"Indecorum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evening parties were sincere. They even gained a certain degree of celebrity, for the kitchen in her house was admirably managed, and whatever came from it found approval even in the home of the finest culinary achievements. But it was especially the freedom—though not the slightest indecorum was permitted—with which people met at "Madame de Blomberg's," as she now styled herself, that lent her house so great an attraction, and finally added the more aristocratic members of her party to the number of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Temple[4]. In these Reflections, the obvious ground of attack, occupied by Hunt, is again resumed. The general indecency of a theatrical exhibition, which alluded to state-transactions of a grave and most important nature; the indecorum of comparing the king to such a monarch as Henry III., infamous for treachery, cruelty, and vices of the most profligate nature; above all, the parallel betwixt the Dukes of Monmouth and Guise, by which the former is exhibited as a traitor to his father, and recommended as no ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... said Elsie, much shocked at the indecorum, "that the new person should be thrust in here; for the old one ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... offensive, inflammatory, and exasperating. Denunciation, sneers, and public rebuke, were bestowed indiscriminately upon the conductors of the enterprise, and of course they fell upon many sincere, upright, and conscientious men, whose feelings were harrowed by a sense of the injustice, the indecorum, and the unchristian treatment, they received. And when a temporary impression was made on the public mind, and its opponents supposed they had succeeded in crushing this society, the most public and triumphant exultation was not repressed. Compare this method of carrying ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... returning the Salutation. Here that Action is as proper and graceful, as it is at Church unbecoming and impertinent. By the way, I must take the Liberty to observe that I did not see any one who is usually so full of Civilities at Church, offer at any such Indecorum during any Part of the Action ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... fornication and any impurity or covetousness be named among you, as becomes saints, [5:4]nor indecorum and foolish talking, or jesting, things not becoming, but rather giving of thanks. [5:5]For you know this, that no fornicator, or impure, or covetous person, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. [5:6]Let no man deceive you with vain words; for on ...
— The New Testament • Various
... him justice, nobody knows better how to place chacun avec sa chacune; but it is a pity that in this case it contributes so little to the general amusement; for really Theobald's intense flirtation with Lady Bolsover, is the flattest piece of dull indecorum that ever met my virtuous eyes. They are dull, these people—keep him from quadrupeds, and Theobald is a cipher; and Lady B. has little more than the few ideas which she gets sent over with her dresses from Paris. I know it is mauvais ton to cry them down—but I cannot help it. My sincerity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... adjournment of the other[q]. It hath also been usual, when his majesty hath signified his pleasure that both or either of the houses should adjourn themselves to a certain day, to obey the king's pleasure so signified, and to adjourn accordingly[r]. Otherwise, besides the indecorum of a refusal, a prorogation would assuredly follow; which would often be very inconvenient to both public and private business. For prorogation puts an end to the session; and then such bills, as are only begun and not perfected, must be resumed de novo (if ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... feet (courtesy), if we appear unsought before the light of your Excellency's eyes (courtesy), if we err in maidenly decorum in thus seeking unbidden your Excellency's presence (courtesy), believe us, it is the fear of some greater, some graver indecorum in our conduct that has withdrawn your Excellency's person from us since you have graced our roof with your company. We know, Senor Commander, how superior are the charms of the American ladies. It is in no spirit of rivalry with them, ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... undue degree of exasperation in the indignant feelings which moved Mr Wentworth. He kicked off his dusty boots with an indecorum quite unusual to him, and hunted up his slippers out of the adjoining room with perhaps an unnecessary amount of noise and haste. Then he went and looked out of the window into the serene summer darkness and the dewy garden, getting a little fresh air upon ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... or features, and that high breeding was only to be looked for in trim gardens, where the soul of the trees is ill at ease perhaps, but their manners are unexceptionable, and a rustling branch or leaf falling out of season is an indecorum. The real forest is hardly still except in the Indian summer; then there is death in the house, and they are waiting for the sharp shrunken months to come with white raiment for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... when it was engraved, but are now generally disused, except in some of the provinces very distant from the capital; sprigs of rosemary were then given to each of the mourners: to appear at a funeral without one, was as great an indecorum as to be without a white handkerchief. This custom might probably originate at a time when the plague depopulated the metropolis, and rosemary was deemed an antidote against contagion. It must be ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the greatest triumphs, unless the honours should more properly go to Cuzzoni, as Rodelinda, and her brown silk gown trimmed with silver. All the old ladies, says Burney, were scandalised with its vulgarity and indecorum, "but the young adopted it as a fashion so universally, that it seemed a national uniform for youth ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... the right of every British citizen, provided he does not commit damage nor indecorum, to appear suddenly wherever he pleases, and as ragged and filthy as he pleases, and with whatever amount of virgin gold he sees fit to encumber himself, and no one has any right at all to hinder and detain him in this procedure. I formulated that at last to myself, and repeated it ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... gentleman, nay, any honest boor, act the part now acted by his host? The man was an impostor. Some low-born adventurer, masquerading as an oceanic grandee; yet so ignorant of the first requisites of mere gentlemanhood as to be betrayed into the present remarkable indecorum. That strange ceremoniousness, too, at other times evinced, seemed not uncharacteristic of one playing a part above his real level. Benito Cereno—Don Benito Cereno—a sounding name. One, too, at that period, not unknown, in the surname, to super-cargoes and sea captains ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... and taste, a thousand problems arising which he delighted to study, a thousand opportunities to make these infinitesimal improvements which are so much in art and for the artist. Our first Greek play had been costumed by the professional costumer, with unforgetable results of comicality and indecorum: the second, the TRACHINIAE, of Sophocles, he took in hand himself, and a delightful task he made of it. His study was then in antiquarian books, where he found confusion, and on statues and bas-reliefs, where he at last found clearness; ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Melbourne, when I came on the stage for the first time, and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy height of the gallery. It is always difficult to answer a sudden inquiry like that, when you have come unprepared and don't know what it means. I will remark here—if it is not an indecorum—that the welcome which an American lecturer gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which will move him to his deepest deeps, and veil his sight and break his voice. And from Winnipeg to Africa, experience will teach ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... courtesyings, so accurately and quaintly true to the original, that her father roared with laughter; and even the footman (who came in at that moment with the post-bag) rushed out of the room again, and committed the indecorum of echoing his master audibly on the other ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... features, and pleasant faces, which had been fair before the sun and the sea air tanned them to that warm, deep brown; their round, red arms, and handsome feet and legs, displayed with a freedom and ease which custom had robbed of all indecorum, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... done before I could be entitled to the privileges which Messrs Buster, Tomkins, and the rest, had it in their power to bestow. The manner in which this delicate investigation was carried on, its indecorum and profaneness, I never can forget; nor can I, in truth, remember it without humiliation and deep sorrow. Against the indiscreet, illegal exhibition, I set off my ignorance, simplicity, and desire of serving heaven; and in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Here, the indecorum would arise from the very nature and quality of the subject: but others are equally guilty of it, by not adapting their discourse either to their own characters, or to that of their hearers, and, in some cafes, to that of their antagonists; and they extend the fault ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... could endure? When I sit upon the bench, a respectable magistrate, and commit some battered reprobate for trial for this lurid offence or that, or send him or her to prison for drunkenness or such-like indecorum, the doubt drifts into my mind which of us after all is indeed getting nearest to the keen edge of life. Are I and my respectable colleagues much more than successful evasions of THAT? Perhaps these people in the dock know more of the essential strains and ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... of prayer or singing, he always stood up; and whatever regard he might have for persons who passed by him at that time, though it were to come into the same pew, he never paid any compliment to them; and often has he expressed his wonder at the indecorum of breaking off our addresses to God to bow to a fellow-creature, which he thought a much greater indecency that it would be, on a little occasion and circumstance, to interrupt an address to our prince. During the time of preaching, his eye ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... acted upon by the party-feelings of the Monarch, would soon narrow the Throne into the mere nucleus of a favored faction. In allowing, too, his friends and partisans to throw the whole blame of this exclusive Ministry on the King, he but repeated the indecorum of which he had been guilty in 1802. For, having at that time made use of the religious prejudices of the Monarch, as a pretext for his manner of quitting office, he now employed the political prejudices of the same personage, as ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... this liberty, the world is now and then gifted with a woman like Elizabeth Fry, while the family state loses none of its security and sacredness. No one in our day can charge the ladies of the Quaker sect with boldness or indecorum; and they have demonstrated that even public teaching, when performed under the influence of an overpowering devotional spirit, does not interfere with ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... that delights the world. The dress—a short kilt of calabash fibre—rather set off than concealed their charms, and though destitute of petticoat they were wholly unconscious of indecorum. These beautiful domestic animals graciously smiled when in my best Kenyamwezi I did my devoir to the sex; and the present of a little tobacco always secured for me a seat in the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... alguazil-mayor of the court of this royal Audiencia, in the churches and public places where they have met, in regard to the seats and places which each shall occupy, and their precedence—so that it has resulted in their coming to blows, to the great scandal and indecorum of their offices, and particularly in contempt of this said royal Audiencia: therefore it is necessary in this matter to provide some regulation to be kept and observed in like cases by the aforesaid officials, so that the said disturbances shall cease. In order that the said alcaldes-in-ordinary ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... still revere, rule not their actions only but their inmost hearts; because their conscience is indeed awake and alive, representing all the nobleness with which they stand in sympathy, and reporting their most hidden indecorum before a public opinion of the absent and ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Cominges, one of those who went with him to the military school at Paris, and who had emigrated, was at Bale. Having learned our arrival, he presented himself without ceremony, with great indecorum, and with a complete disregard of the respect due to a man who had rendered himself so illustrious. General Bonaparte, offended at this behaviour, refused to receive him again, and expressed himself ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... without being seen by his royal master. The mission on which he was dispatched was urgent, and the Susunan himself inconvenienced by the delay; but these inconveniences were insignificant compared with the indecorum of being seen out of the dodok posture. When it is necessary for an inferior to move, he must still retain that position, and walk with his hams upon his heels until he is ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas |
