"Decency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fat face wagged at Waters peremptorily; he quite obviously felt himself a spokesman for order and decency and the divinely ordained ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... shall leave father and mother', &c. O! with what exquisite purity this scene is conceived and executed! Shakspeare may sometimes be gross, but I boldly say that he is always moral and modest. Alas! in this our day decency of manners is preserved at the expense of morality of heart, and delicacies for vice are allowed, whilst grossness against it is hypocritically, or ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... the following terms embody your conception of what is expressed by Sittlichkeit: good form, decency, self-respect, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in the efforts to better the conditions of the fallen women, make timely a rough outline of the methods by which girls are lured into the haunts of vice, and kept there until they have lost all power or desire to escape and win their way back to decency and respectability. It is not pretended that this line is accurate, or that it fits any particular case, but the information on which it is based is gained from what are believed to be reliable sources, and it is not likely to be misleading: if ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... hailed with delight. The air was filled with happy shouts from men and boys, so glad were they that Sunday, their only day of rest, was near. In the cabins the women were washing and fixing garments for Sunday, that they might honor the Lord in cleanliness and decency. It was astonishing how they utilized what they had, and with what skill and industry they performed these self-imposed tasks. Where the family was large it was often after midnight before this work was done. While this preparation for the Sabbath was in progress in most of the cabins, ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... decent of him, too, to hold off a little. Most parsons would have rushed in, hot foot, to administer extreme unction and be sure I was in a proper mood concerning Providence. Brenton has had the decency to wait a little. It was almighty decent, too. I knew him in my palmy days, when life was young. It's young for him still—Hold on, Olive; I'm not going to maunder!—and I had a natural dread of having him ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... horses well enough. But of a morning she was accustomed to go about the house in a pale-tinted wrapper, which, pale- tinted as it was, should have been in the washing-tub much oftener than was the case with it—if not for cleanliness, then for mere decency ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... unfortunately received different designations as its several features have been recognized and studied apart. The difference between the subject of "moral insanity" and the general paralytic, who has lost all sense of decency and lives the life of a beast, is one of degree. The practical difficulty is to convince the mere observer that forms of insanity which seem to consist in the loss of moral qualities and principles ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... year B.C. 187, with a strong hand, by the Consuls Spurius Posthumius Albinus and Q. Marcius Philippus; from which period the words "bacchor" and "bacchator" became synonymous with the practice of every kind of vice and turpitude that could outrage common decency. See a very full account of the Dionysia and the Bacchanalia in Dr. Smith's Dictionary ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... and cargoes over to the Spanish ambassador. Thus prizes fairly gained by nautical skill and hard fighting, off Spain, Portugal, Brazil, or even more distant parts of the world, were confiscated almost in sight of port, in utter disregard of public law or international decency. The States-General remonstrated with bitterness. Their remonstrances were answered by copious arguments, proving, of course, to the entire satisfaction of the party who had done the wrong, that no practice could be more completely in harmony with reason and justice. Meantime ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... owed his preferment to Stapleton. He was, therefore, guilty of gross ingratitude when he refused to take in the corpse of his patron, or to allow it the rites of burial. Certain poor women had more compassion; they at least cast a piece of old cloth over the corpse for decency's sake and buried it out of sight, although without any attempt to make a grave and "without any office of priest or clerk." Thus, it remained till the following month of February, when it was disinterred and taken to Exeter. The treatment of Bishop ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... to corner of forge, and looks out left.) Come back here and don't mind her at all. Come back here, I'm saying, you've no call to be spying behind her since she went off, and left you, in place of breaking her heart, trying to keep you in the decency ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... I demanded. "Why aren't you there to keep a little decency about the thing? Why aren't you looking after ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... man over the Princess is, therefore, without bounds. She has sacrificed to the adoration with which he has inspired her not only her marriage vow and every shred of public decency, but that vice of jealousy which is so much dearer to the female sex than either intrinsic honour or outward consideration. Nay, more: a young, although not a very attractive woman, and a princess both by birth and fact, she submits to the triumphant rivalry of one who might ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... speculative philosophy, that makes everything to be alike fitting at all times; but there is another philosophy that is more pliable, that knows its proper scene, accommodates itself to it, and teaches a man with propriety and decency to act that part which has fallen to his share. If when one of Plautus' comedies is upon the stage, and a company of servants are acting their parts, you should come out in the garb of a philosopher, and repeat, out of Octavia, a discourse of Seneca's to Nero, ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... partisan spites, which he had hoped would vanish almost of their own accord, were become, on the contrary, even more formidable and irritating. At this juncture the coming of Genet and his machinations added greatly to the embarrassment, and, having no sense of decency, Genet insinuated that the President had usurped the powers of Congress and that he himself would seek redress by appealing to the people over the President. I have already stated that, having tolerated Genet's insults and menaces as ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... and many troubles have had their origin in the truculent behaviour of such parties. Such parties of Sea Dayaks have been known to accept the hospitality of unsuspecting and inoffensive Klemantans, and to outrage every law of decency by taking the heads of old men, women, and children during the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... forfeits not infrequently called for liberties and concessions that could not be permitted on the spot or in public, but must wait the opportunity of seclusion. There were, no doubt, times when the conduct of the game was carried to such a pitch of license as to offend decency; but as a rule the outward proprieties were seemingly as well regarded as at an old-fashioned husking bee, when the finding of the "red ear" conferred or imposed the privilege or penalty of exacting or granting the blushing ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... her hand. "Joseph, I had hoped you were not going to refer to this again for some while. I have told you hundreds of times, or more, that a woman cannot marry with decency a second time when she has two strapping daughters who have not ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... garlic on the sixth day of the week, as this vegetable has the property of promoting secretions (see Exod. xxi. 10); that the wife should be up betimes and bake the bread, so as to have some ready in case any one should come begging; that the women should wear a girdle round the waist for decency sake; that they should comb their hair before bathing; that peddlers should hawk their perfumes about the streets in order that women should supply themselves with such things as will attract and please their ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... for decency, they don't seem to have a shred of it amongst them. And the Hannays are not her own people. I thought I should be safe in going there after what you told me. And it was ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... extravagant, temptations which lie in the way of youth. Sir Walter Scott used to say that "of all vices drinking is the most incompatible with greatness." Not only so, but it is incompatible with economy, decency, health, and honest living. When a youth cannot restrain, he must abstain. Dr. Johnson's case is the case of many. He said, referring to his own habits, "Sir, I can abstain; but ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... of pitying Lucia on that account. She, herself, heard nothing of these rumors and lived in the illusion that everything retained its former aspect. I believe I was praised - behind my back, of course, not to my face - because I had had the decency to seek my diversion so far from the vicinity, and not, as more shameless ones, in The Hague or Amsterdam. As long as I did not arouse publicity or scandal, I could do what I wished; these were my private affairs. And Lucia and the gentlemen of my set seemed to agree ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... was still there, with Hugo! She had believed that Hugo would be found sheepish and embarrassed, or in a regular fury, while the stranger would weep and wring her hands and seek to explain. And the invading crowd was to have manifested its indignation at this breach of all decency and proper custom, and sent the woman away, while they would have told the man what they thought of him, in spite of his rage, and warned him that he must mend his ways ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... save what souls I can, by bringing them to the knowledge of some Catholic doctrine, necessary to salvation; and since these people are under your immediate government, in gratitude, justice, and decency, for what you have done for me, I shall offer no farther points in religion, that what shall merit your approbation. Being a-pleased with the modesty of his carriage, I told him he should not be worse used for ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... dinner with us afterwards. I do not think he was an illiberal man at heart, but he had been very poor in his youth—('So poor, ma'am,' he said one day to my mother, 'that I could not live with honour and decency in the estate of a gentleman. I did not live. I starved—and bought books,')—and he seemed unable to shake off the pinching necessity of years. A wealthy uncle who had refused to help him whilst he lived, bequeathed all his money to him when ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... got, there would have been no chance for him. Wainwright, when he heard it, lay thoughtful for a long time, a puzzled, half-sullen look on his face. He saw that everybody considered Cameron a hero. There was no getting away from that the rest of his life. One could not in decency be an enemy of a man who had saved one's life. Cameron had won out in a final round. It would not be good policy not to recognize it. It would be entirely too unpopular. He must make friends with him. It would be better to patronize him than to be patronized by ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... your foreign phrases?" angrily interrupted the general. "This is not a drawing-room! You might drop it, from a sense of decency." ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... efforts at putting civil law and order into effect were just then being tried in the new and lawless frontier railroad town and the contest between the two elements of decency and of license had reached an acute pass when Rebstock and Seagrue were thrown into jail at Medicine Bend. A case of sympathy for them was not hard to work up among men of their own kind and threats were heard up and down Front Street that if the railroading ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... pretty results have come of this infection of decency!" Durtal burst out laughing as he thought of the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... young ones, instead of rambling abroad from place to place; a few years will give you many Sabbaths, which, if rightly improved, will be sufficient for the purpose. Attend, also, on public worship, when you have opportunity, and behave there with decency and good order. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... ill-concealed by tinsel, gave him a sort of pain, and it often happened that when he was going to preach somewhere he secretly called together the priests of the locality and implored them to look after the decency of the service. But even in these cases he was not content to preach only in words; binding together some stalks of heather he would make them into brooms ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... the fact that when the compulsory education law went into effect, the inspectors found in the squalid region, a great number of children so destitute, that they were absolutely unfit to attend school; decency forbidding that the sexes in far more than semi-nude condition should mingle in the school-rooms, and although a number of noble-hearted ladies banded together and decently clothed three hundred of these almost naked boys and girls, they were compelled to admit the humiliating fact that they ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... "One thing more," she said. "Whatever happens, Helen, don't let me be kept over Sunday. There'll certainly be another death in the family within the year if you do. If I die on Saturday, there's no help for it. Common decency won't let you shove me into the ground at once, and so you will have to make up your minds for a second summons." And Aunt Pen, contemplating the suttee of some one of us with great philosophy, lay down and closed ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... know that I am yet in the world," he said, with quick, complaining tone of voice. "Had you not better remind him of it for decency's sake, Adam?" ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... their short seasons of respite from labour. You see them, boys and girls, from the youngest age to seventeen and eighteen, rolling, tumbling, kicking, and wallowing in the dust, regardless alike of decency, and incapable of any more rational amusement; or, lolling, with half-closed eyes, like so many cats and dogs, against a wall, or upon a bank in the sun, dozing away their short leisure hour, until called to resume their labours in the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... on the horrible and unnatural luxury and vice which defiled the Papal chair and ran riot through every ecclesiastical order, whether such men, without faith, without conscience, and without even decency, were indeed the only authorized successors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... all right. It was a wicked thing to run him down like that, but Wiley hasn't got the decency of a coyote, and he had it in for Jose." She broke off suddenly, and held her hand out to the young engineer. "Adios, stranger, and ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... ambitious mind, as he caught a glance from Eleonore. If he obeyed Modeste all was over, and forever, between himself and his protectress. Not to obey her was to avow his slavery, to lose the chances of his twenty-five days of base manoeuvring, and to disregard the plainest laws of decency and civility. The greater the folly, the more imperatively the duchess exacted it. Modeste's beauty and money thus pitted against Eleonore's rights and influence made this hesitation between the man and ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... became suddenly typified in these five hundred jumping tatterdemalions—the way in which he had plundered the world of its youth, its cleanness, its decency. I felt an anger which battlefields had never aroused, where men moulder above ground and become unsightly beneath the open sky. The slain of battlefields were at least motionless; they did not gape and grin at you with the dreadful humour of these perambulating dead. I felt the Galilean ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... an exclusive right to her own domain, and for another to enter therein without special invitation was held as an outrage against decency ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... use in building up and preserving one's self-complacency. In all but the lowest stages of culture the normally constituted man is comforted and upheld in his self-respect by "decent surroundings" and by exemption from "menial offices". Enforced departure from his habitual standard of decency, either in the paraphernalia of life or in the kind and amount of his everyday activity, is felt to be a slight upon his human dignity, even apart from all conscious consideration of the approval ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the marginal version, I will now touch on, for not all the marginal notes are various readings, but some mark expressions which have passed out of common use, obsolete words and terms which current decency did not allow to be read in a public assembly. (88) The ancient writers, without any evil intention, employed no courtly paraphrase, but called things by their plain names. (891) Afterwards, through the ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... of self-government, as I have said, is a natural right pertaining to all alike, and is to be exercised by the ballot. And the right to that is therefore a natural right, as is the right to wear clothes. Decency and comfort require that clothes should be worn; but they are artificial wholly. Just so is the right to vote a natural right, though the vote, or the mode of voting at least, is an artificial means. This logic can not be caviled with or gainsaid. The young man and the young woman outside ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... synagogue will by no man be expected to appreciate; for to apprehend it requires some knowledge and some understanding of the poetry of the Shakespearean age—so surely we now should call it, rather than Elizabethan or Jacobean, for the sake of verbal convenience, if not for the sake of literary decency; and such knowledge or understanding no sane man will expect to find in any such quarter. Even in the broad coarse comedy of the period we find here and there the same sweet and simple echoes of the very cradle-song (so to call it) of our drama: ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... general discontent at this time, but really acted for the public good. He was made a member of the cabinet, and the King being now so much worse that he could not be carried about and shown to the people with any decency, the duke was made Lord Protector of the kingdom, until the King should recover, or the Prince should come of age. At the same time the Duke of Somerset was committed to the Tower. So, now the Duke of Somerset was down, and the Duke of York was up. By the end of the year, however, the King recovered ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... to give increased acrimony to the opposition. Such hold had the President taken of the affections of the people, that even his enemies had deemed it generally necessary to preserve, with regard to him, external marks of decency and respect. Previous to the mission of Mr. Jay, charges against the chief magistrate, though frequently insinuated, had seldom been directly made; and the cover under which the attacks upon his character were conducted, evidenced ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... it is, beside, so very French as to be almost valueless in this regard, for that reason alone. What it would be well to have written is the story of an abandoned woman, told simply and without any reserve, except that of decency, and purely from a woman's point of view. But, except by a woman, and at the cost of the experience to be recounted, this is manifestly possible only to genius. The author of "Out of the Depths" has not attained the desideratum; but has yet approached so near it, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... petitioner shall be dead and buried, he might with as much propriety and decency have his body snatched ...
— International Copyright - Considered in some of its Relations to Ethics and Political Economy • George Haven Putnam
... upon them as companions of each other. And surely this is a national barbarism: within these beautiful walls is the ugliest church that was ever beheld—if it had been hewn out of the side of a hill it could not have been more dismal; there was no neatness, nor even decency, and it appeared to be so damp, and so completely excluded from fresh air, that it must be dangerous to sit in it; the floor is unpaved, and very rough. What a contrast to the beautiful and graceful order apparent in every part of the ancient ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... the devout multitude still enjoyed the luxury of sacrifices, of festivals, and of processions, by the permission, or by the connivance, of the civil government. About four years after the supposed date of this bloody edict, Constantius visited the temples of Rome; and the decency of his behavior is recommended by a pagan orator as an example worthy of the imitation of succeeding princes. "That emperor," says Symmachus, "suffered the privileges of the vestal virgins to remain inviolate; he bestowed the sacerdotal dignities ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... contrary, she was of a meek spirit, and, as she was strictly virtuous herself, so she always put the best construction upon the words and actions of her neighbours, except where they were irreconcileable to the rules of honesty and decency. She was neither one of your precise prudes, nor one of your fantastical old belles that dress themselves like girls of fifteen; as she neither wore a ruff, forehead-cloth, nor high-crowned hat, so she had ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... visible Church of Christ on earth, with the immense superstructure of miracle and infallibility erected thereon. The true Church of Christ is in heaven; and the members of the earthly society can but try in a human, blundering way, to act with decency and justice. Apostolic succession, the power of excommunication, the dealing out of forgiveness for men's sins, the determination of true doctrine, insofar as the Church claims these powers, it is usurping an authority that is not ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... it be more worse than that, I an't got no behind to my trousers, they pulled it out when they pulled me into the boat. I sticks to this here rock for decency's sake. What ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 'Very well, as you please. The world is governed by form and title, and I suppose such dignities lend a decency even to exile in men's eyes. Is it late? I was tired, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Peter Monk's unfortunate affinity to the ape subjected him to no little annoyance from the sneers and insults of other boys, whose sense of decency was below ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... of reformation they had been purchased by James J. Early after a venture in his gambling schemes so surpassingly "lucky"—to quote himself—that he was almost shamed into decency by its magnitude. He even felt a thrill of compunction—a very brief thrill—for the manner in which two-score people, who had trusted him, were left in the trough of ruin while he rode high on the wave of success. Almost trembling between triumph and contrition, he had been seized with the virtuous ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... woman who had instigated the foul deed but had meanwhile died, was ordered to be dug up and burned. But the feeling of the great majority of the besieged was far removed from that despair which prompts to an inhuman disregard of natural decency and affection. Near the close of July a boy of barely ten years, as he lay on his death-bed, said to his weeping parents: "Why do you weep thus at seeing me die of hunger? I do not ask bread, mother; I know you have none. But since ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... He had passed just now through, first, a network of small stairways, archways, vestibules and passages, and then along two immense corridors with windows on one side and closed doors on the other. Everywhere there was the same quiet warmth and decency and plainness—stained deal, uncarpeted boards, a few oil pictures in the lower corridor, an image or two at the turn and head of the stairs; it was lighted clearly and unaffectedly by incandescent gas, and the only ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... press generally commented unfavorably. The Herald said: "The legislature passed a bill in the interest of decency and humanity, authorizing the appointment of matrons in the several police stations in the city of New York to look after female prisoners who might be placed in the station-houses. This bill was recommended by our best charitable and religious societies, but ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... who stood looking solicitously down at him and licked his lips. There was an acknowledgment which decency required his making in their presence, and he keyed himself for a feeble effort ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency has always been considered, amongst us, the sure mark ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... precise connexion between you and our host, there can be no objection to giving a perfectly frank reply. The women strike me as being singularly delicate and pretty; well dressed, too, I might add; but, while there is a great air of decency, there is very little high finish; and what strikes me as being quite odd, under such circumstances, scarcely any downright ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... square by themselves, are the houses of the secret societies, surrounded by images and large drums. The dwelling-houses are rather poor-looking huts, with low walls and roofs and an exceedingly small entrance which is only to be passed through on one's hands and knees. Decency demands that the women should always enter the houses backward, and this occasions funny sights, as they look out of their huts like so many ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... the overpowering of the First Consul's escort, and the seizure of his person, during one of his journeys. Then he was to be forcibly transferred to the northern coast on relays of horses, and hurried over to England.[292] But, though the plotters threw the veil of decency over their enterprise by calling it kidnapping, they undoubtedly meant murder. Among Drake's papers there is a hint that the royalist emissaries were at first to speak only of the seizure and deportation ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Steering, "twice now I've done my best to hope that somehow, somewhere you were going to throw me one line of commercial honesty and decency. I haven't asked you to measure up to very high standards, I'd have been satisfied with damned little; I've waited on you and hoped for you and let you try to bull-doze me, but by God! I'm done. You hear, I'm done!" He got up and the lean strength of his determination and the ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... The result was to have been expected. Extravagance, debts, too much family, drink, death—the sequence was complete. He had been captured, withered, cast aside, by a tribe that had not even had the decency to grant his memory the kindness ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... said, "that there were in this school some boys who had a notion of gentlemanly behaviour, manly conduct, and common decency. I see that I was mistaken. The behaviour of certain of you to-day—I will not mention them because of their exceeding shame, but you will all know whom I mean. . . ." At this moment all the boys turned round and looked hard at Gordon, Smith, and Hart minor, who blushed scarlet, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... built for gentlemen. It was an unavoidable misfortune that this prison, which had up to this time housed only refractory Kaffirs, should by force of circumstance become the domicile for six long dreary months, and through a hot tropical summer, of gentlemen nurtured in every decency. Captain Mein told me that he stood the greater part of that first night rather than sit upon the filthy floor, but exhaustion at length conquered his repugnance. These were times which proved men's natures. It distilled the very essence of a man, and if anywhere in his ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... way of his I would have withdrawn it at once, and that with right goodwill, for I had so great a respect for the Nestor of gypsyism that I would have been very glad to have gratified him with such a small sacrifice. But it was not in him to suspect or imagine so much common decency in any human heart, and so he craftily, and to my great delight and satisfaction, "got ahead" of me. For, to tell the truth of truth, I was pleased to my soul that I had caused him to ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... very fine!" said Sir Wilfrid; "but I wanted a big fight—Achilles and his Myrmidons going for the other fellows—and somebody having the decency to burn the temple of that hag Artemis! I say!" He spoke, smiling, in Marcia's ear. "Your brother Arthur's in very bad company! Do you see where he is? ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... injustice! Among these victims the two that most attracted her sympathy were Madame de Camors and Renee Mauperin. But what horrors surrounded them! What a varied assortment of deceptions, treacheries, and mysteries, lay hidden under the outward decency and respectability of what men called "the world!" Her young head became a stage on which strange plays were acted. What one reads is good or bad for us, according to the frame of mind in which we read it—according as we discover ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... pleasure. And what was the reality?—An absolute emptiness, and the knowledge that, unless Arabella Clinker continued her ministrations, he himself would have to play her part! He actually regretted his accession to fortune. But for it he could have broken off the engagement with decency, but now his hands were tied. Only Cecilia could release him, and she did not seem to have the slightest intention of ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... to students of human nature that just in proportion as a man is neatly and trimly dressed is he apt to conduct himself with like decency. The worst vagabonds in our communities are the tramps, with their dirty bodies and dirty clothes; the most brutal deeds in all history were those of the ragged, motley mobs of Paris in the days of the French Revolution; the first act of the mutineer ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... rent is due, no matter to whom the said cattle may belong. The tenants are said to have been arranging an amicable interchange of grazing land, the cows of Smith feeding on the land of Brown, and vice versa, so that the affidavit agreement might have some colour of decency. The ancient Act discovered by the ardent MacAdam has rendered null and void this proposed fraternal reciprocity, and the order to conceal every hoof and horn pending discovery of the right answer to this last atrocity has been punctually obeyed, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... sin of the Censor's office lies as much in what it permits as in what it forbids; and a growing sense of decency in the public is displacing prudery so that the abolition of the office will not cause the ill-results announced by the managers, who regard the existence of the Censor as valuable to them, because it frees ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... attended to. I further heartily desire to keep them from the corrupting and demoralizing effect of the lowest sort of children in the streets and courts and Unions. But I desire more for them than mere decency and morality; I desire that they should be useful members of society, and that the prisons of the United Kingdom should not be filled with poor, destitute, and homeless orphans; and we bring them up therefore in habits ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... shall be settled in twenty-four hours!" I replied. "That man and his family are the pest of the neighborhood, and everyone lives in a sort of abject dread of them. Now, the neighbors must say 'yes' or 'no' to the question whether we shall have decency, law, and order, or not. Merton, unharness the horse. Junior, come with me; I'm going ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... state of joyful intoxication, and there were days in which he was in such an elevated condition of mind that he had inward promptings to make use of his opportunity. He had always trodden his path in this world so sedately, done his duty and lived his life in such unwavering decency. Why should not he too for once let things go, and try to leap through the fiery hoops? There was a tempting development of power in ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... this duel, Mr Floyer wrote him word that he was now obliged in common decency to take the part of his nephew, and therefore had already given the place to ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... that the audience hear Clytemnestra crying out to AEgysthus for help, and to her son for mercy: While Electra, her daughter, and a Princess, both of them characters that ought to have appear'd with more decency, stands upon the stage and encourages her brother in the parricide. What horror does this not raise! Clytemnestra was a wicked woman, and had deserv'd to die; nay, in the truth of the story, she was kill'd by her own son; but ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... credulity, and more practised in the arts of courts, than that of almost any of his contemporaries. On some particular occasions, when the magistrates were exasperated by some personal motives of interest or resentment, the rules of prudence, and perhaps of decency, to overturn the altars, to pour out imprecations against the emperors, or to strike the judge as he sat on his tribunal, it may be presumed, that every mode of torture which cruelty could invent, or constancy could endure, was exhausted on those devoted victims. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... varied by the appearance of a beggar-woman, got up in great decency, and with a wonderful air of pinched and faded gentility. She wears an old shawl upon her head, but it is as nicely folded as an aristocratic mantilla; her feet are cased in the linen slippers worn by the poorer classes, but there are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Green Foundation. As a consequence, in a towering rage, he summoned the ringleaders, chief among whom he had recognized Dink Stover and, corraling them in his study that night, exposed to them the enormity of their offense against the sex of their mothers and sisters, common decency, morals and morality, the ideals of the school, and the hope that the Nation had a right to place in a body of young men nurtured in such homes and ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... the place," continued Alfred, "the LaSalle—a restaurant where I am known—where she is known—where my best friends dine—where Henri has looked after me for years. That shows how desperate she is. She must be mad about the fool. She's lost all sense of decency." And again Alfred paced ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... decency to be ashamed of himself when he finds out we know what he did to us. I shouldn't think he'd want to look us in ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... and decency, if we are simians we have done well, considering: but if we are something else—fallen angels—we have indeed fallen far. Not being modest by instinct we invent artificial ideals, which are doubtless well-meaning ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... They will make us regret the time of dynastic ambitions, with their human absurdity moderated by prudence and even by shame, by the fear of personal responsibility and the regard paid to certain forms of conventional decency. For, if the monarchs of Europe have been derided for addressing each other as "brother" in autograph communications, that relationship was at least as effective as any form of brotherhood likely to be established between the rival nations ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... among civilized women. The comparatively evanescent character of modesty has led to the argument (Venturi, Degenerazioni Psico-sessuali, pp. 92-93) that modesty (pudore) is possessed by women alone, men exhibiting, instead, a sense of decency which remains at about the same level of persistency throughout life. Viazzi ("Pudore nell 'uomo e nella donna," Rivista Mensile di Psichiatria Forense, 1898), on the contrary, following Sergi, argues that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... information, and the whole party being now in excellent temper after their repast, we began our purchase of horses. We soon obtained five very good ones, on very reasonable terms—that is, by giving for each horse merchandise which cost us originally about $6. We have again to admire the perfect decency and propriety of the Indians; for though so numerous, they do not attempt to crowd round our camp or take anything which they see lying about, and whenever they borrow knives or kettles or any other article from the men, they return them ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... know that. And therefore why can't we have the decency to agree simply about money—just agree to dispose of it so that all men could ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... narrower principles. Dennis and Rhymer think his Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire censures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended, that Menenius, a senator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency violated when the Danish Usurper is represented as a drunkard. But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and if he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... too high in price, and was no longer needed for clothing. He was wise enough to see that battle axes, maces, swords, lances and armor had better be put to some better use, when iron was getting scarce and wool and linen were cheaper. Even the stupid Normans learned that decency and kindness cost less, and accomplished more in making the Welshery ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these dreadful preliminaries, the provisional removement &c. when they are proceeded with,—will you do—all you can—suggest every regard to decency and proper feeling to the persons concerned? I have a horror of that man of the grave-yard, and needless publicity and exposure—I rely on you, dearest friend of ours, to at least lend us your influence when the time shall come—a word may be invaluable. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... courts, the count's card—when I returned his visit, Commissioner Falconer was with him in close converse—confirmed by this in opinion that Lord Oldborough is sucking information—I mean, political secrets—out of the count. The commissioner could not, in common decency, help being 'exceedingly sorry that he and Mrs. Falconer had seen so little of me of late,' nor could he well avoid asking me to a concert, to which he invited the count, for the ensuing evening. As the count promised ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... the chapel in the palace at Bristol, told me that he was mentioning the neatness and elegance of it to Bishop Young at Therfield, who told him, that however he might admire the decency and elegance of it, yet upon his waiting, upon some occasion or other, on my Lord Hardwick, his Lordship spoke to him of it, and asked him whether he had not a design of pulling down the cross of marble over the Altar, which he thought ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler
... to annoy her further. This young lady's brother has been with us all day; he left us only by accident, and by forcing her to remain here alone you are acting outrageously. If you knew anything of decency, or ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... thing for which there is no necessity, and which might subject you to impertinent observations. No, I'll set about disposing of my personal property at once; that will soon bring Mr. Daggett to some sense of decency." ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... matrimony had arisen from the fact that he had been amusing himself with a girl who was nothing else than an attractive and finely-dressed harlot, named Brandonia Seroni, the last woman in all Milan whom he could with decency receive into his house. And the pitiful story was not yet complete. In marrying her the foolish youth had burdened himself with her mother, two or more sisters, and three brothers, the last-named ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... an attendant came in and filled other cups,—we may suppose for all the other personators. This was called 'the cup of repose or comfort;' and the sacrifice was thus concluded,—in all sobriety and decency. ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... "Decency. I was wrapped up in it," replied the skipper. "Where I came from or how I got there I don't know more than Adam. I s'pose I must have been ill; I seem to remember taking something out of a bottle pretty often. Some old gentleman in the crowd took me ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... murmured Dr. Lavendar. "Shame is a curious thing, William. It's like some of your medicines. The right amount cures. Too much kills. I've seen that with hard drinkers. Where a drunkard is a poor, uneducated fellow, shame gives him a good boost towards decency. But a man of education, William, a man of opportunity—if he wakes up to what he has been doing, shame gives him such a shove he is apt to go all round the circle, and come up just where he started! Shame ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... orderly, eager to drill and without a vestige of bluster—these poor peasants are of a very different stuff from the emasculated, conceited scum which has palmed itself off on Europe as representative Frenchmen. The families with whom they lodge speak with wonder of their sobriety, their decency, and their simple ways, and in their hearts almost despise them because they do not ravish their daughters or pillage their cellars; and neither swear every half-hour to die for their country, nor yell the "Marseillaise." If Paris be saved, it will be thanks to ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... knowledge of which, if it be really so, can be used against him with terrible—yes, fatal effect. I now can understand very easily why he was so strangely and frantically eager to betroth his child to the son of Lord Chetwynde—why he trampled on all decency, and bound his own daughter, little more than a baby, to a stranger—why he purchased Guy Molyneux, body and soul, for money. All is plain from this. But, after all, it is a puzzle. He makes so high a profession of honor that if his profession ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... their old companion. But they were proud, as they well might be; for it was a privilege even to have beheld him, and in that homage they recognised and felt the tribute that was paid to their order. The instinctive decency of Scottish feeling had accorded to these men a fitting and conspicuous place. Around them were the women of their families of all ages—from the matron in her coif to the bashful maiden with the snood—and even children; for few were left at home on that day of general jubilee. These, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... know what I mean, of course," said the little clerk almost brutally: "I've waited, and waited, to see if you would have the decency, and the gratitude, and the honesty, to offer me a trifle out of It; but I see I might wait till dooms-day before you would ever think of thinking of anybody but yourself. So now shell out without more words or I'll blow ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth. In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... first spreading currents, the human wretches of the place cast their street and house foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes; which, having neither energy to cart away, nor decency enough to dig into the ground, they thus shed into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it will float and melt, far away, in all places where God meant those waters to bring joy and health. And, in a little pool behind some houses farther in the village, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... it. But now, I was told, they were the chief promoters of a shameful traffic, and that for a spike-nail, or any other thing they value, they would oblige the women to prostitute themselves, whether they would or no; and even without any regard to that privacy which decency required. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... all the sad contempt of the natural and recognised forms of beauty, delicacy, or even decency, into which some may have allowed themselves to be betrayed by their eagerness to throw off intolerable intellectual fetters, must not render us unjust to the sounder aspect of the movement. Nor can those vagaries prevent us from giving a due meed of admiring praise to the heroism displayed ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... had the decency," he went on, more slowly, "to, as he thought, retain his wife's private papers. He had caused the contents of the various drawers to be dumped out upon a chair. But there was one drawer of which he knew nothing—a secret drawer, known only to my client. ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... look her into decency, but in vain. She sighed, and even groaned; but Mrs. Downe Wright would not be dolorous, and was not to be taken in, either by sigh or groan, crape-fan or prayer-book. There was nobody her Ladyship stood so much in awe of as Mrs. Downe Wright. She had an instinctive ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... in it any adequate sense of its gloom; of the utter, callous, brutal indifference of the so-called nurses; of the neglect of the poor patients by those who were paid to attend to them; of the absence of even common decency; of the desperate persistent attempts made by everybody concerned to impress upon the wretched mortals who were brought there that they were chargeable to the parish and put there for form's sake, prior to being shovelled into a hole in the adjoining churchyard? The infirmary nurses ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... merged into his later employment of a designer and etcher of book illustration, by which no doubt he achieved his reputation. In answer to those who tell us that he never produced a drawing which could call a blush into the cheek of modesty, and never raised a laugh at the expense of decency, we will only say that we can produce at least a score of instances to the contrary. To go no further than "The Scourge," we will refer them to three: his Dinner of the Four-in-Hand Club at Salthill, in vol. i.; his Return to Office (1st July, 1811), ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... would say to them, in the eternity of soul and love, and therefore the nature sacrament is not for you. But having presented yourselves at its sacred table, and partaken of its rites, do not, if only for motives of mere decency, betake yourselves to the denunciation of that of which, indeed, you were ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan |
