"Indelicate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cruel," I exclaimed; "Alice herself is not more pure than I am from an indelicate thought, or an evil design. You wrong me; I do not deserve such language; and even from you I will not endure it. Forgive me, dearest uncle, forgive me; but indeed you do me a grievous injustice." I seized his hand and ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... circumstances under which our emotions may be excited. A man may smile at his own misfortunes after they are over—sometimes our laughter seems scarcely directed against anyone, and in the most profane and indelicate humour there ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... first drop in a distillation that would do its poisonous work gradually,—but she had supposed that Mathilde would be too sensitive to expose Pete to further criticism. Indeed, there seemed something obtuse, if not actually indelicate, in being willing to create a situation in which every one was bound to suffer. Obtuseness was not a defect with which Adelaide ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... occasion when Fox and Burke called for papers by the aid of which they proposed to demonstrate the iniquity of the scheme by which the ministry proposed to settle the debts of the Nabob of Arcot, pretended that the production of such papers would be indelicate,—"that this inquiry is of a delicate nature, and that the state will suffer detriment by the exposure of this transaction." As Dundas had previously brought out six volumes of Reports, generally confirming Burke's own views of the corruption and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... as real as that of Olympus. The introductory chapters are of that elephantine facetiousness which pleased our great-grandfathers, but which is exceedingly tedious to modern taste; and the humor of the book occasionally has a breadth that is indelicate to our apprehension, though it perhaps did not shock our great-grandmothers. But, notwithstanding these blemishes, I think the work has more enduring qualities than even the generation which it first delighted gave it ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... likest it. If dost, thee'll have enow to do, I can tell thee." This was one of the little incidents of his life upon which he was accustomed to advert with pleasure; and often has he, with much good humour, contrasted it with the rude and indelicate conduct of persons of great pride and importance. No man that ever lived required less entreaty to oblige his convivial friends with his charming singing. Of the families where he was treated with friendship and free hospitality he delighted ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... a play or a book and he said it was "no good," they at once demanded why. The Erlichs thought him a clam, but Claude sometimes thought himself amazing. Could it really be he, who was airing his opinions in this indelicate manner? He caught himself using words that had never crossed his lips before, that in his mind were associated only with the printed page. When he suddenly realized that he was using a word for the first time, and probably mispronouncing it, he would become as much confused ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... establishment elsewhere. There lay, moreover, as I have said, behind the scenes a whole drama of contention and bitterness, which now is happily concealed from us; but which being concealed, leaves us without the clue to these painful doings. Indelicate, however, the position given to Anne Boleyn could not but be; and, if it was indelicate in Henry to grant such a position, what shall we say of the lady who consented, in the presence of her sovereign and mistress, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... was, I do not think I should have been so indelicate as to have asked this question if I had not come to fancy that Nurse made out the story worse than it really was, for my behoof. Aunt Isobel was so cheerful and bright with us!—and I was not at that time able to believe ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... on a variety of subjects. He thought portrait-painting an improper employment for a woman[1082]. 'Publick practice of any art, (he observed,) and staring in men's faces, is very indelicate in a female.' I happened to start a question, whether, when a man knows that some of his intimate friends are invited to the house of another friend, with whom they are all equally intimate, he may join them without an invitation. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... midst she lived; and on the very second day I had destroyed this hope, and paid by impertinent irony for the love which I had accepted during two nights. What I had done was therefore not merely ridiculous, it was indelicate. I had not even paid the woman, that I might have some right to find fault with her; withdrawing after two days, was I not like a parasite of love, afraid of having to pay the bill of the banquet? What! I had only known Marguerite for thirty-six hours; I had been her lover for only twenty-four; ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... personal and essential. Not a few there are in our country, who, while they have no scruples against robbing the laborer of the hard earned results of his patient industry, will be shocked by the extremely indelicate manner of bringing your name before the public. Believing this to be the case, and wishing to meet every reasonable or plausible objection to my conduct, I will frankly state the ground upon which I justfy(sic) myself in this instance, as well as on former ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... Blake, and of course your wishes must be obeyed. But as regards this will, do not think me indelicate for mentioning it, but ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... decision arrived the boy had begun to understand he must see to all that unaided. For his mother was ill, how deeply and in what manner he could not tell. He shrank, indeed, from all clear thought, let alone speech, on the subject, as from something indelicate, in a way irreverent. Her beauty remained to her, notwithstanding a gradual wasting as of fever. A peculiar, very individual grace of dress and of bearing remained to her likewise. But she was uncertain in mood, the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... white, gray, or orange papers "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." This is nowhere done, for there are many bits of information which come to a Government through its diplomatic connections which it would be indelicate, discourteous, or unwise to give to the public. The official documents on American foreign relations and all white, gray, or orange papers are "edited." They are understood to be so by Congress, Parliament, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... us, without circumlocution, why the Miller's Wife for while had left her husband's side; but Mr Horne is intolerant of the indelicate, and thus elegantly paraphrases the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... lover's own ideas of generosity were extremely refined, he was shocked at the indelicate insinuations of Mrs. Trunnion, and felt all the pangs of an ingenuous mind that labours under obligations to a person whom it contemns. Far from obeying her injunction, or humbling himself by a submissive answer to her reprehension, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... enable me to get these treats. I had seen as already said, the cunts of my aunt and cousins, young ladies and others bathing, etc. (and as I shall tell of, have since seen a noble lady frig herself.) I have seen in fact modest ladies at their most decent, as well as the most indelicate of their toilet performances, and think I prefer looking at them under such circumstances, rather than at the beautiful voluptuous creatures who undress willingly in my presence, for those are so intent ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... attempt to see how he looked, but he walked immediately to a window as if irresolute and embarrassed, and for about the space of five seconds she repented what she had done—censured it as unwise, blushed over it as indelicate. She longed to be able to speak of the weather or the concert, but could only compass the relief of taking a newspaper in her hand. The distressing pause was over, however; he turned round in half a minute, and coming ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... of many a double meaning. There is, in fact, no lyric song describing natural scenery that may not have beneath it some implied, often indelicate, allusion whose riddle it takes an adroit and ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... fined three parents for not sending their children to school, made out an attendance order upon another, mulcted a youth in five shillings for riding a bicycle without a light, charged a navvy ten shillings and costs for use of indelicate language (total, seventeen and sixpence), and threatened, but did not punish, a farmer with imprisonment for working a horse 'when,' as the charge put it ambiguously, 'in an unfit state.' He wound up by transferring an alehouse licence, still in his stride, beamed around ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... moment of intense hatred and anger he could not have shot a man. Fearing that the bullet might somehow hit Von Koren by accident, he raised the pistol higher and higher, and felt that this too obvious magnanimity was indelicate and anything but magnanimous, but he did not know how else to do and could do nothing else. Looking at the pale, ironically smiling face of Von Koren, who evidently had been convinced from the beginning that his opponent would fire in the air, Laevsky ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... many will accuse me of indecorum for presenting these pages to the public; for the experiences of this intelligent and much-injured woman belong to a class which some call delicate subjects, and others indelicate. This peculiar phase of Slavery has generally been kept veiled; but the public ought to be made acquainted with its monstrous features, and I willingly take the responsibility of presenting them with the veil withdrawn. I do this for the sake of my sisters ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... mean, Randal?" demands his aunt, with a snort that would have done credit to a war-horse. "To whom are you addressing your remarks? Are you calling me indelicate?" ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... afternoon and lie out of it in the most obvious manner. The game was finally discontinued, owing to a shortage of checkermen which they had secreted in their pockets, a fact which each one stoutly denied with many weird and rather indelicate vows. I left them engaged in the pleasant game of recrimination, which had to do with stolen golf balls, the holding out of change and kindred sordid subjects. In my weakened condition this display of fraternal depravity so offended my instinctive sense of honor that ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... know. No, he is not tactful; yet, have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... may rest assured that M. de Bois was totally ignorant of her intention to leave us. And, if you will allow me to make a suggestion, I would charge you not to let him suspect, when you meet, that you for a moment imagine he was in Madeleine's confidence. It would be highly indelicate,—the very supposition would be derogatory to her dignity. I have said all that was necessary to him, and, as he had nothing to do with the affair, it is a topic which cannot with propriety be touched ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... public men connected with former administrations, interspersed, illustrated, and seasoned pleasantly with Mr. Lincoln's stories, anecdotes, etc. And here I feel called upon to vindicate Mr. Lincoln, as far as my opportunities and observation go, from the frequent imputation of telling indelicate and ribald stories. I saw much of him during his whole Presidential term, with familiar friends and alone, when he talked without restraint; but I never heard him use a profane or indecent word, or tell a story that might not be repeated in the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... relieved," continued Atherton, "of the sense I've had that it was indelicate in me to keep it, while I felt as I've grown to feel—towards you." He stopped: "If I take it back, you must come with it!" he ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... possibly involve anything in the slightest degree indelicate, I shall of course infer that you have no answer to give, and that the matter is not ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... repulsive in the half-ironical, half-mischievous merriment of these patrician revellers; their witticisms were brilliant and pointed, but never indelicate; and if their darker passions were roused, and ready to run riot, they showed as yet no sign of it. They ENJOYED—yes! with that selfish animal enjoyment and love of personal indulgence which all men, old and young without exception, take such delight in—unless indeed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... me against him,' continued Lady Clonbrony, 'is what I have just heard from Grace, who was really hurt by it, too, for she is the warmest friend in the world: I allude to the creature's indelicate way of touching upon a tender PINT, and mentioning an amiable young heiress's name. My dear Colambre, I trust you have given me credit for my inviolable silence all this time upon the PINT nearest my heart. I am rejoiced to hear you was so warm when ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Miladi. The petticoat is somewhat short, you comprehend, to escape the damp of the deck, and, after all, Hessians are much less indelicate than silk stockings, legs a cru, as one ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... short pause, marking an automatic close of the subject. Deeply as I admired both women, I shrank from the idea of their meeting. It seemed curiously indelicate, in view both of my former engagement to Eleanor and of Lola's frank avowal of her feelings towards me before what I shall always regard as my death. It is true that we had never alluded to it since my resurrection; but what of that? Lola's feelings, I was ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... head, blushing as she untied her "fascinator." She was fond of apple toddy, but she regarded the taste as an indelicate one, and would as soon have admitted, before gentlemen, a ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... she would prefer not to take any part in the discussion, and everybody suddenly remembered that Mrs. Bird had thought of naming the baby Lucy, for Grandma herself; and, while it would be indelicate for her to favor that name, it would be against human nature for her to suggest any ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... MORE POLITE TO WOMEN.—So far from being in the least gross or indelicate, its proper exercise is pure, chaste, virtuous, and even an ingredient in good manners. It is this which renders men always more polite towards women than to one another, and more refined in their society, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... sentiment or language, and I have seen her very much amused with jokes, stories, and allusions which would shock a very nice person. But her own conversation is never polluted with anything the least indelicate or unbecoming. She is very sensible to little attentions, and is annoyed if anybody appears to keep aloof from her or to shun conversing with her. Her dogs are her greatest interest and amusement, and she has at least forty of various kinds. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... was not speaking the particular word. "If you like me because you think she doesn't, it isn't a bit true: she does like me awfully!"—that would have been the particular word; which there were at the same time but too palpably such difficulties about his uttering. Wouldn't it be virtually as indelicate to challenge her as to leave her deluded?—and this quite apart from the exposure, so to speak, of Kate, as to whom it would constitute a kind of betrayal. Kate's design was something so extraordinarily special to Kate that he felt himself shrink from the complications involved in judging ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... people who had never really remained away from it. There had been natural reasons enough for considerate absence from a house of bereavement and a desolate widow upon whose grief it would have been indelicate to intrude. As Feather herself had realized, the circle of her intimates was not formed of those who could readily adjust themselves to entirely changed circumstances. If you dance on a tight rope and the rope is unexpectedly ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... more delicate—however indelicate—argument of the fabliaux not only invited but almost necessitated a different kind of handling. The story had to draw to point in (on an average) two or three hundred lines at most—there are fabliaux of a thousand lines, and fabliaux of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Alicia, and he had such pretty ways." She hesitated and looked quite tenderly at the tea-pot, a sort of shyness in her face. "I am sure," she burst forth, "I feel quite sure that you will understand and won't think it indelicate; but I had thought so often that I should like to have a little boy—if I had married," she added in hasty tribute ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... herself," Ransom remarked; whereupon Doctor Prance rejoined, "Well, I guess she'll have to pay for it!" She appeared to regret her own half-dollar, and to be vaguely impatient of the behaviour of her sex. Ransom became so sensible of this that he felt it was indelicate to allude further to the cause of woman, and, for a change, endeavoured to elicit from his companion some information about the gentlemen present. He had given her a chance, vainly, to start some topic herself; but he could see that ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... costume of a bride, generally serves me with Havanas in a cigar store. When Leonora removed her gloves I recognized her at once by her large chilblained hands. Here is my haberdasher promenading in an indelicate costume as Bacchus; also a Diana, dressed up atrociously, who is really a waiter at ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... I have my own views in the matter.— Besides, there's something else. You have been exceedingly indelicate. You took advantage of my ignorance. You let me think you were a rose-beetle and yesterday the snail told me you are a tumble-bug. A considerable difference! He saw you engaged in—well, doing something I don't care to mention. I'm sure you ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... had developed real statesmen among you, men who knew their age, they would be here to tell all these people save myself to be quiet, on the ground that it is indelicate for a corpse to cheer at its own funeral. But your really great men are at home sorrowing over your coming humiliation. This day's work is the beginning of the end. Eunice, ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... pocket a little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning, for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would recognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The indelicate clacking of the men's heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... primal instinct exists in us all, its fruition is greatly hindered by the way in which it is steadily ignored, and by the fact that any proclamation of its existence is considered indiscreet and even indelicate. How are children to develop a holy reverence for their own bodies unless they know of their wonderful destiny? If they do not recognise that at least in one respect God has confided to them in some measure His own creative function, how can they jealously guard against ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... his mouth a word which might not have been spoken in the presence of the most pure and sensitive—except,' he adds, 'on one occasion. He was then forced by others to repeat a negro story which, though free from all evil de sexu, was indelicate. He did it with great resistance. His example gave me a ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... are to be found in these places. The price of admission is low, and strange as it may sound, almost any beggar can raise it. People have no idea how much of the charity they lavish on street beggars goes in this way. The amusement afforded at these places ranges from indelicate hints and allusions to ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... becomes a man of his station; for he has mastered most of the obstacles in a business career, and by leading a prudent and temperate life has established himself so well that he owns his own house and furniture, and is only slightly behind on his license. It would be indelicate to give statistics as to his age. Mr. Hennessy says he was a "grown man whin th' pikes was out in forty-eight, an' I was hedge-high, an' I'm near fifty-five." Mr. Dooley says Mr. Hennessy is eighty. He closes discussion ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... her great designs was now swallowed up in a passing distrust of the designs themselves. For Gondremark, besides, she had conceived an angry horror. In her heart she did not like the Baron. Behind his impudent servility, behind the devotion which, with indelicate delicacy, he still forced on her attention, she divined the grossness of his nature. So a man may be proud of having tamed a bear, and yet sicken at his captive's odour. And above all, she had certain jealous intimations ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proportions, had its purposes. He there assembled his supporters; there, for a short time, he entertained his constituents and coadjutors with a magnificent, jovial hospitality, of which he, with his gay spirits, his humourous, indelicate jokes, and his unbounded good-nature, was the very soul. Free conversation, hard-drinking, were the features of every day's feast. Pope thus ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... conscience does not reproach you. No, not one bit. Positively you are not aware of anything reprehensible or even indelicate in what you are about. Thinking of the matter, as you carefully scan the books of record, you regard it precisely as you would any other investigation. To you it is essential that the girl you are to marry should have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "Nothin' so indelicate, sir. Your revered an' lovely relative—God bless her jolly old heart!—expressed her doubt in re leopards an' buffaloes. I'm goin' out, sir, into the wilds—amidst dangers, Ham, old feller, that only seasoned veterans like you an' me ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... in Newcastle they sent the bellman through the town inviting every one to make complaints.[5] In this business-like way they collected thirty women at the town hall, stripped them, and put them to the pricking test. This cruel, not to say indelicate, process was carried on with additions that must have proved highly diverting to the base-minded prickers and onlookers.[6] Fourteen women and one man were tried (Gardiner says by the assizes) and found guilty. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... upon the family and upon "mother." American ideals are homely. The social unit is the home, and it is another and a different set of influences and considerations that are never thought of at all when the home sentiment is under discussion, that, indeed, it would be indelicate to mention at such a time, which are making that social unit the home of one child or ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... He was disgusted enough over the action of the first class cadets, but, being in the service himself, he felt it indelicate in him to criticise the action of the cadets of the United States ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... what he said, and he would not only hold his own in a discussion with Senators learned in the law, but would convince his opponents by merely saying his say, and meaning what he said. He was never known while in Washington to tell an indelicate story or to use a profane word, although when slightly excited he would sometimes say, "Dog on it!" to give emphasis ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... think proper," replied the lady; "and I'll thank you for none of your indelicate insinuations." So saying, the lady bounced out of the room into her own, and our midshipmen then made a noise in the passage, to intimate that they had come in. They found Mr Hicks looking very red and vice-consular indeed, but he recovered himself; and Captain Hogg making his appearance, they ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to manifold temptations which he rather sought than fled. He had figured on the stool of repentance, for once fulfilling to the letter the tradition of his hero and model. His humorous verses to Mr. Torrance on that occasion - "Kenspeckle here my lane I stand" - unfortunately too indelicate for further citation, ran through the country like a fiery cross - they were recited, quoted, paraphrased, and laughed over as far away as Dumfries on the one hand ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in dancing, and would not waste much time on music unless one has a talent for it. She thinks that the excessive cultivation of the arts has contributed to the decline of States. She is severe on that style of dress which permits an indelicate exposure of the person, and on all forms of senseless extravagance. She despises children's balls, and ridicules children's rights and "Liliputian coquetry" with ribbons and feathers. She would educate women to fulfil the duties of daughters, wives, and mothers rather ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... concealed curiosity about the outside of the stronghold, and smiled to himself as one who knows the reason for a gentleman's prying. Montaiglon caught that smile once: his chagrin at its irony was blended with a pleasing delusion that the frank and genial domestic might proffer a solution without indelicate questioning. But he was soon undeceived: the discreet retainer knew but three things in this world—the grandeur of war, the ancient splendour of the house of Doom, and the excellent art of absent-mindedness. When it came to the contents of Doom, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... purify materials like those which Hesiod presents in the crudest form? Mr. Grote says: "How far these stories are the invention of Hesiod himself it is impossible to determine. They bring us down to a cast of fancy more coarse and indelicate than the Homeric, and more nearly resemble some of the holy chapters ((Greek text omitted)) of the more recent mysteries, such, for example, as the tale of Dionysus Zagreus. There is evidence in the Theogony itself that the author was acquainted with local legends current ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the Lord thy God, to observe to do all the commandments and statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.' Is this the real reason? The third, fourth, and fifth chapters of Hosea are a piece of immodest confession. The indelicate type might apply in a hundred senses to a hundred things. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does not exceed in clearness the oracles of Delphos. The historical proof that Moses, Isaiah, and Hosea did write when they are said to have ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... in this. The match was to be broken off without any notice to him; and when he requested, at any rate, to hear this decision from the mouth of the only person competent to make it, he was told that it was indelicate for him to wish to do so. This ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... Mrs. Mumbles, "it is astonishing, the quantity of victuals these boarders consume. It is so unfeminine and indelicate for young ladies to have appetites. I declare it quite shocks me to see the large slices of bread and butter disappearing down Jenny Andrews' little throat, and, as for that Charles Seaton, I believe he would eat a whole plum pudding if he could get it. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... cow-stealing, for example, which is very little better than drabbing baulor; whilst the softer part is mostly about the slips of its females among the broom, so that no upholder of Scotch poetry could censure Ursula's song as indelicate, even if he understood it. What do you ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... description of one of the characteristics of charity is sufficiently comprehensive, if exhibited in all its details, to fill a volume. It conveys the idea of an exquisite propriety of deportment, free from everything indelicate, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... by the invitation, and less clear-headed than usual, was sufficiently trusting to accept. She soon, however, discovered that his Excellency's intentions were strictly dishonourable, for he made her, she afterwards said, "a most indelicate proposition." Her response was to laugh in his face, and to tell him that "she had no wish to become his toy." Thereupon, Paskievich, furious at such a repulse (and unaccustomed to being thwarted by anyone, must less by a ballet-dancer), dismissed her with threats ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... possible hope of return; to love, knowing that the person you loved regarded you with less than indifference, and, what was worse, that this person was passionately attached to another man—no, there was something indelicate about it, at which his blood revolted. It was the kind of thing that it suited poets to make tragedies of, but it did not—should not—happen in sober, daily life. And if, as it seemed in this case, it was beyond mortal's power to prevent it, then ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... stray hint or an indelicate expression for the poor fellow's two shillings. The fraud, was complete. It was not like the ground coffee, pepper and mustard in a London shop—in which there is as often as not a pinch of real coffee, mustard and pepper to a pound of chicory and bullock's blood, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... for "general masonic business," but when engaged in the consideration of matters which interest the lodge alone, and which it would be inexpedient or indelicate to make public, may refuse to admit a visitor. Lodges engaged in this way, in private business, from which visitors are excluded, are said by the French Masons to ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... matrimonial observation has not been to advise all men of superiority to seek for women of superiority and we do not wish each one to expound our principles after the manner of Madame de Stael, who attempted in the most indelicate manner to effect a union between herself and Napoleon. These two beings would have been very unhappy in their domestic life; and Josephine was a wife accomplished in a very different sense from this virago of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... to describe how the gross remains are detruded by the motion of the intestines, which contract and dilate; but that must be declined, as too indelicate for discourse. Let us rather explain that other wonder of nature, the air, which is drawn into the lungs, receives heat both by that already in and by the coagitation of the lungs; one part is turned back by respiration, and the other is ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... they are not familiar. But certainly, to the inhabitants of Otaheite, our eating parties, where the sexes at times vie with each other in the management of knife and fork, and where it usually happens that a woman presides, would seem as unaccountable and as indelicate, as a certain social exhibition, already mentioned as occurring amongst them, appeared to be to those who witnessed it. And perhaps it is less easy, than at first sight may be imagined, to justify one more than the other. Of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... secret which she imagined she shared with no one in the house; turning over and over in her mind all manner of impossible devices for the relief of her scapegrace brother. Not for one instant would she entertain the thought of applying to her uncle in accordance with his indelicate suggestion; and her father and mother were, to her mind, as well as to Percy's, utterly out of the question. No idea of applying to them entered her head. The change in her, her troubled, worried expression, ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... pocketed fifty thousand dollars for making a very dead bronze horse stand on his hind legs. For twenty-five cents I have seen a man at the circus do something more wonderful,—make a very living bay horse dance a redowa round the amphitheatre on his (it occurs to me that hind legs is indelicate) posterior extremities to the wayward music of an out-of-town (Scotice, out-o'-toon) band. Now, I will make a handsome offer to the public. I propose for twenty-five thousand dollars to suppress my design for an equestrian statue of a distinguished general officer ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... touch the meat with his hands."[B] At the close of the sixteenth century were our ancestors eating as the Turkish noblesse at present do, with only the free use of their fingers, steadying their meat and conveying it to their mouths by their mere manual dexterity. They were, indeed, most indelicate in their habits, scattering on the table-cloth all their bones and parings. To purify their tables, the servant bore a long wooden "voiding-knife," by which he scraped the fragments from the table into a basket, called "a voider." Beaumont ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... a hurried tone, "it would be an idle compliment to say that you are not likely to love in vain; perhaps it is indelicate in me to apply a general remark; and yet—yet I cannot but fancy that I have discovered your secret, and that you are not insensible to the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VIII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a fastidiousness of feeling in relation to this subject, as though it were indelicate to speak of it. Others make it the principal subject of their thoughts and conversation; yet they seem to think it must never be mentioned but in jest. Both these extremes should be avoided. Marriage is an ordinance of God, and therefore a proper subject of thought and discussion, ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... 2. Compare the singular anecdote in VI. 22 where the Buddha quite unjustifiably suspects a Doctor of making an indelicate joke. The story seems to admit that the Buddha might be wrong and also that he was sometimes treated ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... fists er shticks, er knives, er guns, that's the thing that marks the man. 'Tis not Patrick Mooney that'll fault a gintleman for ways that he can't help owin' to his improper bringin' up. Av ye don't mind, will ye tell me fwhat they call ye? I'll not be so indelicate as to ax yer name. Fwhat they call ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... among the crowd on her deck, when there was a sound of a rolling chain and a slight rocking of the boat, which provoked an indelicate man near me to take off his helmet and pretend to be sick in it. There was a rumbling of the engines as their wheels began to revolve, and a throbbing of the Redbreast's heart as though she found difficulty in getting under way with such a load. Then a sudden and ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... is Pantalone, and I am a native of Venice. At the moment I am the Prime Minister of the Chinese Empire. Eh, what d'ye say? What I'm doing here in Pekin? H'm. (Puts his hand in front of his mouth.) Venice got too hot for me. An ind-indelicate affair. My wife of course, you guess my meaning. (To the PRINCE.) This, your Royal Highness, is the place you have heard so much of. Have a good look at it, please. Make yourself quite at home. Yes, quite right, up there, ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... comfortable in their own beds in Nunsmere? It was an impenetrable mystery to which the sleeping girl who was causing him such acute though cheerfully borne discomfort alone had the key. In vain did he propound to himself the theory that such speculation betokened an indelicate mind; in vain did he ask himself with unwonted severity what business it was of his; in vain did he try to hitch his thoughts to Patent Safety Railway Carriages, which were giving him a great deal of trouble; in ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... "I almost forget how to speak in plain words now," he said. "We have grown so polished in these latter days, that mere bald truth would be hissed as indelicate. But for the memory of those early years, when we expended as much law and thought over the ownership of a hay-byre as we should now over the fate of a rebellious city, I will try and speak plain to you even now, Deucalion. Tell me, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... intensity, a half-hidden smile which I was unable to interpret, according to the instruction I had received in the ways of good breeding, save as a mark of infinite disgust; and her hand, at the same time, sketched in the air an indelicate gesture, for which, when it was addressed in public to a person whom one did not know, the little dictionary of manners which I carried in my mind supplied only one meaning, namely, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... spades, and not to be ashamed to tell men plainly how ugly are the vices which they are not ashamed to commit. No doubt some of the drunken priests and false prophets in Jerusalem thought Isaiah extremely vulgar and indelicate, in talking about staggering teachers and tables swimming in 'vomit.' But he had to speak out. So deep was the corruption that the officials were tipsy even when engaged in their official duties, the prophets reeled while they were seeing visions; the judges ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... become a fatigue to himself and to his readers? Are not, perhaps, his characters too real? and do they not often degenerate, without motive, from the sublime into the ridiculous? Would Hamlet have appeared less interesting or less mad had he not spoken indelicate and cruel words to Ophelia? Would Laertes have seemed less grieved on hearing of the death of his sister had he not made so unnecessary a play on ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Indelicate friend that he was, Ernest pounced upon the note and took possession of it. The Scottish youth, furious, flung himself upon the treacherous French boy; on which Monsieur de l'Estorade, a thousand leagues from imagining the subject of the quarrel, intervened and parted the ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... indelicate and unfeminine rhapsody, Captain Ludlow has seen proper to ascribe to me!" she said, while her voice trembled between ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... one, trust that you will retain your supremacy, for I know—I know," he repeated with emphasis—"that Mrs. Allistair has used some methods not altogether—sportsmanlike, may I say? And now"—rapidly shifting once more—"I trust I will not seem indelicate if I inquire whether it is in the scope of your present plans, perhaps at house-parties at the estates of titled friends, to ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... parents, who lived a long way off, were always writing and asking all sorts of indelicate questions; they were longing to have a grandchild. Louisa ought to remember that the institution of marriage existed for the benefit of the children, not the parents. Louisa held that this view was an old-fashioned one. ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Miss Swinkerton was strongly of opinion that bygones should be allowed to be bygones, and was author of a theory which found much acceptance among the villas—namely, that Lady Tristram would consider any reference to her immediate predecessor as inconsiderate, indeed indelicate, and not such as might be expected ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... issue of his immediate heir. Earlier in the year, indeed, the queen had been delivered of another son, Augustus Frederic, the late duke of Sussex, and no mention had then been made of an address, and therefore to have presented one on this occasion, would have been invidious, if not indelicate. This motion, therefore, proved abortive. Wilkes, however, with his friend Oliver, succeeded in obtaining from the court of alderman a resolution "that a frequent appeal to the people by short parliaments was their undoubted right, as well as the only means of obtaining a real representation;" ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... began To wail and whine, let him not see a man; Lock, lock him up, far from the public eye; Give him no opportunity to buy, Or to be bought; B——, though rich, was sold, And gave his body up to shame for gold. 620 Let it be bruited all about the town, That he is coarse, indelicate, and brown, An antidote to lust; his face deep scarr'd With the small-pox, his body maim'd and marr'd; Ate up with the king's evil, and his blood Tainted throughout, a thick and putrid flood, Where dwells Corruption, making him all o'er, From head ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... was too contemptible for mention, and in the pantomime, or rather spectacle, became latterly so indelicate, that I found it necessary to withdraw. I should hope that the performances are not always of the same character: perhaps something must be allowed for the occasion. The French, however, have no idea of humour ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... with a mighty and generous fire-place at one end, occupying the whole space left by a balcony-window. The floor was paved with tiles, and the window-panes were round and small, and set in lead—like the floors and window-panes of all the other rooms. A gaudy fresco, representing some indelicate female deity, adorned the front of the fire-place, which sloped expanding from the ceiling and terminated at the mouth without a mantel-piece. The chimney was deep, and told of the cold winters in the hills, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... Little Gentleman,—I 'm past that! There is n't a thing that was ever said or done in Boston, from pitching the tea overboard to the last ecclesiastical lie it tore into tatters and flung into the dock, that was n't thought very indelicate by some fool or tyrant or bigot, and all the entrails of commercial and spiritual conservatism are twisted into colics as often as this revolutionary brain of ours has a fit of thinking come over it.—No, Sir,—show me any other place that is, or was since the megalosaurus ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... ground, And thrice she waved her wand around; When I, endow'd with greater skill, And less inclined to do you ill, Mutter'd some words, withheld her arm, And kindly stopp'd the unfinish'd charm. But though not changed to owl or bat, Or something more indelicate; Yet, as your tongue has run too fast, Your boasted beauty must not last. No more shall frolic Cupid lie In ambuscade in either eye, From thence to aim his keenest dart To captivate each youthful heart: No more shall envious ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... severe limitations of Victorian delicacy, and all of us, from princesses and prime-ministers' wives downward, talk of topics that would have been considered quite gravely improper in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, some topics have, if anything, become more indelicate than they were, and this is especially true of the discussion of income, of any discussion that tends, however remotely, to inquire, Who is it at the base of everything who really pays in blood and muscle and involuntary ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... as a mighty passion from the substratum of sexual life, has, under the repressing influence of centuries of habits and customs, taken on an entirely new, supersensual, ethereal character, so that to a lover every thought of naturalia seems indelicate and improper." "I feel it deeply that love must ennoble, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... see for pendant light, A tea-pot dangle in a lady's ear; And 'twere indelicate, although she might Swallow two whales and yet the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... more easily impressed upon the memory. But I care little for his journey to Brundusium, and his account of a bad dinner, or of his low quarrel between one Rupilius whose words he says were full of poisonous filth, and another whose language was imbued with vinegar. I have read with much distaste his indelicate verses against old women and witches; nor do I see any merit in telling his friend Maecenas that if he will but rank him in the choir of lyric poets, his lofty head shall touch the stars. Fools admire everything in an author of reputation. ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... the effect of that question's existence and overshadowing importance on the conduct of the Great Queen. The desire that she should marry, and the pertinacity with which she was urged to abandon her maiden state by Parliament, which strike us of the nineteenth century as being not simply indelicate, but utterly gross even in the coarse sixteenth century, must in fairness be attributed to the fear that prevailed throughout England that that country might again become the theatre of a civil conflict as extensive, as bloody, and as destructive of material prosperity and moral excellence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... an answer which will carry them both over to the next difficulty fairly successfully. But to live in an eternal state of love-mush is what young people are brought up to regard as matrimony. The plain facts of matrimony are carefully hidden from them, as either being too "prosaic" or too indelicate. The most responsible position in all life for a man and a woman is entered upon by them with an ignorance and an irresponsibility which are neither dignified nor likely to be satisfactory. A woman goes in for several years' ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... with a jest but passed her days in a fire of indelicate allusions, however, which did not bring a flush to her cheek. So long as he was not rough and brutal, she objected to nothing, but one day she was very angry when he, in trying to steal a kiss, tore out a ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the attempts of Keim to associate the narratives of the infancy in the canonical and apocryphal gospels, a great gulf separates them: on the one side there is a reverent and beautiful reserve, on the other indelicate, ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... "No indelicate language, if you please, sir," interrupted the widow, "I won't put up with it in my house, I can tell you—ho, ho, Mr Vanslyperken," continued the widow, working herself into a rage, "that won't do ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "It was very indelicate and inconsiderate of Fred to tell any one that it was my fault that he was doing anything so foolish," she said, with true feminine deceit, "but he has taken the very worst possible means to make me care for ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... store winda' becomes kind of wicked and interestin' the minute they get what they call the human note. There it lays, that virgin lawnjerie, for all the county to look at, with pink ribbons run through everything, and the poor Krieger girl never dreamin' she's doin' somethin' indelicate. She says yesterday if she wins the prize she's going to put it toward one of these ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... dozen for my breakfast. As for Sir Hercules, he didn't know what to do; he did nothing but storm at everybody, for my lady, with her head under the clothes, was serving him out at no small rate. She wouldn't, she declared, allow any man to come into the cabin to hoist her up again. So indecent, so indelicate, so shocking,—she was ashamed of Sir Hercules,—to send for the men; if they didn't leave the cabin immediately, she'd scream and she'd faint—that she would—there was no saying what she wouldn't ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... love in utter contempt—entertains no higher opinion of the writers of them—and considers publishing any thing of the kind as a downright ungentlemanly act; bringing, as she says it does, a lady's name before the public in the most indelicate and unwarrantable manner." ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... an impenetrable one indeed, if it could have been disguised to the two sisters here—yet, I beseech you, my dear, almost on my knees I beseech you, let not the audacious, the insulting Greville, have ground given him to suspect a weakness in your Harriet, which indelicate minds know not how to judge of delicately. For sex-sake, for example-sake, Lucy, let it not be known, to any but the partial, friendly few, that our grand-mamma Shirley's child, and aunt Selby's niece, has been a volunteer in her affections. How many still ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... leaning back in her chair, and tapping her foot impatiently, "I do not see how my husband can be so silly. One would think I was a matchmaker, and no one detests anything of that sort as I do,—no one! Fall in love, indeed! I think the expression is positively indelicate, Henry. Of course, if Lois should be well married, I should be grateful; and if it should be Mr. Forsythe, I should only feel I had done my duty in urging Arabella to ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... till his means had become equal to his wishes, his greediness for lucre was unrestrained either by justice or by shame. He had the effrontery to ask for a thousand louis more, in order to enable him to bring his niece, Madame Denis, the ugliest of coquettes, in his company. The indelicate rapacity of the poet produced its natural effect on the severe and frugal King. The answer was a dry refusal. "I did not," said his Majesty, "solicit the honour of the lady's society." On this, Voltaire went off into a paroxysm of childish rage. "Was there ever such avarice? He has ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... upon my unhappy situation, which is attended with so many indelicate and even shocking circumstances, some of which my pride will not let me think of with patience; all aggravated by the contents of my cousin's affecting letter; you will not wonder that the vapourishness which ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... unprotected girl in a world of males was a lamb among lions, a victim with no way of escape. That she was a lamb among lions, and a victim with no way of escape, she was still prepared to believe; only the preliminaries puzzled her. Instead of being crude, direct, indelicate, they were subtle and misleading. After twenty-four hours in Miss Towell's spare room there was still no hint ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... select some exceedingly ludicrous prescriptions (for the book contains 400 pages), but the most curious unfortunately happen to be the most indelicate. Besides this, I am afraid the subject is scarcely worthy of much space in such an important and useful work ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... shameless. It does not matter at last at all if one is a little harsh or indelicate or ridiculous if that also is in the mystery ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... in regard to the important question of surgical intervention, the female opinion of the neighbourhood was divided, some glorying in the prestige conferred by operations while others shunned them as indelicate. Ethan, from motives of economy, had always been glad that Zeena was of the ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... through one of the instruments of her choosing—the man Meadows, perhaps, or—" (He stopped short of mentioning Ned Faringfield, whose trustworthiness on either side he was warranted, by much that he had heard, in doubting.) "In any case," he resumed, "'twould be indelicate to imply that her judgment of men, her confidence in any one, could have been mistaken. We'd best merely tell her, then, that the rebels were on the alert, and fell upon us before we could ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of the country to keep a love affair a secret as long as possible; if it is discovered and talked about by outside gossips, half its delight and charm is gone; indeed it is considered indelicate to show any signs of love-making in public. It is true that this secrecy often leads to serious mischief, but, on the other hand, there is much to be said for the sensitive modesty of the Welsh maiden, when compared with an English girl's too evident appreciation of her lover's attentions ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... thought indelicate in me to quote at length the many pleasant greetings of the press to my first odd volumes; suffice it to say, that the kind critics were with few exceptions unanimous in commendation; and some great names, as Heraud, Leigh Hunt, and St. John particularly favoured me,—the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sympathy. A man should know what ideas the woman entertains whom he is going to make his wife and the mother of his children. But, unfortunately, this, the most important subject of sex and sexuality, is never touched upon by the engaged couple (it would be so indelicate!), and after they are married they often find themselves at opposite poles. Here also a good heart-to-heart talk will do a world of good. I have had several such cases where a little conversation or even a letter saved ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... spirits, a tireless and energetic talker, and always overflowing with good-nature and bursting with jollity. It was a choice and satisfactory menagerie, this pensive poet and this gladsome gorilla. An indelicate story was a sharp distress to Stoddard; Dolby told him twenty-five a day. Dolby always came home with us after the lecture, and entertained Stoddard till midnight. Me too. After he left, I walked the floor and talked, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... eighty thousand dollars—all, however, secured by city warrants; still, he kept bank accounts elsewhere, and was generally a borrower. I instructed Nisbet to insist on his reducing his line as the notes matured, and, as he found it indelicate to speak to Meiggs, I instructed him to refer him to me; accordingly, when, on the next steamer-day, Meiggs appealed at the counter for a draft on Philadelphia, of about twenty thousand dollars, for which he offered his note ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... this remark rather indelicate, and yet she liked Alix's recognition of her superior knowledge of ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... I really was trying to be delicately indirect. But that you should beg off discussion because my way of putting things seems to you indelicate is yet another count in my quarrel with your established ministry. You seem to me to be amateurs where you ought to be professionals. How can you possibly deal with poor weak humanity in kid gloves? Like the surgeon ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the pen poised in her hand. There was rather an awkward pause. The question seemed at first blush a little indelicate. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... whose family I lived, was a tall, thin, sallow-faced man. He had a nervous manner, but he was not unkind to me. He clothed and fed me well. He chewed tobacco and was brimming over with funny stories, funny and usually indelicate. I heard much swearing, too, and I began to think it the proper thing to try to be wicked myself. I was greatly attached to the two clerks, and they were my models in everything. One of them was also the bookkeeper of the establishment ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... by his wife, she began to talk about the funeral preparations, and the persons to be invited. But such sorrow overtook him afresh, that even his wife, herself inconsolable over her loss, was surprised at the depth of his grief for one who was no relative. It seemed to him indelicate, almost heartless of her to talk so soon of burying the dear one but just gone from their sight: it was unnecessary dispatch, and suggested ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... the General, turning very crimson in the face. "I call it indelicate to discuss such subjects. As for Nelly's marrying, why, she's only a child. I should feel very little obliged to the man who would want to take her from me ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... proud heart, in which ungrateful anger could not long find room, had smitten him for so ill a return to well-meant and not indelicate kindness. And, his wounded egotism appeased by its very outburst, he had called to mind Fairthorn's allusions to Darrell's secret griefs,—griefs that must have been indeed stormy so to have revulsed the currents of a life. And, despite those griefs, the great man had ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brutal, bitter, he was in his youth; he saw the grosser facts of life, so often lamentable and tender, in the spirit of a Voltaire doubled by a Rabelais. There is honest and also shocking laughter in these early illustrations. A fantaisiste, graceful, delicate—and indelicate—emerged after the lad went up to Paris, as if he had stepped out of the eighteenth century. Rops summed up in his book plates, title-pages, and wood-cuts, illustrations done in a furious speed, all the elegance, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... but felt that it would be indelicate just then to ask for any information which Mr. Casaubon did not proffer, and she turned to the window to admire the view. The sun had lately pierced the gray, and the avenue of limes ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... in Germany as in England, who saw in Sterne's works only a mine of vulgar suggestion, arelation sometimes delicate and clever, sometimes bald and ugly, of the indelicate and sensual, is a foregone conclusion. Undoubtedly some found in the general approbation which was accorded Sterne's books a sanction for forcing upon the public the products of their own ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... "It's indelicate it's indecent, that's what it is. Didn't I get my clothes, and weren't we to have been married by the Reverend Dwight Johnstone, out in Salem, Ohio? And didn't he go out there and have old Johnstone marry him to somebody else? The wretch! If ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... same unhappy psychological condition which makes the dance an unclean thing in their jaundiced eyes renders it impossible for them to enjoy art or literature when the subject is natural, the treatment free and joyous. The ingenuity that can discover an indelicate provocative in the waltz will have no difficulty in snouting out all manner of uncleanliness in Shakspeare, Chaucer, Boccacio—nay, even in the New Testament. It would detect an unpleasant suggestiveness ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... or hunt was unfamiliar or unwelcome to these readers; no subtle arguments concerning the art of love were too abstruse to delight a generation steeped in amorous casuistry and allegories. And if some scenes seem to us indelicate, yet after comparison with other authors of his times, Chretien must be let off with a light sentence. It is certain he intended to avoid what was indecent, as did the writers of narrative poetry in general. To appreciate fully the chaste treatment of Chretien one must know ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... manner as may be least offensive to his feelings, and so as not to have the appearance of officiousness nor obtrusion on my part. I hope you will be able to do this, as I should be very sorry to do any thing by him that may be deemed indelicate. The sum Murray offered and offers was and is one thousand and fifty pounds:—this I refused before, because I thought it more than the two things were worth to Murray, and from other objections, which are ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... polished friends into the wretched asylum of penury, the Poet led the way with tardy reluctancy, while his visitors regretted every step of ascent, under the appalling circumstance of giving pain to adversity; yet they felt that to recede would be more indelicate than to advance. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... "Don't be indelicate, Ham! Why, she might never forgive me, dear old thing! Suppose she walked out of the office in a huff? Great Scotland! Great Jehoshaphat! It's too ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... is of the essence of cake not to be plain. As well say, acid sweetness. Nor did I like the hereditary election-cake of my ancient State and city. Fat pork I could not swallow; nor onions nor cabbage,—gross, indelicate vegetables! And even now, as well present upon my table that other diabolic cabbage of the New England swamps,—in old legend said to have been conjured up out of the ground by the Indian pow-wows, to beautify ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various |
