"Straight-laced" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leave so straight-laced a spot behind. The rocky "road" could not hold to the same opinion for a hundred consecutive yards, but kept changing its mind as often as it caught sight of some new corner of the landscape. The Indians, who crowded the way during the first hour, were not friendly, but neither did they show ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... it in that way if you like it, my dear. Girls in your position often do want assistance. I dare say you think me very straight-laced, but I am quite sure Mr. Stanbury will be grateful to me. As you are to be married from Monkhams, it will be quite well that you should pass thither through my house as an intermediate resting-place, after ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... into fits. It is a strange thing that both my daughters should be such old maids to the bone and marrow. You can read it though if you wish, Annie. I doubt if you understand the wickedness anyway, and I don't want you to grow up straight-laced like Harriet and Susan. It is really a misfortune. ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Jones" has its center of plot in a life history of the foundling who grows into a young manhood that is full of high spirits and escapades: likable always, even if, judged by the straight-laced standards of Richardson, one may not approve. Jones loves Sophia Western, daughter of a typical three-bottle, hunting squire: of course he prefers the little cad Blifil, with his money and position, where poor Tom has neither: equally of course ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... it, Hugh. He's easy enough, but scratch him and you come upon a very straight-laced aristocrat. He and the statuesque Edith Morriston are made for ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... he would take good care that no evil chances came to him! If he laid hands on five thousand pounds, he would be out of Highmarket within five hours, and half-way across the Atlantic within five days. No—Dave Myler was a good sort—one of the best—but he was a bit straight-laced, and old-fashioned—especially since he had taken a wife—and after all, every man has a right to do his best for himself. And so, when Stoner came face to face with Mallalieu, on the lonely moor between High Gill and Highmarket, his mind was ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... in all the Waverley novels, would be good enough! And then, on her hot desire to know what they meant, they quoted John, the brother in the Guards, as having been so droll about poor Ellen's perfect hero, and especially at his straight-laced Aunt Fordyce having been taken in,—but of course it was the convenience of joining the estates, and it was agreeable to see that your very good folk could wink at things like other people in such a case. Then, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most interesting quota of our business, and, did not professional confidence seal my lips, I could recount numerous entertaining anecdotes concerning some of what are usually regarded as New York's most respectable, not to say straight-laced, households. A family skeleton is the criminal lawyer's strongest ally. Once you can locate him and drag him forth you have but to rattle his bones ever so little and the paternal bank account is at your mercy. New York is prolific of skeletons of this generic character, and Gottlieb ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... see that nudity is not an incident, or accident, of sculpture, but its very essence and principle; and his jealousy of undressed images strikes the reader as a strange, vague, long-dormant heritage of his straight-laced Puritan ancestry. Whenever he talks of statues he makes a great point of the smoothness and whiteness of the marble—speaks of the surface of the marble as if it were half the beauty of the image; and when he discourses of ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Ambassador and his lady; and a Russian Prince and Princess, their relations. The Prince and Princess Colonna and the Princess Lucretia were also paying a visit to the Marquess; and the frequency of these visits made some straight-laced magnificoes mysteriously declare it was impossible to go to Coningsby; but as they were not asked, it did not much signify. The Marquess knew a great many very agreeable people of the highest ton, who took a more liberal view of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... in Beulah's direction, saw the look of chagrin and disappointment on her face, and realized how much she minded playing a losing part in the game and yet how well she was doing it. "She's only a straight-laced kid after all," he thought. "She's put her whole heart and soul into this thing. There's a look about the top part of her face when it's softened that's a little like Ellen's." Ellen was his dead fiancee—the girl in the photograph at home in ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... increase, and so it was enacted that the penalty for the first offense should be thirty shillings, and for the second, three pounds, while the offender, presumably a "foraignor," was to be put under a bond to observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy according to the ideas of the straight-laced Puritans. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... to gather in her eyes. "It would indeed be a treat to a poor little recluse like me, but though there is not a bit of harm in it, or you would not ask me, I am sure, I must not offend my mother-in-law; and though Heaven knows I am not straight-laced, I never will tell stories or act deceitfully if I can help it; that is my only strong point, which has to make up for a ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... preaching at Natchez, one Potts, who was a Presbyterian, a Puritan, and extremely straight-laced in doctrine, and eminently puritan in practice, intolerant, bigoted, and presumptuous. Potts had accomplished one great aim of his mission: he had married a lady of fortune, and assumed more purity than any one else, and was a sort of self-constituted exponent of the only ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the straight-laced sort, Joyce," cried Wilson, laughing good-humoredly. "But now that I have had my say out, I shall stop; and you need not fear I shall be such a simpleton as to go prattling of this kind of ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood |
