandal is better sustained in scene and colloquy; and in spite of some indelicacy, which is due to the age, the moral lesson is far more valuable. The satire is strong and instructive, and marks the great advance in social decorum over the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... they were bid," and yet he had a tenderness for such as had been any time with him, which was wounded when once a hired man long in his employ greedily overreached him in a certain transaction. He complained of that with a simple grief for the man's indelicacy after so many favors from him, rather than with any resentment. His hauteur towards his dependents was theoretic; his actual behavior was of the gentle consideration common among Americans of good breeding, and that recreant hired man had no doubt never been suffered to exceed him in shows ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... delusion as to the grossness of Don Juan. His plea or pretence, that he was sheltered by the superior grossness of Ariosto and La Fontaine, of Prior and of Fielding, is nihil ad rem, if it is not insincere. When Murray (May 3, 1819) charges him with "approximations to indelicacy," he laughs himself away at the euphemism, but when Hobhouse and "the Zoili of Albemarle Street" talked to him "about morality," he flames out, "I maintain that it is the most moral of poems." He looked upon his great work as a whole, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... flattened semicircle; while those on the opposite side are comparatively sharp, and of a considerably later period. The ornaments of the capitals of these older pillars are, some of them, sufficiently capricious and elaborate; while others are of a more exceptionable character on the score of indelicacy. But this does not surprise a man who has been accustomed to examine ART, of the middle centuries, whether in sculpture or in painting. The side aisles are comparatively modern. The pillars of the choir ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... so brilliantly written, or so variously absorbing, as the life of Von Weber, written by his son, the Baron Max Maria von Weber. For years the son had resisted the urgence of his mother to undertake the work, fearing that partiality would warp, and indelicacy stain, any such memorial of a father who had lived so lively a life. When at last the work was begun and done, it was a miracle of impartiality, of frankness which seems complete, of sins confessed and expiated in their confession, and of trenchant ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... deserved the severest attacks: but what is there to justify severity now? at this day not only the success of every new play so much depends upon its purity, but so scrupulously correct in that particular is the public taste, and so abstinent from every the slightest indelicacy are the authors of plays and even farces, that not a word is uttered upon the stage from which the most timid real modesty would shrink. In conformity to this happy state of the general taste and morals, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... economically free, and mentally and spiritually independent enough to refuse to have their food paid for by men; when women will receive equal pay for equal work, and have all avenues of activity open to them; and will be free to choose their own mates, without shame, or indelicacy; when men will not be afraid of marriage because of the financial burden, but free men and free women will marry for love, and together work for the sustenance of their families. It is not too ideal a thought. It is coming, and the new movement among women who are crying out for ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... brought, as comparative philologists assert, from Asia, but it had luxuriantly germinated and developed under the sky of Europe. Of the legends, many are far from answering to their reputed Oriental source; their barbarism and indelicacy represent the state of Europe. The outrage of Kronos on his father Uranos speaks of the savagism of the times; the story of Dionysos tells of man-stealing and piracy; the rapes of Europa and Helen, of the abduction of women. The dinner at which Itys ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Emily, shocked at the indelicacy of this accusation, still more than by the vulgarity of the former, instantly forgot the pride, that had imposed silence, and endeavoured to vindicate herself from the aspersion, but Madame Cheron ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... dance went on he grew furious with her lack of reserve, her indelicacy. Her good-natured laughter with the men who crowded about her familiarly was a kind of disloyalty. She seemed at times to be exchanging doubtful jests with them; and at last, to protect her from the results of her own fatuity, he ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... which he is going to appear, his natural humour turns to pertness, and for real wit he is obliged to substitute vivacity. His first publication draws a crowd; they part dissatisfied; and the author, never more to be indulged with a favourable hearing, is left to condemn the indelicacy of his own address or their want of discernment. For my part, as I was never distinguished for address, and have often even blundered in making my bow, such bodings as these had like to have totally repressed my ambition. I was at a loss whether to give the public specious ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... phallic and solar worship in the East could make any mistake as to the purport of the shrine at Stonehenge... yet the indelicacy of the whole subject often so shocks the ordinary reader, that, in spite of facts, he cannot grant what he thinks shows so much debasement of the religious mind; facts are facts, however, and it only remains for us to account for them. Perhaps indeed in these later times an artificial ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... people being so. He says what he thinks, and you have got to lump it. Sometimes he is good-natured enough, and even brave. There is an admirable sketch of a good-natured cad in one of Mrs. Walford's novels, who is the acme of kind indelicacy. The cad is dreadful to live with, because he is always making one ashamed, and ashamed of being ashamed, because many of the things he does do not really matter very much. Then, when he is out of sight and hearing, you cannot trust him. He makes mischief; he throws mud. If he is vexed ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rigidly. "You'll have to pardon my seeming indelicacy, but—" He coughed behind his hand. "That might bring about a very unhappy relationship between my family and yours. Had you thought ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... was by no means unnatural; and precisely what Leigh Hunt is himself in the weekly practice of doing to other people without the same excuse. Leigh Hunt has now spoken out so freely to the public on the subject, that there can be no indelicacy in talking of it, in as far as it respects him, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... with English women, blushing does not extend beneath the neck and upper part of the chest. Nevertheless Sir J. Paget informs me that he has lately heard of a case, on which he can fully rely, in which a little girl, shocked by what she imagined to be an act of indelicacy, blushed all over her abdomen and the upper parts of her legs. Moreau also[8] relates, on the authority of a celebrated painter, that the chest, shoulders, arms, and whole body of a girl, who unwillingly ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... at once that the Americans have actually named one of our colonies "Washington" after the rebel George Washington, though one would have thought that the indelicacy of this would have been only too apparent. But, then, I recalled, as well, the city where their so-called parliament assembles, Washington, D. C. Doubtless the initials indicate that it was named in "honour" ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... would have heard him, he had indelicacy enough to have gone into the nature of the proof of the crime upon which they wanted to have Lovelace arraigned. Yet this is a man improved by travel and learning!—Upon my word, my dear, I, who have been accustomed to the most delicate conversation ever since I had the honour ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... the Chief Custodian's attention is again devoted wholly to the Person of Importance. Feeling that to persist in overhearing their conversation would be an indelicacy, the Heroic Explorer politely leaves the room, and establishes himself on a chair in a gloomy passage outside, where he wiles away the time by rehearsing in his imagination how he will tell off the Chief Custodian when the Person of Importance retires. But this the Person of ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... writings, much apparent indelicacy and grossness are encountered; but it must be remembered for whom she was writing, the condition of morality and the taste of the public at that time, and that she aimed faithfully to depict the society that lay before ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... hardly be expected to adopt the theory which has commended itself to the filial piety of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge— namely, that it was through the father's "influence" that the sons were sent to college. On a plain matter of fact such as this, one may be permitted, without indelicacy, to uphold the conclusions compelled by the evidence. Such expressions of opinion, on the other hand, as that Coleridge's "separation from his family, brought about and continued through the force of ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... The extreme indelicacy of this play would, in the present times furnish ample and most just grounds for the unfavourable reception it met with from the public. But in the reign of Charles II. many plays were applauded, in which the painting is, at least, as coarse ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... the plans, then? You've been striking up an acquaintance with the architect himself?" Dill frowned repugnance upon such a bit of indelicacy, such ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... By Jove! the padres have made a Spanish swell out of him without spoiling the Brant grit, either! Come, now; you're not afraid that Susy's style will suffer from HIS companionship. 'Pon my soul, she might borrow a little of his courtesy to his elders without indelicacy. I only wish she had as sincere a way of showing her respect for you as he has. Did you notice that he really didn't seem to see anybody else but you at first? And yet you never were a friend ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... was she to answer him? She had not yet taught herself what answer she ought to make if he persisted in his suit. She had hitherto been content to run away from him; but she had done so because she would not submit to be accused of the indelicacy of putting herself in his way. She had rebuked him when he first spoke of his love; but she had done so because she looked on what he said as a boy's nonsense. She had schooled herself in obedience to the Greshamsbury doctrines. Was there any real reason, any reason founded on truth and honesty, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... were to carry the two ladies thither, Cecilia trembled and hung back. The greatness of her undertaking, the hazard of all her future happiness, the disgraceful secrecy of her conduct, the expected reproaches of Mrs Delvile, and the boldness and indelicacy of the step she was about to take, all so forcibly struck, and so painfully wounded her, that the moment she was summoned to set out, she again lost her resolution, and regretting the hour that ever Delvile was known to her, she sunk into a chair, ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the hula no longer suit the action to the word. The utterance harks back to the golden age; the gesture is trumped up by the passion of the hour, or dictated by the master of the hula, to whom the real meaning of the old bards is ofttimes a sealed casket. Whatever indelicacy attaches in modern times to some of the gestures and contortions of the hula dancers, the old-time hula songs in large measure were untainted with grossness. If there ever were a Polynesian Arcadia, and if it were possible ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... which I want to tell you, but I have not time. Brussels is a beautiful city. The Belgians hate the English. Their external morality is more rigid than ours. To lace the stays without a handkerchief on the neck is considered a disgusting piece of indelicacy." ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... out of the world that no bishop had ever seen them. I was divided between horror and admiration at their soul-stretching propensities, and it is difficult to describe the shock with which I faced the perpetual exposure of their spiritual nakedness. It was a naive kind of religious indelicacy, like the unguarded ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... temple of Venus Ferina that the fair hind should shrink from the place, touched with that somewhat, either of fear or frolic, of nicety or skittishness, with which nature hath bedecked all females, or hath at least instructed them how to put it on; lest, through the indelicacy of males, the Samean mysteries should be pryed into by unhallowed eyes: for, at the celebration of these rites, the female priestess cries out with her in Virgil (who was then, probably, hard at work ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... there were no indelicacy, this time, in watching him. Just as "pluck" comes of breeding, so is endurance especially an attribute of the artist. Because he can stand outside himself, and (if there be nothing ignoble in them) take a pleasure in ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... Frederick Douglass and the further fact that he became an advocate of Suffrage. In his "Life and Times" he says: "I could not meet her [Mrs. Stanton's] arguments except with the shallow plea of 'custom,' 'natural division of duties,' 'indelicacy of woman's taking part in politics,' 'the common talk of woman's sphere,' and the like, all of which that able woman brushed away by those arguments which no man has yet successfully refuted." Mr. ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... out he watched Sally with close and what he fancied was unobtrusive attention while she ate, and though he was sensible of the indelicacy of this, he was once more relieved to find that she did nothing that was actually repugnant to him. After all, there was a certain daintiness about the girl, and her frank appreciation of the good things set before her only amused him. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... such coarseness! such vulgarity! such indelicacy!" cried Mrs. Ramshorn, while the parson was still occupied with the sherry. "Not content with talking about himself in the pulpit, he must even talk about his wife! What's he or his wife in the house of God? When his gown is on, a clergyman is neither Mr. This nor Mr. That any longer, but ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... much aversion, as if they had been so many plague-spots on the whole work, instead of passing them over in silence, as so much blank paper, or leaves of a bookseller's catalogue; especially, as no one pretended to have found in them any immorality or indelicacy; and the poems, therefore, at the worst, could only be regarded as so many light or inferior coins in a rouleau of gold, not as so much alloy in a weight of bullion. A friend whose talents I hold in the highest respect, but whose judgment and strong sound sense I have had almost continued ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... is an indelicacy in you to observe such things. You should be ignorant of them, and I can't think who is so... so unfeeling as to inform you. But since you are informed, at least you should be modestly blind to things that take place outside the... orbit ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... blush—literally the first blush—of the matter, the formal lady had not felt quite certain whether the being present at such a ceremony, and encouraging, as it were, the public exhibition of a baby, was not an act involving some degree of indelicacy and impropriety; but certain we are that when that baby's health was drunk, and allusions were made, by a grey-headed gentleman proposing it, to the time when he had dandled in his arms the young Christian's ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens |
