"Decorum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... druidical mystery from the wall of blackness about him, from the flickering reflections on the branches far above, from the cool night air which stirred across the clearing. The change was in the blood of those who saw and heard him, too. The decorum and half-heartedness of their devotions by day deepened under the glare of the torches into a fervent enthusiasm, even before the services began. And if there was in the rustic pulpit a man whose prayers or exhortations could stir their pulses, they sang and groaned ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Clapperton, "that as this is for the highest good of the School, and as everybody is to be all the better in the long run, and as we're all going to be noble and sacrifice ourselves together, you may put me down as not playing on Saturday. Dulce et decorum est pro patria—I beg pardon, I'm not on the ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... expression of a mind or a hundred minds forming a portion of the great body politic, of which we ourselves are a part, and are they not entitled to their opinion and modes of expressing it, providing it be done with decorum and with a proper respect for the opinions of their adversaries? Why then do we or they employ, through the press and in rhetorical bombast, opprobrious epithets, fit only for the pot-house or the shambles? Shall we men and citizens, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... but he was more of the prince and the diplomatist, and less of the soldier. Our sitting closed with a resolution, to agree upon an armistice, and to make the immediate release of the king one of the stipulations. I combated the proposal as long as I could with decorum. I placed, in the strongest light that I could, the immense impulse which any pause in our advance must give to the revolutionary spirit in France, or even in Europe—the impossibility of relying on any negotiation which depended on the will of the rabble—and, above all, the certainty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Mercandotti is standing upon one leg for the pleasure of Lord Fife and Mr. Ball Hughes; the grave regard directed by Lord Petersham towards that pretty little maid-a-mischief who is risking her rouge beneath the chandelier; the unbridled decorum of Mdlle. Hullin and the decorous debauchery of Prince Esterhazy in the distance, make altogether a quite enchanting picture. But, of the whole series, the most illuminative picture is certainly the Ball at Almack's. In the foreground ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the king!" exclaimed the Antiquary at the first glance at the contents of his packet, and, surprised at once out of decorum, philosophy, and phlegm, he skimmed his cocked hat in the air, from which it descended not again, being caught in its fall by a branch of the chandelier. He next, looking joyously round, laid a grasp on his wig, which he perhaps would have sent after ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... point of management—how the two rival parties were to conduct their visit to the village with proper circumspection and due decorum. Neither of the leaders had spoken to each other since their quarrel. All communication had been by ambassadors. Seeing the jealousy entertained of Lisa, Mr. Breckenridge, in his negotiation, had arranged that ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... address in such an assemblage, Ursula was relieved from her perplexity by an officer attired in a suit of crimson and gold, who, with a grave and formal decorum, which indeed reigned throughout the whole retinue, demanded, respectfully, whom she sought? "The Signora Nina!" replied Ursula, drawing up her stately person, with a natural, though somewhat antiquated, dignity. There was something ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... us our By-laws, a copy of which he held in his hand, the framers of which were then, in all probability, sleeping in death, beneath the sand of the shore before our eyes. That these laws had been framed in wisdom, and were well fitted to preserve order and decorum in a community like ours: that his present object was to impress upon our minds the absolute necessity of a strict adherence to those wholesome regulations; that he should briefly comment upon each article, which might be thus considered as the particular text of that ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... was he to say to them? It went against him to reel off compliantly the usual patriotic phrases that forced themselves on one's lips as though dictated by an outside power. For months he had carried about the defiant resolve not to utter the prescribed "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," whatever the refusal might cost. Nothing was so repulsive to him as singing the praises of the sacrifice of one's life. It was a juggler's trick to cry out that some one was dying while inside the ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... she sees you comin' she'll p'r'aps upset a kid or two assoomin' a decorous attitood. That's feeminine, and as such is approved by the ladies, but"—and here Leander put his head on one side and gave a grotesque impression of outraged decorum—"pants is ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... judge, who lives impeccably upstairs With dull decorum and its implication, Has all his servants in to family prayers, And edifies his soul ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... angry, and, for the first and only time in my experience of him, lost control of his temper, bursting out on the culprit with a torrent of abuse which cooled the hilarity of the poet instantly, and reduced him to decorum with the promptness of a wet bath. To hear Swinburne read his own poetry was a treat, and this I enjoyed several times at Rossetti's; the terrible sonnets on Napoleon III. after Sedan, amongst the readings, being the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... sinner than many who remained behind, only she was unlucky enough or stupid enough to be found out. Her admirers were so indiscreet that they had not left her a shred of reputation, and in a court where a cardinal is the lover of a queen, a hypocritical appearance of decorum is indispensable to success. So Angelique had to suffer for the faults she was not ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... poetry. There is one Northern tale I will relate, as it is one from which Shakspeare derived that strongly marked and extraordinary scene between Richard III. and the Lady Anne. It may not be equal to that in strength and genius, but it is, undoubtedly, superior in decorum and delicacy. ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... William Curtis, "the party will designate one of its most reputable members."[1433] The New York Times spoke of him as a "man of unsullied honour,"[1434] and the Tribune declared that "his career in office, should he be elected, would be distinguished alike by integrity, decorum, administrative ability, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... his Journals and Letters might be supposed to bear too personally or particularly on the same delicate topics. Incomplete as the strange history of his mind and heart must, in one of its most interesting chapters, be left by these omissions, still a deference to that peculiar sense of decorum in this country, which marks the mention of such frailties as hardly a less crime than the commission of them, and, still more, the regard due to the feelings of the living, who ought not rashly to be made to suffer for the errors of the dead, have combined to render this sacrifice, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... his opening address he modestly promised that he would do his best to preserve the fame which the place had acquired under his predecessors, and amply has he fulfilled the pledge. We are led to understand that, alike in lecture-room and laboratory, everything is carried on with spirit, decorum, and order, and that what with the efficiency of the prelections and examinations, aided as these are by a profusion of admirably executed pictorial illustrations, many of them drawn by the lecturer himself, the place is, in point of usefulness, outstripped by no ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... face or limb, the slow hot fever, long impatient anchorage in bed, and all the forms of maiming, operation and disease. Alas! America have we seen, though only in her early youth, already to hospital brought. There have we watch'd these soldiers, many of them only boys in years—mark'd their decorum, their religious nature and fortitude, and their sweet affection. Wholesale, truly. For at the front, and through the camps, in countless tents, stood the regimental, brigade and division hospitals; while everywhere amid the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... insensibility to pride as well as to duty. Those high and haughty sentiments, which are the great support of independence, were to be let down gradually. Point of honour and precedence were no more to be regarded in Parliamentary decorum than in a Turkish army. It was to be avowed, as a constitutional maxim, that the King might appoint one of his footmen, or one of your footmen, for Minister; and that he ought to be, and that he would be, as well followed as the first name for rank or wisdom in the nation. Thus Parliament ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... blessed with a sense of humor; he realized that the inquiry had long since passed the bounds of official decorum, and its irregularities had proved so illuminative that he was not anxious to ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... doth nothing unseemly, "behaveth not itself unseemly," 1 Cor. xiii. 5. Vanity and swelling of mind will certainly break forth into some unseemly carriage, as vain estimation, and such like, but charity keeps a sweet decorum in all its carriage, so as not to provoke and irritate others, nor yet to expose itself to contempt or mockery. Or the word may be taken thus, it is not fastidious. It accounts not itself disgraced and abused, to condescend to men of low estate. It ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... by the heroic Sam, and attended by a mounted groom. The parting, which shook Ishmael's whole nature like a storm, nearly rending soul and body asunder, seemed to have but little effect upon Miss Merlin. She went through it with great decorum, shaking hands with Ishmael, wishing him success, and hoping to see him, some fine ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... accomplished, graceful and pretty, she commanded universal admiration; yet her manner was marked by a quiet, grave dignity, and a peculiar reticence, at variance with the prevailing type of young ladyhood, now alas! too dominant; whose premature emancipation from home rule, and old-fashioned canons of decorum renders "American girlhood" synonymous with flippant pertness. Moulded by two women who were imbued with the spirit of Richter's admonition: "Girls like the priestesses of old, should be educated only in sacred places, and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... firmness which at once restrains and charms. The debates just before the war, during the war, and after the war, had been violent and acrimonious; but he had kept his own temper, and compelled the House to observe an approach to decorum. On one occasion he came into such sharp collision with the excitable Randolph, that the dispute was transferred to the newspapers, and narrowly escaped degenerating from a war of "cards" to a conflict with pistols. But the Speaker triumphed; ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... wealth of cities nearly always flow westward,—converting, as in London, the market-gardens of the poor into the 'Palace Gardens' of the rich; and, with steady advance, sweeps away our landmarks,—turning the gravel pits of western London into the decorum ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... interpreter of religion to mankind. The work is no longer a revelation devoutly received by the artist and piously transmitted to a believing world; but he is a cultivated man, who gives what is agreeable to a cultivated society, where the Bible is treated with decorum, but all enthusiasm is reserved for Plato and Cicero. The earlier and greater men brought much of what they were from the fifteenth century, but even Raphael is too academic. It is not a Chinese deference to tradition, nor conformity to a fixed national ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... while there was perfect decorum. Then Tommy grew restless. Six weeks out of school had made sitting still almost impossible. He wiggled around in his seat, and began to whistle, "A Life on an ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... schools of that particular district were seated in the gallery, each side of the organ. As this was the Sunday appropriated to the exercise, all three of the creeds were read—the Apostles', Athanasian, and Nicene; all which the little things repeated after the archbishop, with great decorum, and probably with the same amount of understanding that we, when children, had ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a roaring success. Conversation was feeble because all his time was taken up in observing correct decorum. Edith sat and regarded him with curious eyes. She wondered, for good reasons, what the emotions of such a man might be. Behind those quiet, simple eyes of his there occasionally flashed something that made her afraid—dreadfully afraid. She had not wasted ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... Regions fall infinitely short of the majesty of the holy Scriptures when describing heaven and hell, so that in comparison they are childish and trifling;" and yet, perhaps, he had the most regular and best governed imagination of any man, and observed the greatest decorum in his descriptions. "There are I know," said the elegant Joseph Addison, "men of heavy temper and without genius, who can read the words of Scripture with as much indifference as they do other papers; however, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... merely to put the question involved a certain tribute to young Barnes. He had at any rate done his fortune-hunting, if fortune-hunting it were, with decorum. ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a marvel followed! From the pool at once there rose A frog, the sphere of rubber balanced deftly on his nose. He beheld her fright and frenzy, And, her panic to dispel, On his knee by Miss Mackenzie He obsequiously fell. With quite as much decorum As a speaker in a forum He started in his history ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... the people were held. Here they were received by the king and the leading inhabitants, who thanked them warmly for coming to their assistance in the time of their peril. The travelers were both struck with the appearance of the people. They were clad with far more decency and decorum than was usual among the negro tribes. Their bearing was quiet and dignified. An air of neatness and order pervaded everything, and it was clear that they were greatly ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... to moments of deep depression. His sorrows could not always be followed up to their original source, but most frequently they appeared to flow—though Ilbrahim was young to be sad for such a cause—from wounded love. The flightiness of his mirth rendered him often guilty of offences against the decorum of a Puritan household, and on these occasions he did not invariably escape rebuke. But the slightest word of real bitterness, which he was infallible in distinguishing from pretended anger, seemed to sink into his heart and poison all his enjoyments till he became sensible that ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from habit, from a sense of decorum, and for the fitness of things; but that was not love. He shrugged his shoulders scornfully, looking for some word to express the mildly pleasant, unagitating emotion. James, who had been devoured by it, who had struggled with it as with a deadly sin, who had killed ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... wearinge of their myters is included in these woordes, And myters more then one or two. W{hi}che wordes are curteyled for the verse his cause, that the same mighte kepe an equall proport{i}one and decorum in the verse, whiche would be lengthened one foote or sillable moore than the other verses, yf your readinge shoulde stande. But yf yo{u} saye, that in this and other thinges I am overstreyghte laced and to obstinatlye bente to defende the former printed editione, in ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... in protesting against hypocrisy he has occasionally been led beyond the limits prescribed by good taste. He is at times abusive of those who differ from him. This, with other offences against decorum, which here and there disfigure his pages, can only be condoned by an appeal to the general tone of his writing, which is reverential. Burns had a firm faith in a Supreme Being, not as a vague mysterious Power; but as the Arbiter of human life. Amid the vicissitudes of his career he responds ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of us were returning from our usual swim when suddenly we saw the whole camp a beehive of commotion, burghers running to and fro, saddling their horses, shouting at each other, and generally behaving with a great lack of decorum—like madmen, in fact, or members of the Stock Exchange. Hastening on, we heard that the enemy were coming out to attack us. We hastily seized our nags, and in five minutes were on top of the nearest hill between ourselves and the enemy, who could be seen approaching ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... authorities, having been previously advised of their intention, had the military in readiness to act, should the Chartists behave in a disorderly manner: but they conducted themselves with great decorum. It is said that, previous to Divine Service, they handed the clergyman a Chartist text to preach from, but he selected as his text, "My house is the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves"; on announcing which, the Chartists ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... after the election, the Little Missouri Stock Association held its semi-annual meeting. Roosevelt presided, "preserving," as he wrote to Lodge a day or so later, "the most rigid parliamentary decorum." He was elected a representative of the Association at the meeting of the Montana Stock growers' Association in Miles City, to be held a day or two later, and, after a hurried trip to Elkhorn Ranch with Merrifield, started west ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... the end. He looked from his throne of elevated sentiment upon the under-world of spectators with a most sovran and becoming contempt. There was excellent pathos delivered out to them: an they would receive it, so; an they would not receive it, so. There was no offence against decorum in all this; nothing to condemn, to damn. Not an irreverent symptom of a sound was to be heard. The procession of verbiage stalked on through four and five acts, no one venturing to predict what would come ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... address. His companions now and then made signs to him which betokened no great amount of respect. As the boys of Saint Paul's School, however, had the eyes of their masters fixed on them, they behaved with sufficient decorum. A'Dale, however, who disliked such mummeries as much as did Ernst, did not altogether keep his countenance. He was in sight of the altar, where the priest was about to perform the high mass. That ceremony was gone through ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... year or two would render her less volatile, and add to those sterling good qualities which she really possessed. In heart and feeling she was a modest girl, although the buoyancy of her spirits often carried her beyond the bounds prescribed by decorum, and often called forth a blush upon her own animated countenance, when her good sense, or the remarks of others, reminded her of her having committed herself. It was impossible to know Mary and not like her, although, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... for the effect of this boldness upon her, and the girl frowned to keep herself from laughing, and then gave way. Mrs. Maybough smiled with a ladylike decorum which redeemed the excess from impropriety. Charmian seemed to know the bounds of her license, and as if Mrs. Maybough's smile had marked them, she went no farther, and her mother began softly to question Cornelia ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... disregarded: that monarch was himself too much a sufferer by the arrogance and ambition of the house of Guise, to be very strenuous in his friendship towards any one so nearly connected with it; and it is even said that, while a sense of decorum extorted from him in public some energetic expressions of the interest taken by him in the fate of a sister-in-law and queen-dowager of France, a sentiment of regard for Elizabeth, his friend and ally, prompted ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Seneca fell in the last years of the Emperor Augustus, when, in spite of the general decorum and amiability of their ruler, people began to see clearly that nothing was left of liberty except the name. His youth and early manhood were spent during those three-and-twenty years of the reign of Tiberius, that reign of terror, during which the Roman world ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the road, are they?" cried Clifford, musingly, and without heeding the insinuated attack on his decorum. "But answer me, what ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no leisure to stop and talk, or perhaps meeting some one with whom he may be unwilling to talk, will promptly put up his open fan to screen his face, and pass on. The suggestion is that, wishing to pass without notice, he fails to see the person in question, and it would be a serious breach of decorum on the part of the latter to ignore ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... it. She did this and that for him, and she was no doubt on such terms of intimacy with him that they were really part of each other's life in a scheme of domesticity unlike any boarding-house organization she had ever known. Here in everything there was the air, the decorum, and the unartificial ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... look as strange, on his side, as Adela, though in a different way, the children also began to cry, so that when the servants arrived with tea and boiled eggs these functionaries were greatly embarrassed with their burden, not knowing whether to come in or hang back. They all scraped together a decorum, and as soon as the things had been put on table the Colonel banished the men with a glance. Then he made a little affectionate speech to Beatrice and Muriel, in which he described Mrs. Churchley as the kindest, the most delightful of women, only wanting to make them happy, only wanting ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... inflicting punishment—which is so much more terrible to children than the angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but when they took place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining, where we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the decorum and the solemnity. But the ordinary public chastisement was the bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with that almost obsolete weapon now, the ferule. A ferule was a sort of flat ruler, widened at the inflicting end into a shape ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... easily excited and not easily conquered. My parentage was humble, yet I can believe a traditional history of my paternal grandmother, that the origin of our family was from an old Norman stock; I found this belief upon certain feelings which I can only refer to an hereditary source, a pride of decorum, a tact and refinement even in boyhood, and which are contradictory to the idea of an origin from a race of peasants. Accident opened to me in early youth a philosophical career, which I pursued with success. In manhood fortune smiled upon me and made me independent; I then really ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... after-dinner gossip; but gradually he saw that, whether true or not, it had sufficient circulation to cast a shade of ambiguity on the persons concerned. Bessy alone seemed deaf to the rumours about her friend. There was something captivating to her in Mrs. Carbury's slang and noise, in her defiance of decorum and contempt of criticism. "I like Blanche because she doesn't pretend," was Bessy's vague justification of the lady; but in reality she was under the mysterious spell which such natures cast over the less venturesome imaginations of ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... but in manners; for I begin to find out that nothing but virtue will do in this d—d world. I am tolerably sick of vice, which I have tried in its agreeable varieties, and mean on my return to cut all my dissolute acquaintance, leave off wine and carnal company, and betake myself to politics and decorum." ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... was Ebbo's hand, it was a very tight fit, but the purpose was served. The service commenced; and fortunately, thanks to Thekla's conventual education, she was awed into silence and decorum by the sound of Latin and the sight of an abbot. It was a strange marriage, if only in the contrast between the pale, expressive face and sad, dark eyes of the prostrate youth, and the frightened, bewildered little girl, standing upon ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they brought her up. You see, Hiram was bound out to my grandfather when he was a boy, and when grandfather died Hiram said he 's'posed he went with the farm, 'long o' the critters,' and he has been there ever since. He was my mother's only refuge from the decorum of my aunts. They are simply workers. They make me think of the Maine woman who wanted her epitaph to be, 'She was a ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... out her muslin ruffles, reefed a fold of net higher across her neck, and pinned it in place with a jeweled pin, while Hampton's and Billy's and Cliff's expressions and poses of countenance and bodies suddenly fell into lines of decorum. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in a conspicuous corner, and though Martin no longer wove the air with his hands, to Ruth's critical eye he permitted his own eyes to flash and glitter too frequently, talked too rapidly and warmly, grew too intense, and allowed his aroused blood to redden his cheeks too much. He lacked decorum and control, and was in decided contrast to the young professor of ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... His clear-cut features, something too sharply defined for absolute regularity, with the unassertive effect of his straight auburn hair, his deliberate, contemplative glance, his reserved, high-bred look, the quiet decorum of his manner, were not suggestive of the tumult of his inner consciousness, and the unresponsiveness of his aspect baffled Briscoe. With some inapposite, impulsive warmth he protested: "But she has had bitter ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... wishing her evil, and asking her to do anything wrong, he certainly had only good intentions. He had cared for her as if he occupied the place of her own brother who fell in the battle of Marchfield. It would have given him most pleasure—he had said so himself—to dance everything with her, but decorum and the royal dames who kept him in attendance would not permit it. However, he came to her in every pause to exchange at least a few brief words and a glance. During the longest one, which lasted more than an hour and was devoted to the refreshment of the guests, he led her into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cried Sheriff Hank Fowler, but almost as he spoke the decorum was again broken by a voice which cried in ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... present day. The solemn Advent dances in Seville cathedral were described to me, by an eyewitness, as consisting of minuets, or some such stately old-fashioned dances, performed in front of the high altar by boys in white surplices, with the greatest gravity and decorum.] ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... some lilac bushes, she enjoyed the great decorum of the arrest, and heard the dialogue of the two men die away along the path. Soon after, the rolling of a carriage and the beat of hoofs arose in the still air of the night, and passed speedily farther and fainter into silence. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... worthy Bozier suddenly recovering from her neuralgia and coming to look after her pupil,—or the undesired but likely entrance of a servant to attend to the lamps, or to put fresh wood on the fire, they turned each from the other, with reluctance and half laughing decorum,—Sylvie resuming her seat by the fire, and Aubrey flinging himself with happy recklessness in a low fauteuil as near to her as could be permitted for a gentleman visitor, who might be considered as enthusiastically expounding literature or science to a fascinating ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... orderly section of social life magic possibilities of vagrancy. But he was also a Cockney, a lover of limit, civic tradition, the uniform of all ritual. He liked exceptions, because, in every other instance, he would approve of the rule. He broke bounds with exquisite decorum. There was in all his excesses something ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... sincere desire of a pacific result, but show the entire freedom from any angry or resentful feeling with which I took the step. The death of Mrs. Byron, for some time, delayed my purpose. But as soon after that event as was consistent with decorum, I addressed a letter to Lord Byron, in which, referring to my former communication, and expressing some doubts as to its having ever reached him, I re-stated, in pretty nearly the same words, the nature of the insult, which, as it appeared ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... men as well as to policies he had betrayed a disposition to change position. He did not attend the Chicago convention. Nor did Arthur's nomination, brought about largely by Sharpe's activity, particularly please him. While he behaved with decorum and perhaps with loyalty, it was evident that if he did not raise the standard of revolt, he had chosen to fight for his hand. This became the more apparent as the senatorial contest progressed. A grim darksomeness about the expression of his countenance showed that ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... decorum, according to their custom, beginning the banquet with a Bismillah of thanks and ending with an Al Hamd that signified repletion. Knives and forks there were none; each man dipped his hand into ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... ushered in Mrs. Glamorys. She was bewitchingly dressed in white, and stood in the open doorway, smiling—an embodiment of the summer he was neglecting. He rose, but his tongue was paralysed. The dunce became suddenly important—a symbol of the decorum he had been outraging. His soul, torn so abruptly from history to romance, could not get up the right emotion. Why this imprudence of Winifred's? She had been so ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... tragic nuptials. The male is enterprising and assiduous and is subjected to a long trial before succeeding. For days and days he worries his mate, who ends by yielding. Due decorum is preserved after the wedding. The feathered groom retires, respected by his bride, and does his little bit of hunting, without danger of being apprehended and ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... black-eyed Tartar with four very miserable little fox-terriers, who shivered and trembled and jumped reluctantly through hoops. The audience liked this, and cried and shouted and threw paper pellets at the dogs. A stout perspiring Jew in a shabby evening suit came forward and begged for decorum. Then there appeared a stout little man in a top hat who wished to recite verses of, I gathered, a violent indecency. I was uncomfortable about Vera Michailovna, but I need not have been. The indecency was of no importance to her, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... across the water, for other favours. People are simplified alike by great contentments and great yearnings, and, whether or no it was Gravener's directness that begot my own, I seem to recall that in some turn taken by our talk he almost imposed it on me as an act of decorum to ask if Miss Anvoy had also by chance expectations from her aunt. My enquiry drew out that Lady Coxon, who was the oddest of women, would have in any contingency to act under her late husband's will, which was odder still, saddling ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... completely overpowered by their grief and mental agony, the deepest emotion is not as yet reached. The poet may indeed be allowed to take that care for his persons which Caesar, after his death-blow, had for himself, and make them fall with decorum. He must not exhibit human nature in all its repulsive nakedness. The most heart- rending and dreadful pictures must still be invested with beauty, and endued with a dignity higher than the common reality. This miracle is effected by poetry: it has its indescribable sighs, its immediate ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... other times admitted some, lest by impudently denying what was manifestly true their forgiveness might be the more difficult; and then, even admonishing the conscript fathers to be guided by the rules of decorum and moderation in their prosperity, he said, that if the Carthaginians had listened to himself and Hanno, and had been disposed to make a proper use of circumstances, they would themselves have dictated terms of peace, instead of begging it as they now did. That it rarely happened that good fortune ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... not poems, so much as metrical romances. There is a glittering veil of verse thrown over the features of nature and of old romance. The deep incisions into character are "skinned and filmed over"—the details are lost or shaped into flimsy and insipid decorum; and the truth of feeling and of circumstance is translated into a tinkling sound, a tinsel common-place. It must be owned, there is a power in true poetry that lifts the mind from the ground of reality to a higher sphere, that penetrates the ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... "I behaved with perfect decorum," she replied. "I said I really must run for my bus as the conductor was a cousin of my sister-in-law's aunt and he let me ride for nothing. I said it loud too, so that He could hear, ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... latter days, it had become necessary that a Christian should have a reason for his faith—should not only believe, but digest—not only hear, but understand. The words of our morning service, how beautiful, how apposite, how intelligible they were, when read with simple and distinct decorum! But how much of the meaning of the words was lost when they were produced with all the meretricious ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... in the third person!—one other quality which commands admiration; an habitual delicacy in his conversation, evidencing that cheerfulness and wit might exist without ribaldry, grossness, or profanation. He neither violated decorum himself, nor tolerated it in others. I have been present when a trespasser of the looser class, has received, a rebuke, I might say a castigation, well deserved, and not readily forgotten. His abhorrence also of injustice, or unworthy conduct, in its diversified shapes, had all ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... but, notwithstanding what he had said to me at Ghent respecting Cambaceres, I doubt whether he objected strongly. He was one of those who are dignified from habit and decorum rather than from a real and powerful emotion of the soul; and propriety disappeared before emergency. He had, as vouchers for the necessities of the case, two authorities who were the best calculated to influence his decision and uphold his honour; the Duke of Wellington and the Count d'Artois both ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the diggers and delvers of the ground from presuming to sully the aristocratic enclosure belonging to the mansion, the gate had been boarded up to a height of six feet. True, the planks were not so closely adjusted but that a hasty peep might be obtained through their interstices; but the strict decorum and rigid propriety of the inhabitants of the house left no grounds for apprehending that advantage would ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which all were summoned with all proper ceremony to the exhilarating tune of the "Roast beef of old England," Jocko, who had a chair alongside of Tom, behaved with the utmost decorum. ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... meaning of my look or smile, hesitate to respond to them by some legitimate bit of coquetry. In short, we often held converse in that language of smiles, glances, blushes, pauses, gestures, which is the gesture language of sex across the barrier of decorum. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... never to allow his paper to descend to the level of the ignoble vulgus; and we are glad that in wishing "Vanity Fair" long life and prosperity we have to censure it only for some slight violations of good taste, not for any offence against modesty or decorum. It deserves admission to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Molly came flying over. Molly, too, had on a clean afternoon dress, but that never endowed her with a sense of decorum, as ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... royalist; but sure I can contrast those times with ours, and acknowledge the difference between the late sovereign and the present, who, born a Briton, has given to every family in the empire an example of decorum and virtuous life. [The Warrington MS. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... never gave the matter a thought. They were simply 'rotting' in the approved style of to-day. But, seen from the Eastern standpoint, the trivial incident troubled him. It recalled a chance remark of his grandfather's: "With only a little more decorum and seriousness in their way of life out here, they could do far more to promote good understanding socially between us all, than by making premature 'reforms' or tilting at barriers arising ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... critical Jack Ketch. Mr. Channing must be hung, that's true. He must be hung in terrorem —and for this there is no help under the sun; but then we shall do him all manner of justice, and observe every species of decorum, and be especially careful of his feelings, and hang him gingerly and gracefully, with a silken cord, as Spaniards hang their grandees of the blue blood, their ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... should it be otherwise? I have been myself the father of a family; I have been honoured with the intimacy of the wisest and best of kings, my late sovereign George III., and I can proudly show an example of decorum to my pupils in my Sophia. Mrs. Smith, I have the honour of introducing to ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the whole that remains but little altered—amongst all the changes, then, which have taken place in the world, moral, political, and social, there has been none more extraordinary, perhaps, than the rise, progress, extension, and dominion of that strong power called Decorum. I have heard it asserted by a very clever man, that there was nothing of the kind known in England before the commencement of the reign of George III., and that decorum was, in fact, a mere decent cloak ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... walls, gardens, and every spot from which any thing could be seen, were in like manner occupied. Notwithstanding the extraordinary number of persons collected, a very creditable degree of order and decorum was maintained throughout ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... which they might slip through to the front. I've heard my father say so a score of times. He had the largest practice in Scotland, and yet he was absolutely devoid of brains. He slipped into it through seniority and decorum. No pushing, but take your turn. Very well, laddie, when you're at the top of the line, but how about it when you've just taken your place at the tail? When I'm on the top rung I shall look down and say, 'Now, you youngsters, we are going to have very strict ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... her Irish friend people felt something more thoroughly artless and feminine—for the masculine understanding of Lady Carbery in some way communicated its commanding expression to her deportment. I reported to Lord Massey, in terms of unexceptionable decorum, those flattering expressions of homage, which sometimes from the lips of young men, partially under the influence of wine, had taken a form somewhat too enthusiastic for a literal repetition to ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... oppression and fraud; but she ends by recognizing and demanding the marriage of heart, the God of enlightened faith, the government of order and progress. Responding to the dominant chord of the nineteenth century, she strove to exalt individuality above sociality, and passion above decorum and usage. Nor would she allow any World's Congress of morals to settle the delicate limits between these opposing vital forces, between what we owe to ourselves and what we owe to others. If there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... artfully here and there that it mightn't fly away. And a string of big lumpish amber beads. She could have got into that costume in about two minutes and there was probably next to nothing under it. From the on-looker's point of view, it mightn't violate decorum at all; indeed, clearly did not. But Miss Wollaston herself, if she hadn't been more or less rigidly laced, stayed, gartered, pinched, pried and pulled about; if she could have moved freely in any direction ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... unable to account, that these weird creatures—the females, I mean—had in the earlier days of my stay an instinctive sense of their own repulsive clumsiness, and displayed in consequence a more than human regard for the decency and decorum of extensive costume. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... dear Caroline, and given with due maidenly decorum—but here we are; and there is Madame Gironac nodding ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... were about an hour reaching the village, and were much disappointed to find the gate at the entrance closed, and a painted board hung on it, to announce there would be no meeting that day. Nothing could exceed the apparent order and decorum of the place; but we could not effect a closer approach, though our driver tried hard to gain admittance for us. We therefore returned to Albany, but took a different road home, and enjoyed our sleighing ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... correct in his calculations. Before the pacha had finished his pipe, the arrival of the story-teller was announced: and after waiting a few minutes from decorum, which seemed to the impatient pacha to be eternal, Mustapha clapped his hands, and the man was ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... said he, "a part of you have come here legitimately, to hear a lecture; a part to satisfy the curiosity aroused by rumors to the effect that I am likely to make indecorous and indecent remarks, which your decorum and decency make you wish to hear, and of which you will carry away evil and twisted reports, to gain the reputation of being fearless defenders of the truth. It is a temptation to gratify your desire and shock you—a far greater temptation than to be repentant and reactionary. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... very young performers, we made them rehearse many times over, that they might walk in and out with proper decorum; but the performance was stopped before their entrances and their exits arrived. I complimented lady Elizabeth, the sister of Augustus, who was the eldest of the young ladies, with the choice of the Lady Mother or the ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the Spaniards, and the very robber, except in those moments when he is engaged in his occupation, and then no one is more sanguinary, pitiless, and wolfishly eager for booty, is a being who can be courteous and affable, and who takes pleasure in conducting himself with sobriety and decorum. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... are forbidden in some of the States where slavery does not exist, and they are prohibited in all the slaveholding States, and when not absolutely contrary to law, they are revolting, and regarded as an offense against public decorum.' ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... man named D'wiri, who knew every step of every dance, saw this and said in his stern way that it was shameless. But he was old and was, moreover, in fear for the decorum of his own obsequies if these outrageous departures from custom were approved or allowed to ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... Court and of society it is invaluable, but it is still more interesting as, perhaps, the most singular example extant of unreserved self-revelation—all the foibles, peccadilloes, and more serious offences against decorum of the author being set forth with the most relentless naivete and minuteness, it was written in a cypher or shorthand, which was translated into long-hand by John Smith in 1825, and ed. by Lord Braybrooke, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... England he had not attempted to raise. The domestic circumstances of Arthur were more favorable to his authority as a censor; and happily for our ultimate welfare, he resolved to discourage violations of social decorum. Many settlers, whose rank in life made them unwilling to contract lawful marriages with prisoners or their offspring, were surrounded by a numerous race. Their example affected those in stations beneath them. To arrest this domestic evil, was doubtless the duty of Arthur; but it was not always ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... as aristocratic in her ideas of what was due to them, as anybody of sense and honesty could well be. She was a benevolent, charitable, good woman, and capable of strong attachments, most correct in her conduct, strict in her notions of decorum, and with manners that were held a standard of good-breeding. She had a cultivated mind, and was, generally speaking, rational and consistent; but she had prejudices on the side of ancestry; she had a value for rank and consequence, which blinded her a little to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Prize, and so put out to Sea, steering to the Southward, and keeping along the Coast, but met with Nothing. All this while, the greatest Decorum and Regularity was observed on Board the Victoire; but the Dutch Prisoners Example began to lead 'em into Swearing and Drunkenness, which the Captain remarking, thought it was best to nip these Vices in the Bud; and calling ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... another thing, viz. that he himself would not have wounded the tastes and feelings of a family of mourners by attending a funeral in their house in a costume which was an offence against the dignities and decorum prescribed by tradition and sanctified by custom. Yet that man was so heedless as not to reflect that all the social customs of civilised peoples are entitled to respectful observance, and that no man with a right spirit of courtesy in him ever has any disposition ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no comprehension of a man who could be so quiet when he was angry, and she believed that she might impress him with a due sense of the enormity of his offense. "Mr. Holcroft, I scarcely feel that I can meet a girl who has no more sense of decorum than to—" But Jane, striking a match, revealed the fact that she was speaking ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... are mere futile belchings of exasperated gasbags, on whom he darts a look of withering scorn, which they discern means trouble if they do not conduct themselves with decorum. His guards are close at hand, and he is daring enough to make use of them if there is any resistance to that which he has undertaken. To the Directory, through their envoy Dottot, he says in substance, and not without vigour, "Do not sicken me with your imbecile arguments and lame, impotent conclusions. ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... where they are buried. For the above, and so that they may serve in the chaplaincies of the galleons in this line, and for the divine worship of the said chapel, the chapel has its chief chaplain, and a number of royal chaplains, sacristans, and other ministers, who serve it with great decorum and pomp. This is a rich church, and is beautifully adorned with altars, reredoses, pulpit, and sacristy; it has choir, organ, and a goodly band of singers; and rich ornaments, and sacred vessels of silver and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... exchanged his clerical garb for a friend's blue coatee bedizzened with metal buttons; and also had erected a very tasteful and sharp coxcomb on his head, out of hair usually reposing sleek and quiet in the most saint-like decorum; and then, at the bid from the pulpit-stump, out stepped Mr. Sprightly from the opposite spice-wood grove, and advanced with a step so smirky and dandyish as to create universal amazement and whispered demands—"Why! who's that?" And some ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... you! Most of my income will vanish. Even unbelieving biological demonstrators must respect decorum; and besides, you see—you were a student. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... was nevertheless as generous as she was virtuous, fell into deep thought how she might save her Christian brethren. She soon came to her resolve. She delayed the execution of it a little, only out of a sense of virgin decorum, which, in its turn, made her still more resolute. She issued forth by herself, in the sight of all, not muffling up her beauty, nor yet exposing it. She withdrew her eyes beneath a veil, and, attired neither with ostentation nor carelessness, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... indignation came, think how easy it would be to persuade yourself you had done your duty by the facts, and might let the matter lapse! Why should not one woman once take advantage of the obscurities of decorum so many a man has found comforting to his soul during confession of sin, when pouring his revelations into an ear whose owner's experience of life has not qualified her to understand them. Think of the difficulty you yourself have ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... did. But anybody by no means included his daughter. At the thought of anything amiss with her, presto! his sad eyes flamed. Very needlessly too. Cassy was as indifferent to other people's conceptions of decorum as he was himself. The matter did not touch her. Clear-eyed, clean-minded, she was straight ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... dinner was prepared at Spring Gardens by Mr. John Stavely; which, considering the number of citizens and military that partook of it (between 4 and 500) was conducted with the greatest propriety and decorum.—Ludwell Lee, esq. presided at the head of the table—the foot was honored by Col. Charles Little.... GEN. WASHINGTON was escorted into town by a detachment from the troop of Dragoons. He was dressed ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... his elders. It is the child who sees hypocrites. These preposterous grown-up people, who, if they are well-mannered, do not seem to enjoy their food, who are fussy about meaningless employments, and never give way to natural impulses, must surely assume this veil of decorum with intent to deceive. Charles Dickens was hard driven in his childhood, and the impressions that were then burnt into him governed all his seeing. The creative spirit in him transformed his sufferings into delight; but he never outgrew them; and, ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... inherently ill-bred to be late anywhere; but I never before felt how completely it was high breeding to be as punctual as possible. The maitre d'hotel had as much as he could do to announce the company, who entered as closely after each other as decorum and dignity would permit. I presume one party waited a little for the others in the outer drawing-room, the reception being altogether ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... regardless of bodily comfort, will yet labor for a fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith to make himself admired; and that the same woman who would not hesitate to leave her hut without a fragment of clothing on, would not dare to commit such a breach of decorum as to go out unpainted. Voyagers uniformly find that colored beads and trinkets are much more prized by wild tribes than are calicoes or broadcloths. And the anecdotes we have of the ways in which, when shirts and coats are given, they turn them to some ludicrous display, show ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... small and withered lady, who had been something of a beauty, and was now the pink of gentle and middle-aged decorum. She was one of those women it is so easy to ignore till you live with them. Then you perceive that in their relations to their own world, the world they make and govern, they are of the stuff which holds a country together, without which a country can not exist. She might have come out of a Dutch ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the others, with soft smiles and glances. Two little girls, imaginably sorry the feast was over, suppressed their regret in the tutelage of the maiden aunts and grandmothers who put up cakes in napkins to carry home; and then the party vanished in unbroken decorum. When they were gone we found that in studying the behavior of the bride and her friends we had not only failed to identify the bridegroom, but had altogether forgotten ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... plague of hunger. Of all the calamities which beset and waylay the life of man, this comes the nearest to our heart, and is that wherein the proudest of us all feels himself to be nothing more than he is: but I find myself unable to manage it with decorum; these details are of a species of horror so nauseous and disgusting, they are so degrading to the sufferers and to the hearers, they are so humiliating to human nature itself, that on better thoughts I find it more advisable ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... particular about the etiquette of the table as though we were served by footmen in livery; and in our poorest days, when cups and saucers were scant and spoons still more so, we were obliged to observe the utmost decorum till we were helped; and any laughing or chatter among the younger ones was immediately quelled by the emphatic descent of father's fork upon the coverless table, with the ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... responsible for the order of the ward, so that a burly Trager quarreling over his daily tobacco with the nurse in charge, or brawling over his soup with another patient, was likely to be hailed in a thin soprano, and to stand, grinning sheepishly, while Jimmy, in mixed English and German, restored the decorum of the ward. They were a quarrelsome lot, the convalescents. Jimmy was so busy some days settling disputes and awarding decisions that he slept almost all night. This was as it ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... looks there in her bridal dress, She was all gentleness, all gayety, Her pranks the favorite theme of every tongue. But now the day was come, the day, the hour; Now, frowning, smiling, for the hundredth time, The nurse, that ancient lady, preached decorum: And, in the luster of her youth, she gave Her hand, with her heart ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... had seen at Edinburgh, and the Hon. Colonel (now General) Edward Stopford, brother to Lord Courtown, who was desirous of being introduced to him. His tea and rolls and butter, and whole breakfast apparatus were all in such decorum, and his behaviour was so courteous, that Colonel Stopford was quite surprized, and wondered at his having heard so much said of Johnson's ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... in silence. "Cobbler" Horn scarcely knew whether his exacting coachman would think it proper for his master to enter into conversation with him; and the coachman, on his part, would not be guilty of such a breach of decorum as to speak to his master when his master had not first spoken ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... of the Customs of the Manor of Ashton-under-Lyne, in the fifteenth century, it is stated at the manorial festivals, "in order to preserve as much as possible the degree of decorum that was necessary, there were frequently introduced a diminutive pair of stone stocks of about eighteen inches in length, for confining within them the fingers ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... Miss Sherwood choked, then cast a swift glance at the profile of the melancholy young man. The perfectly dismal decorum of this gentleman seemed to inspire her to maintain her own gravity. "It is only that it seemed such a pity about that fly," she explained. From where they sat the journalistic silhouette was plainly visible, and both Fisbee and Miss Sherwood looked toward ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the world only too readily condones in many a famous man less tempted than Josselin was inevitably bound to be through life. Men of the Josselin type (there are not many—he stands pretty much alone) can scarcely be expected to journey from adolescence to middle age with that impeccable decorum which I—and no doubt many of my masculine readers—have found it so easy to achieve, and find it now so pleasant to remember and get credit for. Let us think of The Footprints of Aurora, or Etoiles mortes, or Dejanire et Dalila, or even ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... go for advice on all matters. III. All license, such as the Roman woman's right of taking the initiative in a divorce, must never be tolerated. IV. They should never transgress the bounds of strictest decorum in conduct and dress, lest they seduce men; and they must never be conspicuous in public or attempt to perform public functions. V. They are to be given due honour and are ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... aspirations at one time, and thy flying hour-glasses and dreaming terrors at another, that, as Prior says, What serious is, thou turn'st to farce; and it is impossible to keep within the bounds of decorum or gravity when one reads what ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... Mayhew's family, and Mrs. Elmore herself could not say, then or afterward, that there was any other way open to him. I will not contend that his motives were wholly unselfish. No doubt a sense of personal annoyance, of offended decorum, of wounded respectability, qualified the zeal for Miss Mayhew's good which prompted him. He was still a young and inexperienced man, confronted with a strange perplexity: he did the best he could, and I suppose it was the best that could be done. At any rate, he had no regrets, and ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... and health, such as will enable one to ride forty miles before dinner, and over one's pint of port—for the best gentleman in the land should not drink a bottle—carry on one's argument, with gravity and decorum, with any commercial gentleman who, responsive to one's challenge, takes the part of common sense and humanity against "protection" and the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... indignation against the woman who could look like this at one. This look probed him; it tampered with him. It was dangerous to one as would be a hint of unbelief whispered by a priest in the august decorum of a temple; and at the same time it was impure, it was disturbing, like a cynical consolation muttered in the dark, tainting the sorrow, corroding the thought, poisoning the heart. He wanted to ask her furiously: "Who do you take me for? How dare you look at me like this?" He felt himself helpless ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... solemnity of yesterday reigned supreme, with the difference, that people came thronging into town, making a mournful scene of bustle. The gloomy faces, the comparative silence, the badges and emblems of mourning that everywhere met the eye, and the noiseless, strict decorum which was observed, told how universal and deep were the love and veneration of the people for the illustrious dead. Every one uniformly and religiously wore the emblematic crape, even to the women ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... paid to the vain and ridiculous prejudice of marrying below rank; the ancient policy of giving distinction to men and not to families, by attaching nobility only to employments and talents, without suffering it to be hereditary; and the decorum observed in public, are admirable ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... at once and not even any other ragamuffin lifted his voice. The audience were startled mute. They were quite ready to applaud the girl's daring, but the shocking impropriety of her breach of decorum struck ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... were grossly ignorant of the rudiments of their adopted faith, and having no priest with them in their desert, they had as little knowledge of religious ceremonies as of religion itself. They were not even capable of conducting themselves in a place of worship with ordinary decorum, but would interrupt the service with scandalous cries and warlike shouts. Such is the account the Latins give of them, but I have never heard the other side of the question. These wild fellows, notwithstanding ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... admitted that the South African Native Deputation now in this country have gone about their business with decorum. They have not pressed themselves forward unduly, and, so far, the publicity given to them has been moderate in its tone, and the expressions by the members of the deputation have been equally moderate. Of course, their best friends ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... an authority which thus pervades the sanctity of a household, crosses the threshold and exposes to public view the chamber of mourning, probate jurisdiction in the United States is exercised with great simplicity of form as well as decorum." [Footnote: Schouler's ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... amusing. His religion is not of a very exalted character; he rises to no sublime heights of emotion, and would simply be puzzled by the fervours or the doubts of a more modern generation. In short, it seems to be compounded of common-sense and a regard for decorum—and those are not bad things in their way, though not the highest. He is not a very ardent reformer; he doubts whether the poor should be taught to read, and is very clear that everyone should be made to know his station; but still he talks with sense and moderation, and even gets so far as ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... had too high a sense of what was due to decorum and good manners to say any thing. The meat looked very fine, and being keenly set and strongly tempted by its promising look, they thought they would try more of it. The more they ate the faster they coughed, and the louder became the uproar, until ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... same girl—Leontine was her name—in society, and experienced the advantages of her education. She was ever very polite to my face, and calumniated me directly my back was turned. Thus, you see, under these forms of decorum all kinds of lies and ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... housekeeper will keep house for the art's sake and will resent any domestic event which upsets her housekeeping sense of decorum, even though the event may have splendid home-making possibilities. The mother with the home-making instincts will invite, and aid, and will conceive events, which, though they upset her housekeeping routine, will contribute to the happiness and edification ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... passion as deep. That was how they came to speak about it, in the Burmese garden, under the pale sky, with sheaves of severed vegetation, misty and odorous, in the night around their feet. I think they behaved themselves with decorum for quite a time after that, though Mrs Basil spent so many hours over the accounts of the Ashburnham estate that she got the name of every field by heart. Edward had a huge map of his lands in his harness-room and Major Basil did not seem to mind. I believe that people do not mind ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... bare-footed Friar!'— 'What Baron or Squire, Or Knight of the shire Is half so good as a holy Friar?' O, turpissime! Vir nequissime! Sceleratissime!—quissime!—issime! Never, I trow, have the Servi servorum Had before 'em Such a breach of decorum, Such a gross violation of morum bonorum, And won't have again saecula saeculorum!— Come hither to me, My Cardinals three, My Bishops in partibus, Masters in Artibus, Hither to me, A.B. and D.D., Doctors and Proctors of every degree! Go fetch me ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... motives of gentlemen. Doubtless there are men who honestly believe that such a proposition ought only to be considered in a General Convention. In my judgment such a Convention would be utterly useless. It would lead to endless discussion, which would not be conducted with the decorum that characterizes these proceedings. It would ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... ashamed of; steer clear of these, and you may go into any company you will; not that I would have a young man throw off all dread of appearing abroad; as a fear of offending, or being disesteemed, will make him preserve a proper decorum. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... hen does over her chickens. She fed them and comforted them, nursed them and buried them, always new ones coming to take the places of those who were gone. Chief mourner at over threescore funerals, nevertheless was Mother Daly's voice always for peace and decorum; and what good she did may one day be discovered when the spurred and booted ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... attend the King to the House, as Grand Officier, and says he never witnessed such a scene. Even the opposition shed their crocodile tears. Placed immediately near the King on the steps of the throne, he saw the struggle between kingly decorum and fatherly affliction. Nature had the victory. Three times the King attempted to speak, three times he was obliged to stop, and at last burst into a flood of tears. The contagion gained all around ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope |
