"Propriety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... others, agitated the propriety of refusing to accept the seven dollars per month offered them by the Government, and of refusing to do duty on account of it. Sergeant Barton, however, held it was better to serve without pay than to refuse duty, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... practically deserted by Emerson and his coterie, by some of the associates and pupils of the school, and boarders, who were scared out of their propriety by the fear of losing social caste, and they showed their disfavor by leaving him alone; but, intrenched as he was, and surrounded by a multitude of friends, new and old, and many secretly admiring his intrepid spirit, they could only vent their disfavor ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... interesting information in exchange for the gratification they received. Some of those persons who were admitted to interviews with him have published narratives of their conversation, and all agree in extolling the extreme grace, propriety, and appearance of benevolence manifested by Bonaparte while holding these levees. His questions were always put with great tact, and on some subject with which the person interrogated was well acquainted, so as to induce him to bring forth any new or curious ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... insensible to all we could say to him, cowering down, or rather I might say collapsing into a shapeless heap upon his chair, deaf, blind, torpid, motionless,—even then I whispered to the others that I would engage that Kant should take his part in conversation with propriety and animation. This they found it difficult to believe. Upon which I drew close to his ear, and put a question to him about the Moors of Barbary. To the surprise of everybody but myself, he immediately gave us a summary account of their habits and customs; and told us by the way, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... her, cowardice must be the last lowest depths of degradation. Anyhow he had done the straight thing by Grumper, in leaving the house without any attempt to let her know, to say farewell, to ask her to believe in him for a while. If there had been any question as to the propriety of his trying to become engaged to her when he was the penniless gentleman-cadet, was there any question about it when he was the disgraced ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... on coming into a warm room the pain of hotach is produced, and inflammation, and consequent mortification, owing to the great exertion of those vessels, when again exposed to a moderate degree of warmth. See Sect. XII. 5. Whence the propriety of applying but very low degrees of heat to limbs benumbed with cold at first, as of snow in its state of dissolving, which is at 32 degrees of heat, or of very cold water. A French writer has observed, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... permitting him on one occasion to go as far as London. After this he was more strictly confined, but at last he was often allowed to visit his family, and remain with them all night. One night, however, when he was allowed this liberty Bunyan felt resistlessly impressed with the propriety of returning to the prison. He arrived after the keeper had shut up for the night, much to the official's surprise. But his impatience at being untimely disturbed was changed to thankfulness, when a little after a messenger came from a neighboring clerical magistrate ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... at last. I was proud of myself. In the secret of my soul I strutted. I was like a boy in his first long trousers. I might not yet show myself off to the family. They would question the propriety of my occupation with Mrs. Sewall, but nevertheless I had not failed. Sometimes lying in my bed at night with all the vague, mysterious roar of New York outside, my beating heart within me seemed actually to swell with pride. I ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... effect, and every effect requires a cause. There could be no cause outside of the fire mist; for they say there was nothing else in the universe. Then the cause must be in the mist itself. Had it a mind, and a will, and a perception of propriety? Did the mist become sensible of the lightness of its behavior, and the fire resolve to cool off a little, and both consult together on the propriety of dropping their erratic blazing through infinite space, and resolve to settle down into ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... authors, we may read their manners and natural inclinations, which are wholly different. Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words; Homer was rapid in his thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of expressions, which his language, and the age in which he lived, allowed him: Homer's invention was more copious, Virgil's more confined; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of the frigate which had gone in chase of the slaver's overtook them, and brought them on board the Ajax. Their guilt was so evident, that Captain Bertram had no doubt about the propriety of detaining them as prisoners. It was necessary, therefore, to send a prize crew to take charge of the schooner. She was called the Andorina (the Swallow). Mr Owen, the third lieutenant of the ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... simply as they were in themselves, and did not take into account the way in which they would be taken and understood by others. I did not perceive that their natural or probable effect upon minds other than my own formed part of the considerations determining the propriety of each act in itself, and not unfrequently, at any rate in public life, supplied the decisive criterion to determine what ought and what ought not to be done. In truth the dominant tendencies of my mind were those of a recluse, and I might, in most respects with ease, have accommodated ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... are to supply his place? Indeed, but ill. Our present and future presidents may preside with dignity and propriety; but who can supply his place in diligent and ingenious researches? Not even the combined efforts of the whole Society; and the field is large, and few ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... England at the close of the last century. They are as untrue to nature and to fact at the period to which they are assigned as would be efforts to depict Augustine Washington and his wife in the dress of the French revolution discussing the propriety of ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... But of the propriety and utility of holding up the distant mark of attainable perfection, we shall enter more fully toward the close of this address. We turn with pleasure to the contemplation of that small but glorious band, whom we may truly distinguish by the name of thinking ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... a letter from Lord Howe the day before the ship was paid off, intimating a wish to see Captain Nelson as soon as he arrived in town; when, being pleased with his conversation, and perfectly convinced, by what was then explained to him, of the propriety of his conduct, he desired that he might present him to the king on the first levee-day; and the gracious manner in which Nelson was then received effectually ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... old lady referred to in Thomas Morgan's comedy of "Speed the Plough," personifying the often affected extreme offence taken by people of the old school at what they consider violations of propriety. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to other people's, is a short, but, I believe, a true definition of civility: to do it with ease, propriety and grace, is good-breeding. The one is the result of good-nature; the other of good-sense, joined to experience, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... consciousness of his own triumph; how rare, again, it is to find an unsuccessful person who does not attempt, if he can, to belittle the attainments of his successful rival, or who at least, if he overcomes that temptation from a sense of propriety, feels entitled to nourish a secret satisfaction at any indication of failure on the part of the man who has obtained the prize that he himself coveted in vain. Yet if one has ever seen, as I have, the astonishing ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mentioned, and others who were on hand about those times. The merchants of South Water street in Chicago can now, perhaps, explain why they were called upon to subscribe so heavily to the books of the Invincible Club, and the writer would suggest the propriety of these merchants compelling those who solicited these subscriptions, to deliver up the arms so purchased, or refund the ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... the universal sentiment of the body—that the right of suffrage is not a natural right, but a conventional right, and that it may be limited by the community, the body-politic, in any manner they see fit and consistent with their sense of propriety and safety. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... are in no marked respect different from other boys, but they are orderly and well conducted. They are probably on their way to a church; and if you watch them, you will see them march in with much propriety. The superintendent is evidently not an ordinary schoolmaster; you would suppose that he is an ecclesiastic of some kind. He wears a loose black cloak, a hat with a low crown and a portentous brim, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... repudiating the notion that an escort were needed in a neighbourhood of such propriety and peace, had not refused his offer to accompany her. And Hodder felt instinctively, as he took his place beside her, a sense of climax. This situation, like those of the past, was not of his own making. It was here; confronting him, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... acquiescing in the verdict that the Dutch play of Elckerlijk, attributed to Petrus Dorlandus, a theological writer of Diest, who died in 1507, has a better claim than our English version to be considered the original. Strict adherence to propriety of form was not a characteristic of the dramatic literature of this period, and had the play been of native origin its uniform seriousness of tone would almost assuredly have been broken by some humorous, or semi-humorous, episodes. While the two plays, with the exception ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... it, any how. I have made up my mind to be a saint. I intend to keep out of all scrapes, and behave with perfect propriety all the time, ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... consideration to my foreign ears, very distinct and deliberate, M. Pelet intimated that he had just been receiving from "le respectable M. Brown," an account of my attainments and character, which relieved him from all scruple as to the propriety of engaging me as professor of English and Latin in his establishment; nevertheless, for form's sake, he would put a few questions to test; my powers. He did, and expressed in flattering terms his satisfaction at my answers. The ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... quite as much of earth as of heaven in them, crossed the intervening space. These, however, were stolen, and managed in such a quiet way as not materially to affect the devotions of the elders. In compliance with an usage, a breach of which would have violated propriety, Faith, withdrawing her arm from her father's, glided into a seat among her own sex on the right, while Mr. Armstrong and Holden sought places ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... gives as it runs into yard limits, and then rose. "Good-by, Miss Cullen," I said, properly enough, though no death-bed farewell was ever more gloomily spoken; and she responded, "Good-by, Mr. Gordon," with equal propriety. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... events, no system of this kind exists among the Winnebagoes. The strictest sense of female propriety is a distinguishing trait among them. A woman who transgresses it is said to have "forgotten herself," and is sure to be cast off and ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... not publish it. I possess it only as executor to my father; and, it having been confidential, the executors of Mr. Jefferson have undoubtedly a copy of it, and, as depositaries of his confidence, are the only persons who can, with propriety, authorize its publication." He added: "The divulging private and confidential letters is one of the worst features of electioneering practised among us. Though often tempted and provoked to it, I have ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... shadowed every one of my movements. These precautionary measures were supposed to guarantee my personal safety; but I should have been quite safe without them, for all Americans behaved towards me with perfect propriety and courtesy. Our personal friends did not allow the rupture of diplomatic relations to make any difference in their attitude towards us. Until the very day of our departure, my wife and I were the daily guests ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... farther in the cause of propriety, than propriety itself could justify, held her peace. Only the potatoes splashed yet louder in the bowl. Her mistress sat grimly silent, for though she had had the last word and had been obeyed, she was rebuked in herself. Cosmo, judging the specialty ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... practically inside another parish and another village, I have any business to interest myself in it at all. Well,—I will think about it, Enderby, I will think about it, and possibly I may be able to help you. You would like to get the child away? I see the propriety, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... very bad looking-glass hangs on the wall, and there is a bench to sit on: that is the extent of the furniture. You have been provided with towels and with the regulation bathing-dress for men—linen breeches, to wit. While you are contemplating this garment and questioning of your modesty as to the propriety of donning it, there is a sound of rattling iron outside, and a tap on your door as a warning that your machine is about to start. The machine is dragged in lumbering fashion out into the sea by an antediluvian horse with a small boy astride, and there the boy unhitches the traces from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... bringing the home and the school together. To accomplish this result it was necessary that all the studies offered in Journeys should be after the most approved methods and that there should be no selections that could not with propriety be used in any school in the land. This principle of selection made it necessary to exclude some selections that might have been pleasing but at the same time were not universal in their acceptance. Again, it was necessary to include literature that was in a sense technical, that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... an eye-witness. One thing is certain, contemporary writers appear to have generally acquiesced in the propriety of the retreat; and that circumstance constitutes the strongest evidence in favour of the step. Yet, viewing events at this distance of time, and taking into account the panic which seized, not only the public mind, but which affected ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... nearly strangling his youngest son at every scrimmage near each goal." "It serves you right, Tom. I was always afraid something of that kind would happen; you shouldn't be so demonstrative." Tom was silent. He was as jealous of his own propriety and good behaviour as anybody could be, but being of a most excitable nature, he did things in the heat of a tussle for which he was afterwards very sorry, and many ignored the fact that he was an old Rangers ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... and other places the shameless custom of using virgins, before their nuptials, for purposes of prostitution. Such monstrous infamies were accounted religion and righteousness among the Gentiles. There is nothing, in fact, so ridiculous, so stupid, so obscene, nothing so remote from all propriety, that it cannot be foisted as the very essence of religion upon men who have been forsaken ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... was the author of a pamphlet entitled "Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes on the British Colonies." Pitt, in his speech on the repeal of the Stamp Act, referred to in this ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... learning;[Footnote: Since the first edition, it has been suggested by one of the clubs, who knew Mr Vesey better than Dr Johnson and I, that we did not assign him a proper place; for he was quite unskilled in Irish antiquities and Celtick learning, but might with propriety have been made professor of architecture, which he understood well, and has left a very good specimen of his knowledge and taste in that art, by an elegant house built on a plan of his own formation, at Lucan, a few miles from Dublin.] Jones, Oriental learning; Goldsmith, poetry ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... fortnight at home, and getting to be intimate with the roof-tree of Doctor Yardley, before that person saw fit to pick a quarrel with him, and to forbid him his house. As the dispute was wholly gratuitous on the part of the Doctor, Mark behaving with perfect propriety on the occasion, it may be well to explain its real cause. The fact was, that Bridget was an heiress; if not on a very large scale, still an heiress, and, what was more, unalterably so in right of her mother; and ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Hyde and his daughter had aroused in him certain feelings, and led him to certain decisions. He went to sleep, satisfied with their propriety and justice. He awoke in precisely the same mood. Then he dressed, and went into his garden. It was customary for Katherine to join him there; and he frequently turned, as he went down the path, to see if she were coming. He watched eagerly ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... throw doubt upon his personal prowess or his military capacity. Major Newman had several Questions on the Paper this afternoon, and, as he had just announced the withdrawal of his valuable support from a Government so lost to all sense of propriety as to welcome Messrs. Churchill and Montagu to its fold, Mr. Reddy's comments were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... meditatively, for he rather doubted the propriety of receiving so costly a present for his wife from a stranger, and he said so to Daisy, adding that it was of course very kind in Lord Hardy, but wholly uncalled for, and she'd better return it at once, as he would not quite like to ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... always employed with too much success, is used in this scene with peculiar propriety, to a soldier by a woman. Courage is the distinguishing virtue of a soldier, and the reproach of cowardice cannot be borne by any man from a woman, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... narrative, and the speeches often consist of general reflections or thoughts, which might be equally just in any person's mouth upon the same occasion. As many of his persons have no apparent characters, so many of his speeches escape being applied and judged by the rule of propriety. We oftener think of the author himself when we read Virgil, than when we are engaged in Homer, all which are the effects of a colder invention, that interests us less in the action described. Homer makes us hearers, and Virgil leaves ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... prince, turning his threatening eyes toward the door. "Oh, I will release you from further molestation by this madman, for I tell you the gentle words of your husband will not be able to do so. Baron Weichs is not the man to lend a willing ear to sensible remonstrances or to the requirements of propriety and decency. He has graduated at the high-school of libertinism, and any resistance whatever provokes him to a passionate struggle in which he shrinks from no manifestation of his utter recklessness. Well, am I not ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... yards was, for all practical purposes, the same thing as a hundred miles; the ceaseless roar of the swollen torrent would drown my voice as effectually as a battery of artillery; but, for a moment or two, I considered the propriety of shouting for help. The problem was, whether I should diminish my strength more by the effort of shouting than the additional chance of ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... and who indulges himself in some satires on this point not any less severe, though his pleasantries are somewhat more covert. But the philosopher on this occasion, having produced such a variety of precedents from natural history, appears to be satisfied with the propriety and justice of the proceeding, inasmuch as beasts and men seem to be treated with impartial consideration in it; and though a certain distinction of form appears to obtain according to the species, the main fact is ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... take care that she does not dress too prettily. No mother to see her own youth over again in these fresh features and rising reliefs of half-sculptured womanhood, and, seeing its loveliness, forget her lessons of neutral-tinted propriety, and open the cases that hold her own ornaments to find for her a necklace or a bracelet or a pair of ear-rings,—those golden lamps that light up the deep, shadowy dimples on the cheeks of young beauties,—swinging ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... talking to Martin, whose attention was more occupied by Audrey than by what she was saying. The moment his sense of propriety would allow, coming forward, he took her hand and poured out the feelings of his ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... scholarly preoccupations of the leaders of the constantly growing Faculties, to maintain and encourage the higher aims of the University as a center of learning. It is true that the Board is sometimes criticized for taking upon itself functions which might with propriety rest with the Faculties and their administrative officers, but there is at least a legal justification for this in the legislative provisions upon which the powers of the Board of Regents rest. Thus in the Act of March 18, 1837, the Regents are empowered ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... propriety be divided into whales with whalebone, and whales with teeth. Those with whalebone have rudimentary teeth in both jaws in the foetal state. Fossil Cetacea exist, and they seem to have been of both kinds, but, no doubt, were generically and ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... of which none but the initiated could be informed; that it sufficed for him to know, that the reason which he seemed so highly to prize, which he held in so much esteem, was his most dangerous enemy—his most inveterate, most determined foe. Where can be the propriety of such an argument? Can it really be that reason is dangerous? If so, the Turks are justified in their predilection for madmen: but to proceed, he is told that he must believe in the gods, not question the mission of their priests; in short, that he had nothing to ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... thing of taking up a book and beginning to read "in company." But, as before stated, Miss Agatha had a will of her own, which she usually followed out, even when it ran a little contrary to the ultra-refined laws of propriety. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... flowers come in, and there is a grand ball. The blue violets represent little naval cadets, and dance with hyacinths and crocuses which they call young ladies. The tulips and tiger-lilies are the old ladies who sit and watch the dancing, so that everything may be conducted with order and propriety." ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... what a firebrand!" whispered Irais. I got up and went in. They were sitting on the sofa, Minora with clasped hands, gazing admiringly into Miss Jones's face, which wore a very different expression from the one of sour and unwilling propriety I have been used ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... nothing in the world to pay for what he required. He was fortunate in getting some relief from the kind woman to whom he had applied, and proceeded to speak to her on various topics with great sense and propriety, as became the ex-President of the Court of Session; but when, to satisfy his scruples, he asked her the day of the month, then the month of the year, and then the year of the Lord, the good woman was satisfied he was mad; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... Propriety and decorum were extinguished among the helpless sick. Females of rank seemed to forget their natural bashfulness, and committed the care of their persons, indiscriminately, to men and women of the lowest order. No longer were women, relatives or friends, found in the houses of mourning, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the family of Ezzolino, who fell in with him accidentally on the road. This was the gift of a very fine horse (of the sort which the English call Obinum), but, greatly as Cardan desired to have the horse, his sense of propriety kept him back ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... expressive manner, yet with the fewest possible touches. As Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic.), the aged Cephalus would have been out of place in the discussion which follows, and which he could neither have understood nor taken part in without a violation of dramatic propriety (cp. ...
— The Republic • Plato
... fortune this night,—he, to sell his gold; Eugenie to fling hers into the ocean of affection. She put the pieces back into the old purse, took it in her hand, and ran upstairs without hesitation. The secret misery of her cousin made her forget the hour and conventional propriety; she was strong in her conscience, in her devotion, in ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Goddess,—the ceremony of initiation into the Mysteries is, as it were, to suffer death, with the precarious chance of resuscitation. Wherefore the Goddess, in the wisdom of her Divinity, hath been accustomed to select as persons to whom the secrets of her religion can with propriety be entrusted, those who, standing as it were on the utmost limit of the course of life they have completed, may through her Providence be in a manner born again, and commence the career of a ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... succeeded. He loves her yet—I am sure of it. For her sake he came to this entertainment, to which he would not have come for mine. He would have made an excuse of his old difficulties with the Duke, of his political position. I would have believed him, and have sacrificed my wish to see him to propriety and his honor. He never ceases to look at her. He thinks of her alone. He is busied with her alone, yet he has no look, no thought for me." The Duchess began to weep again. Steps were heard in the gallery—the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... meetinghouses which were the Presbyterian ideal. The preacher generally wears the English preaching gown. The old Geneva gown covered with frogs is hardly ever seen; but the surplice would still stir up a revolution. The service is performed with much propriety of demeanour; the singing is often so well done by a good choir, that the absence of the organ is hardly felt. Educated Scotchmen have come to lament the intolerant zeal which led the first Reformers in their country to such extremes. But in the country we still ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... performance which told very much against the probability of that opera ever becoming a favorite with the Royal Italian Opera subscribers. Nothing could possibly exceed the poetical grace of Eonconi in the title role, or surpass the propriety and expression of his singing. Mme. Castellan's Cunegonda was also exceedingly well sung, and Tamberlik outdid himself by his thorough comprehension of the music, the splendor of his voice, and the ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... fairly made. From the opinion, we find that it was the only one decided in the court below, and it is the only one which has been argued here. The case was undoubtedly brought to this court for the sole purpose of having that question decided by us, and, in view of the evident propriety there is of having it settled, so far as it can be by such a decision, we have concluded to waive all other considerations and proceed at ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... it would be just as well that he should not be disrespectful to the captain. Now Jack had not, hitherto, put on his uniform, and he thought this a fitting occasion, particularly as the waiter suggested the propriety of his appearance in it. Whether it was from a presentiment of what he was to suffer, Jack was not at all pleased, as most lads are, with the change in his dress. It appeared to him that he was sacrificing his independence; however, he did not follow his first impulse, which was to ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... duties should arrive. As he opened the door of the main office, his ear was saluted by a low grunting sound, and there in evening dress was Mr. Augustus Alfonso Brockelsby, reclining in a big chair, asleep, if one could with propriety call the stupor in which he was sunk, sleep. The disorder of his garments, the character of his sternutations, the redness of his face, and above all, the odor he distilled upon the chill morning air, made patent to Mr. Middleton the disgusting fact that the senior member of the firm was drunk. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... put yourself out of the power of the world, the world will treat you well, and respect you; but if you neglect yourself, do not at all be surprised that the world and your friends will neglect you also. So far the world acts with great justice and propriety, and takes its cue from your own conduct; you cannot, therefore, blame the world without ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... present people to each other as little as possible. In the West, however, people do not feel comfortable in a room full of strangers. Whether or not to introduce people therefore becomes not merely a question of propriety, but of consideration ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... this does not necessarily prove that they are wrong, but it means {77} that the problem for us is not one of details, but of opposing systems, the parts of which cannot be interchanged. We can, with logical propriety, accept the Graeco-Jewish eschatology or the Graeco-Oriental sacramental regeneration if we reject modern thought. But we cannot, except in intellectual chaos, combine the two, or appropriately express modern thought in language belonging to the ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... yourself and the young ladies with whom you have hitherto been allowed to associate; and I really think I shall have to adopt another method—unless you conduct yourself, Miss Colwyn, with a little more modesty and propriety." ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... even with the lower classes, with which he frequently condescended particularly to chat, such as Sir Roger de Coverley's old friends, the Vauxhall watermen, they seldom outstepped the limits of propriety. My aunt, who lived to the age of 105, had been blessed with four husbands, and her name had twice been changed to that of Hussey: she was of a most delightful disposition, of a retentive memory, highly entertaining, and liberally ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... an adequate description of these doors; they should be carefully examined as examples of genuine native design and workmanship. Mr. Pollen has concluded a somewhat detailed account of them by saying:—"For elegance of shape and proportion, and the propriety of the composition of the frame and sub-divisions of these doors, their mouldings and their panel carvings and ornaments, we can for the present name no other example so instructive. We are much reminded by this decoration of the pierced lattices at ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... also of this interesting paper was always admitted to be entirely worthy of its fame. The hand-writing fully carried out the idea of extreme debility and agitation corresponding with its nature, while a larger and a lesser blot bore painful testimony to that recklessness of propriety which a starving man might be supposed to feel; one corner had been ruthlessly abstracted at the time it was seen by the writer of this notice, and with it the last figures of the date; a considerable rent crossed the sheet from right to left, but happily without injuring ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... oppose this young man in any thing; he knew so well what he wanted, and demanded it so uncompromisingly. But Sophie's sense of fitness and propriety was as sound and impenetrable as adamant, and scarcely to be affected by any human will or consideration. She felt there was something not quite right in his manner and in the nature of his demand; and, being in the habit of making people conform to her ideas, rather ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... her church that "wearing-apparel was instituted by God as a necessity for the sake of propriety and also for healthful warmth, but when used for purposes of adornment it becomes the evidence of an un-Christlike spirit." Now Tillie knew that her present yearning for new caps was prompted, not by the praiseworthy and simple desire to be merely neat, but wholly ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... Miss Howe.— He presses her to go abroad with him; yet mentions not the ceremony that should give propriety to his urgency. Cannot bear the life she lives. Wishes her uncle Harlowe to be sounded by Mr. Hickman, as to a reconciliation. Mennell introduced to her. Will not take another step with Lovelace till she know the success of the proposed application ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... charmed with the spirit and propriety of Perdita's behaviour; and perceiving that the young prince was too deeply in love to give up his mistress at the command of his royal father, he thought of a way to befriend the lovers, and at the same time to execute a favourite scheme he had ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... rejoice that the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the sentiment of duty or propriety; and am persuaded, whatever partiality may be retained for my services, that in the present circumstances of our country you will not ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... consent, and to make the fulfilment of certain conditions a prerequisite. In each case there were two parties in the district desiring separation, one of them favoring immediate and revolutionary action, while the other, with much greater wisdom and propriety, wished to act through the forms of law and with the consent of the parent State. In Kentucky the latter party triumphed. Moreover, while up to the time of this meeting of the May convention the leaders in the movement had been the old Indian fighters, after this date the lead was taken ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... in Drury Lane now, and William tells me that his wife sings at her work just as she did eight years ago. I have no interest in this, and try to check his talk of it; but such people have no sense of propriety, and he even speaks of the girl Jenny, who sent me lately a gaudy pair of worsted gloves worked by her own hand. The meanest advantage they took of my weakness, however, was in calling their baby after me. I have an uncomfortable suspicion, too, that William has given the other waiters ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... brooding over the future, planning his fight, pessimistically considering his chances of success. Potter's sympathy grew. He thought of approaching his chief with a word of encouragement. But while he hesitated, mentally debating the propriety of such an action, Hollis turned quickly and looked fairly at him, his ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the violets pinned into the buttonhole. And Bessie Lonsdale had seen with pride and no twinge of jealousy the admiration in the eyes of that aristocratic, if somewhat stern-faced, old lady who was to be Peggy's mother-in-law, and who, with true Scotch propriety, had come all the way down to London to take her ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... such dreadful teaching as these people have?" said the mother, appealing to the daughter. "My dear, there is a propriety in things. And not one of the candidates this evening was dressed ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... stern voice, and his huge nose positively wrinkled with passion, "a name has been mentioned which I never thought to hear again in decent society. Freedom of speech is all very well, but we must observe the limits of common propriety. You may talk of Bouguereau if you will: there is a cheerful disgustingness in the sound which excites laughter; but let us not sully our chaste lips with the names of J. Ruskin, G. F. Watts, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... of his subjects are not pastoral in themselves, but only seem to be such, they have a wonderful variety in them, which the Greek was a stranger to. He exceeds him in regularity and brevity, and falls short of him in nothing but simplicity and propriety of style; the first of which perhaps was the fault of his age, and ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... beautiful dresses. Mothers consulted him about taking their daughters out, and the daughters were instructed by him before going into society. He was appealed to for permission to wear low-necked dresses, and he was the man who regulated the modesty of ball costumes and the propriety of reading certain books. He was also asked for titles of novels and lists of moral plays. He prepared candidates for confirmation and led them on to marriage. He baptized children and listened to the confession of the adulterous in thought. Wives ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... Here he executed several portraits at three guineas each, and painted his 'Death of Wolfe,' to which was awarded a prize of fifty guineas by the Society of Arts. Out of this picture arose much controversy. Adverse critics objected that the work could not with propriety be regarded as an historical composition, because, in point of fact, no historian had yet recorded the event it pretended to represent; Wolfe's death, however glorious and memorable, was too recent to be within the legitimate scope of high art! Further, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... done with a master's hand. Its closeness and movement are quite surprising. Its construction is admirable. I have the strongest belief in its making a great success. But I must add this proviso: I never saw a play so dangerously depending in critical places on strict natural propriety in the manner and perfection in the shaping of the small parts. Those small parts cannot take the play up, but they can let it down. I would not leave a hair on the head of one of them to the chance of the first night, but I would see, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... extreme curiosity to know more of so singular a personage, and with that intent have sought to renew their short acquaintance; but in the present instance, the confidential nature of the conversation he had overheard made him, with propriety, judge that his appearance at such a time would be anything but agreeable. As we have seen, therefore, he permitted his former host to retire without attempting a recognition, but fully promising himself a rich indemnity for his present ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which, generally attracted to gold-producing countries, necessarily forms there the substratum of the working population; while the native born portion of the people is entitled to all praise for its strict propriety. To remove this stigma of mauvais ton, and establish our fair name in opposition to the mal-impressions which have gained currency respecting the Australian colonists, I have been induced to add another to the tales of Australian ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... piece of obsoleteness in it; and as it is professedly a tale of ancient times, I trust, that 'the affectionate lovers of venerable antiquity' (as Camden says) will grant me their pardon, and perhaps may be induced to admit a force and propriety in it. A heavier objection may be adduced against the Author, that in these times of fear and expectation, when novelties explode around us in all directions, he should presume to offer to the public a silly tale of old fashioned love; and, five years ago, I own, I should ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... it was occasionally a matter of doubt with Quintus whether his brother should not be abandoned among other things which were obtrusive and vain. He could not quite do it. His brother compelled him into propriety, and carried him along within the lines of the oligarchy. Then Caesar fell, and Quintus saw that the matter was right; but Caesar, though he fell, did not altogether fall, and therefore Quintus after all turned out to be ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... six inches deep, of a constituent forming the smaller proportions of the whole weight of an acre of soil of that limited depth. It shows the existence of a practically unlimited amount of the most important mineral constituents of plants, and clearly points out the propriety of rendering available to plants, the natural resources of the soil in plant-food; to draw, in fact, up the mineral wealth of the soil, by thoroughly working the land, and not leaving it unutilized as so much ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... her Ladyship's good disposition, I should make her show your letter to her to Lord Holl(an)d; I am persuaded that his faculties are not so entirely lost as not to discern with how much force of reason, propriety, and good nature it is wrote. What he would do in consequence of it, I cannot be quite so sure. Then he might, perhaps, relapse into a state of imbecility, or affected anility, which might deprive you of the advantage which you should expect ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... had spoken something to excuse himself, Aristodemus said: When we had so short and fair a cut to our design, how have you blocked up the way before us, by preventing us from joining issue with the faction at the very first upon the single point of propriety! For you must grant, it can be no easy matter to drive men already possessed that pleasure is their utmost good yet to believe a life of pleasure impossible to be attained. But now the truth is, that when they failed of living ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Twenty-five centuries ago, when Europe and Asia met for brotherly participation in the noblest, perhaps,[12] of all recorded solemnities, viz., the inauguration of History in its very earliest and prelusive page, the coronation (as with propriety we may call it) of the earliest (perhaps even yet the greatest?) historic artist, what was the language employed as the instrument of so great a federal act? It was that divine Grecian language to which, on the model of the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Montanism or about the Paschal controversy. It is difficult to believe that such a writer could have kept clear of these 'burning' questions, if he had lived in the midst of them. Even though his sense of historical propriety might have preserved him from language involving a positive anachronism, he would have taken a distinct side, and would have made his meaning clear by indirect means. Again, there is nothing at all bearing on the great Gnostic heresies ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... I might with propriety answer: Suppose that Government ought to do the work and does not, shall we fold our hands and let our soldiers suffer? But the truth is, Government does do its duty. Some persons foolishly exaggerate the work of the Commission. They talk as though it were the only salvation of the wounded, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... now?" Then Lady Ushant went on with her story. The sick man had insisted on making his will and had declared his purpose of leaving the property to his cousin Reginald. As Lady Ushant said, there was no one else to whom he could leave it with any propriety;—but this had become matter for bitter contention between the old ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... Mrs. Vincent, "if you would like it, you ought to go. You need something of the kind, and you will fit in admirably with the party, I am quite sure. To-day," she added with a little laugh, "I was doubtful as to the propriety of these young people going off all the way to Edinburgh by themselves, but you know in these war times we do extraordinary things, but now if you join them, my scruples ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... gravely, "It will come with more propriety from you; but I do think you are right." Then he knew that he had to ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... be it to make distinction between them. Granted, however, that you have made up your mind as to the identity of the treasure, do you not wish to possess other equally choice works of the same class, on the same subject? Suppose some distant relative of yours with great propriety should die, bequeathing you all unexpectedly far more worldly goods than you had ever hoped to possess; supposing also that you were 'without encumbrances' or ties of any description, and that your sole aim and ambition in ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... noncombatants to move, and I said: "White, they would slaughter us like sheep should we undertake such a movement. Our strongest hold is in this town, and if you will get together fifty volunteers, I will drive the Indians out of the lower town and the greatest danger will be passed." He saw at once the propriety of my proposition, and in a short time we had a squad ready, and sallied out, cheering and yelling in a manner that would have done credit to the wildest Comanches. We knew the Indians were congregated in force down the street, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... through these orders that the careful student can pass that veil of formal propriety, reticence, and dignity which so often obscured the inner, the tentative, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... counted; in the city he is likely to be lost. It was this declining weight of the individual in the life of great cities, as compared with that of impersonal social organizations, the parties, the unions, and the clubs, that first suggested, perhaps, the propriety of the term social forces. In 1897 Washington Gladden published a volume entitled Social Facts and Forces: the Factory, the Labor Union, the Corporation, the Railway, the City, the Church. The term soon gained wide ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... fracture of the bones of the vertebrae, occurring when casting a patient for the purpose of undergoing a surgical operation, quite as much as the result of muscular contraction as of a preexisting diseased condition of the bones. A fracture occurring under these circumstances may be called with propriety indirect, while one which has resulted from a blow or a fall differently caused is ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs." "But," he said in the same essay, "however inclined we might be to insist upon an unbounded complaisance in the executive to the inclinations of the people, we can with no propriety contend for a like complaisance to the humors of the legislature.... The executive should be in a situation to dare to act his own opinion with vigor and decision." It is frequently remarked that no President since Lincoln had so thorough a comprehension of public ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... bright childish pranks and sayings, the shrewd simplicity of ordinary cases, characteristic of that time of life, and showing plainly that a child is only a child. Is it surprising that, allowed to speak so much and so freely, unrestrained by any consideration of propriety, a child should occasionally make happy replies? If he did not, it would be even more surprising; just as if an astrologer, among a hundred false predictions, should never hit upon a single true one. "They lie so often," said Henry IV., "that they end by telling the truth." ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... or 'bag-bottom of Fraternity;' the Rue des Moinets took the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; while the Rue Ganton, the licensed abode of the social evil of Chauny, received, with exquisite tact and propriety, the name of the Roman hero Scaevola! The monastery of the Holy Cross, founded by Mary of Cleves, Duchesse d'Orleans, about the end of the fifteenth century, was confiscated, and made the headquarters of the Republican Commission, the street ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... even more gravely, as a spick and span brougham, drawn by two thoroughbreds, dashed out of the mist up to the platform, "unless you prefer to state the case to those two gentlemen"—pointing to the smart coachman and footman on the box—"and take THEIR opinion as to the propriety of my proceeding any further. It seems to me that their consciences ought to be consulted as well as yours. I'm only a stranger here, and am willing to do anything to ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... might have had to any extent: upon application for it, of course. How was he to imagine that she wanted money! Smilingly as she welcomed him and his friends, entertaining them royally, he was bound to think she had means. A decent propriety bound him not to think of the matter at all. He naturally supposed she was capable of conducting her affairs. And—money! It soiled his memory: though the hour at Rovio was rather pretty, and the scene at Copsley touching: other times also, short glimpses of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... whispered his conviction that he had administered 'a clincher,' and that he expected a commission on the profits. Discovering his mistake after a while, he appeared to grow rather sleepy and discontented, and had more than once suggested the propriety of an immediate departure, when the door opened, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... expression. There was never the slightest occasion for young people to feel uneasy concerning what he might say. However lively his mood might be, his fun was always sure to be restrained by the nicest sense of natural propriety. He shaved, and took a cold plunge-bath every day. Not a particle of mud or dust was allowed to remain upon his garments. He always insisted on blacking his own shoes; for it was one of his principles not to be waited upon, while he was well enough to wait upon ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... better that the change should be brought about by men who had already striven to preserve the rights of property acquired under the Clergy Reserve grants, rather than by those whose policy was little {39} short of spoliation. The propriety and reasonableness of all this was very generally recognized at the time, not merely by the supporters of MacNab and Macdonald, but also by their political opponents. A. A. Dorion, the Rouge leader, considered the alliance quite natural. Robert Baldwin ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... recognize the existence of both sides of obstacles to anything like intimacy. Many Indian ideas and habits are repugnant to us, but so also are many of ours to them. Indians have their own conceptions of dignity and propriety which our social customs frequently offend. If Englishmen and Englishwomen in high places in India would exert their influence to invest the social life of Europeans in the chief resorts of Anglo-Indian society ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... to go to them and tell them what he knew, to which of them ought he to speak, and how? In an anguish of perplexity that made the sweat stand in drops upon his forehead, he smiled to think it just possible that Mrs. Vervain might take the matter seriously, and wish to consider the propriety of Florida's accepting Don Ippolito. But if he spoke to the daughter, how should he approach the subject? "Don Ippolito tells me he loves you, and he goes to America with the expectation that when he has made his fortune with a patent back-action apple-corer, you will marry him." Should ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... his suggestion with alacrity, without staying a moment to question its propriety; and both were up the tree almost as soon ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... "—rather a broken reed to trust to (remembering what those young gallants were), with Caesar against him, now at the head of his legions just outside the gates of Rome. He himself seriously contemplated suicide, and consulted his friends as to the propriety of such a step in the gravest and most business-like manner; though, with our modern notions on the subject, such a consultation has more of the ludicrous than the sublime. The sensible and practical Atticus ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... an expression of high refinement, but at the same time a frank cheerfulness and engaging affability. Their brothers were tall, and elegantly formed. They were dressed fashionably, but simply—with strict neatness and propriety, but without any mannerism or foppishness. Their whole demeanor was easy and natural, with that lofty grace and noble frankness which bespeak free-born souls that have never been checked in their growth by feelings of inferiority. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... had received his dram and withdrawn, and Master Spiggot, the gudeman or landlord of the Thane of Fife, the principal tavern, and only inn or hostel in the burgh, was taking a last view of the main street, and considering the propriety of closing for the night. It was broad, spacious, and is still overlooked by many a tall and gable-ended mansion, whose antique and massive aspect announces that, like other Fifeshire burghs before the Union in the preceding year, it had seen better days. Indeed, the house ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... I have suggested the propriety of introducing this alphabet into the primary schools. I need not say I have taught it to my own children,—and I have been gratified to see how rapidly it made head, against the more complex alphabet, in the grammar schools. Of course it does;—an alphabet of two characters matched ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... the fulfilment of his demands. John urged the removal of the materials with all expedition to their original site, a watch being set to discover the delinquents, should they again presume to lay hands on the stuff. The wisdom and propriety of the latter precaution was undisputed; but no one seemed willing to undergo the terrible ordeal, each declining the office in deference to his more privileged neighbour. No wonder at their reluctance to so unequal a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the Orang Benuas, these words are pronounced by an elder, when a marriage is solemnized: 'Listen all ye that are present; those that were distant are now brought together; those that were separated are now united.' Marriage ceremonies in all stages of culture may be called religious with as much propriety as any ceremony whatever. Those who were separated are now joined together, those who were mutually taboo now break the taboo." Thus marriage ceremonies prevent sin and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sayst is, that thou sayst is; and to this Sense he subjoins [Greek: lithon phes einai], but to the former Sense he subjoins [Greek: sy ara phes lithos einai]. Catullus once attempted to imitate the Propriety ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... barrister, who was present during the narration of this anecdote, and the previous discussion, mentioned another instance of the propriety of noticing those minor circumstances in life, which are usually suffered to pass unheeded by people in general. A man of talent was introduced into a company of strangers; he scarcely spoke after his first salutation until he wished the party good night. Almost every one dubbed him a fool; the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... way also in regard to Livia's will, executing all the provisions of it. If he had spent the rest of his money with equal propriety, he would nave been thought prudent and munificent. Sometimes, through fear of the people and the soldiers, he did so act, but it was mostly through whims. At such times he discharged not only the obligations of Tiberius but those of his great-grandmother, and debts ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... a decision as to his title, and had told every one concerned that he meant to be as he always had been,—George Roden, a clerk in the Post Office. When spoken to, on this side and the other, as to the propriety,—or rather impropriety,—of his decision, he had smiled for the most part, and had said but little, but had been very confident in himself. To none of the arguments used against him would he yield ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... San Sebastian, with its angular propriety; its high, haughty houses, holding up their heads in architectural primness; its wide geometrical streets, where there is no shade in the sun, no shelter in the wind. I began to hate it for its rectilinearity, and dub it a priggish, stuck-up, arrogant upstart among cities. What business had it to ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the writer must realise the presence and the mood of the person for whom the letter is destined. Just as good-breeding suggests that you must have the tastes and sentiments of your interlocutor before you for ends of enjoyable conversation, and that, within the limits of propriety and self-respect, you should at once humour them and use them; so in good letter-writing you must write for your correspondent's pleasure as well as ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... connecting the four vertices of the one with those of the other. The third dimension (the one beyond the plane of the paper) is here conceived of as being not beyond the boundaries of the first square, but within them. We may with equal propriety conceive of the fourth dimension as a "beyond which is within." In that case we would have a rendering of the tesseract as shown in B, Figure 14: a cube within a cube, the space between the two being occupied by six truncated pyramids, each representing ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... morning, Mr. Crossman was looking out of his window when he saw the neighboring lady come out of the barn door head first, and the goat was just taking its head away from her polonaise in a manner that Mr. Crossman considered, with his views of propriety, decidedly impolite. ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... dressed, and in that respect would differ greatly from the graduating class in a Northern Female Seminary, but they would have no occasion to shrink from a comparison with their Northern sisters, if propriety of deportment, and excellence and ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... of the European, the tribes were probably nearly in a state of equilibrium, and were in the main sedentary, and those tribes which can be said with propriety to have been nomadic became so only after the advent of the European, and largely as the direct result of the acquisition of the horse ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... which so many cottage builders of the day attempt, and let it stand in its own humble, secluded character, they will save themselves a world of trouble, and pass for—what they now do not—men possessing a taste for truth and propriety in their endeavors. ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... attire, were the fruits of an intimate connexion with the best society of half the capitals of the European continent. As an unmarried female, modesty, the habits of the part of the world in which she had so long dwelt, and her own sense of propriety, caused her to respect simplicity of appearance; but through this, as it might be in spite of herself, shone qualities of a superior order. The little hand and foot, so beautiful and delicate, the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... away from the house in a grand curve. She knew of a path through the trees which would lead her straight to old Badger's lodge. It was shadowy and lonesome, but what did she care for that? No deer ever bounded down that path more lightly than Clara went. She did not stop to think of propriety, or of her own object. Her heart told her that Hepworth had been driven from the house, perhaps thinking that she would sanction the outrage; for it was an outrage, even if her own father had done it. He should ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... conscience, say, is it in thee") recall the lyrists of the Restoration in their cleanlier and happier mood. And in the very fine epigram headed by the words "Devotion makes the Deity" he has expressed for once a really high and deep thought in words of really noble and severe propriety. His "Mad Maid's Song," again, can only be compared with Blake's; which has more of passionate imagination, if ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the parties primarily concerned, for their children, for home life, and for society. The degree of kinship within which marriage is prohibited is, with one exception, quite in accordance with modern sentiment, the exception being the disallowal of marriage with the sister of a deceased wife, the propriety of which is greatly disputed and need not be discussed here. The marriage of a brother and sister would excite a feeling of loathing among us that seems implanted by nature, but which, further inquiry will show, has mainly arisen from tradition ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... priestesses served the temples of any deity, male or female; and 2dly, that when the Egyptians imparted to the Pelasgi the names of their divinities, the Pelasgi consulted the oracle of Dodona on the propriety of adopting them; so that that oracle existed before even the first and fundamental revelations of Egyptian religion. It seems to me, therefore, a supposition that demands less hardy assumption, and is equally conformable with the universal superstitions of mankind (since similar attempts at divination ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is, after all, the most serviceable headgear for all-around wear in the war zone. It should be worn on all formal occasions, particularly when nearing the Boches' reception line. When in doubt as to the propriety of wearing it, it is always well to remember that it is better to err on the ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... people, though by no means destitute of decency and propriety, are not cleanly. The women bathe their hands once a day, but any other washing is unknown. They never wash their clothes, and wear the same by day and night. I am afraid to speculate on the condition of their wealth of coal-black hair. They may ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... [33] With gnat propriety Bunyan places the house of the Interpreter beyond the strait gate; for the knowledge of Divine things, that precedes conversion to God by faith in Christ, is very scanty, compared with the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fancied she knew Isidore better even than he knew himself, and secretly rejoiced to find his visits to Valricour become more and more frequent, and his walks in the forest with Clotilde, accompanied by Marguerite for propriety's sake, more and more prolonged. At last she thought the pear was ripe, and she took a decided step in order to bring the affair to an issue. Let us see what ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... delegates offered to prove that, in the late reign, several royal mandates had been treated as nullities because the persons recommended had not chosen to qualify according to law, and that, on such occasions, the government had always acquiesced in the propriety of the course taken by the University. But Jeffreys would hear nothing. He soon found out that the Vice chancellor was weak, ignorant, and timid, and therefore gave a loose to all that insolence which had long ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the discussion that ensued upon the propriety of granting the patent extension. Suffice to say it was finally granted for a term of twenty-four years, and the path was clear at last. Britain was to have probably for the first time great works and new tools specially designed for a specialty to be produced upon a large scale. Boulton had ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... the eschar unadherent will be mentioned hereafter. In the mean time the fact stated p. 6, will sufficiently establish the propriety of treating distinctly of ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... planted with trees, and the whole has a picturesque effect. These buildings have been almost entirely erected by the soldiers, who are compelled to work from morning till night at every kind of laborious employment. This arrangement has saved the state much money; yet the propriety of employing soldiers altogether in this manner is very questionable. Desertions are frequent, and the punishment hitherto inflicted for that crime has been flogging; but Jackson declares now that shooting must be resorted to. The soldiers are obliged to be servilely ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... would head them at the double-quick: stout old gentlemen unaccustomed to the double-quick, stouter Frauen gathering up their skirts with utter disregard to all propriety, slim Fraulein clinging to their beloved would run after him. Nervous pedestrians would fly for safety into doorways, careless loiterers would be swept into ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... to have been the case. The practical civilization of China was accepted, but not her ethical code. For any palpable moral influence the arrival of Buddhism had to be awaited. Already the principles of loyalty and obedience, propriety, and righteousness were recognized in Japan though not embodied in any written code." Dr. Ariga writes: "Our countrymen did not acquire anything specially new in the way of moral tenets. They must ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... to drink champagne at a restaurant. You see," she explained, "we weren't rich enough to be in really the smart set, or else I should have been allowed to do any mortal thing, and if you aren't in the very smart set, it is best to turn up your nose at them and to ape propriety. That's what we did. It suited father because it was cheap, and mother because she said ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was covered with an odorous tangle of blossoming creepers, and a nightingale overhead was shaking out love-notes with a profusion that made the Count feel his own conduct the last word of propriety. "I've always heard that in America, when a man wishes to marry a young girl, he offers himself simply face to face and without ceremony—without parents and uncles and aunts and cousins sitting ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... advisability of taking the Nadia and a pleasure party over a piece of raw construction line, and into an environment which, to put it mildly, could hardly be congenial to—to the ladies of the party. You know, or ought to know, the MacMorroghs: their camps are not exactly models of propriety, Mr. Colbrith." ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... The propriety of the use of this sacred volume in schools has been regarded as a question by some persons; but we cannot consider it a subject of doubt. After a careful consideration of every objection, we cannot see a reason why its gentle and holy truths should not be given to the mind and heart ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... And when the Church of Jesus Christ becomes thoroughly awake to the worth of a soul and the awful danger to which all out of Christ are exposed, it will be the most natural thing in the world for them to show an undying earnestness in seeking the lost. Then propriety, and reticence, and restraint, and rules of rhetoric will be thrown to the winds, and a divine passion will possess the life. The world may sneer at it as fanaticism, but it is the fanaticism of Pentecost. When the crowd saw the intensity ...
— The Art of Soul-Winning • J.W. Mahood
... the selection of material is unity. It decides what may with propriety be admitted to the essay, and it determines in part what must be left out. Another principle, secondary to this, is scale of treatment. If the essay is to be short, only essentials may be used; if long, many related sub-topics must take their ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... unwonted haste, Gino, now thou hast a mask and jacket of velvet. I know not that I should suffer one to enter my father's house when I am in it alone, and take such disguises to go abroad, at this hour. Thou wilt tell me thy errand, that I may judge of the propriety of what ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper |
