"Respectability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seen thieves and wretches of the vilest type who could not have been distinguished from either of us as regards respectability of appearance. You do not appear to know much about ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... of its original patentee. This is great antiquity for America, which, while it has produced many families of greater wealth, and renown, and importance, than that of the Gardiners, has seldom produced any of more permanent local respectability. This is a feature in society that we so much love to see, and which is so much endangered by the uncertain and migratory habits of the people, that we pause a moment to record this instance of stability, so pleasing and so commendable, in an age ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... one's birth. There a hundred subtile influences, the existence of which no one suspects until the moment they are withdrawn, unite to keep one in the straight path of rectitude, or at least of external respectability; and Ralph's life had been all in society; the opinion of his fellow-men had been the one force to which he implicitly deferred, and the conscience by which he had been wont to test his actions had been nothing but the aggregate judgment of his friends. To such a man the isolation and the utter ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... three sitting-rooms, battlements, dungeons, and electric light. The rent was L60 for the month, the servants' wages were extra, and he wanted references—he wanted assurances that the second half of his rent would be paid, the first half being paid in advance, and he wanted assurances of respectability from a solicitor, or a doctor, or a clergyman. He was very polite in his letter, explaining that his desire for references was what was usual and should be regarded as ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... that you may somehow come to know, be not hasty in questioning, lest your consequence and respectability may suffer:—When Lucman perceived that in the hands of David iron was miraculously moulded like wax, he asked him not, How didst thou do it? for he was aware that he should know it, through his own ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... at the Bell the charge was three-and- sixpence; sherry was often drunk, and there the steward to the Honourable Mr. Eaton, the principal landowner, always met the tenants. The Bell was Tory and the Bull was Whig, but no stranger of respectability, Whig or Tory, visiting Eastthorpe could possibly hesitate about going to the Bell, with its large gilded device projecting over the pathway, with its broad archway at the side always freshly gravelled, and its handsome balcony on the first ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... tickets; so did Colonel John Hathorne. Colonel Henry Whipple, who is remembered as one of our best citizens, kept, in connection with his bookstore, a "Fortunate Lottery Office." Other names might be mentioned, but we think we have given enough to show the respectability of the calling. The better the man, the better the agent. Indeed, it was generally thought to be just as respectable to sell lottery-tickets as to sell Bibles; and we have seen them classed together in the same advertisement. Our observations have been confined ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... sent his name into the manager, and was at once admitted. The manager was a solid man, semi-bald, with side whiskers, and an air of old English business respectability delightful in these new and pushing days, he received the phantom of the Earl of Rochester with the respect due ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... banks—embracing some thousands of directors, and some tens, nay, hundreds of thousands of stockholders and borrowers? We would appeal to that intelligent class of our citizens, who are quietly pursuing their occupations or professions at home, by which they secure to themselves independence and respectability, and who see, in the purity of our political institutions, their country's present happiness and future greatness, to take these things into consideration, and say whether they are willing to give to any administration ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... argument to the jury commenced. The solicitor very briefly adverted to the leading facts, deprecated any attempt to turn the case into ridicule, admitted that the witness was a man of eccentricity and pedantry, but harmless and inoffensive; a man, evidently, of conscientiousness and respectability; that he had shown himself to be a peaceable man, but when occasion demanded, a brave man; that there was a conspiracy to assassinate him upon no cause except an independence, which was honorable to him, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... in her fortunes. The spacious and comfortable mansion of which she found herself the little mistress; the high rank of the veteran officer who claimed her as his ward and niece; the abundance, regularity and respectability of her new life; the leisure, the privacy, the attendance of servants, were all so different from anything to which she had previously been accustomed that there were times when she doubted its reality and ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... as I have already stated, for mutual protection, established at New York; and the government have agents of the first respectability at Quebec, at Montreal, and at Kingston. But the poorer classes, as well as those whose knowledge of life has been limited, are sadly defrauded ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... the young, the old, the learned and the ignorant. He had mingled with mankind from behind the counter, the tavern-bar, in court and school and in church—by the roadside, at horse-races, camp-meetings, dances and social gatherings. He was light of foot, ready of tongue, and with no thought as to respectability, and no doubts and fears regarding the bread-and-butter question. He had no pride, save possibly a pride in the fact that he had none. He played checkers, worked out mathematical problems in his mind to astonish the loafers, related history to instruct them—and get it straight in his own mind—and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... acquired in Athens and Asia Minor, and the natural bent of his mind made him the greatest imitator and adapter of foreign verses that ever lived; and his character, by its eminently Italian combination of prim respectability and elastic morality, gave him a two-sided view of men and things that has left us representations of life in three dimensions instead of the flat, though often violent, pictures which ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... many windows, mostly lightless—materially aggravating that air of isolate, cold dignity which distinguishes the Englishman's castle. Here and there stood one less bedraggled than its neighbors, though all, without exception, spoke assertively of respectability down-at-the-heel but fighting tenaciously for existence. Some, vanguards of that imminent day when the boarding-house should reign supreme, wore with shamefaced air placards of estate-agents, advertising their susceptibility ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... we make a good appearance outside," she said to Archie, who shrank a little at first from the close, dreary room on the fifth floor, so different from his large, airy apartment at home, which though very plainly furnished, had about it an air of refinement and respectability in striking contrast to this ten by twelve hole, where Daisy made the most ravishing toilets of the simplest materials, with which to attract and ensnare any silly moth ready to singe its wings at her flame. She had settled the point that if Archie ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... you see!" he said. "Aren't I a great hand at restoring you to respectability? Stand up! There, you look ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... not been made clear in these paragraphs whether Suzette was a good or a wicked being, we may give the matured and recent judgment of Ralph Flare himself. Put to the test of religion, or even of respectability, this intimacy was baneful. A wild young man had broken his honor for the companionship of a poor, errant girl. She was poor, but she hated to work; she had no regard for his money; she did not share his ambition. Making against her a case thus clear and certain, Ralph Flare entered ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... the death of Morlacchi had left vacant a court conductorship, and it was thought that the King would be willing to offer me the post. My wife was very much excited at this prospect, for in Germany the greatest value is laid on these court appointments, which are tenable for life, and the dazzling respectability pertaining to them is held out to German musicians as the acme of earthly happiness. The offer opened up for us in many directions the prospect of friendly relations in a society which had hitherto been outside ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... their former protectors for subsistence. To the unemployed soldiery of India, particularly to the Muhammadans, the life of a Pindara had many allurements; but the Maratha horsemen who possessed hereditary rights or had any pretensions to respectability did not readily join them. One of the above leaders, Sheikh Dullah or Abdullah, apparently became a dacoit after the Pindaris had been dispersed, and he is still remembered in Hoshangabad and Nimar in the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the proper foundation for a true republic. In a society growing out of the co-operative system, as our rural and agricultural societies may now do. We find the conditions are reversed. Labor, is the badge of respectability. It is the title to an honorable independence. In such a society, both men and women are free. All are co-operators, none are servitors. No beggars! No caste! The units of a co-operative society, are sound and healthy to the core. ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... effect of a short residence here. I find the Ambassador rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a Senator, and I come third. What a subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the country when you place rank above respectability! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the island, in very prosperous circumstances, and from these he received both pecuniary aid and the promise of future support. Through their friendly offices, his two sons, who had been sent out by a generous friend, were placed in situations of respectability and emolument. But the thoughts of the poet himself were directed towards Britain. He sailed from Jamaica, with a thousand plans and schemes hovering in his mind, equally vague and indefinite as had been ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... opinion which appears not to be liberal, it is intended to apply to the lower class, of whom there is a large majority. A gentleman or lady is the same all over the world, and although in the different states there are many characters of the first respectability, and although some of the French are rich, liberal and gentlemanly men, yet this memorandum is strictly correct when applied to ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... mansion was founded on the spot where the house of the first minister was built by the active hands of his parishioners; and, from generation to generation, order, piety, education, and high respectability had been ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... years and respectability, stood well back from the river, to whose brink the smooth, green lawn swept in scarcely perceptible undulation. The river here was broad, almost resembling an arm of the sea it was moving languidly to join. There was no haste ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... been born and bred a slave in Carolina, and, by untiring assiduity, had saved money enough to emancipate himself and his wife; "In fact," he added, "I feel this is my country, and leaving it will come hard." He had a numerous family, which he maintained in great respectability, and his business being a profitable one made him more reluctant to abandon it and the advantages that otherwise would attend his continuance in Charleston. He hospitably entertained me at his home, and appeared highly gratified ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... seems beyond the power of mankind to grant, he left him a poor outcast, whose errors would be first condemned by his professed friends. That which seemed worthy of praise was forgotten, his errors were magnified; and the seducer made himself secure by crushing his victim, compromising the respectability of his parents, making the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... impart my pleasures, and share the counsels of my best, my long-tried, and experienced friend. At this time, my dear mamma, I am peculiarly solicitous for your advice. I am again importuned to listen to the voice of love; again called upon to accept the addresses of a gentleman of merit and respectability. You will know the character of the man when I tell you it is Mr. Boyer. But his situation in life! I dare not enter it. My disposition is not calculated for that sphere. There are duties arising from the ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... ye 're asked, and we'll see who first needs help, ye or I," retorted the squire. "Meantime understand that I'll not have ye at Greenwood, save as a bond-servant. My girl is promised to a man of property and respectability, and is to be had by no servant who dare not so much as let the world know who were his ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... would get my living by selling lucifers." Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the same opinion, holding that a private station is better than public applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs. Perkins') respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol's Arms appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs. Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... definitely by the removal of a mysterious influence—most to be likened to the key of a driving-pulley, whose absence from its slot would leave the machinery of Matrimony at a deadlock. Let Mr. Wix, by force or fraud, get possession of this charter of respectability, and he and his lawful wife would come apart, like a steamed postage-stamp and its envelope. Nothing would be lacking then but a little fresh gum, and reattachment. This expresses Miss Julia's idea, however faulty the simile may ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... not his name. She remembered him as one of the "river characters" regarded as outcast by the Christian respectability of Sutherland. But she who could not but be polite to everybody smiled pleasantly, though she did not like his expression as he looked at her. "No, I'm alone," ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... most honourable character, and receiving such good testimony from all his acquaintance, that his many virtues claim entire belief for that which he relates. His Father, Messer Nicolo, a man of the highest respectability, used to relate all these things in the same manner. And his uncle, Messer Maffeo, who is spoken of in the Book, a man of ripe wisdom and piety, in familiar conversation with his Confessor when on his death-bed, maintained unflinchingly that the whole of the contents ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... to that large class, who are dependent upon exertion of some kind, for the means of comfort and respectability, in their respective stations. But, as those ladies, whose circumstances render a practical acquaintance with the arts here treated of, a matter of indifference, a knowledge of them is, by no means, unnecessary. In many ways indeed, a lady, blessed with affluence, may render ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... of a black or white slave, or servant, at this period was regarded as an evidence of dignity and respectability; and hence magistrates and clergymen winked at the violation of the law by the mercenary traders, and supplied themselves without scruple. Indian slaves were common, and are named in old wills, deeds, and inventories, with horses, cows, and household furniture. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... into state prosecutions, though they fairly enough find admittance into a book which treats of our causes celebres. The 'state' trials of the volume before us are the ha'porth of bread to the gallons of sack. The legitimate is paraded to call attention from the spurious, the vulgar is to find respectability by walking arm in arm with the classical. There was really no necessity for the 'sham.' A crooked stick on a heath has its picturesqueness as well as the Corinthian column. We may be very interesting rascals though we do not poke our walking-canes into ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... two or three consecutive hours, by bands of gentlemanly-looking individuals: clerks, book-keepers, foremen, business-managers, and such like responsible functionaries, whose unimpeachable outer integuments testify to their regard for appearances. This current of respectability sets in towards the city at about half-past six in the morning, and continues its flow until just upon ten o'clock, when it may be said to be highwater. Though a large proportion of these agents of the world's traffic are daily borne to and from their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... fond of each other," said Joe, "but when I picked him up he was so yellow, and so thin, and so creeping, and so scared that I christened him 'Respectability.'" ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... work, and it is still unaccomplished. Do you know, I sometimes think that all this talk of virtue, and teaching of religion, is a kind of practical joke, gravely kept up to find a church parade of respectability for States, a profession for hundreds, and a means of influencing men by making a tender point in their nervous system to be touched, as with a rod, when necessary—a rod that is held over them always in terrorem! We all talk about morality; but try some measure of reform, and ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... upon that ever increasing investment. We now pay $14,000,000 into the city treasury and take $17,000,000 out annually. Brooklyn has often been described as the bedroom of old New York. The description was apt, for Brooklyn has always been a city of homes, a city of those of moderate means, a city of respectability. Brooklyn has never been able to boast of her wealth, as other cities, nor has she had to blush for her poverty and depravity as some other ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... above her head in order to scrutinize the two strangers; doubtless their appearance and air of respectability reassured her, for she replied, in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... order to be good housewives, must know how every thing ought to be done, and be able to do it. If they are poor, this will save them from much misery, and secure them comfort and respectability." ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... manifold misgivings, that these law-abiding farmers found themselves on the point of being actually arrayed against the public authorities in armed rebellion. The absence of Israel Goodrich and Ezra Phelps, who were looked up to as the most substantial in estate and general respectability of those who inclined to the popular side, was moreover unfortunate, although it was supposed that they would ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... was a beaut! Only Worth Gilbert, standing there giving the proceeding respectability by careful attention and a grave face, brought me down to asking ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... seen anything of the kind before, my father being an exceptionally quiet and sober-minded individual, associating only with men of similar temperament to himself. With my new companions, however, 'respectability' was voted old-fashioned and out of date, sobriety of conduct a bore. They were fine, dashing, high-spirited young fellows, fearing nothing and nobody, and they didn't care who knew it. They drank freely, constituted themselves authorities on all kinds of sport, gambled, and did ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... stealthily from laying the saddle blanket, which was the only covering he and Abe had, upon the sleeping form of Aunt Debby, "and my downy couch still waits for me. My life-long habits of staid respectability have been greatly ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... doubt wretched enough; but the worldly, prudent, self-restraining man, with his five senses, which he understands how to gratify with tempered indulgence, with a conscience satisfied with the hack routine of what is called respectability, such a man feels no wretchedness; no inward uneasiness disturbs him, no desires which he cannot gratify; and this though he be the basest and most contemptible slave of his own selfishness. Providence will not interfere to punish him. Let him obey the laws under which prosperity ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... been mistaken, and that the reports he had heard were not true. The house was elegantly and tastefully furnished, the lady was modestly, yet richly attired, the little boy and his nurse lending an air of respectability to the whole establishment only to be out-done by the conversation and demeanor of the lady herself, who was not only the peer, but the superior of any lady among the large circle of the old gentleman's acquaintances. He called about some lessons for his eldest daughter, but was informed that ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... their industry, when the invention of this machine at once opened views to them which set the whole country in active motion. From childhood to age it has presented to us a lucrative employment. Individuals who were depressed with poverty, and sunk in idleness, have suddenly risen to wealth and respectability. Our debts have been paid off, our capitals have increased, and our lands have trebled themselves in value. We can not express the weight of the obligation which the country owes to this invention. The extent of it can not ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... likewise in the battle of the Thames, a fact not previously stated in this work, and which is now given on the authority of a writer in the Baltimore American, to whose respectability the editor of that paper bears testimony. We have, indeed, no reason to doubt the accuracy of this statement, which will be read with the more interest, from the circumstance that it embraces Black Hawk's account of the death of Tecumthe in regard to which much has been written ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... have escaped involvement with Victoria Woodhull and her Equal Rights party just at this time when the Republicans were ready to smile upon women, Susan basked in an aura of respectability thrown around her by her new political allies. She was even hopeful that the two woman-suffrage factions could now forget their differences and work together for "the living, vital issue of ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... humor of his own presence there, he had found the affair tedious, especially that last hour in the drawing-room. It was the sort of place that had always bored him even when he was young, governed by narrow, feminine standards, breathing a ponderous respectability from every curtain fold. Neither of the girls had been attractive. The elder, the small, pale one, was a prim, stiff little thing. The other was nothing but a gawky child; fine coloring—these Californians all had it—but with no charm ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... until the discovery of America and the West Indies, it had little or no foreign trade. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century, several acts of parliament were passed to encourage agriculture, the fisheries, and commerce; the Scotch merchants had now acquired so much wealth and general respectability, that they were frequently employed, along with the clergy and nobles, in embassies. Even some of the Scotch barons were engaged in trade. In 1467 several acts were passed: among the most important enactments were those which related to the freight of ships, the mode of stowing it, the mode ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... were soon to be realized. She was right. She had made an enemy of Mr. Owen, and he determined to make her feel it henceforward, by every means in his power. In his petty way, he was as particular about keeping up an outside appearance of respectability, as any aristocratic member of a rich city church might be to cover up their own glaring deficiencies. It would have ruined him as completely in his little circle, to have been found out in his underhand tricks, as though he had been of the consequence in ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... two muskets were fired from the shore, and a white flag, or rather a rag, was suspended to a pole, around which a group of people had collected. This flag gave us no very favourable idea of the respectability of the place, and the meaning of the muskets we could not divine, nor indeed ever did discover, unless it was that we had anchored on bad ground: the boat was then hoisted out and I went on shore, accompanied by Messrs. Bedwell and Cunningham, to where ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... and a regular fund to purchase livings for those groaning and garrulous gentlemen whom they denominate (by a standing sarcasm against the regular Church) Gospel preachers and vital clergymen. I am too firm a believer in the general propriety and respectability of the English clergy, to believe they have much to fear either from old nonsense or from new; but if the Church must be supposed to be in danger, I prefer that nonsense which is grown half venerable ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... for him, in September 1686, the commission of "Lieutenant de Roi" of the coast of San Domingo. Grammont, however, on learning of his new honour, wished to have a last fling at the Spaniards before he settled down to respectability. He armed a ship, sailed away with 180 men, and was never heard of again.[453] At the same time Laurens de Graff was given the title of "Major," and he lived to take an active part in the war against the ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... least idea of what he wants to do. He has learned many things in school, but little or nothing of the industrial world in which he must live. To many boys and girls, especially to those from the poorest families, an "office job" is the acme of desire. It means to them, pitifully enough, a respectability they have never been quite able to encompass. As a result, perhaps, of our slow-changing educational ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... depended on the convalescents—filling drinking cups; passing milk at eleven and three; keeping the white bedspreads in geometrical order. But the Avenue Girl was taboo. The boycott had been instituted by Old Maggie. The rampant respectability of the ward even went so far as to refuse to wash her in those early morning hours when the night nurse, flying about with her cap on one ear, was carrying tin basins about like a blue-and-white cyclone. The Dummy knew nothing ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... found how their petitions were treated in Congress, they sent in, from all parts of Massachusetts, petitions to the legislature, requesting it to issue a protest against such contempt of the people's wishes and rights. The legislature was amazed at the number and respectability of these petitions, and appointed a committee to take them under consideration. Abolitionists then asked for a hearing before that committee, not in the lobby, but in the Hall of Representatives. The request was granted, and though the day was exceedingly stormy, a good ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... years, but, compared with the family of an ordinary official, their condition anyhow presents a difference. Of late the number of the inmates has, day by day, been on the increase; their affairs have become daily more numerous; of masters and servants, high and low, who live in ease and respectability very many there are; but of those who exercise any forethought, or make any provision, there is not even one. In their daily wants, their extravagances, and their expenditure, they are also unable to adapt themselves to circumstances and practise economy; (so that though) the present external ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... grade. Three members of the Club and two Russian apostles were even then engaged in tossing up who should have the privilege of seeing her home. The lot fell to Mr. Richards, the excellent Vice-President, an elderly gentleman whose carefully parted hair and flowing beard made him the very picture of respectability. To look at him, one would have said that the dear lady could not be ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... different description, both as regards the respectability of the source from whence it comes, and the mysterious interest involved in its contents, is a document which made its appearance soon after the former Volume,[2] and which I have annexed, without a single line of comment, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... last great man who swayed the sceptre of Trajan, his ancestor, he has not too warmly been praised by the Church, whose defender he was—the last flickering light of an expiring monarchy,—although his character has been assailed by modern critics of great respectability. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... been entrusted to his care. After evidence had been adduced, Mr Wire requested that Captain Tune should be remanded for a week, and stated that the directors being anxious that he should receive as much accommodation as might be consistent with the respectability of his character and the nature of the difficulty in which he was at present involved, were desirous that bail should be taken for his appearance on the next day of investigation.—Alderman Gibbs: ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... for us to lay to heart. I address myself more particularly to you who are entering upon the useful and honourable career of the British merchant; for you are now standing on the lower steps of a ladder, which, when it is mounted with diligence and circumspection, leads always to respectability, not unfrequently to high honour and distinction. Bear in mind, then, that the quality which ought chiefly to distinguish those who aspire to exercise a controlling and directing influence in any department of ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... to the mill, sitting with his feet propped up, and drunker than he had been for weeks. But indistinct as things were, the poignancy of it went through him, and he groaned. In a dazed sort of way he knew it was the last of all his dreams of respectability, that from now on there was nothing for him and his but degradation and a lower place in life. To do him justice, he did not care so much for himself; already he felt that he himself was doomed, that he could never expect to shake off the terrible habit which had grown to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... opinion, but is the verdict of history. But there were those in influential positions in England who were not content with publicly approving the act, but publicly proclaimed the motive. The Times, which had then a national authority and respectability which gave its words a weight unknown in modern journalism, openly exulted in the prospect of a Golden Age when the kind of Irishman native to Ireland would be "as rare on the banks of the Liffey as a red ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... fairly launched, and that upon two congenial subjects: the deficiencies of the Lady Whitecross and the turpitudes of the whole Crozer race—which, indeed, had never been conspicuous for respectability. She pursued the pair of them for twenty minutes on the clock with wonderful animation and detail, something of the pulpit manner, and the spirit of one possessed. "O hellish compliance!" she exclaimed. "I would not suffer a complier to break bread with Christian ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Haddon, seemed to be at least elderly. Mrs. Robins, her husband (a successful architect), and her daughter, who acted as "assistant" honorary secretary for the first eighteen months, lent an air of prosperous respectability to our earliest meetings. Mr. and Mrs. J. Glode Stapleton, who were prominent members for some years, were remarkable amongst us because they drove to our meetings in their own brougham! The working classes, as before mentioned, had but a single representative. Another prominent member ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... announced that his reason for not granting his consent was that Schumann was a drunkard. Robert found witnesses enough to be sponsors for his high respectability, but the accusation was a staggering blow in the midst of the deep melancholia into which the endless struggle and the recent death of Henrietta Voigt had plunged him. Clara had the rare agony of seeing him weep. It was now the turn of the strong Clara to break down, and only ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... it, have seen, so we think, through certain tears and rifts in it. We know that a certain number of years ago there was a trading ship in the Yellow Sea, the Elizabeth Robinson, concerning the fate of which there is more mystery than is quite in accordance with either safety or respectability. She was bound from Hong-Kong to Chemulpo, and she never reached Chemulpo. But we also know that on her, when she left Hong-Kong there were two men, presumably brothers, whose names were Noah Quick and Salter ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... forge it. From that moment you have had but the one alternative. You must follow my commands, or you must take the common course of criminals, and go to prison. And now—you Harley—you John Harley—you, who pride yourself for your respectability, for your place in the world, for your illustrious relative Senator Hanway—hear me: You are to be my slave—my dog to fetch and carry. You are to do my will; or I swear by my Czar and by the heart in ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... stern sat a number of comely looking musicians, consisting of several drummers and a trumpeter, whilst the young men, who had the management of the boat, were not inferior to their companions either in decency of apparel or respectability ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... a red morocco case, and only show her in peeps to people of guaranteed respectability," said Grace, continuing his sentence for him. "That's always the way with imaginary sisters. But the real ones like to jump in and help the ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... to Vienna with a gay young father. John went alone, sore from the quarrel and rather adrift. In Vienna, he met Paula Carresford, an American opera singer, young, extraordinarily beautiful, and of unimpeachable respectability. They were in Vienna together the first week in August, 1914. They got out together, sailed on the same ship for America and in the autumn of that year, here in Chicago, in the most decorous manner in the ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... had almost gone by; Dickie had worked much, learned much, and earned much. Mr. Beale, a figure of cleanly habit and increasing steadiness, seemed like a plant growing quickly towards the sun of respectability, or a lighthouse rising bright and important out of a swirling ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... turbulence which must ever be the characteristics of a multitude orally addressed. It was evident, also, that from service in such a court, the wealthy, the eminent, and the learned, with other occupation or amusement, would soon seek to absent themselves. And the final blow to the integrity and respectability of the popular judicature was given at a later period by Pericles, when he instituted a salary, just sufficient to tempt the poor and to be disdained by the affluent, to every dicast or juryman in the ten ordinary courts ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of his station. This should be the primary object. The next, to avoid as much as may be the charge of superciliousness, and seclusion from information, by too much reserve and too great a withdrawal of himself from company on the one hand, and the inconveniences, as well as a diminution of respectability, from too free an intercourse and too much familiarity on the other." This letter, with a set of queries, was also sent to the Vice-President, to Jay, and to Hamilton. They all agreed in the general views outlined by Washington. Adams, fresh from Europe, ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... just remarked, a Samoan house-builder made no definite charge, but left the price of his work to the judgment, generosity, and means of the person who employed him. It was a lasting disgrace to any one to have it said that he paid his carpenter shabbily. It branded him as a person of no rank or respectability, and was disreputable, not merely to himself, but to the whole family or clan with which he was connected. The entire tribe or clan was his bank. Being connected with that particular tribe, either by birth or marriage, gave him a latent interest in all their ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... any more than the eyes. Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature!—ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your tear, your respectability, that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating extasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... a friendship for us, and I believe would have given us his company more often but for my father's disapproval of his manner of life; for he was already known as a wild companion, and one who set little store by religion and respectability. There was even a scandalous report that he had been fined by the Aldermen of Yarmouth under the new statute made against profane swearing. They had fixed his fine, so it was said, at two shillings, being ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... monogamy was practiced among the ancient Greeks and Romans is in no way derogatory of it as an institution. Even if it could be shown that it originated with those nations, still this would in no way detract from its value or respectability. Do not we owe much to those grand old pagans who laid the foundation for nearly all the modern sciences, and established better systems of political economy, and better schools for uniform culture of the whole individual, than any the world has seen since? But ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... throw doubt upon these implements, first upon their nature, and next upon their genuineness; but we think no one who weighs the evidence candidly and carefully, can award to these doubts the merit of respectability. That they are works of art and not native forms, is, we think, as fully established as human observation can establish anything; and though frauds have been recently detected, it would be no more absurd to attribute the whole phenomena of fossil remains to ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... at any need of prudence; living in false show with the very money they were thus lying away, warming and banqueting their innocent neighbours with fuel and wine stolen from their own cellars; and working worse wrong and more misery under the robe of imputed righteousness, that is, respectability, than could a little army of burglars. Unawares to a trusting multitude, the vacant eyes of loss were drawing near to stare them out of hope and comfort; and annihilation had long closed in upon the fund which the chief ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... question to be analysed here: but this thing is noteworthy, that there came next over Tom's mind a stranger feeling still—a fancy that if he did this thing, and sold his soul, he could not answer for himself thenceforth on the score of merest respectability; could not answer for himself not to drink, gamble, squander his money, neglect his father, prove unfaithful to his wife; that the innate capacity for blackguardism, which was as strong in him as in any man, might, and probably would, run utterly ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... gloriously taken away from the character of the cross-legged corporation by Neal Malone. He has wiped it off like a stain from the collar of a secondhand coat; he has pressed this wrinkle out of the lying front of antiquity; he has drawn together this rent in the respectability of his profession. No. By him who was breeches-maker to the gods,—that is, except, like Highlanders, they eschewed inexpressibles,—by him who cut Jupiter's frieze jocks for winter, and eke by the bottom of his thimble, we swear that ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... resided in New York, in the utmost conjugal happiness and respectability, but then Kidd was a martyr ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... understand Ibsen," the newcomer said, reflectively, with the omniscient air of the Indian civilian. "He is too purely Scandinavian. He represents that part of the Continental mind which is farthest removed from the English temperament. To him, respectability—our god—is not only no fetish, it is the unspeakable thing, the Moabitish abomination. He will not bow down to the golden image which our British Nebuchadnezzar, King Demos, has made, and which he asks us to worship. And the British Nebuchadnezzar will never get beyond ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... necessarily break out between Jesus and persons of this character. Jesus recognized only the religion of the heart, whilst that of the Pharisees consisted almost exclusively in observances. Jesus sought the humble and outcasts of all kinds, and the Pharisees saw in this an insult to their religion of respectability. The Pharisee was an infallible and faultless man, a pedant always right in his own conceit, taking the first place in the synagogue, praying in the street, giving alms to the sound of a trumpet, and ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... town, the home of honorable families, extolled for respectability almost to affectation, now learned the disorderly ways of noisy cafes, the luxury of champagne suppers, in over-decorated restaurants, became intimately acquainted with the theaters—gaining doubtful ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... his Jewish origin, of which he was ashamed. Those who did not know this naturally believed that he was proud of it, and were at a loss to account for his permitting his children to be educated as Christians. Well instructed in business, and subject to no emotion outside the love of family, respectability, comfort, and money, he had maintained the capital inherited from his father, and made it breed new capital in the usual way. He was a banker, and his object as such was to intercept and appropriate the immense saving ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... ends, and worn jauntily across one shoulder and under the other arm. Their caps are made of pasteboard covered with gay-colored silk, embroidered and studded with precious stones or pearls. The form of a Parsee's shirt is a matter of vital importance, both in regard to respectability and religion. It must have five seams, neither more nor less, and be made to lap on the breast exactly in a certain way. Both sexes wear around the body a double string, which they loosen when at prayer, and which a Parsee is never, under any circumstances, permitted to dispense with. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... name and procured you consideration and respect by making you my singer and companion, and allowing you to play upon the harp at my improvisations? How has not all Rome admired you when you sang the canzones I wrote for you, thereby procuring you honor and respectability, and making you a popular man from a low beggar? Go, you cannot leave me, for you are my creature, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... on. "I could not bear to humble you in the eyes of others even by forcing you to face a scandal. I could not bear to humble you in your own eyes by letting you suspect that I knew the truth. I could not bring myself to disturb the outward respectability of your life by interrupting its outward calm. To be absolutely honest—though I had lost you, I could not bring myself to give you up,—as I felt I must, if I let any one discover—most of all you—what I knew. So, like a coward, I lived on, becoming gradually ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... the temple of the earthy god—to a worship whose god and temple and treasure caves will one day drop suddenly from under the votary's feet, and leave him dangling in the air without even a pocket about him—without even his banker's book to show for his respectability. ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... fashion's vests by thee be all unworn. Soon luxuries become necessities, But self-denying thrift more joy affords Than all the pleasures of extravagance. A cottage, free from clamorous creditors, Is better than a mansion dunned; a coat, However darned, if paid for, hath an ease, And a respectability beside: Gay, ill-afforded vests can ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... it? But you have been dandled on the knees of respectability all your little life: what do you know of necessity or hunger? I know both, and I tell you necessity and hunger are two gods before whom all who meet them bow down. Better a live jackal than a dead poet. Besides, is he not the greatest of kings? Bishop Thibault had me in gaol for a mere ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the social element in the town as well as the academic. To Ben Minthrop he had been a saving grace during a rather dissipated career at college, and now that that young gentleman was married, and his feet set in the path of commercial respectability, the friendship was even more cemented. On Ben's part there was admiration and gratitude, on Stephen's the genuine liking an older man has for a youngster who has had the pluck to pull himself together. It was a bond between ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... lay down their arms and go away; and everybody had been hustling him about and tumbling over him, while he was calling for pen and ink to write it with. Mrs. Pordage, too, had some curious ideas about the British respectability of her nightcap (which had as many frills to it, growing in layers one inside another, as if it was a white vegetable of the artichoke sort), and she wouldn't take the nightcap off, and would be angry when it got crushed by the other ladies who were handing things ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... the mighty fallen! The Hill, of course, had the farthest to fall. South Parkites merely moved out: they went to another and a better place. There was a decline in respectability and the rent-roll, and no one thinks of South Park now,—at least no one speaks of it above a whisper. As for the Hill, the Hillites hung on through everything; the waves of commerce washed all about it and began gnawing at its base; a deep gully was cut through it, and there a great tide ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... to practical materialism was never wholly absent from the idealism of the moderns. Certainly, the tumid respectability of Anglo-German philosophy had somehow to be left behind; and Darwinian England and Bismarckian Germany had another inspiration as well to guide them, if it could only come to consciousness in the professors. The worship of power is an old religion, and ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... crumpling the Daily Mail in his hand. He would go into Parliament and make fine speeches—but what use are fine speeches and Parliament, once you surrender an inch to the black waters? Indeed there has never been any explanation of the ebb and flow in our veins—of happiness and unhappiness. That respectability and evening parties where one has to dress, and wretched slums at the back of Gray's Inn—something solid, immovable, and grotesque—is at the back of it, Jacob thought probable. But then there was the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... unfortunate habit of squandering the family estate. An excellent relative, this uncle, in all other respects. As a liar, he had few equals; he robbed with taste and discretion; and his murders were all imbued with true artistic feeling. He might have lived to a green old age of spotless respectability but for his one little failing. As it was, justice had to be done, ruat clum: and so it came about that one day the nephew issued forth to correct him with a matchlock. The innocent old man was cultivating his paternal acres; so the nephew was able, unperceived, to get a ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... decidedly. "Pride o' wealth, and pride o' birth. Not that I'm for objecting to a decent satisfaction in a body's ain gude conduct and respectability. Pride o' character, that's anither thing a'thegither, and to ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing |
