"Indelicacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you thoroughly and boldly!" Yet that is just one of the loyal things a friend can do, sometimes when it would be impossible for a man himself to do himself justice with others. Some things, needful to be said or done under certain circumstances, cannot be undertaken without indelicacy by the person concerned, and the keen instinct of a friend should tell him that he is needed. A little thoughtfulness would often suggest things that could be done for our friends, that would make them feel that the tie which binds ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... been glad of his overcoat, but that was in his bedroom, and he dreaded the indelicacy of going there while she was present. So in the event he bade her a brief good-night, and found himself on the dark and chilly stairs without so much as a pillow or a blanket to make sleep possible. For lack of anything else in the shape of a weapon, he had brought ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... our recently declared love for each other, any mention of Hilda's below-stairs passion for the "young master" seemed to me a blatant indelicacy. Almost it might have a quality of pluming and boasting, a gross acceptance ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... by some commentator to some such effect as this: that it would be somewhat difficult to excuse the unwomanly violence of this demand. Doubtless it would. And doubtless it would be somewhat more than difficult to extenuate the unmaidenly indelicacy of Jeanne Darc. ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... such a work as this it is sometimes urged that there is a certain indelicacy in revealing the virtues of a living man to whomsoever has a shilling in his pocket to purchase a book. My answer to such a charge may be given in a few lines. In writing about Baden-Powell your humble servant has hardly considered the feelings of Baden-Powell at all. B.-P. has outlived a goodly ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... ill-results announced by the managers, who regard the existence of the Censor as valuable to them, because it frees them from responsibility and enables them to gratify the taste of the prurient prude, the person who revels in and blushes at the indelicacy of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... a position," he declared, "to produce unquestionable evidence of the indelicacy of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... away all these arms; but could they have had the indelicacy to leave some behind in order to be able to justify the impious and sacrilegious robbery they were meditating. This would be odious but not impossible in ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... Mr. William Watson says he has never read, and at which no consideration shall ever induce him to look. But Mr. Watson reflects upon people who have been human enough to read them when he compares such a proceeding on his own part (were he able to be guilty of it) to the indelicacy of 'listening at a keyhole or spying over a wall.' This is not a just illustration. The man who takes upon himself the responsibility of being the first to open such intimate letters, and adds thereto the ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... his hand was upon the lock of the door; but attracted as much by the daughter as repelled by the mother, he could move no farther. The mother's masculine boldness heightened, by contrast, the charms of the daughter's soft sentimentality. The Lady Isabel seemed to shrink from the indelicacy of her mother's manners, and seemed peculiarly distressed by the strange efforts Lady Dashfort made, from time to time, to drag her forward, and to fix upon her the attention of gentlemen. Colonel Heathcock, who, as Mrs. Petito ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... the robe and seizing the card: "Mrs. Arthur J. Gibby! Well, upon my word, this is impudence. It's not only impudence, it's indelicacy. And I had always thought she was the very embodiment of refinement, and I've gone about saying so. Now I shall have to take it back. The idea of a lady sending a bath-robe to a gentleman! What next, I wonder! What right has Mrs. Gibby to send you a bath-robe? ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... they should all ascend to the banquette. The persons who had the other two seats there would of course be willing to change for the coupe; or at least, since the coupe was considered the best place, there would be no indelicacy in asking ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... Conqueror, is curious and valuable as an historical monument, though it cannot be proved to be contemporary. As a work of art it is singularly spiritless, and devoid of merit of any kind. One of the fancy figures on the border reveals the indelicacy of the ladies (a queen, perhaps, and her handmaidens) who wrought it in a way which would be startling to any one who had taken the manners and morals of the age ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... dreary, and there are a hundred things which I want to tell you, but I have not time. Brussels is a beautiful city. The Belgians hate the English. Their external morality is more rigid than ours. To lace the stays without a handkerchief on the neck is considered a disgusting piece of indelicacy." ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... other a buffoon. In my eyes, the "Lutrin," the "Dispensary," and the "Rape of the Lock," are standards of grace and elegance, not to be paralleled by antiquity; and eternal reproaches to Voltaire, whose indelicacy in the "Pucelle" degraded him as much, when compared with the three authors I have named, as his "Henriade" leaves Virgil, and even Lucan, whom he more ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... low that we really blush to name it;" while the "Sunday Times" and a number of provincial papers of some slight account in their day professed astonishment at the absence of grossness, partisanship, profanity, indelicacy, and malice from its pages. "It is the first comic we ever saw," said the "Somerset County Gazette," "which was not vulgar. It will provoke many a hearty laugh, but never call a blush to the most delicate cheek." They vied with each other in their vocabulary ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... it was really a scream, an explosion, too, if the indelicacy may be excused. But the opportunity for a come-back struck her so keenly, so swiftly, that she just could not contain her eagerness to beat somebody ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... between the smoking room and the drawing room are shadowy things, and she knew very well that he was held in a somewhat curious respect by men, as a person to whom it was impossible to tell a story in which there was any shadow of indelicacy. The ways of the so-called man of world seemed in his presence as though they must be the ways of some creature of a different and a lower stage of existence. A young man whom he had once corrected had ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the papers, a vote is to be taken as to the post-office. Could you not set up Lizzie and beat them all? She, being here, need know nothing of it, so therefore there would be no indelicacy on ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... ambiguously threw up his hands, "Now, at least," she added, "she'll have something to tell you. I happen to know the upshot of my brother's last interview with his wife." Longmore rose to his feet as a protest against the indelicacy of the position into which he had been drawn; but all that made him tender made him curious, and she caught in his averted eyes an expression that prompted her to strike her blow. "My brother's absurdly entangled with a certain person in Paris; of course he ought not to be, but he wouldn't ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... not extend beneath the neck and upper part of the chest. Nevertheless Sir J. Paget informs me that he has lately heard of a case, on which he can fully rely, in which a little girl, shocked by what she imagined to be an act of indelicacy, blushed all over her abdomen and the upper parts of her legs. Moreau also[8] relates, on the authority of a celebrated painter, that the chest, shoulders, arms, and whole body of a girl, who unwillingly consented to serve as a model, reddened when she was ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... constrained to decline, although the office would doubtless have been very agreeable to him, by reason of some statements he had made when elected Governor that he should not be a candidate for the Senate. Mr. Lincoln might, without dishonor or even indelicacy, have accepted the office in spite of those utterances. It was quite clear that all the persons who might be supposed to have acted upon them, desired his election when the time came on. But he was a man of scrupulous ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Tatyana down from their pedestals, but Pushkin remains unhurt. Pisarev is the grandfather and father of all the critics of to-day, including Burenin—the same pettiness in disparagement, the same cold and conceited wit, and the same coarseness and indelicacy in their attitude to people. It is not Pisarev's ideas that are brutalizing, for he has none, but his coarse tone. His attitude to Tatyana, especially to her charming letter, which I love tenderly, seems to me simply ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... vehemently, saying, "Pay, pay, every body pays for this." Nothing they got from me; and the wife of the Marabout came afterwards, imploring me to say nothing to her husband. It is thus these rude women will act for money, as many who are better taught, in the streets of London. But acts of indelicacy are nevertheless very rare amongst the mountain tribes. I have seen Arab women at other occasions, on a cold day, standing athwart a smoking fire, with all the smoke ascending under their clothes. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... family of the Sultan of Mingrelia (you will observe that I use a fictitious name). I can assure you, Lord Embleton, that polygamy presents problems almost insoluble; problems of extreme delicacy—or indelicacy.' ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... conviction of her goodness and purity, of the angelic nature of the spirit which was shrouded in that fair form, that as the idea of guilt in her intercourse with Henry, so now, that of worldliness, of ambition, or of indelicacy, in having made this secret marriage, never presented itself to my mind. Perhaps it might yet turn out well; he might grow to love and to prize her, and she would stand between him and me like an angel of peace. He could not but admire the faultless beauty ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... lightly-clad crowd behind. The skipper's eyes grew large and his jaw dropped, while inarticulate words came from his parched and astonished throat; and the mate, who was by this time awake, sat up in his bunk and cursed them roundly for their indelicacy. ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... say that, although I had my anxieties, I had none about my personal hold upon heart-sustaining truth. It was emphatically a year of prayer, if I may without presumption or indelicacy say so. Humbly and earnestly I sought to the God of wisdom and light to guide me; and I never felt for a moment that I was perilling my salvation. I had a foundation of repose, stronger than mere theology ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Makely's goodness in coming to talk with her, and how skillfully he managed, without committing himself to Altruria, to declare his faith in my Altrurian. Even then she was troubled about what she thought the indelicacy of my behavior in following him across the sea, and she had all sorts of doubts as to how he would receive me when we met in Liverpool. It wasn't very reasonable of me to say that if he cast me off I should still love him more than any other human being, ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... you marry him?" he asked. The sincerity of him was excuse enough for the seeming indelicacy of the question. Besides, he felt himself somehow responsible. He had given back to her the gift of life, which she had rejected. Surely, he had the right ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... few I have seen there was nothing that a sergent de mile at Mabille could have objected to. Certainly, no one who retains a seat during the performance of a ballet can say a word on the subject. If the charge of indelicacy is to be brought against either, it would, I think, weigh most heavily against the latter. The Indian dance is voluptuous and graceful, as a dance should be; which is more than can be affirmed of a ballet of the French school, some of the attitudes of which are certainly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... of a private marriage. This obviated not every evil; but it removed many: it satisfied my impatient love; it placed Isora under a sure protection; it secured and established her honour the moment the ceremony should be declared; and it avoided the seeming ingratitude and indelicacy of disobeying my uncle, without an effort of patience to appease him. I should have time and occasion then, I thought, for soothing and persuading him, and ultimately winning that consent which I firmly trusted I should sooner ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he is as thoroughly in the wrong. By refined taste he signifies an avoidance of immodesty of style. Beaumont and Fletcher, Rochester, Dean Swift, wrote under monarchies—their pruriencies are not excelled by any republican authors of ancient times. What ancient authors equal in indelicacy the French romances from the time of the Regent of Orleans to Louis XVI.? By all accounts, the despotism of China is the very sink of indecencies, whether in pictures or books. Still more, what can we think of a writer who says, that "the ancients have not left us ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was so utterly inconceivable, that I stood bewildered with my hand in his. It is a piece of rudeness to stare at anybody, and it is an act of indelicacy to stare at a gentleman. I committed both those improprieties. And I said, as if in a dream, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... to me. She was not looking well. Her skin was white and opaque, her eyes dull, her lips pale, and her apparent age ten years more than I had given her on the previous evening. She was a lamplight beauty, I supposed. But her dress satisfied. It was a long indoor gown which indicated without indelicacy the natural lines of her slender figure, and she was innocent of the shocking vulgarity of the small waist, a common enough deformity at that time, although now, it is said, affected by third rate actresses and women of indifferent character only. The waist is an infallible index ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... our churches, as well as every other place. It is only recently that our churches have opened to workers to even speak on this subject, but thank God, they are gladly beginning to do so, since they see danger staring them in the face. The time for prudishness, false modesty, indelicacy is over; too long has Satan been aided in his onward march ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Journey through deep snow, in midsummer, to reach Rich Bar. The revivifying effect of mountain atmosphere. Arrival of twenty-nine physicians in less than three weeks. The author's purpose to leave San Francisco and join her husband at the mines. Direful predictions and disapprobation of friends. Indelicacy of her position among an almost exclusively male population. Indians, ennui, cold. Leaves for Marysville. Scanty fare on way. Meets husband. Falls from mule. An exhausting ride. A midnight petit souper ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... commented. But even as she spoke Miss Rooth's fine gaze was suffused again and the next moment she had definitely begun to weep. Nick Dormer sprung up; he felt embarrassed and intrusive—there was such an indelicacy in sitting there to watch a poor working-girl's struggle with timidity. There was a momentary confusion; Mrs. Rooth's tears were seen also to flow; Mr. Nash took it gaily, addressing, however, at the same time, the friendliest, most familiar encouragement to his companions, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... phrase may be interpreted decently, and with such interpretation would provoke a smile, then smile to just the degree called for by such interpretation, and no more. The prudery which sits in solemn and severe rebuke at a double entendre is only second in indelicacy to the indecency which grows hilarious over it, since both must recognize the evil intent. It is sufficient ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... mamma, pronounce his name so tout an long?" "Pardon my indelicacy, my dear; delicacy is a good thing, but truth a better. I have seen the happiness of many young women sacrificed by such false delicacy, and by the fear of giving a moment's present pain, which it is sometimes the duty of ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... it by figuring at the solemnity which inaugurated him as such. Of this inconsistency and impropriety Talleyrand was well aware; but audacity on one side, and endurance and submission on the other, had so often disregarded these considerations before, that he saw no indelicacy or impertinence in the proposal. His master had, however, the gratification to see at his levee, and in his wife's drawing-room, the Ambassadors of Spain, Naples, Portugal, and Bavaria, who laid at the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... wondered at the indelicacy in speaking about old Captain Dunsack to her grandfather, when everyone in Salem knew they had quarreled years ago and not spoken to each ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... manners of Chaucer's age, is intolerable; and by indispensably softening down the incidents, he has killed the spirit of that humour, gross and farcical, that pervades the original. When the work was first mentioned to me, I protested as strongly as possible against admitting any coarseness and indelicacy, so that my conscience is clear of countenancing aught of that kind. So great is my admiration of Chaucer's genius, and so profound my reverence for him. . . for spreading the light of Literature through his native land, that, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Mr Morgan's hand and name with all the fortitude she could assume; but her distress was visible to all, even to Mr Morgan, who was so little touched with it that it proved no abatement to his joy; a symptom of such indelicacy of mind as increased his bride's grief ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... preserve her life, on that dreadful day of blood, to that when the schooner fell into the hands of the savages, few words had passed between them, and these had reference merely to the position in which they found themselves, and whenever Sir Everard felt he could, without indelicacy or intrusion, render himself in the slightest way serviceable to her. The very circumstances under which they had met, conduced to the suppression, if not utter extinction, of all of passion attached to the sentiment ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... in my Senior year, not many this year. What's a man going to do on twelve a week?" She noticed the indelicacy of this, since he spoke in the house of his employer. But the next sentence from him was ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... tremblingly alive to one risk. He shrank from giving us any inducement to lay bare our own religious emotions. To him and to our mother the needless revelation of the deeper feelings seemed to be a kind of spiritual indelicacy. To encourage children to use the conventional phrases could only stimulate to unreality or actual hypocrisy. He recognised, indeed, the duty of impressing upon us his own convictions, but he spoke only when ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... excused a certain indelicacy and callousness in the statement of the Leading Gentleman, albeit the fair young man appeared annoyed at it. His British blood and instincts became predominant when the killing and eating of a fellow-creature were on the tapis—the ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... eager to show woman dressed for the part, and well dressed. She was incapable of stating the deeps of character; and had she had the power, she would have looked upon it as something of an indecency—or worse, an indelicacy. She would, in fact, have preferred to deny the deeps. She sets her sitter ever in the drawing-room of fashion, draws a heavy curtain with a rattle between the drawing-room and the inner boudoir (the "sulking room"), slams the door on the bedroom, or any hint that ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... skin, and not a linen vestment; and a stocking a stocking, though it does reach up the leg, and not a silk hose; and a garter a garter, though it is above the calf, and not an elastic band or a hose suspender. A really modest woman was never squeamish. Fastidiousness is the envelope of indelicacy. To see harm in ordinary words betrays a knowledge, and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... recalls her attitude toward Frederick Douglass and the further fact that he became an advocate of Suffrage. In his "Life and Times" he says: "I could not meet her [Mrs. Stanton's] arguments except with the shallow plea of 'custom,' 'natural division of duties,' 'indelicacy of woman's taking part in politics,' 'the common talk of woman's sphere,' and the like, all of which that able woman brushed away by those arguments which no man has yet successfully refuted." Mr. Douglass might have called to mind the fact, to the recognition of which he had been so ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson |
