"Decency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in these the old man was wont at last to accompany us to church, and to eat his Sunday dinner with us afterwards. I do not think he was an illiberal man at heart, but he had been very poor in his youth—('So poor, ma'am,' he said one day to my mother, 'that I could not live with honour and decency in the estate of a gentleman. I did not live. I starved—and bought books,')—and he seemed unable to shake off the pinching necessity of years. A wealthy uncle who had refused to help him whilst he lived, bequeathed all his money to him when he died. But when late in life the ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... dangerous to health, and to establish a central authority, the home office (now for most purposes the Local Government Board) to superintend all burial grounds with a view to the protection of the public health and the maintenance of public decency in burials. The Local Government Board thus has the power to obtain by order in council the closing of any burial ground it thinks fit, while its consent is necessary to the opening of any new burial ground; and it also has power to direct inspection of any ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the chance. Da Sanhao was a Brazilian wrestler stranded here by the war. Not his war, he said; but he did have the decency to volunteer as medical orderly. But he got conscripted by a bomb that took a corner off the hospital and one off his head. They got him into chemical stasis quicker than it'd ever been done before, ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... disquiet was the last throe of an expiring sense of honor and decency, or whether it was ambition burning in the blood, it is impossible to say. Quite likely it was a little of each. Mr. Wintermuth had been a good friend to O'Connor; still, a man must needs look first after his ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... at the door, as if she considered the interview might now with decency come to an end. Neither Peachy nor Irene took the hint, however. The main object of their mission had ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... easily abolished by act of legislature. And yet they cannot be encouraged by being let alone. They must be recognized as facts, but unpleasant facts; things that stand in the way of civilization and religion and common decency. They can be met in but one way: by the breadth and broadening of human reason, by catholicity of taste and culture. And so, too, the native ambition and aspiration of men, even though they be black, backward, and ungraceful, must not lightly ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... adopting, in the place of an unworthy son, the brave and virtuous Constantius, who at that time was governor of Dalmatia. But the elevation of Constantius was for a while deferred; and as soon as the father's death had released Carinus from the control of fear or decency, he displayed to the Romans the extravagancies of Elagabalus, aggravated by the cruelty of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... and irregularity in dishing, and in sending up; for Shaws-Castle boasted neither an accomplished housekeeper, nor a kitchenmaid with a hundred pair of hands to execute her mandates. All the domestic arrangements were on the minutest system of economy consistent with ordinary decency, except in the stables, which were excellent and well kept. But can a groom of the stables perform the labours of a groom of the chambers? or can the gamekeeper arrange in tempting order the carcasses of the birds he has shot, strew them with flowers, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of death, filled with bones—very many and very dry. Love lies there, dead. Hope is dead. Faith is dead. Honour is dead. Truth is dead. Purity is dead. Liberty is dead. Humility is dead. Fidelity is dead. Decency is dead. It is the blight of humanity. Death— moral and spiritual death in all her hideous and ghastly power—reigns around us. Men are indeed dead—"dead in trespasses and sins." What do we need? What is the secret longing of our hearts? What is the crying agony of our prayers? Is ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... existence.[470] As a result the followers of Besht, calling themselves the "New Saints," and at his death numbering no less than 40,000, threw aside not only the precepts of the Talmud, but all the restraints of morality and even decency.[471] ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... COMMENDABLE, BECAUSE USEFUL AND NECESSARY. They are called assumed semblances, because they exist with those who disagree in mind, and who from such disagreement are interiorly in cold: in this case, when they still appear to live united, as duty and decency require, their kind offices to each other may be called assumed conjugial semblances; which, as being commendable for the sake of uses, are altogether to be distinguished from hypocritical semblances; for hereby all those good things ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... up there in the little pen that night!—women, too—but women with enough decency to be revolted, and with enough character to resent such treatment as the members down there on the floor of the House were giving to our measure. Though the women who ought to have felt it most sat there cowed and silent, I am proud to think there were other women who ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... work that Theodore Roosevelt did for the United States, the great fact which will give his influence vitality and power long after we shall all have gone to our reward, greater than his great services in bringing peace, in settling strikes, in preaching the crusade of honesty and decency in business and in daily life, is the fact that he changed the attitude of the American people toward conserving the natural resources, and toward public questions and public life. The time was, not long ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... ancients to wells and springs, and as one of the most interesting traces of the extension of the loathsome habit among the upper classes of Europe and America, which now renders all external grace, dignity, and decency impossible in the thoroughfares of their principal cities. In connection with that sentence of Moliere's you may advisably also remember this fact, which I chanced to notice on the bridge of Wallingford. I was ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... contributed their full share, if not more than their share, to the steadiness of that movement, even in times when the feelings were most excited, as, for instance, in fugitive-slave cases. Who that has seen mobs practically put down, and mayors cowed into decency, by the silent dignity of those rows of women who sat, with their knitting, more imperturbable than the men, can read without a smile these doubts of the "steadiness" of that sex? Again, among Quaker women, I have asked the opinion of prominent Friends, as of John G. Whittier, whether ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height; and for the Poor also a Gospel has been published. Surely if, as D'Alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man of Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the Moderns; and greater than Diogenes himself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, casting aside all props and shoars; yet ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... who is not thoroughly clean in his person, will be offensive to all he converses with. A particular regard to the cleanness of your mouth, teeth, hands and nails, is but common decency. A foul mouth and unclean hands are certain marks of vulgarity; the first is the cause of an offensive breath, which nobody can bear, and the last is declaratory of dirty work; one may always know a gentleman by the state of his hands ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... this town bore its share in the common sufferings of the north of France. The horrors experienced by other places on the occasion were even surpassed by the outrages that were committed at Bayeux; but it is impossible to enter into details which are equally revolting to decency and to humanity. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... impressions—I saw the thing as clearly as I see it now, as clearly as I saw that great, swollen beast of a face. Here was the chance I had longed for, the hope I had lain awake at night and prayed for; between the man and death I alone stood; and I had every reason, every instinct of decency and common sense, to make me step aside. The man was a devil; he was killing the finest woman I had ever met; his presence poisoned the air he walked in; he was an active agent of evil, there was no doubt of that. I hated him as I had never hated anything else in my life, and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... themselves much in it. But now, I was told, they were the chief promoters of a shameful traffic, and that for a spike-nail, or any other thing they value, they would oblige the women to prostitute themselves, whether they would or no; and even without any regard to that privacy which decency required.[3] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Lernean hydra, whose heads started up in place of those that were destroyed. For they agree on all the rest. There were yesterday only altercations and reproaches, to which those of Amsterdam answered with as much moderation and decency as firmness. All has been deferred till tomorrow, and if they will decide the affair by the majority, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... his own orations; both his accusers and his champions have caught the trick of his rhetorical exaggeration more easily than his eloquence. Modern German critics like Drumann and Mommsen have attacked him with hardly less bitterness, though with more decency, than the historian Dio Cassius, who lived so near his own times. Bishop Middleton, on the other hand, in those pleasant and comprehensive volumes which are still to this day the great storehouse of materials ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... (if laid under the necessity,) I shall on no occasion transgress against the strictest rules of truth and decency, nor be wanting in that respect, which I have ever paid, and shall ever pay to Congress, as the representative body of my fellow citizens. At the same time, I shall with proper firmness, and the dignity becoming ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... cases most interesting to the metaphysician is that of a boy, brought there about two years and a half ago, at the age of thirteen, in a state of brutality, and of ferocious brutality. I read the physician's report of him at that period. He discovered no ray of decency or reason; entirely beneath the animals in the exercise of the senses, he discovered a restless fury beyond that of beasts of prey, breaking and throwing down whatever came in his way; was a voracious glutton, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... unsettle things, that is, things that are antiquated and in need of reform. But we will keep you, when need be, within necessary limits, and so save you from yourselves, for without us you would set Russia tottering, robbing her of all external decency, while our task is to preserve external decency. Understand that we are mutually essential to one another. In England the Whigs and Tories are in the same way mutually essential to one another. Well, you're Whigs and we're Tories. That's how I ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Lavendar. "Shame is a curious thing, William. It's like some of your medicines. The right amount cures. Too much kills. I've seen that with hard drinkers. Where a drunkard is a poor, uneducated fellow, shame gives him a good boost towards decency. But a man of education, William, a man of opportunity—if he wakes up to what he has been doing, shame gives him such a shove he is apt to go all round the circle, and come up just where he started! Shame is a blessed thing,— when you don't get too much of it. ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... just in the very rush and murmur of the first spreading currents, the human wretches of the place cast their street and house foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes; which, having neither energy to cart away, nor decency enough to dig into the ground, they thus shed into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it will float and melt, far away, in all places where God meant those waters to bring joy and health. And, in a little pool behind some houses farther in the village, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... was only the beginning: we read that during the time of the Great Rebellion, "the newly erected font was pulled down, the inscriptions, figures, and coats of arms, engraven upon brass, were torn off from the ancient monuments, and whatsoever there was of beauty or decency in the holy ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... was a cheerful exemplification of the adage that man is not made to live alone. He wore the willow just long enough for decency, and then married again—married another pretty, portionless young woman of no family worth mentioning. This reiterated indiscretion caused a breach with his father, and the slender allowance that had been made him was resumed. But his new wife was good to his little Bessie, and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... the better element a moral secession was apparent. Convention they had left behind with their boiled shirts and their store clothes, and crazed with the idea of speedy fortune, they were even now straining at the leash of decency. It was a howling mob, elately riotous, and already infected by the virus ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... justified. But, besides these gross absurdities, all their plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders, to play a part in majestical matters with neither decency nor discretion." ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... of giving a splendid education to millions in orderliness, sanitation, decent composite life and cultivation of simple and clean tastes is being lost. Instead of receiving an object lesson in these matters third class passengers have their sense of decency and cleanliness blunted during ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... the occasion, or, rather, I sat down on it. I subsided into the chair close to Caspian which the man had jumped up from like a Jack-in-a-box. Pat followed my example by plumping into a seat on Ed's other side, and in common decency he could not bolt. "Why, yes," I said, "I should like nothing better than an excuse to dine as I am. Mr. Caspian is so smart, he must bear off the ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... king; "Yes, stand out of the sunlight," rejoined the cynic; upon which Alexander turned away saying, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." D'Alembert declared Diogenes the greatest man of antiquity, only that he wanted decency. "Great truly," says Carlyle, but adds with a much more serious drawback than that (412-323 B.C.). See "SARTOR RESARTUS," ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... gone to dinner yet, and he gave Maxwell's work the critical censure of a hungry man. It was in two separate parts: one, a careful and lucid statement of all the facts which had come to Maxwell's knowledge, in his quality of reporter, set down without sensation, and in that self-respectful decency of tone which the Abstract affected; the other, an editorial comment upon the facts. Ricker read the first through without saying anything; when he saw what the second was, he pushed up his green-lined peak, and said, "Hello, young man! ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... said, "I'm going to run up to the hermit's shack and reason with him as best I can. I shall paint in touching colors our sad plight. If the man has an atom of decency—" ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... that the very principle of Comedy necessarily occasioned that which in Aristophanes has given so much offence; namely, his frequent allusions to the base necessities of the body, the wanton pictures of animal desire, which, in spite of all the restraints imposed on it by morality and decency, is always breaking loose before one can be aware of it. If we reflect a moment, we shall find that even in the present day, on our own stage, the infallible and inexhaustible source of the ludicrous is the same ungovernable impulses of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... carefully trained, and liked, while eating, to cover her face with her napkin, and then uncover it with a cry of joy. Turnips were her favorite food; and, when a lady of the palace showed her one, she began to run, caper, and cut somersaults, forgetting entirely the lessons of modesty and decency her professor had taught her. The Empress was much amused at seeing the baboon lose her dignity so completely under the influence ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... turning to do no damage to any one but himself;—that was the life which he had planned for himself. His Aunt Stanbury had not read his character altogether wrongly, as he thought, when she had once declared that decency and godliness were both distasteful to him. Would it not be destruction to such a one as he was, to fall into an interminable engagement with any girl, let her be ever ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... brought them together in the first instance. Penny, I was a fool. But I was so afraid—so afraid of Nan with Maryon. He might have made her do anything! He could have twisted her round his little finger at the time if he'd wanted to. Thank goodness he'd the decency not to try—that." ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... desire for ornaments—grew rapidly as the fact developed that for all her work she was not to have them. The sympathy she felt for Hurstwood, at the time he asked her to tide him over, vanished with these newer urgings of decency. He was not always renewing his request, but this love of good appearance was. It insisted, and Carrie wished to satisfy it, wished more and more that Hurstwood was not in ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... been pretty decent of him, too, to hold off a little. Most parsons would have rushed in, hot foot, to administer extreme unction and be sure I was in a proper mood concerning Providence. Brenton has had the decency to wait a little. It was almighty decent, too. I knew him in my palmy days, when life was young. It's young for him still—Hold on, Olive; I'm not going to maunder!—and I had a natural dread of having him ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... lustre, because he had the goverment of that Province. As he spente and lived upon his owne fortune, so he stoode upon his owne feete, without any other supporte then of his proper virtue and meritt, and lyved towards the favorites with that decency, as would not suffer them to censure or reproch his Masters judgement and election, but as with men of his owne ranke. He was exceedingly beloved in the Courte, because he never desyred to gett that for himselfe, which others labored for, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... she will fetch it, for this sometimes in a pleasant discontent she dares chide her sex, though she use it never the worse. She is much within, and frames outward things to her mind, not her mind to them. She wears good clothes, but never better; for she finds no degree beyond decency. She hath a content of her own, and so seeks not an husband, but finds him. She is indeed most, but not much of description, for she is direct and one, and hath not the variety of ill. Now she is given fresh and alive to a husband, and she doth nothing ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... wound he had got, there would have been no chance for him. Wainwright, when he heard it, lay thoughtful for a long time, a puzzled, half-sullen look on his face. He saw that everybody considered Cameron a hero. There was no getting away from that the rest of his life. One could not in decency be an enemy of a man who had saved one's life. Cameron had won out in a final round. It would not be good policy not to recognize it. It would be entirely too unpopular. He must make friends with him. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... found myself despising my own decency. I felt the girl in my arms a thousand times as I had felt her for those delicious hours the night she had invited me to share the wagon with her, and we had sat in the spring seat wrapped in the ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... hay-cock. She makes her hand hard with labor, and her heart soft with pity; and when winter evenings fall early, sitting at her merry wheel, she sings defiance to the giddy wheel of fortune. She bestows her year's wages at next fair, and, in choosing her garments, counts no bravery in the world like decency. The garden and bee-hive are all her physic and surgery, and she lives the longer for it. She dares go alone and unfold sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none; yet to say truth, she is never alone, but is still accompanied ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... But if I talk to you, I hope to goodness you will have the decency to answer me. I wouldn't believe anything different." And she looked into Ethel's face with such a smiling confidence in her good will and obedience, that Ethel could only laugh and give her twenty kisses as she stood up to put on ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... I gave Sara as warm marks of my love as decency would allow in the presence of her father and mother, and I could see that all the girl ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... acquired his nick-name from the very leisurely pace at which he advanced up the school. He wore "Charity tails," as they were called, the swallow-tail coat of the Upper School mercifully given to boys of the Lower School who are too tall to wear with decency the short Eton jacket; he possessed a trouser-press; and his "bags" were perfectly creased and quite spotless. From tip to toe, at all seasons and in all weathers, he looked conspicuously spick and span. Chaff provoked the solemn retort: "One should ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... why he sought out the most obscure rooming house that gave any promise of decency and comfort, and stayed off Central Avenue and away from its loitering groups of range dwellers who might know him. That is why he hired a horse and rode early and alone to the fair grounds on the opening day, and avoided, by a roundabout trail a certain splotch of gray-white ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... time, to return to the serious business of her invitations for the dinner. Geoffrey turned defiantly, book in hand, to his college friends about him. The British blood was up; and the British resolution to bet, which successfully defies common decency and common-law from one end of the country to the other, was not ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... age and temper, young noblemen as froward and as extravagant as himself; yet, as he surpassed them all in birth and rank, so he did in wickedness and cruelty of disposition. For age he had no reverence, for virtue no esteem, neither truth towards man, nor decency towards woman. On his arrival at Waterford, the new Archbishop of Dublin, John de Courcy, and the principal Norman nobles, hastened to receive him. With them came also certain Leinster chiefs, desiring to live at peace with the new Galls. When, according to the custom of the country, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... "For decency's sake, you may, and I shall have to pretend that I do. At least," she continued, turning coldly to Malipieri, "you will make such reparation as is ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... she's not as blind as an owl, I've observed her atrocious designs upon Bernard, and mean to checkmate them. If, after such a letter, she has the cheek to send us her Yankee girl to chaperon, I shall consider her lost to all sense of shame and all notions of decency. But she won't, of course. She'll withdraw her unobtrusively." And Lucy flung the peccant sheet that had roused all this wrath on to the back of the fireplace ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... young spinster, with a grace of manner beyond her station, and a decency and propriety of demeanor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Syllables, and to make Melody in particular Tunes, may as well be called the Inventions of Men and Will-Worship: But these Inventions are absolutely necessary for the Performance of Divine Commands, and for the Assistance of a whole Congregation to sing; with any tolerable Convenience, Order or Decency, as the Reverend Mr. ...
— A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody • Isaac Watts
... for ever be plastering their noses with powder—not just privily, as used to be the better way of faded charmers, but shamelessly in public places. In dress they barely keep within the bounds of decency prescribed by the police. They make their own advances, rounding up and capturing their 'boys' for partners, lest the haunts of jazzery should be closed against them. And in this competition for their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... according to the trade they were engaged in, and might have a wife and group of children depending on them. The captains were purveyors of tobacco, and sold it to the crew at profits that far exceeded the limits of decency. Many of them carried what were known as slop chests, which comprised every article of apparel the sailors were accustomed to wear and use: oilskins, sea-boots, suits of dongarees, jumpers, ducks, dark ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... now was exceedingly unpleasant. If she had such a distaste for his presence, common decency made it imperative that he should give her a good start on the homeward journey. He could not tramp along a couple of yards in the rear all the way. So he had to remain where he was till she had got well off the mark. And as he was wearing a thin flannel suit, ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the white churches referred to the riot in their sermons to-day. The burden of the discourses was that the struggle at the polls Tuesday was for liberty, decency, honesty and right; that it was not so much the drawing of the color line as a contest for the supremacy of intelligence and competence over ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... be brazen is to imperil some of the best elements of character. Modesty may be strengthened into a becoming confidence, but brazen facedness can seldom be toned down into decency. It ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... disorganization, they have higher hopes and nobler passions. Out of the suffering comes the serious mind; out of the salvation, the grateful heart; out of the endurance, the fortitude; out of the deliverance, the faith; but now when they have learned to live under providence of laws, and with decency and justice of regard for each other; and when they have done away with violent and external sources of suffering, worse evils seem arising out of their rest, evils that vex less and mortify more, that suck the blood though they do ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... no reverence, no decency?" he said. "In the name of everything you respect, I call upon you to stop this ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... ministers, he had discharged an important, and, for one in his situation, an imperative, duty. Unequal to the exercise of virtue itself, he thought he had done enough in preserving some of its seemliness. Though far from paying even this slight homage to decency, in his more ordinary habits, his pride of rank had, on the subject of so coarse a failing, induced him to maintain an appearance which his pride of character would not have suggested. Carnaby was much the most degraded and the lowest of those with ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... awoke with a shudder, as there came back to him many a memory of lofty pitying words, with which he had gently drawn aside the cloak of seemliness wherein some sinner had sought to wrap his sin. His dream of the perfect joint-life, what was it but a sham tribute to decency, a threadbare garment for the hideousness of naked passion? Had he taught himself to contemplate such a life, and shaped himself for it, it might be a worthy life—not the highest, but good for men who were not made for saints. But as it was, it seemed to him but a glazing over of his crime. ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... man—a noble man—a whole man; a man, in fine, of whom no woman need be ashamed. I am aware, you are aware, that the world will severely condemn you; so it did Luther, when he married a nun; it was then thought to be as great an outrage on decency, for a minister to marry a nun, as it now is for a white young lady to marry a colored gentleman. You have this consolation, that God does not look upon the countenance—the color of men; that in ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... taken a turn - THE turn, we shall hope. Please let us know how you get on, and what has been the matter with you; Braemar I believe - the vile hole. You know what a lazy rascal I am, so you won't be surprised at a short letter, I know; indeed, you will be much more surprised at my having had the decency to write at all. We have got rid of our young, pretty, and incompetent maid; and now we have a fine, canny, twinkling, shrewd, auld-farrant peasant body, who gives us good food and keeps us in good spirits. If we could only understand what she says! But she speaks Davos language, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be getting on better than at any time since the last wheat-harvest, as I took the lane to Kensington upon the Monday evening. For although no time was given in my Lorna's letter, I was not inclined to wait more than decency required. And though I went and watched the house, decency would not allow me to knock on the Sunday evening, especially when I found at the corner that his ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... his feet desisted (slack'ning pace), From haste, that mars all decency of act, My mind, that in itself before was wrapt, Its thoughts expanded, as with joy restor'd: And full against the steep ascent I set My face, where highest ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... and as such may more nearly move our pity and affect our hearts, but I do not think she ever becomes so nauseous a thing as the man that has abandoned all the hopes of life for gin. You can still touch her;—ay, and if the task be in one's way, can touch her gently, striving to bring her back to decency. But the other! Well, one should be willing to touch him too, to make that attempt of bringing back upon him also. I can only say that the task is both nauseous and unpromising. Look at him as he stands there before the foul, reeking, sloppy ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... and with a lively disposition, I confess, not to miss even the vaguest of them. I can scarce indeed overstate the vagueness that quite had to attend a great number in presence of the fact that our father, caring for our spiritual decency unspeakably more than for anything else, anything at all that might be or might become ours, would have seemed to regard this cultivation of it as profession and career enough for us, had he but betrayed more interest in our mastery of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... a terrible person, this Ben Butcher. You'd think that any one after being told he wasn't wanted would have had the decency to keep quiet. But not Ben Butcher. He kept going round the deck pointing out all the things we had wrong. According to him there wasn't a thing right on the whole ship. The anchor was hitched up wrong; the hatches weren't fastened ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... induces me now to retain my office but the sense of duty, which constrains me to remain as long as I have the confidence of the Emperor and the majority of the delegations. A soldier with any sense of decency does not desert. But no Minister for Foreign Affairs could conduct negotiations of this importance unless he knows, and all the world as well, that he is endowed with the confidence of the majority among the constitutional representative bodies. ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... interject here in full testimony the nevertheless fact that such a pagan city as Rome, or licentious Corinth or idolatrous Ephesus were lifted into cleanness and moral decency, not by legislative action, by reorganization of local conditions, but by the regeneration of one individual at a time until the divine sanity and personal spirituality enthroned in them built up societies, assemblies of such heaven-given health that the old social ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... of the Censor's office lies as much in what it permits as in what it forbids; and a growing sense of decency in the public is displacing prudery so that the abolition of the office will not cause the ill-results announced by the managers, who regard the existence of the Censor as valuable to them, because it ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... give to understand 't the Brunhilde 's Felicia Hemans was so book-took with is long dead, 'Dragged at horses' tails,' she had the face to tell me—the joint godmother!—''N' who by?' I couldn't in decency but ask.—'By the horses,' says Felicia Hemans, a-gigglin' fit to beat the band. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I'm pretty patient with the young in general, but I must say 's I can't but feel 't when them shirts o' Sam Duruy's is done 'n' their consequences ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... friendship and kindliness. But then he never did anything to try her shyness or to call up her reserve. He never asked anything of her that she could refuse. He never advanced a step where it could with decency be repressed. He knew it. But he bided his time. He did not know what thorough and full accounts of all his evenings ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... bludgeon is perceptible in the prose description. They are not at present 'the eruption of every miserable scribbler, the scum of every dirty newspaper, or fragments of fragments picked up from every dirty dunghill ... equally the disgrace of human wit, morality, decency, and common sense.' But if the translator of the 'Dunciad' into modern phraseology would have some difficulty in finding a head for every cap, there are perhaps some satirical stings which have not quite lost their point. The legitimate drama, so theatrical critics ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... an unpardonable liberty," she said wildly. "You have already passed the bounds of decency or consideration. You have been not only impudent but ridiculous. One service you have done me tonight. I thank you. You may do me another—by getting out at ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... care in a new suit of clothes, a new hat, and a well-powdered wig; and could not but notice his uncommon spruceness. "Why, sir," replied Johnson, "I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night to show ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... I had had the decency to trust her before she gave the weapon to me. But I was blazingly angry with myself when I got out of the wagon and saw just what had happened. Fair in the middle of my new road was a boulder that the frost must ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... long time of reading "The Times"—not regularly but very frequently, and sometimes every day for a considerable period; but I have never seen an individual disrespectfully mentioned in the paper. An opinion may be denounced; but the individual holding that opinion is invariably spoken of with decency. "The Times" has frequently objected to the course pursued by Mr. Gladstone; but the man himself is treated with precisely the same respect as he would be if he were an invited ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... To Horace there seemed nothing outrageous in this suggestion. He had talked it over with Fanny French several times, and they had agreed that his father could not in decency offer them less than a hundred a year. He began to shake out the ashes from his pipe, with a ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... ha, ha!" Who would go to see a fellow so void of the sense of common decency! I gave this priest from this time ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... talking with a girl. (Martin Doul gets up and goes to corner of forge, and looks out left.) Come back here and don't mind her at all. Come back here, I'm saying, you've no call to be spying behind her since she went off, and left you, in place of breaking her heart, trying to keep you in the decency of clothes and food. ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... Prayer-Book says, "Devout and holy men, as well under the Law as under the Gospel, moved either by the express command of God, or by the secret inspiration of the blessed Spirit, and acting agreeably to their own reason and sense of the natural decency of things, have erected houses for the public worship of God, and separated them from all unhallowed, worldly, and common uses, in order to fill men's minds with greater reverence for His glorious Majesty, and affect ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... to read the will immediately after the funeral,' said Lady Le Breton, firmly, to whom the ordinary usage of society formed an absolutely unanswerable argument; 'and how you, Ronald, who haven't even the common decency to wear a bit of crape around your arm for her—a thing that Ernest himself, with all his nonsensical theories, consents to do—can talk in that absurd way about what's quite right and proper to be done, I for my ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... land hundreds of young lives whom the morning light awakes to hunger, filth, and wretchedness, and whom the evening shadows limit to rooms in which you would not care to keep your dogs. They are growing up without the least sense of decency, or the slightest reverence for God. Their existence is one long struggle against the constituted guardians of society; or if they do not resist, they are always eluding. In addition to these are the children of our homes and families ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... the sporting instinct ran strong in Captain Hyde. He was irritated by Val's grave superior dignity, and deep and unacknowledged there was working in him the instinct of the bully, the love of cruelty, overlaid by layer on layer of civilization, of chivalry, of decency, yet native to the human heart and quick to reassert itself at any age: in the boy who thrashes a smaller boy, in the young man who takes advantage of a woman, in the fighter who hounds down ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the police to let you spend your vacations in "that dear New York," which still shows signs of your red—paint brush. I would be pleased to have an apology by return mail, so that I may meet you in New Orleans and start you off once more on the road to decency and self-respect. You will never be a success at anything, but I am always ready to do my duty. This is my last offer, and if you refuse you may distinctly and definitely go to the ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... not be complete without mention of the courtesan, and Part VI. is entirely devoted to this subject. The Hindoos have ever had the good sense to recognise courtesans as a part and portion of human society, and so long as they behaved themselves with decency and propriety, they were regarded with a certain respect. Anyhow, they have never been treated in the East with that brutality and contempt so common in the West, while their education has ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... a blob of a nose," she said ruefully. "There is mighty little to be done with a nose like mine unless I have paraffin injected under the skin right on top. Of course, I could make it up for the stage from the outside, but not for close inspection. Are my skirts too short for decency?" ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... time and influence over matters far less important and less pressing, the other three must laugh at them, and more than laugh at them; and ask them—"Why have you education, why have you influence, why have you votes, why are you freemen and not slaves, if not to preserve the comfort, the decency, the health, the lives of men, women, and children—most of those latter your own wives and ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... affection; bringing forth in pain, rearing, with long-suffering solicitude, his young. To touch the heart of his mystery, we find in him one thought, strange to the point of lunacy: the thought of duty, the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his God: an ideal of decency, to which he would rise if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a guard. Now he would tarry awhile in the guard-room, and stand over against the soldier's table, his head resting very sadly against the chimney, and listen to their wild talk, which was, however, somewhat hushed and shaped to decency so long as he abided there. And anon he would come into the Governor's apartment, and hold Colonel Glover for some moments in grave discourse on matters of history, and the lives of Worthy Captains, and sometimes upon points and passages of Scripture, but never upon anything that concerned ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... their desire to speak practically, forget the moral values which should underlie this intimate information. Never should the spirit of levity intrude itself in these intimate personal sex colloquies. Restraint and decency should ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... one tittle of her dignity, or cease to assert her claim to it. Her reply, however, appears to have been anticipated, and the request was only preparatory to ulterior measures. For the sake of public decency, and certainly in no unkind spirit towards herself, a retirement from the court was now to be forced upon her. At Midsummer she accompanied the king to Windsor; in the middle of July he left her there, and never saw her again. She was removed to the More, a house ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... admonish all loud, mischievous, airy, dull Companions, that they are mistaken in what they call a Frolick. Irregularity in its self is not what creates Pleasure and Mirth; but to see a Man who knows what Rule and Decency are, descend from them agreeably in our Company, is what denominates him a pleasant Companion. Instead of that, you find many whose Mirth consists only in doing Things which do not become them, with a secret Consciousness that all the World know ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... now the proposal to open up trade with the Co-operative Societies in Russia, to the obvious benefit of the Bolshevists, who practically control the whole country, looks like an attempt to bring about indirectly a peace which we cannot in decency negotiate through ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... yet say, this Art may be apply'd to those that intend to marry. There is nothing sure against Decency in all that. I agree, if you will have it so, that it extends so far as to direct one to the Means to gain a Mistress. If this was not lawful heretofore in Italy, on account of the jealous Humour of the ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... the cases of the burning alive of women for civil offences. This practice was considered by the framers of the law as a commutation of the sentence of hanging, and a concession made to the sex of the offenders. "For as the decency due to the sex," says Blackstone, "forbids the exposing and publicly mangling their bodies, their sentence (which is to the full as terrible to sensation as the other) is, to be drawn to the gallows, and there to be burnt alive;" and he adds: "the humanity of the English nation has authorised, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... pale face, with its healing scars, bore witness to what she had undergone, and one of her arms was completely swathed in bandages. Emmeline did not soften towards her, but the frank speech, the rather pathetic little smile, in decency ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... their health. In this respect I desire to care for them; but there is more than that to be attended to. I further heartily desire to keep them from the corrupting and demoralizing effect of the lowest sort of children in the streets and courts and Unions. But I desire more for them than mere decency and morality; I desire that they should be useful members of society, and that the prisons of the United Kingdom should not be filled with poor, destitute, and homeless orphans; and we bring them up therefore in habits of industry, and seek ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... lectures VERY much (after which Erasmus goes to "Mr. Sizars on Anatomy," who is a charming Lecturer). At 12 the Hospital, after which I attend Monro on Anatomy. I dislike him and his lectures so much, that I cannot speak with decency about them. Thrice a week we have what is called Clinical lectures, which means lectures on the sick people in the Hospital—these I like very much. I said this account should be short, but I am afraid it has been too long, like the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... who had now worked himself into a towering passion; "we are not alone. Mr Barnett is here, a witness to the way in which this man has prevailed upon you to set all common decency at defiance, and come here alone. How long, I repeat, has this disgraceful business ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... in excellent temper after their repast, we began our purchase of horses. We soon obtained five very good ones, on very reasonable terms—that is, by giving for each horse merchandise which cost us originally about $6. We have again to admire the perfect decency and propriety of the Indians; for though so numerous, they do not attempt to crowd round our camp or take anything which they see lying about, and whenever they borrow knives or kettles or any other article from the men, they return ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... the body is to put it into a right, proper, and becoming external condition. Comfort and decency are to be sought first in dress; next, fitness to the person and the condition of the wearer; last, beauty of form and color, and richness of material. But the last object is usually made the first, and thus all are perilled and often lost; for that which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... rather to confirm corruption by its maxims. We deny nature in her legitimate field and feel her tyranny in the moral sphere, and while resisting her impressions, we receive our principles from her. While the affected decency of our manners does not even grant to nature a pardonable influence in the initial stage, our materialistic system of morals allows her the casting vote in the last and essential stage. Egotism has founded its system in ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... get no decency off him. A body would think I had been in jail and him looking out for her all those ten years and more. I can say thank you, though; we'll need your ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... fellows who have earned a reputation by pounding each other. The wealthy bully and his hangers-on are dangerous to the public peace; their language is too foul for even men of the world to endure it, and the whole crew lord it in utter contempt of law and decency. That is the kind of spectacle to be seen in our central city almost every night. Consider a story which accidently came out a few weeks ago owing to legal proceedings and kept pleasure-seeking and scandalmongering London laughing for a while, and ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... confidence in me. You have borrowed their money, cheated them at cards, stolen from them. Your acquaintance with me has given them the opportunity. But now I've found you out. I refuse any longer to sacrifice my friends, my self-respect, my sense of decency." Angrily she continued: "You thought you could bluff me. You've adopted this coward's way of forcing me to receive you against my will. Well, you've failed. I will not sanction your robbing my friends. I will not allow you to sell them any more of your high-priced rubbish, or permit you to cheat ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... worthy of the aim which he sets before him. Here, he carefully insists, are wit and humour wholly void of offence. He assures his reader that in the whole course of the work, he will find "nothing prejudicial to the Cause of Religion and Virtue; nothing inconsistent with the strictest Rules of Decency, nor which can offend even the chastest Eye in the Perusal." As the almost incredible change from the manners of 1749 to those of the following century, and of our own day, has injuriously affected the reputation of Fielding among readers ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... up! Meantime, thanks for the money. Thanks also for the prayers which I take for granted you let us have. You might also pray for a woman who has a very good, quiet, Christian husband, but herself has such a temper that she cannot in decency take on a Christian profession. Eh, man! eh, man! it is curious that I, a widower, should be left to look after women's souls out here, when lots of women are competing for men's situations and businesses at home. ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... and the charm of her frankness, her innate decency under conditions so anomalous, her simple unaffected recognition of the primal facts of life lifted her to a plane in his esteem which she had ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... never occurred to me, any more than it does to the average Canadian boy, to be thankful for his heritage of liberty, of free speech, of decency. It has all come easy to us, and we have taken all the apples which Fortune has thrown into ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... about as true as it is original, and that is not saying very much for it. If we don't go to church for any other reasons than those it is merely mockery and wickedness to go at all. I was very glad to see that a great many people did send their carriages away. Next Sunday I hope they will have the decency to walk." ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... joyful intoxication, and there were days in which he was in such an elevated condition of mind that he had inward promptings to make use of his opportunity. He had always trodden his path in this world so sedately, done his duty and lived his life in such unwavering decency. Why should not he too for once let things go, and try to leap through the fiery hoops? There was a tempting development of power ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... night was enough; and, with three half-crowns in my pocket, paid to me as subsistence money for the three days ensuing between that date and the date of my departure, I betook myself to a common lodging-house, and lived in comparative decency. Some score of us, or perhaps a dozen, went up together for surgical examination, and were made to strip stark naked in each other's presence. I had never objected to this amongst my own kind and kindred, when one exposed one's ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... the Market Street Church almost fifty years ago, would seem incredible to the New Yorkers of to-day. The disgusting depravities of the Fourth Ward, afterwards made familiar by the reformatory efforts of Jerry McCauley, were then in full blast, defying all police authority and outraging common decency. The most hideous sink of iniquity and loathsome degradation was in the once famous "Five Points," in the heart of the Sixth Ward and within a pistol shot of Broadway. At the time of my coming to New York public attention had been drawn to that quarter with the opening ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... promised had not yet been given—doubtless an opportunity had not yet occurred; and Janet was willing to concede that the circumstances might require a rather special opportunity. When it should occur she recognized that delicacy, decency almost, demanded that she should be out of the way. She shrank miserably from the prospect of being a daily familiar looker-on at the spectacle of Lawrence Cardiff's pain, and she had a knowledge that there would ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... appeareth equal to his eminently-affecting Powers in Tragedy, (so generally known, and so unexceptionably confessed) from the magnificent Theatre, erected by that Gentleman, with amazing Expedition, in Grandeur, Convenience, and Elegance, preferable to any in London, or Paris: From the obliging Decency the respective Performances thereof are conducted with, and evidently from the surpassing theatrical Abilities of the Company, that, with the most engaging Variety, entertains the Publick in Crow-street Play-house. I have sometimes seen, and have been as often delighted, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... not to grow too inward with me, on so short an Acquaintance: Not that I'de have you think the Lady of so base a Disposition to grant me any thing beyond the Rules of Decency and Honour. The only Favour I e're receiv'd from her, was a Present of those Bracelets she wears about her Arms, and that Chain of Gold and Pearl she has about her Neck; all which either of us may own ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... least," Fred had urged, "we fellows preserved the decency of a respect for the principles ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... ingratitude when he refused to take in the corpse of his patron, or to allow it the rites of burial. Certain poor women had more compassion; they at least cast a piece of old cloth over the corpse for decency's sake and buried it out of sight, although without any attempt to make a grave and "without any office of priest or clerk." Thus, it remained till the following month of February, when it was disinterred and taken to Exeter. The treatment of Bishop Stapleton caused other ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... from me a certain decency of mercy? Why not undo? Have I ever tormented—day by day, some wretched worm—making filth for it to trail through, filth that disgusts it, starving it, bruising it, mocking it? Why should you? Your jokes are clumsy. Try—try some milder fun up there; do you ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... verge of tears). Well, then, I do. I am responsible for her going—I'm not ashamed of it. Her remaining here was an affront to all right thinking people. I appealed to her, and she had the decency to leave. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of those dreadful North-western States and bound to be corrupt," cried Emory, triumphantly. He wished desperately that he had waited and got up his case. He spoke from sincere conviction. "There may be a rag of decency left in the older States, but the West is positively fetid. I give you my word I am speaking the truth, Betty dear, and in your own interest. If I have no more details to give you, it is because I promised my father on his death-bed that I would have nothing to do with politics, ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... To the old people, whose one solace of a cup of tea would be gone unless I gave it them; to the boys who were learning to read, who wanted testaments; to the bed-ridden and sick, who wanted blankets; to the young and well, who wanted gowns (not indeed for decency, but for the natural pleasure of looking neat and smart)—and to Margaret, first and last, who was nearest to me, and who, I began to think, might want some other trifles besides a cloak. The girl ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... never!' shouts the woman; 'I shorely sees inebriates ere now, but at least they has the decency not to pull ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... post-bellum strife which was raging around her would succeed, for a time at least, in establishing this ideal "class society." While the Nation slumbered in indifference, she feared that these men, still full of the spirit of slavery, in the very name of law and order, under the pretense of decency and justice, would re-bind those whose feet had just begun to tread the path of liberty with shackles only less onerous than those which had been dashed from their limbs by red-handed war. As she thought of these things ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Unwary, and misguide Mankind. As I am fully persuaded, the Generality of those Writers; who stick by this Covenant, and endeavour to vindicate the Honour, Justice, and Goodness of God therein, do it only for Decency sake, and to put (as I observed) a more plausible Outside on their Doctrines; I think it incumbent on me to detect this equivocal Way of Writing, and shew, that while the Doctor is endeavouring to persuade you he does not believe these Doctrines in their most harsh and ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... picture of our life were to rise before your mental vision, you would, I think, behold a scene like that of a town just taken by storm, where decency and righteousness were no longer regarded, and no advice is heard but that of force, as if universal confusion were the word of command. Neither fire nor sword are spared; crime is unpunished by the laws; even religion, which saves the lives of suppliants in the ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... philosopher would not have lost a fashionable dinner in his admiration of a common ant-hill. La Fontaine did so once, because the well-known little community was engaged in what he took to be a funeral. He could not in decency leave them till it was over. Verse-making out of the question, this was to be a genuine poet, though, with commonplace mortals, it was also to ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... of decency and of etiquette, which I hope my daughter will respect," said Frau von Werrig, in a severe tone. "No virtuous young girl would presume to receive her betrothed alone or exchange love-letters with him ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... Lord, what will young fellows think if we stand for him! So I have kind of worked myself up," the Doctor smiled deprecatingly, "to a place where I seem to have a sacred duty in the matter of licking him for the sake of general decency. Anyway," he concluded in his high falsetto, "old Browning's diver, here, fits me. He goes down a pauper and, with his pearl, comes ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... with a profit, the implications for the future are enormous. Like any pioneering venture, it has run into some troubles, and it lately suffered a shift in management. But it is still being steered toward the same goal of environmental grace and decency and seems likely to ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... the wall. She was no longer sobbing now, but was hardening herself against her aunt. She was resolving that she would be a castaway,—that she would have nothing more to do with godliness, or even with decency. She had found godliness and decency too heavy to be borne. In all her life, had not that moment in which Ludovic had held her tight bound by his arm round her waist been the happiest? Had it not been to her, ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... vulgar thing. The vicious, uneducated barbarians who form the surplus of over-populous European countries, are far behind the wild man in delicacy of feeling or natural courtesy. The people who covered the island appeared perfectly destitute of shame, or even of a sense of common decency. Many were almost naked, still more but partially clothed. We turned in disgust from the revolting scene, but were unable to leave the spot until the captain had satisfied a noisy group of his own people, who were ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... enough to do it. Is her ignorance a fault? All her training deprecates any acquisition of worldly knowledge: it is not for her: her value is in her ignorance. Then when she naturally makes some revolting mistake and attempts to escape to decency and freedom once more there is a hue and a cry from good folk and clergy. Divorce? It is a good thing—as the last resort. And a woman need feel no responsibility for the sort of society that would deprive a woman of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... writers have been convicted of one single inaccuracy of statement, their narratives ought to be accounted faultless, like Him whose Life they record;—like Him by whose Spirit they are inspired. I would to Heaven that men would have the decency to suspect themselves, and one another, rather than the Evangelists,—of mistake; or at least, before they venture publicly to impugn the Authors of the Everlasting Gospel, that they would be at the pains to weigh the evidence with the care that evidence deserves, but which I am sure ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... a hospital are wanting; there is not the least attention paid to decency or cleanliness; the stench is appalling; the fetid air can barely struggle out to taint the atmosphere, save through the chinks in the walls and roofs; and, for all I can observe, these men die without the least effort being made to save them. There they lie, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... the decency," he went on, more slowly, "to, as he thought, retain his wife's private papers. He had caused the contents of the various drawers to be dumped out upon a chair. But there was one drawer of which he knew nothing—a ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... Niccolo, and also his aged and much deserving minister Alberto dal Sale. Both of these, their tears flowing down their cheeks, and upon their knees, implored him for mercy; adducing whatever reasons they could suggest for sparing the offenders, besides those motives of honour and decency which might persuade him to conceal from the public so scandalous a deed. But his rage made him inflexible, and, on the instant, he commanded that the sentence should be ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... orator cried with wrath, "I appeal to your sense of honour and decency. My credentials have been accepted by your own committee, and my seat been awarded me. My majority is unquestioned. This is a high-handed outrage. You cannot ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... the visit he owed to John Jacks. It was not pleasant, the thought of calling at the house at Queen's Gate; Mrs. Jacks might have heard strange things about him on that mad evening three years ago. Yet in decency he must go; perhaps, too, in self-interest. And at the wonted ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... her due influence and voice in the government, we lose that elevating and refining influence which she gives to religious, social, and domestic life. Her presence at our political meetings, all agree, contributes greatly to their order, decorum, and decency. Why should not the polls, also, be civilized by ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... parchment manuscripts were used to scour tubs and grease boots. Out of the wreck about a hundred and thirty thousand manuscripts have been saved. It must be admitted that the commissioners were not delicate in their labors; that they insulted many nuns, robbed the monks, violated the laws of decency and humanity, and needlessly excited the rage of the people and outraged the religious sentiments of the Catholics. They even used sacred altar-cloths for blankets on their horses, and rode across the country decorated ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... consistent with propriety, we would entreat that you allow your minds to be calmed; be content, rest satisfied with the provisions that have been made for you; and if you should be found to need anything further, make your request with decency and order, and not with tumult; for when your demands are reasonable they will always be complied with, and you will not give occasion to evil designing men to ruin your country and cast the blame upon yourselves." These words conveying ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... well enough. But of a morning she was accustomed to go about the house in a pale-tinted wrapper, which, pale- tinted as it was, should have been in the washing-tub much oftener than was the case with it—if not for cleanliness, then for mere decency of appearance. ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... the Spanish ambassador. Thus prizes fairly gained by nautical skill and hard fighting, off Spain, Portugal, Brazil, or even more distant parts of the world, were confiscated almost in sight of port, in utter disregard of public law or international decency. The States-General remonstrated with bitterness. Their remonstrances were answered by copious arguments, proving, of course, to the entire satisfaction of the party who had done the wrong, that no practice could be more completely in harmony with reason and justice. Meantime the Spanish ambassador ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with modern grace, Half naked at a ball or race; But when at home, at board or bed, 45 Five greasy nightcaps wrapp'd her head. Could so much beauty condescend To be a dull domestic friend? Could any curtain-lectures bring To decency so fine a thing? 50 In short, by night, 'twas fits or fretting; By day, 'twas gadding or coquetting. Fond to be seen, she kept a bevy Of powder'd coxcombs at her levy; The 'squire and captain took their stations, 55 And twenty other near relations; Jack suck'd his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... and, reminding his readers that the Arcadia was established in 1690, declares that what the Englishmen of William and Mary's reign would have received with shouts of laughter, and the French under Louis XIV, would have corrupted and made perilous to decency, "was so mixed up with better things in these imaginative and, strange as it may seem, most unaffected people, the Italians,—for such they are,—that, far from disgusting a nation accustomed to romantic impulses and to the singing of poetry in their streets and ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... an allusion or reference to the Georgic. Give me leave to tell you, Sir, that if humanity were a branch of your studies at the university, it has not found a genius in you for mastering it. Nor is either my sex or myself, though a sister, I see entitled to the least decency from a brother, who has studied, as it seems, rather to cultivate the malevolence of his natural temper, than any tendency which one might have hoped his parentage, if not his education, might have given him to a ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the sixth day of the week, as this vegetable has the property of promoting secretions (see Exod. xxi. 10); that the wife should be up betimes and bake the bread, so as to have some ready in case any one should come begging; that the women should wear a girdle round the waist for decency sake; that they should comb their hair before bathing; that peddlers should hawk their perfumes about the streets in order that women should supply themselves with such things as will attract and please their husbands; and that certain unfortunates (see Lev. xv.) should bathe themselves before ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... We passed with some decency through some towns, till by way of the Hastings road we whirled into Cramberhurst, which ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... far advanced in decency and civilization compared with many," was the reply. "With the missionary, the trained nurse, and the railroad, India is in a fair way to become thoroughly enlightened before a half-century has rolled away. The trouble is that she clings so to her own ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... swim: it is best they should swim; and if city fathers, foreseeing and caring for this want, should think it worth while to mark off some good place, and have it under such police surveillance as to enforce decency of language and demeanor, they would prevent a great deal that now is disagreeable in the unguided efforts of boys ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... encouraging his guests to forget their uncomfortably decorative surroundings and talk like regular people. But when he saw how skinny were the sandwiches and how reticent the cinnamon toast he was cheered. He calculated that the whole bill couldn't, in decency, be more than ninety cents for the six ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... signet, the badge of authority, which she probably got from him for her unspoken purpose. Her letter to the elders of Jezreel speaks out, with cynical disregard of decency, the whole ugly conspiracy. It is direct, horribly plain, and imperative. There is a perfect nest of sins hissing and coiled together in it. Hypocrisy calling religion in to attest a lie, subornation of evidence, contempt for the poor tools who are to perjure ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
