"Decent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the new giant and the old—the struggle for the caucuses and the polls—had begun. Miss Sadler cared but little and understood less of all this matter. She lingered over the sentences which described Jethro Bass as a monster of iniquity, as a pariah with whom decent men would have no intercourse, and in the heat of her passion that one who had touched him had gained admittance to the most exclusive school for young ladies in the country ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sufficient to observe, that the use of beer and ale had produced none of those dreadful effects which were the consequences of drinking geneva; and since the prohibition of the distilling of malt-spirits had taken place, the common people were become apparently more sober, decent, healthy, and industrious: a circumstance sufficient to induce the legislature not only to intermit, but even totally to abolish the practice of distillation, which has ever been productive of such intoxication, riot, disorder, and distemper, among the lower class of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... prelates and ministers who would have sent to the flames an unoffending woman if she denied the authority of the Pope, were not the men to suffer him to escape who had not only overturned the papal power in England, but had deprived them of their sees and sent them to the Tower. No matter how decent the forms of law or respectful the agents of the crown, Cranmer had not the shadow of a hope; and hence he was certainly weak, to say the least, to trust to any deceitful promises made to him. What his enemies were bent upon was his recantation, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... but a sorry hospitality that you will receive from us, regard had to that which should behove unto you, an I may judge by that which I apprehend from your carriage and that of your companions; but in truth you could nowhere out of Pavia have found any decent place of entertainment; wherefore, let it not irk you to have gone somedele beside your way, to have a little less unease.' Meanwhile, his servants came round about the travellers and helping them to dismount, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... don't make life very interesting, do you? Do you think it's interesting to spend the summer in this horrible old house with the paper falling off the walls and our rotten old furniture that I work my hands off trying to make look decent and can't, and every other girl I know at the seashore with motor-cars and motor-boats, or getting a trip abroad and buying her clothes in Paris? What do you offer to ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... attracted into the hole. Golf, he contends, is a recreation, and the true aim of golf legislation should be to make the game easier, not more difficult; to attract the largest possible number of players and so to keep up the green-fees and pay a decent salary to secretaries ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... getting late in the afternoon so I proposed to the men that we take the bodies back to where we had found their camp, as we had no way of burying the bodies in a decent manner, we had to wait until the train came up to us. We laid the bodies side by side under a tree and then we went into camp for the night as there was good grass for the horses. We staked them out close to camp. We had seen no Indians all day, so we did not think ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... the warrant that morning, Charley Balaam had shown Carrington the road to the Forks, assuring him when they separated that with a little care and decent use of his eyes it would be possible to fetch up there and not pass plumb through the settlement without knowing where he was. But Carrington had found the Forks without difficulty. He had seen the old mill his grandfather had built almost a hundred years ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... any rate it's worth trying," cried Robin impatiently. "We must, I suppose, eat humble pie after the things you said to him, Aunt Clare, the other day, but I must confess it's the only chance. He will be decent about it, I'm sure—I think you scarcely realise how ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... what they could be made into decent soldiers in time; but they don't seem to have anybody ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... developed this character at full length in a book he would have preserved for ever in literature a type of great humour and great value, and a type which may only too soon be disappearing from English history. He would have eternalised the English waiter. He still exists in some sound old taverns and decent country inns, but there is no one left really capable of singing his praises. I know that Mr. Bernard Shaw has done something of the sort in the delightfully whimsical account of William in You Never Can ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... friendly arm Ashurst went along, up a hill, down a hill, away out of the town, while the voice of Halliday, redolent of optimism as his face was of sun, explained how "in this mouldy place the only decent things were the bathing and boating," and so on, till presently they came to a crescent of houses a little above and back from the sea, and into the centre one ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of domestic happiness, would we earnestly advise a decent, nay, a strict regard to personal habits, so far, at least, as the feelings of others are concerned. "It is seldom." writes a traveller, "that I find associates in inns who come up to my ideas of what is right and proper ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... he swept along, followed by the faction, a great body of citizens of the lower orders, decent substantial men, came crowding toward the Campus, and paused to inquire the cause of the tumult, which had left its visible effects in the flushed visages and knotted ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... course, Lancaster, though he will have retired from business, will have quite a decent income of his own when the mines ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... His forehead mark'd with many a care-worn furrow, Whose feeble body, bending o'er a staff, Still shew that once it was the seat of strength, Tho' now it shakes like some old ruin'd tow'r, Cloth'd indeed, but not disgrac'd with rags, He still maintains that decent dignity Which well becomes those who have serv'd their country. With tott'ring steps he to the cottage moves: The wife within, who hears his hollow cough, And patt'ring of iris stick upon the threshold, Sends out her little ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... as if not hearing the interruption, "have been for years doing what seems now to recoil on my unhappy head, strengthening his belief in himself by training his people for him, and turning savages into decent, well-drilled soldiers, who have made him the dread of the country for hundreds ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... striking evidences of the warm interest which the King felt in the colony was his sending out, in 1728, a number of decent girls, each with a trunk filled with linen and clothing (from which they were called filles a la cassette, or girls with a chest), who were to be disposed of under the direction of the Ursuline nuns, in marriage to the colonists. Other consignments followed; ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... Le Roy, the King's watch-maker, a man of character in his business, who shewed a small clock made to find the longitude[1163].—A decent man. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of a brutal militarism (though you were that, all right). We knew that you must have something of the beast in your hearts. How it got there was another matter; we only knew that it was there and that while it remained you were not fit for intercourse with decent men. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... I ask you not to smoke? When a chap's honour an' reputation an' all that sort of thing is being weighed in the balance, sir, believe me, smokin' isn't decent—it isn't ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... celestial, and to every limb Suitable grace diffused, so well he feigned: Under a coronet his flowing hair In curls on either cheek played; wings he wore Of many a coloured plume, sprinkled with gold; His habit fit for speed succinct, and held Before his decent steps a silver wand. He drew not nigh unheard; the Angel bright, Ere he drew nigh, his radiant visage turned, Admonished by his ear, and straight was known The Arch-Angel Uriel, one of the seven Who in God's ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... what you are," answered Seabrooke, continuing his reproaches, instead of giving the straightforward answer which he considered unnecessary, "that you have not the decent manliness to demand that which rightfully belonged to you because you were ashamed of your own folly and weakness, but must go and ransack in my quarters to find your money. Let me go; I wish nothing more to ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... barrow-fulls of soil only to cover the sand which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that meagre assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and Art, which I call my front-yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments, acorn-tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... a lot—and Hattie is beginning again her old talk that she MUST have more money in order to live 'even decent.' It sounds very familiar to me, and to Jim, I suspect, poor fellow. I saw him the other night, and from what he said, and what she says, I can see pretty well how things are going. She's trying to get some of her rich friends to give Jim a better position, ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... garments of enlightened self-government, but underneath those garments are, or were, the same vermin that infested the garments of so many communities less clean—parasites that suck existence from God's gifts to decent people. Indeed, that human vermin at one time infested East Haven even more than the other and neighboring towns; perhaps just because its clothing of civilization was more soft and warm than theirs; perhaps (and upon the face this latter is the more likely explanation of the two) because, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... rather have alledged their cleanliness, and the frequent washing of their beds and blankets, to be the cause of it, which when the French, the Dutch, and Italians do less regard, they more breed this plague. But the English that take great care to be cleanly and decent, are seldom troubled with them." Also, on p. 1092, he says, 'As for dressing the body: all Ireland is noted for this, that it swarms almost with Lice. But that this proceeds from the beastliness of the people, and want of cleanly women ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... merely for the purpose of deciding personal supremacy, there remained sufficient public morality to condemn any baron who suffered himself to be guided openly by ambition alone. Some reasonably decent cause had to be found. Now the Emperor, though, as above stated, communicating his will verbally to Nobunaga, had not sent him any written commission. The necessary pretext was furnished, however, by the relations between the members of the Saito family of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... in my letters that I did not like it. It would have been more decent in you to stay in Portland, among the people whom I had requested to take care of you. However, you are accustomed to have your own way. I can only observe that when a woman will have her own way, she ought to ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... Library, the World's Classics, the Universal Library. Such volumes are to be found in many refined and strenuous homes—oftener unopened than opened—but still there! But does this estimable practice aid the living author to send his children to school in decent clothes? He whom I am anxious to meet is the man who will not willingly let die the author who is not yet dead. No society for the prevention of the death of corpses will help me to pay ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... rereading. At the top of all I should place Fay Yauger's "Planter's Charm," published in a volume of the same title. With it belongs "The Hired Man on Horseback," by Eugene Manlove Rhodes, a long poem of passionate fidelity to his own decent kind of men, with power to ennoble the reader, and with the form necessary to all beautiful composition. This is the sole and solitary piece of poetry to be found in all the myriads of rhymes classed as "cowboy poetry." I'd want Stanley Vestal's ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... a decent end, Shrewder fellows than your friend. Fare you well, for ill fare I: Live, lads, ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... inch and a half, black bobwig in buckle, a check shirt, a silk handkerchief, a hanger, with a brass handle, girded to his thigh by a furnished lace belt, and a good oak plant under his arm. Thus equipped, he set out with me (who by his bounty made a very decent appearance) for my grandfather's house, where we were saluted by Jowler and Caesar, whom my cousin, young master, had let loose at our approach. Being well acquainted with the inveteracy of these curs, I was about to betake myself to my heels, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... he was the life of their house; and Frank said he knew how that was,—that he had a life of the house of his own; and then the father thanked him very simply and touchingly, and with the decent New England self-restraint, which is doubtless so much better than any sort of effusion. "Say good-night to the gentleman, Freddy," he said at the door; and Freddy with closed eyes murmured a good-night from far within the land of ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... condemn as beneath contempt the spirit which drives him to an isolation, in bearing which the black shows himself the superior of the white. We do not ask nor do we care to encourage any thing more than decent courtesy. But the young gentlemen who boast of holding only official intercourse with their comrade should remember that no one of them stands before the country in any different light from him. West Point is an academy for the training of young ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... wounded modesty for anything that he ever read secretly of Hood's? Dr. Johnson says that dirty images were as natural to Swift as sublime ones were to Milton;—we may say that images at once lambent and laughable were those which were natural to Hood. Even when his mirth is broadest, it is decent; and while the merest recollection of his drollery will often convulse the face in defiance of the best-bred muscles, no thought arises which the dying need regret. Who can ever forget "The Lost Heir," or remember it but to laugh at ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Still the nurse had said how pleased Polly was. By George, it is strange what will please people. He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying horses, how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the sight of the first decent sized wheat field just went to his heart, when he was coming back. Someway he could not laugh at anything that morning, for Polly was dead. And Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed to see her yet, how she ran after the colt the day ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... live in the good day of which John Bright spoke. Yet while a public speaker today is in no dread of arrest or imprisonment for any decent expression of opinion, the platform is not without its hindrances; and some of these will never be cured, while babies cry, architects sacrifice acoustics to style, young people do their courting in public, janitors smother ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... important advantage that the scheme is applicable to all cases. For instance, although we have in English from 30 to 40 different ways of forming the feminine such as father, mother; brother, sister; uncle, aunt; bull, cow; stallion, mare; fox, vixen; etc., yet in most cases we possess no decent or sensible way to indicate the sex of the individuals; as, for instance, in the cases of teacher, doctor, friend, cousin, neighbor, witness, elephant, camel, goat, typist, stenographer, companion, ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... paternal benediction on the young pair, and on the happy country which was to possess them for its king and queen. France being thus securely riveted to Rome, other matters could be talked of more easily. Francis made all decent overtures to the pope in behalf of Henry; if the pope was to be believed indeed, he was vehemently urgent.[177] Clement in turn made suggestions for terms of alliance between Francis and Charles, "to the advantage of the Most Christian king;"[178] and thus parried the remonstrances. The ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... he protested fiercely. "You got a charge against me you haven't proved, and I don't guess you ever will prove. I'm a prisoner by force, not by law. I demand the right to decent treatment. I need to get papers from the Fort. There's things there to help my case. Maybe you figger to beat me through holding me from my rights. It would rank well with the way you've already acted. I need to see Father Jose ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... forgot the "only decent-looking woman in Gumbolt," she did not forget him. The invitation of a sovereign is equivalent to a command the world over; and Terpsichore was as much the queen regnant of Gumbolt as Her Majesty, Victoria, was Queen of England, or of any other country in her wide realm. She was more; she ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... and give her to Vinicius! Thou hast the right to do so, for she is a hostage; and if thou take her, thou wilt inflict pain on Aulus.' He agreed; he had not the least reason not to agree, all the more since I gave him a chance to annoy decent people. They will make thee official guardian of the hostage, and give into thy hands that Lygian treasure; thou, as a friend of the valiant Lygians, and also a faithful servant of Caesar, wilt not waste any of the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... It was nothing else than the fear that you'd get aboard before them that made the men think of boarding the barque in such a hurry, and so far out. I knew the men well, poor fellows, and they were all decent men and good ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... inconsistent—to be a Conservative at home and a Liberal abroad. There were very good reasons for keeping the Irish in their places; but what had that to do with it? The point was this—when any decent man read an account of the political prisons in Naples his gorge rose. He did not want war; but he saw that without war a skilful and determined use of England's power might do much to further the cause of the Liberals in Europe. It was a difficult ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... United States, July 4 (N.A.N.A.)—'A decent respect for the opinion of mankind' dictates the content of this summary. Less than two centuries past, a small group of smugglers, merchants and planters united in an insurrection which in its course gathered to itself ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... is left for them. They are not needed. The cow and the pig have gone, and the horse is still more undesirable. A higher public ideal of health and cleanliness is working toward such banishment very swiftly; and then we shall have decent streets, instead of stables made out of strips of cobblestones bordered by sidewalks. The worst use of money is to make a fine thoroughfare, and then turn it over to horses. Besides that, the change will put the humane societies out of business. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... as the clock struck eleven, and entered by the dark, arched door, and went up the damp, stone steps, as Bosio had done a fortnight earlier. She was admitted by the decent woman whose one eye was of a china blue, and she waited for Giuditta in the same small sitting-room, of which the one heavily curtained window looked out upon an inner court. She did not know that Bosio had ever been there, but in her thoughts of him she felt his presence, and ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur. Their very numbers and their crowded and swift movement deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to which the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... know very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from one another, and how little is to be learned from reading many books; but at the same time, when one writes upon any particular period, it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it upon which he can lay his hands." This avowal proves that Robertson knew little of the history of Charles V. till he began the task; and he further confesses that "he had no knowledge of the Spanish or German," which, for the history of a Spanish ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... pleased Constantine to the point of saying: "Do you want a loan, O'Valley? I think you'll make good. Then it's up to my daughter; she knows whom she wants to marry better than I do. You're a decent sort—her mother would ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... as well as I do the contents of my linen chest? I have never before known you open your purse strings one inch wider than was necessary. Have I not always had to ask, until I am verily ashamed, before I can get a new gown for myself, or a decent cloak for the girls? You have ever been hard fisted with your money, and never disposed to spend a groat, save on good occasion. There is not the wife of a trader of your standing in Plymouth but makes a braver ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... and in one little chapel the priest was baptizing an infant. We went in and looked on. It was the first time I had ever witnessed this monstrous mummery in the Catholic church; and I called in the Dr. and Mr. S., who were looking at some statuary. The priest was hardly decent at his work. He did it all in a hurry,—put oil and something else on the child, fore and aft,—and how men and women could stand and let the stupidity take place on their children, I cannot understand. After seeing Pascal's grave, and thinking ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... commanding officer on board, and the Major called out to me to beat to quarters. It might have been for a wedding, he sang it out so cheerful. We'd had word already that 'twas to be parade order; and the men fell in as trim and decent as if they were going to church. One or two even tried to shave at the last moment. The Major wore his medals. One of the seamen, seeing I had work to keep the drum steady—the sling being a bit loose for me, and the wind what you remember—lashed it tight with a piece of rope; and ...
— The Roll-Call Of The Reef • A. T. Quiller-Couch (AKA "Q.")
... I might have a book I needed. She did our household drudgery that the servant's wage might go for my tuition in a thorough school. Oh, how we labored, she and I together, cheating night of many hours o'er books and study that were to repay us at the last with decent independence. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... artificial polity continued unchanged. The ancient form of the representation remained; and precisely because the form remained, the spirit departed. Then came that pressure almost to bursting, the new wine in the old bottles, the new society under the old institutions. It is now time for us to pay a decent, a rational, a manly reverence to our ancestors, not by superstitiously adhering to what they, in other circumstances, did, but by doing what they, in our circumstances, would have done. All history ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... better not take it off altogether before so many decent people; for, to say the truth, I've got nothing under it but my bare skin," said Larry to ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... his room and dress quickly, in order not to add to his crimes the additional one of unpunctuality, for unpunctuality, so Lord Ashbridge held, was the politeness not only of kings, but of all who had any pretence to decent breeding. His father gave him a carefully-iced welcome, his mother the tip of her long, camel-like lips, and they waited solemnly for the appearance of Aunt Barbara, who, it would seem, had forfeited her claims ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... that, after the birth of Frances, Sir Edward and Lady Elizabeth "lived little together, although they had the prudence to appear to the world to be on decent terms till the heiress was marriageable." Coke had been astute enough to secure a comfortable country-house, at a very convenient distance from London, through Lady Elizabeth. Her ladyship had held a mortgage upon Stoke Pogis, a place that belonged formerly to the Earls ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the Disposer of all things may so order it, that it happen not to me in my own house—but rather in some decent inn—at home, I know it,—the concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul, that I shall ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... "How can you say such things? If he came to me at that hour, I would settle him. No, Boris Pavlovich, live like other decent people. Stay with us, have dinner with us, go out with us, keep suspicious people at a distance, see how I administer your estate, and find fault ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... room, but decent. The boy was discovered sitting up in bed—a bright-faced little fellow with black hair. Clara closed the door, then turned and looked at her husband. The light made a glistening appearance on her eyes; she had become silent, allowing facts to speak ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... in everything he did. He sold his goods at the marked price, for cash only—got a decent profit and told ...
— Sam Lambert and the New Way Store - A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks • Unknown
... Vertrees. I made him understand that," said Edith, demurely, "and he's promised to try and meet Mr. Vertrees and be nice to him. It's just this way: if we don't know THEM, it's practically no use in our having build the New House; and if we DO know them and they're decent to us, we're right with the right people. They can do the whole thing for us. Bobby Lamhorn told Sibyl he was going to bring his mother to call on her and on mamma, but it was weeks ago, and I notice he hasn't done it; and if Mrs. Vertrees decides not ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... hung out, and I noticed this question was cleverly eluded, but I heard him say afterwards that he was in regular work, and liked his present governor, and that the old woman who looked after him was a tidy, decent lady, and kept things comfortable. My thoughts strayed a little after this. The sight of Mr. Hamilton had disturbed me. What would he think when Gladys showed him my telegram? He had promised to finish our conversation this ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to be christened, and the parson said: 'You'll never be able to put that child in a decent bed on account of his prickles.' Which was true, but they shook down some straw for him behind the stove, and there he lay for eight years. His father grew very tired of him and often wished him dead, but he did not die, but lay ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... at Rock Spring, I wanted to go to a Fourth of July celebration. Those celebrations was mighty rough them days and Grandpa didn't think that would be a good place for a decent little girl, so he didn't want me to go. I cried and hollered and cut up something awful. Grandma told him to give me a good thrashin' but Grandpa didn't lak to do that, so he promised me I could go to ride if I wouldn't go ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... all subjects were most decided, but on no single subject were they more decided than on this very one of a Kiss. No Decent Woman, said Miss Eliza with a terrible emphasis, would allow a man's lips to Touch hers, or permit him to embrace her, unless ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... shall; and it will be a treat to sit down at a decent table with a white cloth on, and eat bread ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... week in August, when the messenger arrived with the long-hoped-for report of the ratification of the treaty of peace, and General Mason's proclamation officially announcing it, there were not enough men left in the valley, outside of the barracks, to give a decent round of cheers for the blessing ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... he says, "but by the grace of God I fret at nothing." Goethe, who reached his eighty-third year, is another good example. Then there is Boerhaave, one of the most celebrated physicians of modern times, who held that decent mirth is the salt of life. Indeed in the case of most old people, we believe it will be found that cheerfulness is ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... chosen to build this country house, in which he received strangers with a generosity free from ostentation. He went himself to meet the two travelers, whom he led into a commodious apartment, where he desired them to repose themselves a little. Soon after he came and invited them to a decent and well-ordered repast during which he spoke with great judgment of the last revolutions in Babylon. He seemed to be strongly attached to the queen, and wished that Zadig had appeared in the lists to dispute the crown. "But the people," added he, "do not deserve to have ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... also has everything to do with how your dough behaves and how your bread comes out. And how well your bread nourishes you. Thirteen percent wheat will not make a decent loaf—fourteen percent is generally considered 2 quality and comprises the bulk of cheap bread grain. When you hear in the financial news that a bushel of wheat is selling for a certain price, they mean 2. Bakers ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... tuae memor, talem te cum Vitebergensibus tuis iam geras, qualem te ab initio huius causae gessisti, hoc est, ut ea sentias, dicas, scribas, agas, quae Philippum, doctorem Christianum, non aulicum philosophum decent." (Tschackert, 506.) ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... other; "my dear, he was as poor as a church mouse, and left Daisy only a hundred a year to live on. That is the one decent thing about Morley. He did take Daisy in, and he does treat her well, though to be sure she is a pretty girl, and, as I say, he ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... sad night,—that at the Commandant's hut, and a sad morning followed upon it. It must be remembered that they had there none of those appurtenances which are so necessary to make woe decent and misfortune comfortable. They sat through the night in the small hut, and in the morning they came forth with their clothes still wet and dirty, with their haggard faces, and weary stiff limbs, encumbered with the horrid task of burying that loved body among the forest ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... back, Captain Manual, welcome, welcome, all of you, my boys! as welcome as a breeze in the calm latitudes." As his eye, however, passed along the deck of the Alacrity, it encountered the shrinking figures of Cecilia and Katherine; and a dark shade of displeasure crossed his decent features, while he added: "How's this, gentlemen? The frigate of Congress is neither a ballroom nor a church, that is to be thronged ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... offspring, he will be fairly well posted, and he will be ready to imbibe more details, and you will have done much of your duty. His curiosity will be quickened and his interest is awakened. It depends upon the father. If your boy is honest and clean, open and decent, he will not fall without a fight, and while he is fighting he is maturing. If your picture of the consequences of the venereal diseases has been effective and vivid, he will grow up with a healthy horror of them. If your conduct as a father has been wise and exemplary, and if your home has the right ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... 'pegging away' until we get something done. And, one word more, Mrs. Mitchell; do not bring Juliet up to the slop-work trade. Get her a situation. When your husband is strong again and goes to work, then set the girl up with some decent clothes, and we will find her a ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... made memorable by a decent dinner; the special reason for it was the fact that Borasdine had presented our caterer with an old coat. I regretted I could not afford to reduce my wardrobe, else we would have secured another comfortable repast. Both steward and cook were somewhat negligently ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... unfortunate ones as I should have been. I had made assertions similar to this: "If you can't trust the Lord for healing, I would advise you to use remedies. Mother says that any one who would keep such an affliction any length of time is not decent." Many of the people were wounded because of my heartless way of talking, though I did ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... established in America. He had seen the effects of woman's presence in associations upon men, and he was sure that this same agency would have the effect of bringing politics to such a condition as that decent people of either sex might take part in it. As to the Bible declaring that man shall rule over woman, he found a similar case where it used to be quoted in support of the institution of slavery, but when the grander and more beautiful ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... but good that could be told of her," he said warmly. "I have known something of her for a long time, and there is not a more decent, respectable woman in the township. It is a mystery how she ever married that wretched fellow; but after she had married him she was a good wife, and did what little she could to keep him out of mischief. What is strangest of all, however, ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... He had observed the great men of both parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders of opposition without the mask of patriotism, and had heard the prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not over decent. During some months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson; and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson remained in London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the West of England, lived there as he had lived everywhere, and in 1743, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... known ... in other directions. I could give you four addresses ... but of course I wasn't going to give her one. Though there again ... if she'd told me the whole truth!... My God, women are such fools! And they prefer quackery ... look at the decent doctors they simply turn into charlatans. Though, there again, that all comes of letting a trade work mysteriously under the thumb of a benighted oligarchy ... which is beside the question. But one day I'll make you sit up on the subject ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... the Bawe, but they could only refer to custom. Some among them had always liked it for no reason in particular: shame seemed to lie dormant, and the sense could not be aroused by our laughing and joking them on their appearance. They evidently felt no less decent than we did with our clothes on; but, whatever may be said in favour of nude statues, it struck us that man, in a state of nature, is a most ungainly animal. Could we see a number of the degraded of our own lower classes in like guise, it is probable that, without the black colour which ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... sot," began the gambler, "you listen to me! I suppose if they could shift suspicion so that it would appear you had had something to do with the old man's murder, it would take Moxlow and the judge and any decent jury no time at all to hang you; for who would care a damn whether you were hanged or not! But you needn't worry, I'm going to manage this thing for you, I'm going to see that you don't get into trouble. Now, listen, you're ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... the British citizen of 1860 is above the rudimentary personage in prehistoric times from whom he has been gradually improved up to his present state of enlightenment and perfection. But each state has also its own troubles as well as its pleasures; and, though the former are a price which no decent fellow would boggle at for a moment, it is useless to pretend that ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... primary meetings as you do intelligent men. Women know that every corner in the house must be inspected if the house is to be clean. Fathers and brothers want women to vote so that they can have a decent place for a primary meeting, a decent place to vote in and a decent ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... support. Well, in his quiet way he draws on his courage. The history of the two years that passed before he came to Mr. Sloane is really absolutely edifying. He rescued his sisters and nieces from the deep waters, placed them high and dry, established them somewhere in decent gentility—and then found at last that his strength had left him—had dropped dead like an over-ridden horse. In short, he had worked himself to the bone. It was now his sisters' turn. They nursed him with all the added tenderness of gratitude for the past and terror ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... the villages were so numerous and near together, as hardly to exceed a coss from each other in any direction. This town was the best built of any I had seen in India, many of the houses being two stories high, and most of them good enough for decent shop-keepers, all covered with tiles. It had been the residence of a Rajput rajah, before the conquests of Akbar Shah, and stood at the foot of a great and strong rock, about which were many excellent works of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... benevolence, its active charity, and its mission of good will, I admire. When death's unwelcome presence rests within our portals, and obedient to his call a loved one has gone hence, we should give the mortal remains of the departed brother a decent sepulture; fondly cherish the remembrance of his virtues, and bury his frailties "beneath the clods which rest upon his bosom." We should then direct our thoughts and cares to the desolate home, where the widow, clad in the robes of grief, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... held over David's body, and that it had been decided that David Findlay had met his death at the hands of some unknown person or persons. There was nothing more left to be done but to give the body a decent burial. ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... It was the face of a Roman mother, tight-lipped, brown-eyed, and fierce. You may understand the kind of woman she was from the hands she employed on the farm. They were smugglers and night-malefactors to a man—and she liked that. The decent, slow-witted, gently devious type of rustic could not live under her. The neighbours round declared that the Lady Mary Kemp's farm was a hotbed of disorder. I expect it was, too; three of our men were hung up at Canterbury on one day—for horse-stealing and arson.... ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... gathered together over the doomed carcass of the city. Inquiring our way from Ram Allah to Jifna, some said there was a road without going to Beeri; some said there was none. At length we were put upon a pretty decent path. ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... should not be taken to prevent the fall of it into ruin. And it would be no less disgrace to religion, happily established in this kingdom, if it should have so little power over the minds of men as not to prevail with them to keep those eminent places of God's service in due and decent repair, which their forefathers built in times, by their own confession, not so full of the knowledge of God's truth as this present age is. I am not ignorant how many worthy works have been done of late in and about this City towards the building and repairing ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... tenderness of conscience, such a fervent desire of improvement, will rarely be found. It is, surely, not decent in those who are hardened in indifference to spiritual improvement, to treat this pious anxiety of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... out all right. Charlie's gone to fight, same as every decent young feller wants to do. He thinks the world of Maud and she does of him, but he was honorable enough not to ask her while he worked for you, Sam. He wrote the letter after he'd gone so as to make it easier for her to say no, if she felt like ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... is the august Prussian Travelling-Party: shove aside your bewitchments and bewilderments; hang a decent screen over many things! Poor Eberhard Ludwig, who is infinitely the gentleman, bestirs himself a good deal to welcome old royal friends; nor do we hear that the least thing went awry during this transit of the royalties. "Field of Blenheim, says your Majesty? ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... our quarters?" one of them said. "We have got some decent wine, and some really good cigars which came up from Lisbon last week, and there are lots of our fellows who will ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... Cedric, raising him up. "The son of Hereward knows how to keep his word, even when it has been passed to a Norman. But let me see thee use the dress and costume of thy English ancestry—no short cloaks, no gay bonnets, no fantastic plumage in my decent household. He that would be the son of Cedric, must show himself of English ancestry.—Thou art about to speak," he added, sternly, "and I guess the topic. The Lady Rowena must complete two years' mourning, as for a betrothed husband—all our Saxon ancestors would disown ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... very well off and successful, and thought ourselves of some consequence (as we now very often are, I beg to say), and showed it (as, I'm afraid, we sometimes do). He preferred the commonest artisan to M. Jourdain, the bourgeois gentilhomme, who was a very decent fellow, after all, and at least clean in his habits, and didn't use bad language or beat ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... of the sea as they were, found it advisable to disguise themselves in the sheep's clothing of zeal against the idolater. More creditable to the cause was the adherence of men like Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, a man of cool judgment and decent conversation. Coverdale, still active, was made a bishop. John Foxe published, all in the interests of his faith, the most popular and celebrated history of the time. Roger Ascham, Elizabeth's tutor, still looked to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... intelligence or superior acquirement to atone for his, crapulous; licentious, shameless life. His military efficiency at important emergencies was impaired and his life endangered by vile diseases. He was covetous and greedy beyond what was considered decent even in that cynical age. He received subsidies and alms with both hands from those who distrusted and despised him, but who could not eject him from his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... pleased with the celerity, if not with the perfection, of our work. Five-and-forty beds are ready; the rest will be so in a very few days. An old bad stable is converted into an excellent school-room. The chapel is decent, in place and in furniture. The eating-room is reasonably good. Twenty-five boys are received, clad in a cleanly and not unpleasing manner, and they are fed in an orderly way, with a wholesome and abundant diet. The masters are pleased ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... was not getting on. I would discover at odd times (generally about midnight) that I was totally inexperienced, greatly ignorant of business, and hopelessly unfit for any sort of command; and when the steward had to be taken to the hospital ill with choleraic symptoms I felt bereaved of the only decent person at the after end of the ship. He was fully expected to recover, but in the meantime had to be replaced by some sort of servant. And on the recommendation of a certain Schomberg, the proprietor of the smaller of the two hotels in the place, I engaged a Chinaman. Schomberg, ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... Warrington, and can't afford to be more particular than my neighbours. Video meliora, deteriora sequor, as we said at college. I have got a little sister, who is at boarding-school, not very far from here, and, as I keep a decent tongue in my head when I am talking with my little Patty, and expect others to do as much, sure I may try and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be made, the names of the most deserving applicants are to numbers of people perfectly well known. The members have now got before them a plain statement of fact as to these charges; and it is for them to say whether they are justifiable, becoming, or decent. I beg most earnestly and respectfully to put it to those gentlemen who belong to this institution, that must now decide, and cannot help deciding, what the Literary Fund is for, and what it is not ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... for such a strait, will not be so very frightened at an amount of plain-speaking, neither in itself immoral, nor, on the whole, impertinent. Had he docked his work of everything condemned by prudish theories, he might have made it more conventionally decent; but Michelet would have been puzzled to recognize himself in the poor maimed cripple that would then have borne ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... where Bok was sitting, "for hesitating at all about taking an English set of plates of the novel you speak of is because it is of anonymous authorship, a custom of writing which has grown out of all decent proportions in your country since the issue of that stupid ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... distorted mind. His regard for Necia was a careless whim, a rather aimless, satisfying hobby, not at all serious, entirely extraneous to his every-day life, and interesting only from its aimlessness, being as near to an unselfish and decent motive as the man had ever come. But it was not of sufficient consequence to stand out against or swerve the course of a quarrel; wherefore, he was gladdened by the news of ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... with which they had previously been acquainted. As soon as I had gone, the Turks and Circassians returned in full force; the old Bashi-Bazouk system was re-established; my old employes were persecuted; and a population which had begun to appreciate something like decent government was flung back to suffer the vast excesses of Turkish rule. The inevitable result followed; and thus it may be said that the egg of the present rebellion was laid in the three years during which I was allowed to govern the Soudan on ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... Daisy," said Patty, sternly. "Now, look here, if you'll just be friendly and decent, we needn't have such a bad time, but if you're going to be cross and cry all the time, I shall simply let you alone, and we'll have a horrid, ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... following his ancient models, ignored metaphysics altogether: jumped the life to come, and made his be-all and his end-all here:—in what was necessary, in deeds and thought and speech, to make individual, social, and political life staid, sincere, orderly, quiet, decent, and happy. He died a broken- hearted failure; than whom perhaps no man except the Lord ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... right. And Harboro wondered what was the matter with a man who saw the whole world, always, solely in relation to women. He sensed the fact that Peterson was not entirely comfortable. "He's probably never grown accustomed to being in the company of a decent woman," he concluded. He tried to launch the subject of old associates. It seemed that Peterson had been out in Durango for some time, but he had kept in touch with most of the fellows on the line to the ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... and, with a flaming countenance, called upon me peremptorily to produce her 'lawful husband.' Her loud, insolent, outrageous attack had the effect of enhancing my indignation, and I quite forget what I said to her, but I well remember that her manner became a good deal more decent. She was plainly under the impression that I wanted to appropriate her husband, or, at least, that he wanted to marry me; and she ran on at such a pace, and her harangue was so passionate, incoherent, and unintelligible, that I thought her out of her mind: she was far from it, however. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... can work and pay your way? The newspapers are always trying to persuade us to meddle in other folks's business;—I say, take care of your own affairs!—serve God and obey the laws of the country, and there won't be much going wrong with you! If you must read, read a decent book—something that will last—not a printed sheet full of advertisements that's fresh one day and torn up ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... next morning, his funeral was attended, and all the Europeans in the place, with many natives, were present. It may be some consolation to you to know that everything was performed in as decent a manner, as if he had been buried in our own dear native land. By his own request, he was interred on the south side of our darling first-born. It is a pleasant circumstance to me, that they sleep side by side. But it is infinitely more consoling to think, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... said I; let me advise thee to be a little decent; or I shall teach thee a lesson thou never learnedst ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... civility, as the conduct of the English missionaries may be thought, in withholding a decent reception to these persons, the latter were certainly to blame in needlessly placing themselves in so unpleasant a predicament. Under far better auspices, they might have settled upon some one of the thousand unconverted isles of the Pacific, rather than have forced themselves thus ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... you are tolerably made, Nor in assurance will you be deficient: Self-confidence acquire, be not afraid, Others will then esteem you a proficient. Learn chiefly with the sex to deal! Their thousand ahs and ohs, These the sage doctor knows, He only from one point can heal. Assume a decent tone of courteous ease, You have them then to humor as you please. First a diploma must belief infuse, That you in your profession take the lead: You then at once those easy freedoms use For which another many a year must plead; Learn how to feel with nice address The dainty ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... custom when death takes place. The two great toes are tied together, to make the body look decent; and formerly the hands were placed with the palms together, as if in the attitude of prayer, and were kept in that posture by tying ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Charles proceeded to Bentley. It took but little time to transform the woodcutter into a domestic servant, and to exchange his dress of green jump for a more decent suit of grey cloth. He departed on horseback with his supposed mistress behind him, accompanied by her cousin, Mr. Lassells; and, after a journey of three days, reached[b] Abbotsleigh, Mr. Norton's house, without interruption or danger. Wilmot stopped at Sir John Winter's, a place ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... Mayhew. "That sort of trick isn't played on folks in any decent resort on shore. I don't understand Mr. Benson's conduct. I remember his mishap at Dunhaven. I remember the plight he got into at Annapolis; and now he and Mr. Hastings are found in this questionable shape. I am very much afraid these young men do not conduct themselves, on ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... messages had reached Grismet; he would not have had to justify himself then. But they had not, and he could not find a way to tell this cold old man of what he had learned about the robots and their unity with men. "I did it because it was the only decent thing to do." ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... in the least believe his own argument. If he had come from a city he would have dismissed the matter as none of his business. But he came from the clean Southwest where every straight girl is under the protection of every decent man. If she was in danger because of her innocence it was up to him to look after her. There was no more competent man in Graham County than Clay Lindsay, but he recognized that this was a delicate affair in which ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... gracious, Mr. Berry!" gasped Mrs. Harmon, "what have you done?" "If it's back pay, Mrs. Harmon, we'll pass round the hat. Don't you be troubled. That fellow wasn't fit to be in a decent house." ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... exceptional and experimental cannot possibly find a place in a syllabus which is to bind all schools and all teachers alike, and which must therefore be so framed that the least capable teacher, working under the least favourable conditions, may hope, when his pupils are examined on it, to achieve with decent industry a decent modicum of success. Under the control of a uniform syllabus, the schools which are now specialising and experimenting, and so giving a lead to the rest, would have to abandon whatever was interesting in their respective curricula, and fall into ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... her son presented the stranger as his good friend and neighbor, Keith Cameron. She was still privately convinced that he looked a criminal—though, if pressed, she must surely have admitted that he was an uncommonly good-looking young outlaw. It would seem almost as if she regarded his being a decent, law-abiding citizen ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... substantial and very decent. One could walk all round, seeing little front gardens with auriculas and saxifrage in the shadow of the bottom block, sweet-williams and pinks in the sunny top block; seeing neat front windows, little porches, little ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... profit out of the follies and the vices of the world. Its prices are too high, its houses are too large, its promenades and its public places have cost too much for it to be able to pay its way as the sober, decent capital of a moderate-sized country, where there are few great fortunes. If the Parisians decide to become poor and respectable, they are to be congratulated upon the resolve, but the present notion seems to be that they are to become rich and respectable—a ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... coarsest materials, are patched, and threadbare, and valueless; hundreds of houses without anything in them deserving the name of furniture; hundreds of beds without clothing, and hundreds of children whose excuses for clothes are barely sufficient, with every contrivance decent poverty can suggest, to cover the body as civilized society demands. In the towns I have enumerated, in fact, if the least reliance may be placed in newspaper reports, in every town and village in the country ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... now high time to look about me for a decent Execution against next Sessions. I hate a lazy Rogue, by whom one can get nothing 'till he is hang'd. A Register of the Gang, [Reading.] Crook-finger'd Jack. A Year and a half in the Service; Let me see how much the Stock owes to his industry; one, two, three, four, five Gold Watches, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... down moodily, "That," said I, as a series of small explosions popped like pistol shots, "is the cafe; and, oh, Lord! there goes the only decent Scotch in all Liege!" ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... confused richness the terribly distinct little faces characteristic of these artists stare at you with a solemn formalism. Some are faded and injured, and many so ill-lighted and ill-placed that you can only glance at them with decent conjecture; the great group, however— four paintings by Giotto on the ceiling above the altar—may be examined with some success. Like everything of that grim and beautiful master they deserve examination; but with the effect ever of carrying one's appreciation in and in, as ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... before her marriage; and the London world to which she had belonged pitied poor Fanny Evelyn when she married the young clergyman, and went to settle in that smoky hole Turley; a very nest of Chartism and Atheism, in a part of the country which all the decent families had had to leave for years. However, somehow or other she didn't seem to care. If her husband's living had been amongst green fields and near pleasant neighbours she would have liked it better—that ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... will be over, as far as Lola is concerned. Not that she will be getting more stupid with increasing age! indeed, as she grows older, she will probably be better than ever able to understand what is said to her, but she will no longer find it worth her while to pull herself together so as to do decent work. I shall, of course, do all I can as far as trying to influence her so as to put off the evil moment—but the fact is that one has here to do with a remarkably sensitive and obstinate living-creature, and one that is quite ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... the Rectory's strict rules of conduct as little as its feckless poverty (for so she called it). That a household which held its head so high should be content with a parlour furnished like a barn, sit down to meals scarcely better than the day-labourers' about them, and rest ignored by families of decent position in the neighbourhood, puzzled and irritated her. "Better he paid his debts and fed his children," was her answer when Sam put in a word for his father's spiritual ambitions. Her slight awe of the Wesleys' abilities—even she could ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it was frightfully decent to do what you liked; the lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps. "Only," he added, "of course I wish I was in town, and could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... everybody within twelve miles round, has heard over and over again. Now, Mr. Hunter, I have one thing to say, if you choose to go into the field behind the house, and fight the young man, you can. I'll back him for ten pounds; but no fighting in my kitchen—because why? I keeps a decent kind of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... are turned. Let us go up into the higher land for the present—some place where they won't know where we are. They may grow friendlier when they see we mean no harm. They have honest, open faces and look like a decent crowd to me. They're just ignorant—probably never saw ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... disapproval that was far from being inarticulate. His most innocent flirtations were watched with the straining eagerness which a group of unexercised terriers concentrates on the slightest movements of a human being who may be reasonably considered likely to take them for a walk. No decent-souled mortal can long resist the pleading of several pairs of walk-beseeching dog-eyes; James Cushat-Prinkly was not sufficiently obstinate or indifferent to home influences to disregard the obviously expressed wish of his family that he should become enamoured of some nice marriageable ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... afternoon a decent middle-aged woman came to the house, with a letter from Mr. Merrick. She was well known to the doctor as a trustworthy and careful person, who had nursed his own wife; and she would be assisted, from time to time, by ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... hundred and eighty-four years. The spotless white walls, the green blinds, the graceful Colonial spire, are meetly set in an environment which strikes no note of dissonance. On either side are quaint, narrow streets, lined with decent door-yards and houses almost as old as the church. Within the cool interior the cottagers, and representatives of a native aristocracy—direct descendants of the English of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who are ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... flattering vote to his credit, however, he could be very sure that he had made a wise choice between the forge and the lawyer's desk. At first he did not come into special notice in the legislature. He wore, according to the custom of the time, a decent suit of blue jeans, and was known simply as a rather quiet young man, good-natured and sensible. Soon people began to realize that he was a man to be reckoned with in the politics of the county and State. He ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... a taking of her part, B. A woman as has a husband as finds her with her wittels regular, and with what's decent and comfortable beside, ought to be contented. I've never said no other than that. I ain't no patience with your saucy madames as can't remember as they're eating an honest man's bread. Drat 'em all; what is it they wants? They don't know what they wants. It's just hidleness,—cause ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the objects of satire, but the satirists rarely had any inclination for the role of revolutionaries or martyrs. The recent revival of learning had developed a scepticism which was however habitually accompanied by a decent profession of orthodoxy. That there was prevalent unrest had long been obvious; that there was risk of disturbing developments was not unrecognised; but that these things were the prelude to a vast revolution had been realised neither ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domrmy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish priest (cur) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statistical view: certain weeds mark poverty in the soil; fairies mark its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before cities does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed victualer. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... applied, the expenses of tobacco, pipes, snuff, and spitting boxes—and of the injuries which are done to the clothing, during a whole life, the aggregate sum would probably amount to several hundred dollars. To a labouring man this would be a decent portion for a son or daughter, while the same sum saved by a man in affluent circumstances, would have enabled him, by a contribution to a public charity, to have lessened a large portion of the ignorance or misery of mankind." But Lord Stanhope makes a far more liberal estimate ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... sent you this Letter, But Yarmouth and I thought perhaps 'twould be better To wait till the Irish affairs are decided— (That is, till both Houses had prosed and divided, With all due appearance of thought and digestion)— For, tho' Hertford House had long settled the question, I thought it but decent, between me and you, That the two other ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... fact, he's a very decent five. And there you are again. In any other family, Bob would be thought rather a nut. ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... when I saw the diggers looking at one another significantly and tapping their foreheads. I resolved to tell them nothing further about myself, well knowing that the more I told them the more convinced they would be that I was a wandering lunatic. I learned that these men were a party of decent young fellows from Coolgardie. They offered me a meal of tea and damper, and pressed me to stay the night with them, but I declined their hospitality. I gratefully accepted a pair of trousers, but declined the offer of a pair of boots, feeling ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... in the evening, in a street of Liverpool, I saw a decent man, of the lower orders, taken much aback by being roughly brushed against by a rowdy fellow. He looked after him, and exclaimed indignantly, "Is that a Yankee?" It shows the kind of character ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I was only a little bit vexed. Things can be also very nice; of course, there are certainly decent men in the world as well as others. Oh, yes, things can be very nice, ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... no sympathy for the unsuccessful man who is not hungry. If a fellow mortal be ragged, humanity will subscribe to mend his clothes; but humanity will subscribe nothing to mend his ragged hopes so long as his outside coat shall be whole and decent. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... letters, on a strip of wood nailed to the bricks over his door, tell us he is a dealer in "Imported and other liquors." Next door to Mr. Korner's tipsy looking grocery lives Mr. Muffin, the coffin-maker, who has a large business with the disciples who look in at Korner's. Mrs. Downey, a decent sort of body, who lives up the alley, and takes sixpenny lodgers by the dozen, may be seen in great tribulation with her pet pig, who, every day, much to the annoyance of Mr. Korner, manages to get out, and into the pool of decaying matter opposite ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... said the more and more interesting Master, "don't imagine I talk about my books specifically; they're not a decent subject—il ne manquerait plus que ca! I'm not so bad as you may apprehend! About myself, yes, a little, if you like; though it wasn't for that I brought you down here. I want to ask you something—very much indeed; I value this chance. Therefore sit down. We're practical, but there is a ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... on, another complained that when the river was falling, the water was so muddy the fish would not bite; and even in the best of seasons, a fisherman had "a hard pull uv it; hit ain't no business fer a decent man!" The other day, when the river was rising, a Cincinnati follower of the apostle's calling averred that there was no use fishing when the water was coming up. As the variable Ohio is like the ocean tide, ever rising or falling, it would seem that the thousands in this valley who make fishing ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... here Bonbright man has come up on Turkey Track to give us a show at law. If they's persons engaged in unlawful practices on this here mountain top, mebbe he'll knock up against 'em. Them that keeps the law and lives decent has no reason to fear the law. Ain't that what you say, Blatch?" turning ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... sunrise to sunset. The little fellow hops about, in his bright red waistcoat, from tree to tree. He flutters to the fence, and from the fence to the garden path, and so to the door and into the kitchen. If you will give him decent encouragement he will come on to your hand and take his meal with absolute confidence in your good faith. Then he will trip away and resume his song on ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... of great tension, and it required not only the wise forbearance of Hyde and Cornelia, but the domineering selfishness of Arenta and the suave clever diplomacies of Madame Jacobus to preserve at times the merely decent conventionalities of polite life. To keep the peace until the wedding was over—that was all that Rem promised himself; THEN! He often gave voice to this last word, though he had no distinct idea as to what measures he ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... Buster Jack got over that awful punch he'd got from the old man he made up to Collie harder than ever. She didn't tell me then, but I saw it. An' she couldn't avoid him, except by stayin' in her room, which she did a good deal. Then Jack showed a streak of bein' decent. He surprised everybody, even Collie. He delighted Old Bill. But he didn't pull the wool over my eyes. He was like a boy spoilin' for a new toy, an' he got crazy over Collie. He's sure terribly in love with her, an' for days ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... generally could understand it in English. He was continually making terrific indictments of the German Government, yet he hated England to such a degree that he would splutter and get purple in the face whenever he mentioned the word. However, he could find it in his heart to be decent to ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... his own conscience; but in drawing out a system of rules he is obliged to go by logic, and follow the exact deduction of conclusion from conclusion, and must be sure that the whole system is coherent and one. You hear of even immoral or irreligious books being written by men of decent character; there is a late writer who says that David Hume's sceptical works are not at all the picture of the man. A priest might write a treatise which was really lax on the subject of lying, which might come under the condemnation of the Holy See, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... later, he sat with me in the dining-room of a hotel which faced The Hoe. His nondescript garments were discarded, and he was now clothed in decent British attire. That he had a good upbringing, and was accustomed to the polite forms of society, was more than ever evidenced while we were together at the hotel. There was no suggestion of awkwardness in his movements, and everything he did betrayed ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... Facciolati and Forcellini's Lexicon]. Now we ought to be guided by the measure in all things appertaining to us: for it is written (Titus 2:12): "We should live soberly and justly and godly," where a gloss remarks: "Soberly, in ourselves"; and (1 Tim. 2:9): "Women . . . in decent apparel, adorning themselves with modesty and sobriety." Consequently it would seem that sobriety regards not only the interior man, but also things appertaining to external apparel. Therefore drink is not the matter ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... lousy auto smash the radio car covered as though it were the story of the Second Coming, and maybe it helped circulation. But I had been on it for four months and, wouldn't you know it, there wasn't a decent murder, or sewer explosion, or running gun fight between six P.M. and six A.M. any night I was on duty in those whole four months. What made it worse, the kid they gave me as photographer—Sol Detweiler, his name was—couldn't drive worth a damn, so I ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl |
