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More "Decency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... notes. Then it gets down to work, and its harsh, high-pitched, metallic drone makes the street ring for a moment. Then it is temporarily drowned by a chorus of shrill, small voices. The person—I am afraid his decency begins to drop off him here—leans on his broad window-sill and looks out. The street is filled with children of every age, size, and nationality; dirty children, clean children, well-dressed children, and children in rags, and for every ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... the trifling sum which a few of them may be able to earn, is more than ten millions of dollars per annum. Nor is this all, or even the worst feature of their case. The greater part of them are without sense of shame, without any notions of chastity or decency, and so weak in moral sense as to be the ready tools and dupes of artful villains, and often themselves exhibit a perverseness and malignity of character which render them dangerous members of society. Their influence for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Minister in Washington. May 22, he warned Sir Edmund Head, Governor of Canada, urging him to make defensive preparation[215]. The following day he dilated to Russell, privately, on "the difficulty of keeping Mr. Seward within the bounds of decency even in ordinary social intercourse[216] ..." and in an official communication of this same day he records Washington rumours of a belligerent despatch read by Seward before the Cabinet, of objections by other members, and that Seward's insistence has ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... this Art may be apply'd to those that intend to marry. There is nothing sure against Decency in all that. I agree, if you will have it so, that it extends so far as to direct one to the Means to gain a Mistress. If this was not lawful heretofore in Italy, on account of the jealous Humour of the Italians, we cannot, for the same Reason only, say it ought to be forbidden in our ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... fashion,—these all help at times to prepare young people to fall before the special temptations that beset all commercial recreation centers. Especially dangerous are the saloons, billiard rooms, dance-halls, ice-cream parlors, road-houses and amusement parks. Both male and female enemies of decency frequent these resorts. They are often schools of sexual immorality, with clever and persistent teachers. Unless we take them into due account, we cannot see the whole problem of education in sexual hygiene ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... they!" she answered, with a peculiar laugh. "You don't appreciate the character of these people. When a man fights for money, just plain, sordid money, he loses all sense of honor, chivalry, and decency, he employs any means that come handy. There is no real code of financial morality, and the battle for dollars is the bitterest of all contests. Of course, being a woman, they couldn't very well attack me personally, but they tried everything except physical violence, and I don't ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... unabashed. He watched Wrayson pour brandy between the girl's lips, bathe her temples, and chafe her hands. All the time he stood doggedly waiting close by. No considerations of decency or humanity would weigh with him for one single second. The fever of his great desire still ran like fire through his veins. He did not think of the girl as a human creature at all. Simply there was a pair of lips there which might point out to him the ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... promoting secretions (see Exod. xxi. 10); that the wife should be up betimes and bake the bread, so as to have some ready in case any one should come begging; that the women should wear a girdle round the waist for decency sake; that they should comb their hair before bathing; that peddlers should hawk their perfumes about the streets in order that women should supply themselves with such things as will attract and please their husbands; and that certain unfortunates (see Lev. xv.) should bathe ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... fact came out that the greater part of the courtiers had been dismissed as well as the servants, and this fact swelled the hope of the Party of Decency, as they called themselves. Upon it they proceeded to act, and strengthened themselves on ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... ourselves, for the other three are destructive of all the opportunities for dissection; whereas, in the last, the coffin can lie in peaceful decency, while the remains are made to subserve the useful purposes of science. Ah! Captain Lawton, I enjoy comparatively but few opportunities of such a nature, to what I expected on entering ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... was Miss Tresize here. She thinks it such a disgrace for any man to shirk at such a time as this, that she thought they should be shamed to some sense of decency and pluck." ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... little hope of ever being recompensed; But this consideration prevented her not from taking care that the Interment was performed with decency, and from showing the unfortunate Antonia all ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... and to make Melody in particular Tunes, may as well be called the Inventions of Men and Will-Worship: But these Inventions are absolutely necessary for the Performance of Divine Commands, and for the Assistance of a whole Congregation to sing; with any tolerable Convenience, Order or Decency, as the Reverend ...
— A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody • Isaac Watts
... trembling voice, he made the ghost equally terrible to the spectator, as to himself! and in the descriptive part of the natural emotions which the ghastly vision gave him, the boldness of his expostulation was still governed by decency, manly, but not braving; his voice never rising into that seeming outrage, or wild defiance of what he naturally revered. But alas! to preserve this medium, between mouthing, and meaning too little, to keep the attention more pleasingly awake, by a tempered spirit, than by mere vehemence ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... a gentleman of honour; Keep off the rabble, that I may have room To entertain my fate, and die with decency. ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... CORELLI telegraphs: "I am all for anonymity and everything that tends to the avoidance of advertisement. If people must ride in motors, let them have the decency to disguise themselves as effectually as possible, and shun all contact with ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... acidity presentable! "There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned," and degradation in the dignity that has to be preserved. Simplicity is the only dignity. If one has not the genuine article, no affluence of starch, no snow-drift of white-linen decency, will furnish any substitute. If one has it, he will retain it, whether he stand on his head or his heels. Nothing is really undignified but affectation or conceit; and for the total extinction and annihilation of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... can't play MACBETH; for he neither looks nor understands the character. FANNY MORANT can't play LADY MACBETH as perfectly as it should be played; but she tries to do her best, and is quite respectable. Nobody else plays any part with common decency. But then the scenery is good; the Scottish nobility look sufficiently hungry and seedy, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... you have neither shame nor regret, nor remorse: you are rotten to the heart; you have never had an honest sentiment; you have not robbed as long as you had enough to satisfy your caprices; that is what is called probity by rich people of your stamp; then followed want of decency, then baseness, crime, and forgery. This is only the first period of your life—it is beautiful and pure compared to that ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... but when he repeats what for years has been the gossip of the countryside about her supposed killing of her babe, the "traveling man" interrupts and declares he is the son whom it was rumored she had drowned. In the end he is turned out of the house, not altogether unkindly, but as much for decency's sake as for his own. That the son, for any motive at all, should be turned out of the house where his mother lies dead, even though he had not stood by her living, is hard enough in the estimation of any people, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... decency to burn in the ears. I had taken the step, so now I could not draw back. I sincerely hoped that they would not exchange any embarrassing confidences. When alone women converse upon many peculiar topics; and conversing in a tongue which ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... to deplore, and to upbraid me with,—I had withdrawn her veil;—there was no forgiveness for me—that indulgence which even a husband scarcely ever enjoys, that distinguishing emblem of chastity and honour, so sacred in the eyes of an Armenian woman,—every sense of decency had been disregarded by me, and I stood before her in the criminal character of one who had seen all her face. In vain I represented, that had I not relieved her mouth and nose from the pressure of the lower ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... attention after his death—by means of a flaming dissertation by the coroner on his own zeal and spirit—the nature and extent of his rights, powers, and duties;—when high doctors are brow-beaten, the laws set at defiance, and public decency plucked by the beard, and the torn and bleeding hearts of surviving relatives still further agonized by an exposure, all quivering under the recent stroke, to the gaping vulgar! Indeed, I sometimes think that the object of certain coroners, now-a-days, is twofold; first, public—to disgust people ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... When neither decency nor politeness is known, the man who invites his friends to a repast is greatly embarrassed to testify his esteem for his guests, and to offer them some amusement; for the savage guest imposes on himself this obligation. Amongst the greater part of the American Indians, the host is continually ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... resigned, and they were invited by Lincoln to discuss the matter in his presence with these Ministers. Chase, to his still greater annoyance, found himself, as the principal Minister there, compelled for decency's sake to defend Seward from the very attack which he had helped to instigate. The deputation withdrew, not sure that, after all, it wanted Seward removed. Chase next day tendered, as was natural, his resignation. Lincoln was able, now that he ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... is aggravated by the consideration, that in it duty and decency are sacrificed to the slenderest of temptations. Suppose the habit, either from affectation, or by negligence and inadvertency, to be already formed, it must always remain within the power of the most ordinary resolution to correct it: and it cannot, one would think, cost a great deal to relinquish ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... you 're in Rome'—you know the rest. Mrs. Clearweather introduced me to several dark men, to him among others. They were her friends, and common decency required me to ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... father, whose very name made the cheeks of the children grow white and their pulses almost to cease with terror. A drunkard, who drowned in his cup, not only wife and children and home and all outward decency, but every characteristic of truth and honesty and manhood of his own soul. A man, who through self-indulgence and the incessant yielding to unspeakable desires, had become little better than a human sewer, through whom the slime and indescribable filth of fallen and degraded ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... including utility, respectability, and imbecility, and I would sit, quite frankly poor, with a piece of bread, and a pot of geraniums, and a book. I conclude that if I did without the things erroneously supposed necessary to decency I might be able to afford a geranium, because I see them so often in the windows of cottages where there is little else; and if I preferred such inexpensive indulgences as thinking and reading and wandering in the fields to the doubtful ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the best speech in the worst cause that ever I heard, and getting away with it too. And there was Richland trying to answer him and in comparison making a spectacle of himself—Richland with all the right and all the decency on his side and yet showing up like a perfect dub alongside Mallard, because he hasn't got one-tenth of Mallard's ability as a speaker or one-tenth of Mallard's personal fire or stage presence or magnetism or whatever it is that makes Mallard ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... were, a golden bridge for the Spaniards to withdraw their troops with decency. I told him as soon as they were gone that he was an excellent man to persuade people that a "quartan ague was good ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... self-restraint and thrift, honesty and temperance. It cannot actually intermeddle with the sanctity of the home, or assume the role of paternal authority, but it can insist upon the fulfilment of the conditions of decency and propriety; it can condemn insanitary dwellings, suppress traffic in vice, supervise unhealthy trades, protect the life and health of workmen, and, generally, devise means for the culture and the advancement, intellectually and morally, of the people. The State in some degree embodies the public ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... reply. His shoulder twitched under Mr. Jennings's hand. He meditated pushing between these interlopers and running for home. The New England constraint, to which he had been born, was to him as a shell of defence and decency, and these men had had a glimpse of him outside it. He was horribly ashamed. "S'pose they think I'm ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... obey the owners' orders, I can promise you that there'll be a fine rich reward waiting at Salem for every man here. What's more, it'll be an honest reward, with credit from the owners and all law-abiding men. But enough of that! It's a matter of ordinary decency—of common honesty! The man who will conspire against the owners of this ship is a contemptible cur, a fit shipmate with the brute who horsed poor ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... to bring his spirit or soul under more complete subjection and to make him feel that so far from moral reform being the end sought in his incarceration, he will best consult his private interests by abandoning all thoughts of decency and honor, and acting, with the officials, against the welfare and ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... this period, where all were evil, William Wycherley was the worst. In his four plays, Love in a Wood, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, The Country Wife, and The Plain Dealer, he outrages all decency, ridicules honesty and virtue, and makes vice always triumphant. As a young man, profligate with pen and in his life, he was a wicked old man; for, when sixty-four years of age, he published a miscellany of verses of which Macaulay ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... he said, "that there were in this school some boys who had a notion of gentlemanly behaviour, manly conduct, and common decency. I see that I was mistaken. The behaviour of certain of you to-day—I will not mention them because of their exceeding shame, but you will all know whom I mean. . . ." At this moment all the boys turned round and looked hard at Gordon, Smith, and Hart minor, who blushed scarlet, and whose ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... unconvicted assassin, the last of his race—the bullies and bad men of the border—a thing to be forgotten and put away forever from the sight of man. He has outlasted his time; he is a superfluity and an outrage on our reign of decency and order. And I ask you, gentlemen, to put him away where he will not hear the voice of man nor children's laughter, nor see a woman smile, where he will not even see the face of the warden who feeds him, nor sunlight except as it is filtered through the iron bars of a jail. Bury him with the ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... handling themes lascivious and immodest, use language comely and decorous, speak in terms beyond reproach and inoffensive to chaste ears. You, on the contrary, presenting so awful a subject, exhibit saints and angels, these without earthly decency, and those without ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... friends. They are awfully flat and flabby—they have all been rolled about in some one's mind, till they are as smooth as pebbles—some bits of the crudest rudeness, not worked up to—some knock-down schoolboy retorts which most civilised men would have had the decency to repress—and then we get back to the real Boswell again, and how fresh and ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and Fellow-Sufferers to remember, that it is not a low Degree of Submission to the Divine Will, which is called for in the ensuing Discourse. It is comparatively an easy Thing to behave with external Decency, to refrain from bold Censures and outragious Complaints, or to speak in the outward Language of Resignation. But it is not, so easy to get rid of every repining Thought, and to forbear taking it, in some Degree at least, ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... in 1727, had previously visited that same house of correction on account of his political views expressed in Mes Pensees, published at Copenhagen in 1751. In his Memoires he attributed to the mistress-queen of Louis XIV. sayings which she never uttered, and his style lacks the dignity and decency of true historical writings. Voltaire advised that La Beaumelle should be fettered together with a band of other literary opponents and sent to ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... and generosity in this last remark won for him the respect of the Ridgleyites who had remained on the scene, and the result of the incident was to make them feel that Campbell had acted with little or no decency. ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... herself could but show, of course, for an interested party, however much she might claim to be none the less a decent girl—to whatever point, that is, after all that had both remotely and recently happened, presumptions of anything to be called decency ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... smashes cities, stops everything. And one of the young men in the story looks around rather dazed, and says in a low voice: "I've always thought life was a lark. It isn't. This sort of thing has always been happening, I suppose—these things, wars and earthquakes, that sweep across all the decency of life. It's just as though I had woke up to it all for the first time.... And it's always been so—it's the way ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... gave the message to the Dominie, who never in his life had been more delighted, and, without thinking of or imagining peril or danger, entered his master's chamber, where the wench and his master slept. He cast all sense and decency to the winds, and only thought of satisfying his foolish lust,—albeit it was ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... UNNECESSITY of it! I don't mind Clarence's doing as other men do, I certainly don't mind his caring so much for his daughter"—her fine brows drew together— "but where do I come in?" she demanded with a quizzical smile. "What's MY life? I ask only decency and civility, and I don't get it. The very servants in this house pity me—they see it all. When Clarence isn't himself, he needs me; when he is, he is all for Billy. I must apologize for breaking ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... have seen a little volume which is in the Signet Library of Edinburgh. It is entitled, "The Gentleman's New Bottle Companion," Edinburgh, printed in the year MDCCLXXVII. It contains various toasts and sentiments which the writer considered to be suitable to such occasions. Of the taste and decency of the companies where some of them could be made use of, the less ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... him, and made no answer, feeling none due. He came out into the open, followed by a nondescript dog, which had the lack of decency—and also of discretion—to attack my dog Partial with no parley or preliminary. I wot not of what stock Partial came, but somewhere in his ancestry must have been stark fighting strain. Mutely and sternly, as became a gentleman, he joined issue; and so ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... where he is jealous of any man, he lays worse plots for them than ever was impos'd on Hercules, for he strews in his way flatterers, panders, intelligencers, atheists, and a thousand such political monsters. He should have been Pope; but instead of coming to it by the primitive decency of the church, he did bestow bribes so largely and so impudently as if he would have carried it away without heaven's knowledge. Some ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... this great picture, at the right hand of the spectator, is a hideous figure of a damned person, girdled about with a serpent, the folds of which are carefully knotted between his thighs, so as, at all events, to give no offence to decency. This figure represents a man who suggested to Pope Paul III. that the nudities of the "Last Judgment" ought to be draped, for which offence Michael Angelo at once consigned him to hell. It shows what a debtor's prison and dungeon of ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the humorous coup de theatre, the jeu d'esprit sparkling up into music, the elevated sentiment, the merciless exposure of vice and folly, the purest and noblest morality, largely mixed with an ostentatious ridicule of every sacred truth, and an absolute disregard of every principle of decency and duty, give strange glimpses into ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... just one of that class of men, although perhaps he carried the fault I speak of a little to excess. A dollar looked so big to him, and he held it so close, that at last he couldn't see much of anything else. By degrees he lost all regard for decency and his neighbor's opinions. His children went barefoot, even after they got to be great boys and girls, because he was too mean to buy them shoes. It was pitiful to see a nice, interesting girl, like Maria, go about looking as she ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge
... frantic women, he said, sharply, "You may all do just as you like. I've no authority here, except that the ethics of my profession dictate. That does not extend to jurisdiction over the guests present. But I advise you as a matter of common decency to stay here ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... widows cries, and undone orphans wash with tears their thresholds, they only think what 'tis to make themselves acceptable in the sight of God. Believing pious ends justify any means, they glory in conduct the most repugnant to every principle of decency, equity, ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... as Margaret saw what was the real state of affairs in the cottage, she sent away Dr Levitt, who could be of no use till some degree of decency was instituted in the miserable abode. What to set about first was Margaret's difficulty. There was no one to help her but Mrs Platt's mother, who was sitting down to wait the result of the fortune-teller's predictions. Her daughter lay moaning on a bedstead spread with ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... divorces, and family quarrels, pass with little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. But once in six or seven years our virtue becomes outrageous. We can not suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must teach libertines that the English people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. Accordingly some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... lewdness, or anathematized the wearing of jewelry as fiercely as the commission of crime. [Footnote: Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, the Backwoods Preacher.] More than one hearty, rugged old preacher, who did stalwart service for decency and morality, hated Calvinism as heartily as Catholicism, and yet yielded to no Puritan in his austere ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... table was singularly disconnected, with an average of interest uncommonly low. People were obviously saving themselves up. There was no lingering over tobacco; the last course served, the guests dispersed in all haste compatible with decency. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... estates, I was obliged to leave them deserted, because I had already sold my negroes. I shall be entirely ruined unless your Majesty release me from the payment of those two thousand pesos, or at least give me a continuance of ten years. I entreat your Majesty for this, since in order to foster decency among the women I brought here three sons and a nephew, whose exceedingly honorable and virtuous reputation is known throughout Nueva Espana, where ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... Those men surely did not go into battle without clothes; and why they should have been sent out of the surgeon's hands without enough of even underclothing to cover them, is the question I have never yet had answered. Common decency led to his being placed in the back room alone, but I shall never blush for going to him and doing the little I could for ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... Sybil, he is merely biding his time: waiting until a sufficient number of weeks have passed to enable him to come to the point with something like decency." ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... of learning would be followed by such ill-conduct and indignity of impertinence on the part of the shirted as might be intolerable to the one and disadvantageous to the other. Now there be women, we know, whose horrid fronts could have awed these saucy little Cubans into decency and good behavior, and some that we know, whether possessing that power or not, would have delighted in the fancied exercise of it. What strong-minded company, under these circumstances, would have turned back? What bolting, tramping, and rushing would they not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... how to escape from the veritable hell in which they lived. The "upper classes" of society know nothing about the way in which the poor live; how their overcrowding destroys all sense of personal dignity, of modesty, of outward decency, till human life, as Bishop Fraser justly said, is "degraded below the level of the swine." To such, and among such I went, and I could not grudge the price that then seemed to me as the ransom for their redemption. To me, indeed, it meant the losing of all that made life dear, but for them it seemed ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... before him. Here, he carefully insists, are wit and humour wholly void of offence. He assures his reader that in the whole course of the work, he will find "nothing prejudicial to the Cause of Religion and Virtue; nothing inconsistent with the strictest Rules of Decency, nor which can offend even the chastest Eye in the Perusal." As the almost incredible change from the manners of 1749 to those of the following century, and of our own day, has injuriously affected the reputation of Fielding among readers ignorant of past ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... moved in general social decency one realizes after listening to such conversations as I have hinted at, where respect and affection dominate, and then turning to some of the children's books of a century ago—the kind of book in which the parents ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... But besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies, nor right comedies: mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in clowns by head and shoulders, to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion. So as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained. I know Apuleius [Footnote: In his Latin Romance, the Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass.] did somewhat so, but ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... is the lot of the dumb. Merely for not knowing what a man believed he should know, Pat was to be humiliated, was to be punished far beyond justice and decency. And because he was a horse abnormally highstrung and sensitive, this punishment was to be doubly cruel. To him a blow was more painful than to the average horse, even as a word of kindness sank deeper and remained ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... any sense of decency," she said—"I say nothing of a sense of honor—you will leave this house, and your acquaintance with that lady will end here. Spare me your protests and excuses; I can place but one interpretation on what I saw when I opened ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... no sense of decency," I cried, "to contract yourself to a noble gentleman, who, though he is no longer young, is still distinguished in appearance and possessed of many attractions—one whose fortune and rank immeasurably surpass ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... and common decency alike dictate the futility of appeasement, we shall never try to placate an aggressor by the false and wicked bargain of trading honor for security. Americans, indeed all free men, remember that in the final choice a soldier's pack is not ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... scuffle would accept it as a practical illustration of that method. And if Julia wanted him to be nice to Biddy—which was exactly, even if with a different view, what he wanted himself—how could he better testify than by a visit to Lady Agnes—he would have in decency to go to see her some time—at a friendly, fraternising hour when they would all be likely to ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... from sympathetic observers, the "philanthropists," often described as sentimentalists. But the modern, more enlightened, labor movement has better ideals and policies in respect to the safety, sanitation, and decency of the working places. ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... and it is this bribery (for bribery it is, in whatever guise it may appear) that upholds one of the most glaring, the most oppressive of all monopolies, in the face of common sense, common justice and common decency. Other taxes are principally felt by the higher and middling classes; but this most odious, this most galling tax, is felt even in the cottage of the labourer, who cannot return to refresh himself after his day of toil with his favourite beverage without paying ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... little six had been discovered to be grievances, we understand why Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, and no one can persuade us into laying it on Harriet. Shelley and Cornelia are the responsible persons, and we cannot in honor and decency allow the cruelties which they practised upon the unoffending wife to be pushed aside in order to give us a chance to waste time and tears over six sentimental justifications of an offence which the six can't justify, nor even respectably assist ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... You'll have to do that part of it." He smiled with faint irony. "But you may take my word for it, it is so. He has thought of nothing but you and your happiness from the very beginning of things. And—unlike someone else we know—he has had the decency always to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... prosperity: impoverish the land and the bloom withers. If there are cases that seem to you otherwise, it is simply because the pressure has not been great enough; sufficient nourishment has not yet been withdrawn from the soil. Dignity, decency, honor, fade away when man or woman is reduced to shabby, shameful, degrading, cruel wretchedness. Before the clamors of the stomach ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... when immersion in baptism was deemed necessary to salvation; a ceremony still considered by the Greek church as indispensable. Why the disputes concerning this sacrament were carried on with more decency and less lasting rancour among Christians, than those which related to the other great pledge of our pardon, the communicating with our Saviour Christ in his last Supper, I know not, nor can imagine. Every page of ecclesiastical history exhibits the tenaciousness with ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... So when I got a polite note from Grim about half an hour after the results of the Perry Exhibition had been announced, telling me that Corker had given the customary consent, I strolled about looking up a cohort of monitors to help me in maintaining the "sacred cause of order and decency." I knew of old those junior concerts. "Pandemonium" was ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... months. The Lady Abbess, who called him her son, treated him with the affection and care of a mother; and he always declared that every thing which he saw within these walls, was conducted with the strictest decency and decorum. He received a great many devout admonitions from the ladies there, and they would fain have persuaded him to acknowledge what they thought so miraculous a deliverance, by embracing the ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... not have been appropriate to have written for them on the door, "Voi che intrate lasciate ogni speranza." (He who enters here leaves soap behind.) The most painful fact which struck me, in my many visits, was the intelligence and decency of some of the boarders. There was more than one who conversed in a manner which indicated an excellent early education; more than one who read the newspaper aloud and commented on it to the company, as any gentleman might ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... atrocious designs upon Bernard, and mean to checkmate them. If, after such a letter, she has the cheek to send us her Yankee girl to chaperon, I shall consider her lost to all sense of shame and all notions of decency. But she won't, of course. She'll withdraw her unobtrusively." And Lucy flung the peccant sheet that had roused all this wrath on to the back of the fireplace with ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... going to be brought down from heaven by a dove or something, when all the time, those wicked flying things are going round on the other side of the earth, and there don't seem as if there could be a dove left. Well, now that the time's come when you ought to be paid, if there's any decency left in the place, they comes to me and says, 'Oh, Mrs. Black, what shall we do?' I said, 'Why didn't you listen when I spoke out in meeting about our not being able to afford luxuries like gospel preaching?' ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... good. If they were to flee through the woods, there would certainly be time for only a shot or two when the tribesmen found them. If the rifle was to be used against the three nobles, then it was necessary, in all decency, to wait until the nobles had stopped, climbed out of their tankettes, equipped themselves equally, and a mutual ground of battle had been agreed upon. In that case, three against one would make short work ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... It was I who banged the table now, without any of the reserve of decency. "McCord, you're drunk—drunk, I tell you. A cat! Let a cat throw you off your head like this! She's probably hiding out below this minute, on affairs ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... the druggist, "should she excommunicate actors? For formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in the middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called 'Mysteries,' which often offended against the laws of decency." ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... off roughly and impatiently. Sally had evidently no sense of decency or even decorum. "Get out of my sight," he cried fiercely, "or if it comes to that I can go myself. I've done with you, I tell you—ye needn't come after ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... art the widow of a man of whom Report spake only praise: no act of thine Hath openly offended decency, But that young life which draws its sustenance From thy round breast ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... indifference. Was I to hear tomorrow that Mr Wortley had a train of charmers as long as Captain Macheath's in the "Beggars' Opera," 'twould not inflict a pang, so long as he kept within the bounds of prudence and family decency; and indeed, 'tis as my poor sister Gower said to me more than once: "'Tis you, sister, for a merciless good sense that makes you accommodate yourself without complaint to what had drove another woman distracted." We not married two years before I had ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Reformed in New York, the Lutherans and Presbyterians in the Middle and Southern colonies, and the Friends in Pennsylvania, whatever their denominational differences, was a unit in favor of the utmost simplicity consistent with decency and order; and though there was a difference between Congregational churches like the Old South in Boston and the Friends' meeting-houses in Philadelphia, the difference was far less marked than that existing between the new and old buildings ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... so few things in the world, about us, most unnatural, and yet most natural in being so? Hear the magistrate or judge admonish the unnatural outcasts of society; unnatural in brutal habits, unnatural in want of decency, unnatural in losing and confounding all distinctions between good and evil; unnatural in ignorance, in vice, in recklessness, in contumacy, in mind, in looks, in everything. But follow the good ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... old ones which should be dangerous to health, and to establish a central authority, the home office (now for most purposes the Local Government Board) to superintend all burial grounds with a view to the protection of the public health and the maintenance of public decency in burials. The Local Government Board thus has the power to obtain by order in council the closing of any burial ground it thinks fit, while its consent is necessary to the opening of any new burial ground; and it also has power ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of life; just the same degree of certainty have we in what relates to them in works of imitation. Indeed it is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observances of time and place, and of decency in general, which is only to be learned in those schools to which Horace recommends us, that what is called taste, by way of distinction, consists: and which is in reality no other than a more refined ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... severe a strain on their loyalty, and it has already been seen that when Elgin, obeying constitutional usage, recognized the French as citizens, equally entitled to office with the Tories, and passed the Rebellion Losses Bill in accordance with La Fontaine's wishes, the Tory sense of decency gave way. Many of them, not content with abusing the governor-general, and petitioning for his recall, actually declared themselves in favour of independence, or joined the ranks of the annexation party. ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... height of virtue not to elope with a married man, who has entirely and deliberately deceived you, and adds to the wrong of deceit the insult of proposing an elopement! Triumph of principle! I should call it the result of common decency, rather,—a thing that the instinct of any woman would compel her to do. My only wonder is how Jane Eyre could continue to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... by its own limitations twenty years afterward. Meantime the prejudice against Chinese labor had modified somewhat. The public had become somewhat more considerate of their rights and, at any rate, there was a desire to maintain some show of decency in legislating the matter. So a more moderate Statute was enacted in 1902. I was the only person who voted against it in either House. It was, of course, clear that resistance was useless. It was not worth while, it seemed to me, to undertake to express my objections at length. I ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... conversation, Oswald was upon his guard, lest any thing should escape that might create suspicion. He withdrew as soon as he could with decency, and left the Baron meditating what all these things should mean; he feared there was some misfortune impending over his house, though he knew not ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... the laws of society, with the means at hand of acquiring the few necessaries of life that Nature in this generous part of her domain fails to provide readymade, a Beachcomber of virtuous instinct, and a due perception of the decency of things, may enjoy a happy life. Should, however, he be of the type that demands a wreck or so every month to maintain his supplies of rum or gin, and other articles of his true religion, and is prepared if wrecks do not come with regularity, to assist tardy ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... which seems to think, that to subvert the constitution, the shortest and most effectual method is by beginning with the Established Church; but will any person of veracity, any person of ordinary decency, say that he has deserved the accusation which the Edinburgh reviewer, with a want of decency peculiarly his own, has ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... had an immense time; and never wrote home, but saved it all up to tell when he should get back. Twice, with proper modesty and decency, he proposed to end his visit, but the Commodore said, "No—wait; leave it to me; I'll tell ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... backwardness of her lover; he was indeed so very urgent in his addresses, that, had he not with many oaths promised her marriage, we could scarce have been strictly justified in calling his passion honourable; but he was so remarkably attached to decency, that he never offered any violence to a young lady without the most earnest promises of that kind, these being, he said, a ceremonial due to female modesty, which cost so little, and were so easily pronounced, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... imperialism of a gross scale and illiberal, even tyrannical working. We could hardly do otherwise for such has been the universal tendency for more than an hundred years. By constant progression municipal governments have absorbed into themselves matters that in decency, and with any regard for liberty, belong to the individual. Simultaneously our state governments have followed the same course, infringing even on the just prerogatives of the towns and cities, while, more than all, ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... went to bed upbraiding myself for cowardice and resolved to go to Boyce the next day. Not only Fate, but honour and decency forced ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks; the ghost of a linen decency yet haunts us. We stumble and are impatient at the least dividing of one visible congregation from another, though it be not in fundamentals; and through our forwardness to suppress, and our backwardness to recover any enthralled piece of truth out of the gripe ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... mind, as he walked sharply up and down the platform, trying to get warm. It was strange how Miss Pigchalke and her vigorous, unpleasant personality haunted him. But he had found in his passbook only this morning that she had already cashed his last cheque for fifty pounds. Surely she couldn't, in decency, go on with this half-insane kind of persecution if she accepted what was, after all, his free and generous gift ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... to the lands in the Basin. He took them up under the mineral act, and plainly against all law and decency. It's the plainest case of fraud I know about, and is a direct steal ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... little apart, on a square by themselves, are the houses of the secret societies, surrounded by images and large drums. The dwelling-houses are rather poor-looking huts, with low walls and roofs and an exceedingly small entrance which is only to be passed through on one's hands and knees. Decency demands that the women should always enter the houses backward, and this occasions funny sights, as they look out of their huts like so ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... fill up with a couple of their own shareholders; and were, in fine, proceeding to dispose of, by open sale, and by private contract, the freehold, leasehold, and funded property of plaintiff, to the incalculable danger of the estate, and to the disregard of decency and justice. What rendered this assumption and exercise of power the more intolerable, was, that the persons the most unfit were selected; and as if, it would appear, from a "hateful love of contraries," the man learned in law being sent to preside over the business of equity, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... plenty to pay you in the bank, but my husband 'ain't had any time to go there this mornin', what with seein' the doctor, and gettin' the certificate for my poor sister, and all I've got to say is: if you're so dreadful afraid as all this comes to, that you have to lose all sense of decency, and dun folks so hard, in such trouble as we be, you can put on your things and go jest as quick as you have a mind to, and I'll get Miss Patch to finish the work. I've been more than half a mind to have her, anyway. I was very strongly ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... protested, "have a sense of decency, Reginald or Horace or Hector; I always forget your London name. No," he said, "I won't accept your suggestion, but I have got a proposition to make to you, and it concerns a certain relative of John Minute—a nice, young fellow who will one day ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... last nail into the coffin of a competitive examination system. A good tree in full bearing should produce 120 coco-nuts in a season; so that a very small grove is quite sufficient to maintain a respectable family in decency and comfort. Ah, what a mistake the English climate made when it left off its primitive warmth of the tertiary period, and got chilled by the ice and snow of the Glacial Epoch down to its present misty and dreary wheat-growing condition! If it were not for that, those odious ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... in a cottage contained three beds occupied by eleven people of all ages and both sexes, with no curtain or partition whatever. At Milton Abbas, on the average of the last census there were thirty-six persons in each house, and so crowded were they that cottagers with a desire for decency would combine and place all the males in one cottage, and all the females in another. But this was rare, and licentiousness and immorality of the ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... no blacks, but as much decency as you choose. You will mark the distinction between my sister and your maids of honour, Mrs. Lewin. She is but a debutante in our modish world, and must be dressed as modestly as you can contrive, to be consistent with ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... bulks largest is the inadequate wages of a considerable portion of the lowest class. It is obviously impossible to support the average family of five in decency, not to say in health, efficiency, or comfort, with an income of, say, less than a thousand dollars a year, as prices go at time of writing (1914). Yet great numbers of families at present have to exist ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... talk of decency!" retorted Morgan. "Pah! You were a decent man once, and a good miller into the bargain. But that time's past and gone. Decency died out when you exchanged the pick and facing-hammer for the glass and muddler. Decency! Pah! How you talk! As if it were any more decent to sell ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... Of advancing years—Browning was now nearly forty-nine—the only symptoms were that he had lost his youthful slightness of figure, and that his beard and hair were somewhat blanched by time. "The women," his wife wrote to his sister, "adore him everywhere far too much for decency," and to herself he seemed "infinitely handsomer and more attractive" than when, sixteen years previously, she had first seen him. On the whole therefore she was well pleased with his new passion for clay, and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... I send you a copy of a letter received from the Marquis Fayette. In the present unsettled state of American commerce, I had as lieve avoid all further treaties, except with American powers. If Count Merci, therefore, does not propose the subject to me, I shall not to him, nor do more than decency requires, if he does propose it. I am, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the ordinary talk is that an artist should be judged purely by his art; but I am rather a Philistine and like to feel that the art serves a good purpose. Your art is not only an art addition to our sum of national achievement, but it has also always been an addition to the forces that tell for decency, and above all for the blotting out of ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... give champagne breakfasts, comes as a matter of course; while their supremest delight is to wander back to their old school, in fawn-coloured dittos, and with a cigar in their mouths, to show their superiority to all sense of decency and good taste. But these are the rare exceptions. However much they may conceal their own emotions, however dead and cynical, and contemptible they may grow in after days, there are few men of ordinary uprightness who do not feel a thrill of genuine ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... America, without first grovelling down upon the earth, and bending the knee before this monster of depravity; when any private excellence is safe from its attacks; when any social confidence is left unbroken by it; or any tie of social decency and honour is held in the least regard; when any man in that Free Country has freedom of opinion, and presumes to think for himself, and speak for himself, without humble reference to a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance and base dishonesty, he utterly loaths and despises ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... cheerful exemplification of the adage that man is not made to live alone. He wore the willow just long enough for decency, and then married again—married another pretty, portionless young woman of no family worth mentioning. This reiterated indiscretion caused a breach with his father, and the slender allowance that had been made him was resumed. But his new ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Philip, "a duty of decency and honour, and to name that girl, foolish as she is, in the same breath with your women—But here, listen to me. Best tell you now, so there may be no mistake and no excuse. Miss Cregeen is to be married to a friend of mine. I needn't say who he is—he comes close enough to you at all events. When ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... are buried both in ignorance and superstition; their ignorance can be seen in their hatred of British rule, and their refusal to accept the British religion; wherever they go in the wide world, they reduce the average of decency and intelligence and virtue; for twenty years these lies have been sung in the ears of the nations, until only the enemies of England have a welcome for us. Behold our position in this country. Just tolerated. No place open to us except that of cleaning the sewers. Every soul of us compelled ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... lofty constructive purposes. They may, in their desire to speak practically, forget the moral values which should underlie this intimate information. Never should the spirit of levity intrude itself in these intimate personal sex colloquies. Restraint and decency should always mark them. ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... fine!" said Sir Wilfrid; "but I wanted a big fight—Achilles and his Myrmidons going for the other fellows—and somebody having the decency to burn the temple of that hag Artemis! I say!" He spoke, smiling, in Marcia's ear. "Your brother Arthur's in very bad company! Do you see where he is? Look at the ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... creed is long enough to cover many different meanings, and elastic enough to be worn, at least outside, for common decency, and to fit almost any form of ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon, for his part, will not higgle with a royal sinner about turning of the key: but there are other Churchmen; there is a King's Confessor, foolish Abbe Moudon; and Fanaticism and Decency are not yet extinct. On the whole, what is to be done? The doors can be well watched; the Medical Bulletin adjusted; and much, as usual, be hoped for ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... startling exceptions to this rule, which astonish any one accustomed to see the high regard to outward decency observed by the same cloth at home; for instance, it would be considered most reprehensible at home, for any clergyman to keep a mistress; and if the fact became known, would occasion his instant dismissal from his cure, and his expulsion ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... who had now worked himself into a towering passion; "we are not alone. Mr Barnett is here, a witness to the way in which this man has prevailed upon you to set all common decency at defiance, and come here alone. How long, I repeat, has this ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... that very reason he must. Listen to me, major; if he doesn't care to please his daughter for her own sake, he will have to do so for the sake of decency. Yes, I tell you, she has thoroughly compromised herself—quite enough, if it is ever known, to spoil any other engagement her father may make. Why, ask Adele! The day of the earthquake she ABSOLUTELY had the audacity to send him ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... he said in his own language. "A hundred curses on the swine-eaters, who know neither decency ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... who is Author of this Air, adds the pretty Run to it; and has also, when she is in very good Humour, a taking Familiarity in throwing herself into the lowest Seat in the Room, and letting her hoop'd Petticoats fall with a lucky Decency about her. I know she practices this way of sitting down in her Chamber; and indeed she does it as well as you may have seen an Actress fall down dead in a Tragedy. Not the least Indecency in her Posture. If ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... so, can be used against him with terrible—yes, fatal effect. I now can understand very easily why he was so strangely and frantically eager to betroth his child to the son of Lord Chetwynde—why he trampled on all decency, and bound his own daughter, little more than a baby, to a stranger—why he purchased Guy Molyneux, body and soul, for money. All is plain from this. But, after all, it is a puzzle. He makes so high a profession of honor that if his profession were real ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... number of the people, and the value of their estates; and soon after, they were invested with the authority not only of inspecting the morals of individuals, but of inflicting public censure for any licentiousness of conduct, or violation of decency. Thus both the civil and religious institutions concurred to restrain the people within the bounds of good order and obedience to the laws; at the same time that the frugal life of the ancient Romans proved a strong security against those vices which ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... foreign women I think of "Mary," and "Annie," and others I have known. I see their broad foreheads and intelligent kindly faces, and think of the heroic struggle they are making to bring their families up in thrift and decency. Would Mary vote against liquor if she had the chance? She would. So would you if your eyes had been blackened as often by a drunken husband. There is no need to instruct these women on the evils of liquor drinking—they are able to give you a few aspects of ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... "Devout and holy men, as well under the Law as under the Gospel, moved either by the express command of God, or by the secret inspiration of the blessed Spirit, and acting agreeably to their own reason and sense of the natural decency of things, have erected houses for the public worship of God, and separated them from all unhallowed, worldly, and common uses, in order to fill men's minds with greater reverence for His glorious Majesty, and affect their hearts with more devotion and humility in ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... history will, I think, consider the space given to him here as wasted. He was a really powerful schoolmaster to bring the popular novel into still further popularity; and he made a distinct advance upon such persons as Pigault-Lebrun and Ducray-Duminil—upon the former in comparative decency, if not of subject, of expression; upon the latter in getting close to actual life; and upon both in what may be called the furniture of his novels—the scene-painting, property-arranging, and general ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... would like to say. I would wish to show you something at least of the success with which religion among the Jews has been turned to domestic uses. No detail of the home life is left unhallowed. Even the poorest Jewish home is saved by its ceremonies from the degrading indifference to decency and tenderness, which is the terrible feature of the industrial homes of poverty. The sanctity of the home is an affectionate tradition linking the Jews through the ages with a golden chain. The purity of home ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... in Countenance, especially in that half of the congregation who did not enjoy the advantages of the polish of the village. A sallow skin, that indicated nothing but exposure, was common to all, as was an air of great decency and attention, mingled, generally, with an expression of shrewdness, and in the present instance of active curiosity. Now and then a face and dress were to be seen among the congregation, that differed entirely from this description. If pock-marked and ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Dublin it is impossible not to be struck with the fact that it records a degree of neglect and indifference on the part of the people and the local authorities to beauty, decency and order such as could scarcely be found in another country. In the centre of Merrion Square was a fountain of very ambitious expense and design, erected to the honor of the duke and duchess of Rutland, a lord and lady lieutenant. The fountain was only finished in 1791, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... answered are not all as broad in their significance as the foregoing, there are others of a more immediate personal kind which arise in his life as a student, as a friend, as a son and brother, problems in which standards of fair play and "decency" are involved, and upon which it may be taken for granted that he has done some thinking, howsoever crude. These interests are invaluable. Out of them the finer product is to be created in the shape of better standards, higher ideals, and habits of moral thoughtfulness, leading in turn ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... I say? How could I tell him that he was opening a door for me that I could never enter; that by all the canons of decency and honor I should never seek to enter? In the mingled emotions of the moment there was a blind anger at the thought that he had unconsciously made my hard case infinitely harder by showing me that my loyalty to him ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... positive existence.[470] As a result the followers of Besht, calling themselves the "New Saints," and at his death numbering no less than 40,000, threw aside not only the precepts of the Talmud, but all the restraints of morality and even decency.[471] ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Letter V. the Doctor again is very much himself. A little provocation and he bristles and stabs all round. He mounts the hygienic horse and proceeds from the lack of implements of cleanliness to the lack of common decency, and "high flavoured instances, at which even a native of Edinburgh would stop his nose." [This recalls Johnson's first walk up the High Street, Edinburgh, on Bozzy's arm. "It was a dusky night: I could ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Guillet turning scarlet each time either of his divergent orbs of vision encountered his serenely unconscious, full-dressed pupil; which certainly, considering that he was a member of the Grand Opera corps de ballet, was a curious instance of the purely conventional ideas of decency ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... could express those opinions without resorting to illegal expedients and employing the agency of desperate men. The consequence was that the dispute was carried on, though with sufficient keenness, yet, on the whole, with a decency which would have been thought extraordinary in the days of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a tackle was attached to the board, and the remains * * * were hoisted over the side of the ship into the boat, without further ceremony. If several bodies were waiting for interment, but one of them was lowered into the boat at a time, for the sake of decency. The prisoners were always very anxious to be engaged in the duty of interment, not so much from a feeling of humanity, or from a wish to pay respect to the remains of the dead, for to these feelings they had almost become strangers, as from the desire of once more placing their feet ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... is sheer blasphemy to say that He did not so become incarnate, it is obvious enough that each must be logically held to deny the existence of the other's Deity. Therefore; that each has a scientific right to call the other an atheist; and that, if he refrains, it is only on the ground of decency and good manners, which should restrain an honourable man from employing even scientifically justifiable language, if custom has given it an abusive connotation. While one must agree with Hume, then, it is, nevertheless, to be wished ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... clean. So far as I know how to be, I am honest and scrupulous. It wouldn't hurt me to feel that you took some interest in these things. Rather fierce temptations strike a man, every few days, in this world. I can keep decent, for a woman who cares for decency, but when I do, I'd like to have the fact recognized, by just enough of a show of appreciation that I could see it. I am tired of this one-sided business. After this, I want to get a little in return for what I give. Elnora, you have love, tenderness, and honest appreciation ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... instantly take out my pocket-handkerchief, and begin to cry again. Then I look at my watch; a quarter-past seven only—and my watch always gains! Two hours and three-quarters before I can, with the smallest semblance of decency, go to bed. Meanwhile I am hungry. Though my husband has deserted me, though my brother and sister have failed me, my ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... wrong was expressed by her. She had used double sets of standards in behavior all through her life. What she was urged to be and to do seemed impossible in the light of her past and its connections. Even her apparent decency belied the reality underlying her career, she thought. With all this and her vivid imagery it is little wonder that her magnificent powers of imagination had full sway and that she said and half believed all sorts of things which were not true. Then, probably, habit-formation ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... uncleanness, and also from the animal itself. The word came in this way to be a useful one to hurl at the head of an enemy at all times, or by which to classify those who lived outside the pale of common, human decency. For such as these last there could be no hope, and the term as applied to them was judged to carry with it the bitterest stigma, just as it continues to do in the East to the present day. To be a Christian ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... said Cochrane firmly. "He shot at me! And in my small way I'm a psychopath too, Bill. My psychosis is that I don't like his kind of psychosis. I am psychotically devoted to sense and my possibly quaint idea of decency. I am abnormally concerned with the real world—and you'd better come back to it! Look here! I'm pathologically in revolt against such imbecilities as an overcrowded Earth and people being afraid ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... out her hand to Beth as she passed. Beth accepted this also as a congratulation, and stooped and kissed her mother. Then the lawyer got up and shook hands with her, and thereupon Uncle James, feeling forced for decency's sake to do something, observed pointedly: "I suppose Miss Victoria Bench was quite sane when she made ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... near the drawing-room; its occupants consisted solely of a few obese ladies of the type referred to by the gentleman with the glass eye, wearing such palpable wigs that my artistic susceptibilities were sorely wounded at the mere sight of them, and my sense of decency outraged. ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... your foreign phrases?" angrily interrupted the general. "This is not a drawing-room! You might drop it, from a sense of decency." ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... forward to office as a sub-prefect. At last he blossomed into full glory as head of the school, ex-officio captain of the games; head of his house, where he and his lieutenants preserved discipline and decency among seventy boys from twelve to seventeen; general arbiter in the quarrels that spring up among the touchy Sixth—and intimate friend and ally of the Head himself. When he stepped forth in the black jersey, white knickers, and ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... new. Lucilius, warm'd with more than mortal flame Rose next[29], and held a torch to ev'ry shame. See stern Menippus, cynical, unclean; And Grecian Cento's, mannerly obscene. Add the last efforts of Pacuvius' rage, And the chaste decency of Varro's page.[30] ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... family quarrels pass with little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. But, once in six or seven years, our virtue becomes outrageous. We cannot suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must teach libertines that the English people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. Accordingly, some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offences have been treated with lenity, is ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... to defend her," said Mrs. Mirvan; "but indeed, as she belongs to our party, we cannot, with any decency, leave the place till she is, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... him and was sitting, you may say, in Furny's pocket while he explained to us that his weak health would have prevented him from coming, but that he had to come. He evidently thought that the funeral couldn't have taken place without him—not with any decency, you know. And then Antigone said a thing for which I ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... But now, I was told, they were the chief promoters of a shameful traffic, and that for a spike-nail, or any other thing they value, they would oblige the women to prostitute themselves, whether they would or no; and even without any regard to that privacy which decency required.[3] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... fetches me. When I think of what I've done for this country, and then of what this country has done for me, it makes me fairly wild—clean drives me off my head. There's no gratitude nor common decency left, doctor!" ...
— My Friend The Murderer • A. Conan Doyle
... the courts of princes." "Yes, there is," said I, "but not for this speculative philosophy, that makes everything to be alike fitting at all times; but there is another philosophy that is more pliable, that knows its proper scene, accommodates itself to it, and teaches a man with propriety and decency to act that part which has fallen to his share. If when one of Plautus' comedies is upon the stage, and a company of servants are acting their parts, you should come out in the garb of a philosopher, and repeat, out of Octavia, a discourse of Seneca's to Nero, would ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... He had the decency to rise. "Major Meredyth," said he, "you're under a terrible misapprehension. You're a military man and must look at everything from a military point of view. It would be useless to discuss the philosophy of the situation with ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... bitterly, "she is better employed than to come near me. She is not a self-sacrificing fool like me. When I had the advantage, I gave it up; now she has got it, she uses it without mercy, decency, or gratitude. And that is the way to love. Oh! if my turn could but come again. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... "luxuries." Custom permits them to go barefoot without hardship or degradation. For the middle classes of the same country, they are "decencies." Shoes are worn there, not to protect the feet but one's civil position. In Turkey, tobacco is a decency and wine a luxury. The reverse is the case in England. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... picture, certainly, but (unless perhaps it is to be taken allegorically) downright impious, and overstepping the bounds of decency. It seems to me that the strange medley of wounds, quarrels, revenges, tears, bonds, and other woes which makes up the Homeric tradition of the gods was designed by its author to degrade his deities, as far as possible, into men, and exalt his men into deities—or rather, his gods ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... in its monstrous irony, unsurpassable drama, which is put forward as the introduction to the great era. The bourgeois conscience of the West has no inkling of what it means. To this conscience, the war was a huge violation of decency, contrived by bandits; its victory is the final triumph of a capitalist, rationalistic civilization; the torch lit in the East means murder and incendiarism, and the upward migration of the people from the depths is ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... them by imitating their vices. Robespierre never condescended to this, and never sought to obtain ascendency over the people by pandering to their brutality, but by appealing to their reason; and the fanatical tone of his speeches possessed at least that decency that attends great ideas—he ruled by respect, and scorned to captivate them by familiarity. The more he gained the confidence of the lower classes, the more did he affect the philosophical tone and austere demeanour of the statesman. It was ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... his mind is almost disordered by what he sees. In his journal he notes his own fight with poverty and its contrast with the careless luxury of a crowd of worthless hangers-on making four or five hundred thousand francs a year and insulting decency by their lavish expenditure. One of the ring, a clerk with a petty salary, a base creature, spends more on carriages, horses, and harness than a foppish and reckless young member of the nouveaux-riches would spend in France. Corruption in Canada is protected by corruption in France. ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... were now fixed on the subject of the toast, who by gulping down port wine at the imminent hazard of suffocation, endeavoured to conceal his confusion. After as long a pause as decency would admit, he rose, but, as the newspapers sometimes say in their reports, 'we regret that we are quite unable to give even the substance of the honourable gentleman's observations.' The words 'present company—honour—present occasion,' and 'great happiness'—heard occasionally, and repeated ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to it? I am amazed that Mr. Lincoln should ask such a question. Mr. Lincoln's object is to cast an imputation upon the Supreme Court. He knows that there never was but one man in America, claiming any degree of intelligence or decency, who ever for a moment pretended such a thing. It is true that the Washington Union, in an article published on the 17th of last December, did put forth that doctrine, and I denounced the article on the floor of the Senate. * * * Lincoln's friends, Trumbull, and Seward, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Chancellor shuts him up in Bedlam, or till the mob pelts him as he passes." But the reviewer reminds him that he has no similar right as against clergymen presented to benefices in his diocese. They are protected by the patron's action of Quare Impedit; and all considerations of honour, decency, and common sense should restrain the Bishop from "letting himself loose against the working man of God," and enforcing against the curate a system of inquisition which he dare not apply to ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... satisfying my hunger, the old woman counted down upon a table the ten thousand crowns which were owing to me. 'There is your whole sum,' said she. 'Be not uneasy that my mistress does not yet appear. The law commands, and decency requires, that you should not see one another ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... should take, but in order thereto it is necessary that I prepare several things for the children, especially those who have no graundee, and I am resolved to finish them before I go, that we may appear with decency, both here and at Arndrumn-stake; for I am sure my father, whose temper I am perfectly acquainted with, will, upon sight of me and my little ones, be so overjoyed, that he will forgive my absence and marriage, provided he sees reason to believe I have not matched unworthily, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... of rescues compassed, directly or indirectly, by the Piccadilly Midnight work is about fifty a year. This is not a very great result; but after all the taking of even a few people from this hellish life and their restoration to decency and self-respect is well worth the cost and labour of the mission. The Officers told me that they meet with but little success in the case of those women who are in their bloom and earning great incomes. It can ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... had thus their feuds with the clergy, they had feuds still more bitter with the rival order of the Templars. With different interests and different aims, the one sought to promote enterprises against which the other protested, or stickled about points of precedence when common decency called for harmonious action, or withheld its aid when that aid was indispensable for the very safety of the State. Thus we have the triple discord of the King and his barons struggling against the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... therefore, guilty of gross ingratitude when he refused to take in the corpse of his patron, or to allow it the rites of burial. Certain poor women had more compassion; they at least cast a piece of old cloth over the corpse for decency's sake and buried it out of sight, although without any attempt to make a grave and "without any office of priest or clerk." Thus, it remained till the following month of February, when it was disinterred and taken to Exeter. The treatment ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... session, the two Houses reconciled to the church of Rome against Easter term, and the fires lighted in Smithfield by Midsummer. Such horrible calumnies against a nation are not the less injurious to decency, good-nature, truth, honour, and religion, because they may be vented with safety. And I will appeal to any reader of common understanding, whether this be not the most natural and necessary deduction from the passages I have ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... me the key; and here's hot water in tripping Mary's hands. The portmanteau opens easy. Quick! the door's shut on rosy Mary. The race is for domestic peace, my boy. I sacrifice everything I can for it, in decency. 'Tis the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he questioned, as he opened the gate; and without waiting for an answer, he went on: "I've come to thank you for getting my dog away from those scoundrels at the City Hall. They had the decency to tell me where ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... others he was loved by Govinda, his friend, the son of a Brahman. He loved Siddhartha's eye and sweet voice, he loved his walk and the perfect decency of his movements, he loved everything Siddhartha did and said and what he loved most was his spirit, his transcendent, fiery thoughts, his ardent will, his high calling. Govinda knew: he would not become a common Brahman, not a lazy ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... number of gallants who continued to hover about her even after her marriage, that he had hurried her down into the country, much against her own inclination, where their mutual animosities had risen to such a height, that they preserved no decency before company or servants, but abused one another in ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... no remark, and to be considered as a matter of course. With us, at least, the converse of the proposition prevails: it is the man professing irreligion who would be remarked and reprehended in England; and, if the second-named vice exists, at any rate, it adopts the decency of secrecy and is not made patent and notorious to all the world. A French gentleman thinks no more of proclaiming that he has a mistress than that he has a tailor; and one lives the time of Boccaccio over again, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be called such—have little regard to comfort or decency. Old and young, male and female, married and single, drop down upon the common clay floor, each covering up with his or her blanket,—the only protection they have from cold or exposure. The night, however, is shortened ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... splendor of material growth, no brilliance of artistic development, will permanently avail any people unless its home life is healthy, unless the average man possesses honesty, courage, common sense, and decency, unless he works hard and is willing at need to fight hard; and unless the average woman is a good wife, a good mother, able and willing to perform the first and greatest duty of womanhood, able and willing to bear, and to bring up as they should be brought ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... have lost a fashionable dinner in his admiration of a common ant-hill. La Fontaine did so once, because the well-known little community was engaged in what he took to be a funeral. He could not in decency leave them till it was over. Verse-making out of the question, this was to be a genuine poet, though, with commonplace mortals, it was also to be ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... their desire to speak practically, forget the moral values which should underlie this intimate information. Never should the spirit of levity intrude itself in these intimate personal sex colloquies. Restraint and decency should ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... we may, there was certainly in our camp an average tone of propriety which all visitors noticed, and which was not created, but only preserved by discipline. I was always struck, not merely by the courtesy of the men, but also by a certain sober decency of language. If a man had to report to me any disagreeable fact, for instance, he was sure to do it with gravity and decorum, and not blurt it out in an offensive way. And it certainly was a significant fact that the ladies of our camp, when we were so fortunate as to have such guests, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... know it does. And you do know it does, and you do it because you know it does. The principal pleasure of your life is to remind your family of their misfortunes. And the next great pleasure of your existence is to keep low company. But, however, if you have no sense of decency, I have. You'll please to allow me to go on the other side ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... old Kentuck—as I began: "Well, ma'am, this tobacco-chewing, as I said before, carried me, as you witnessed, constantly to the window. I don't know that I chew more than many others, but I know I chew too much for my good, and for decency, too, ma'am." ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... it," said Lord Chiltern. "Her temper is too much like mine to allow her to be happy with such a log of wood as Robert Kennedy. It is such men as he who drive me out of the pale of decent life. If that is decency, I'd sooner be indecent. You mark my words. They'll come to grief. She'll never ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... the back while in the act of doing his duty, and who had called her a "damn fool" in her own house, and was even then off on the trail of another man he had sworn to kill on sight. By all the laws of justice, equity, and decency, she should hate this man! She was conscious of no other feeling toward him than a burning, unquenchable hate. And yet, deep down in her heart she knew—by the pain of her discovery of his treachery—she knew she loved him, and utterly she despised herself ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... scarcely thrown off its control; whereas the homeward bound revelled in disgusting excess of licence. Although many of the women on their way to California showed clearly enough that the life of licence they sought would not be altogether unfamiliar to them, they still retained some appearance of decency in their attire and manner; but in many cases (as I have before said) the female companions of the successful gold-diggers appeared in no hurry to resume the dress or obligations of their sex. Many were clothed as the men were, in flannel shirt and boots; rode their mules ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... of spirit. Jimmy had successfully fought poverty and ill-health; he had risen from a newspaper-boy's existence to the dizzy heights of a milkman's cart. His pale face with its prominent eyes and rich, chestnut forelock bore an expression of indomitable Cockney confidence in the ultimate decency of things. He had always been kind to his mother. "More like a girl than a boy," she said, "in the way he cared for his home and looked after me." And now Jimmy was dead: the message had come that he would not return. "And ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... or, rather, I sat down on it. I subsided into the chair close to Caspian which the man had jumped up from like a Jack-in-a-box. Pat followed my example by plumping into a seat on Ed's other side, and in common decency he could not bolt. "Why, yes," I said, "I should like nothing better than an excuse to dine as I am. Mr. Caspian is so smart, he must bear off the honours ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... an open passage to its brood of slaves. And, in spite of this, Freedom's share is about to be taken by violence—by the force of misrepresentative votes, not called for by the popular will. What name can I, in common decency, give to this wicked ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the scandal in the manner of the personal columns in newspapers, and drawing a number of obvious morals. The Griffith family were sitting in their pew well in view of the congregation; and losing even the shadow of decency, the people turned round and stared at them, ghoul-like.... Robert Griffith sat in the corner with his head bent down, huddled up, his rough face speaking in all its lines the terrible humiliation; his hair was all dishevelled. He was not more than fifty, and ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... that nothing was wanting to his consent, but that my uncle should settle his estate upon me. I objected the indecency of encroaching on his life, and the danger of provoking him by such an unseasonable demand. Lucius seemed not to think decency of much importance, but admitted the danger of displeasing, and concluded that as he was now old and sickly, we might without any in convenience, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... with the others, laughing with Burke, who had a dozen army reminiscences to exchange with him, and bidding as small a good-by as decency permitted to Logan. Marjorie heard him dash up again, and then run down, as if he had left something outside the door and forgotten it. Lucille came over to her and began to fuss at her about changing her frock for a heavier ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... they had done good service, omitted to mention their names. The complaint was just; and, had it been made in language becoming Christians and gentlemen, would probably have produced a considerable effect on the public mind. But Walker's accusers in their resentment disregarded truth and decency, used scurrilous language, brought calumnious accusations which were triumphantly refuted, and thus threw away the advantage which they had possessed. Walker defended himself with moderation and candour. His friends fought his battle with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... free conversation, I think is my duty as my profession obliges me, to save what souls I can, by bringing them to the knowledge of some Catholic doctrine, necessary to salvation; and since these people are under your immediate government, in gratitude, justice, and decency, for what you have done for me, I shall offer no farther points in religion, that what shall merit your approbation. Being a-pleased with the modesty of his carriage, I told him he should not be worse used for being of a different persuasion, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... men, generally proceeds from sincere and strong personal convictions. Even the bare fact of having to give an account of their conduct is a powerful inducement to adhere to conduct of which at least some decent account can be given. If any one thinks that the mere obligation of preserving decency is not a very considerable check on the abuse of power, he has never had his attention called to the conduct of those who do not feel under the necessity of observing that restraint. Publicity is inappreciable, even when it does no more than prevent that which can by no possibility ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... him. I told him I'd leave him if he didn't mend his manners, and he wouldn't; so I left him. You see, I'm a better man than you think me; and, what's more, I have serious thoughts of washing my hands of him entirely, and the whole set of 'em, and comporting myself from this day forward with all decency and sobriety, as a Christian and the father of a family should do. What do you think ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... square miles among the dwarf pines and oaks. The guard-house is kept by a squad of Dutch soldiers. But it is in no sense a prison-camp, for people are coming and going freely all the time, and the only rules within are those of decency ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... with by the navigators had little idea of decency or modesty, the same was not true of the New Zealanders, and Cook gives a curious example of this fact. Although not so clean as the natives of Tahiti, whose climate is much warmer, and although they bathed less often, they took a pride in their persons, and showed a certain coquetry. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... secretions (see Exod. xxi. 10); that the wife should be up betimes and bake the bread, so as to have some ready in case any one should come begging; that the women should wear a girdle round the waist for decency sake; that they should comb their hair before bathing; that peddlers should hawk their perfumes about the streets in order that women should supply themselves with such things as will attract and ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... you what it matters, sir. It matters that if this family difference is to be smoothed over as we all hope it may be, Mrs. Clandon, as a matter of social convenience and decency, will have to resume her husband's name. (Mrs. Clandon assumes an expression of the most determined obstinacy.) Or else Mr. Crampton will have to call himself Mr. Clandon. (Crampton looks indomitably resolved to do nothing of the sort.) ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... worst of this kind, was that of Captain Kotzebue, commanding a Russian exploring expedition. Wherever he went he outraged decency by the licence he allowed his crew, and on his return home malignantly abused the English missionaries whom he found nobly struggling, against innumerable difficulties, to reclaim the hapless natives from the sin and corruption which he had done his utmost to encourage. Others, from ignorance ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... once from Liverpool Street Station to Blackfriar's Bridge. It was a sixpenny job,—you needn't laugh; indeed it was,—and I wanted the money desperately. He only gave me threepence; and he hadn't even the decency to pay in silver. Whatever money I make, I shall never get that odd threepence ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... extraordinary trials that has ever been recorded in merely literary annals. The attack in the "Commercial Advertiser" was followed by a similar one in the "North American Review." This was written, however, with more decency, though it again devoted itself mainly to the battle of Lake Erie. It was the work of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a naval author, who by three books of travel had gained at the time some literary notoriety. But the notoriety never rose to ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... for even to-day, when wagon roads have been driven into the mountain-walled forests where only the bear and wood-deer roamed before, all who go out on the gold trail do not come home. I was anxious to return to Fairmead, so that as soon as decency permitted I called on Colonel Carrington, and though I longed to challenge what he had said to Calvert, I contented myself with ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... if he is not trained with intelligence; but mere intelligence by itself is worse than useless unless it is guided by an upright heart, unless there are also strength and courage behind it. Morality, decency, clean living, courage, manliness, self-respect—these qualities are more important in the make-up of a people than any mental subtlety. Shape this University's course so that it shall help in the production of a constantly upward ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... volunteered. "The dirty cur's stuck Carson up for twenty thousand pesos. We had to pay, or he'd have compelled half our peons to enlist or set the wells on fire. And you know, Davies, what we've done for him in past years. Gratitude? Simple decency? Great Scott!" ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... the surface that secret, indecorous, primordial quality that he shared, though in less splendor and abundance, with Laurence Furnival. He had kept his head, or had seemed inimitably to have kept it. At any rate, he had preserved his sense of decency. He was incapable of presenting on the terrace at Amberley the flaming pageant of his passion. Straker was not sure how far this restraint, this level-headedness of young Reggy, had been his undoing. It might be that Miss Tarrant had required of him a pageant. Anyhow, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... such publications as will accept their lying advertisements, do more to encourage abortion than even the professional abortionists themselves? There seems to be but one remedy: Speed the time when in their acceptance of advertising those publishers who fail to recognize decency as a moral obligation may be forced by public opinion to recognize its ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... nothing of. Life is not all Beer and Skittles. The inherent tragedy of things works itself out from white to black and blacker, and the poor things of a day look ruefully on. Does it shake my cast-iron faith? I cannot say it does. I believe in an ultimate decency of things; ay, and if I woke in hell, should still believe it! But it is hard walking, and I can see my own share in the missteps, and can bow my head to the result, like an old, stern, unhappy devil of a Norseman, as my ultimate ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Aladdin's fate, and know my father's temper so well that I am persuaded, with you, he could not escape the terrible effects of the sultan's rage: therefore, should I continue to lament him all my life, my tears cannot recall him. For this reason, since I have paid all the duties decency requires of me to his memory, now he is in the grave I think I ought to endeavour to comfort myself. These are the motives of the change you see in me; I am resolved to banish melancholy entirely; and persuaded that you will bear me company to-night, I have ordered a supper to be ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... love; that is all I ask of you; and this you cannot, in duty, in kindness, in prudence, or with decency, refuse me." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in an air of decency. But to Susy it no longer carried conviction, ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... brought in with the fruit, to enliven the festival that begins to languish. And they are so peculiarly adapted to scenes of pleasure, that they are always considered as inconsistent with mourning. Decency, informed by nature, never admits them into those places where ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... been pacing the room, turns suddenly.] Public decency? Very well, very well. ... [Short pause.] We occupy a most peculiar position Do we not, Herr Stroebel? [Stroebel bows.] We know fully the existing difference between official ... and let me say ... personal sensitiveness, ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... aid—amusements are multiplied, and combined, and varied, "to fill up the void of a listless and languid life;" and by the judicious use of these different resources, there is often a kind of sober settled plan of domestic dissipation, in which with all imaginable decency year after year wears away in unprofitable vacancy. Even old age often finds us pacing in the same round of amusements, which our early youth had tracked out. Meanwhile, being conscious that we ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... at the maintenance of the proprieties, and then Wilbraham Hall rang with the laughter of a joke which the next day had become the common precious property of all the Five Towns. When the aged rector had restored his flock to a sense of decency Mr. Emanuel Prockter had vanished. In that laughter his career as a singer reached an abrupt and final conclusion. The concert also came to an end. And the collection, by which the divine always terminated these proceedings, was the largest in the ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... when it is ready; but he is almost as prone to hide everything else that goes on inside his house, unless he has fair warning of a visit, and full time to make preparation for a guest. In the feeling there is great decency and self-respect, as well as a wish ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... before the Table, hath so ordered the Bread and Wine, that he may with the more readiness and decency break the Bread before the people, and take the Cup into his hands, he shall say the Prayer of Consecration, as followeth, ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... bring her right into church with him," she cried brokenly. "Right before everybody. Oh, dear, oh dear, is my son totally lacking in a sense of decency? This is ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... been to inquire of Mrs. Troy if she could tell me the reason of the delay. I am afraid it is too late now for the funeral to be performed with proper decency. Have ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... guajuco two inches broad. Even this band is regarded as less essential than the pigment which covers the skin. To go out of the hut without being painted, would be to transgress all the rules of Carib decency. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... surrounded by images and large drums. The dwelling-houses are rather poor-looking huts, with low walls and roofs and an exceedingly small entrance which is only to be passed through on one's hands and knees. Decency demands that the women should always enter the houses backward, and this occasions funny sights, as they look out of their huts like so many dogs ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... is Author of this Air, adds the pretty Run to it; and has also, when she is in very good Humour, a taking Familiarity in throwing herself into the lowest Seat in the Room, and letting her hoop'd Petticoats fall with a lucky Decency about her. I know she practices this way of sitting down in her Chamber; and indeed she does it as well as you may have seen an Actress fall down dead in a Tragedy. Not the least Indecency in her Posture. If you have observ'd what pretty Carcasses are carry'd off at the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Linton reflected that common decency would demand that he wait over a day or two and help bury the old man—people would expect that much of him. He'd do it. He'd speak kindly of the departed; he'd even erect a cross and write an epitaph upon it—a kindly, lying epitaph extolling the dead man's virtues, and omitting all ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... persecution, raised by Maximinus, numberless christians were slain without trial, and buried indiscriminately in heaps, sometimes fifty or sixty being cast into a pit together, without the least decency. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... called "flats." These flats consist of only two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen. There are no "conveniences"—except some of an indescribably filthy nature which are mutually shared by the inhabitants of several flats, to their own necessary loss of self-respect and decency. And in these two-roomed flats families ranging from three to twelve members are forced to live, and for this benefit they must pay six shillings a week. How can youth reach its full perfection amid such surroundings—surroundings which can be multiplied hundreds ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... example, have business, at present, that calls me another way. I therefore request you will give such orders, concerning the funeral, as you shall think proper: and, as I have no doubt you will agree with me that decency, and not unnecessary pomp, which cannot honor the dead, and does but satirise the living, will be most creditable to Mrs. Wakefield's memory, the expence, as it ought, will be defrayed ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... sensualism to trample her in the mire of his bestiality. A father, whose very name made the cheeks of the children grow white and their pulses almost to cease with terror. A drunkard, who drowned in his cup, not only wife and children and home and all outward decency, but every characteristic of truth and honesty and manhood of his own soul. A man, who through self-indulgence and the incessant yielding to unspeakable desires, had become little better than a human sewer, through whom the slime and indescribable filth of fallen and degraded humanity ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... and by-ways of life, dropped out of the remembrance of a country that has used and forgotten them. They have given for her, not life, but all that makes life pleasant, hopeful, or even possible. It seems to me, that, in common decency, if she has no laurels to spare, she should at least give them in return—a daily dinner. Already, however, has the idea been set forth, after a better fashion than I can hope to do,—in wood and stone, and by the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... was the chief object of those employed at the assemblies of the rich Egyptians; and the ridiculous gestures of the buffoon were permitted there, so long as they did not transgress the rules of decency and moderation. Music was always indispensable, whether at the festive meetings of the rich or poor; and they danced to the sound of the harp, lyre, guitar, pipe, tambourine, and other instruments, and, in the streets, even ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... thumb to the left big toe, and the left thumb to the right big toe. So great was the belief in this test that many women accused of witchcraft insisted on undergoing this ordeal, which was often conducted with solemnity and decency under the auspices of the minister of the parish and other grave persons. Unless there was strong feeling against the woman for other reasons, the mere fact of her floating did not rouse the populace against ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... kept up the conflict, and Pompey, too, encountered some trouble in the distribution of the grain. Many slaves had been freed in anticipation of the event, of whom he wished to take a census in order that the grain delivery might take place with some decency and order. This, to be sure, he managed fairly easily through his own wisdom and because of the large supply of grain: but in seeking the consulship he found annoyances which likewise entailed a measure ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... only in its relation to Man; sin therefore has no positive existence.[470] As a result the followers of Besht, calling themselves the "New Saints," and at his death numbering no less than 40,000, threw aside not only the precepts of the Talmud, but all the restraints of morality and even decency.[471] ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... ladies of St. James's with such glittering eyes and carmine lips—a soupcon of wantonness in their glances, and a rather needless undraping of their beautiful shoulders; while the painter to the Prince was bestowing on the giddy angels of Carlton House a decency that was within a little of dull, a simplicity that was almost sombreness, a purity that was prudery! The beauties of George III.'s court were not displeased to be pictorially credited with a levity ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... he follows, it matters less for his fame in the future than for his prosperity in the present whether he retains or discards any vestige of respect for any other obligation in the world. Francois Villon, compared with whom all other reckless and disreputable men of genius seem patterns of austere decency and elevated regularity of life, was as conscientious and self-respectful an artist as a Virgil or a Tennyson: he is not a great poet only, but one of the most blameless, the most perfect, the most faultless among his fellows in the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... errand-boy didn't know you from Adam, and no one but your private secretary was with you at the time; at least, so I gathered: it was before breakfast and you had given the detectives the slip. Well, then, merely by letting your human nature and your sense of decency have free play you help to run the monarchic system—you almost make a success of it. But you stop just where you ought to go on. You are natural—you are yourself—where there is no opposition to your being so. If ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... I replied, giving him what I conceived to be a look of severe rebuke, "that a teacher of common decency and politeness is most ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... own calamities, who have permitted a woman who, against reason, was mad with ambition, to reign over them, when there were sons in the flower of their age fitter for it." So Alexandra, not knowing what to do with any decency, committed the fortresses to them, all but Hyrcania, and Alexandrium, and Macherus, where her principal treasures were. After a little while also, she sent her son Aristobulus with an army to Damascus against Ptolemy, who was called Menneus, who was such a bad neighbor ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... to humanity became suddenly typified in these five hundred jumping tatterdemalions—the way in which he had plundered the world of its youth, its cleanness, its decency. I felt an anger which battlefields had never aroused, where men moulder above ground and become unsightly beneath the open sky. The slain of battlefields were at least motionless; they did not gape and grin at you with the dreadful ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... day passed with the greatest freedom, yet with the utmost decency; not a single equivocal word, not one attempt at double-meaning pleasantry; yet this delicacy was not affected, we only performed the parts our hearts dictated; in short, my modesty, some will say my folly, was such that the greatest familiarity that ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... I should not be worth a thought; and though nothing could ever give me your buoyant spirits and an outward man corresponding therewith, I may, in dress and appearance, emulate something like ordinary decency. And now, wherever coming years may lead—Greenland's snows or sands of Afric—I trust, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... his club. He paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth. In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... intervening. In a message to Congress in 1904 he laid down this new doctrine, which soon became famous as the Big Stick policy. He said: "If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... do not want to be put to the trouble of finding out, nor of obtaining the object and transmitting it to you. Will you, therefore, buy something for yourself and send the bill to me. Of course, a sense of social decency will prevent you from spending more than a small sum, and I shall be spared all exertion beyond signing a cheque. Yours insincerely and loggishly * * *." So managed, the contrivance of present-giving ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... nine times out of ten, would be left standing in a sort of fog and blinking at the suddenness with which the metaphorical can had, metaphorically speaking, been tied to his caudal appendage. Every large business office has its Skinner—a queer combination of decency, honesty, brains and brutality, a worshiper at the shrine of Mammon in the temple of the great god Business, a reactionary Republican, treasurer of his church and eventually a total loss from diabetes, brought on by lack of exercise and ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... back in her chair, motionless, while before her mind's eye rose the altered face of the woman who, deceived for long, was deceived no more—who knew! With her there had been no self-respecting reticence, no decency of secret tears. She had heaped insult upon the woman who had wronged her, she had led her ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... home. And so the Prayer-Book says, "Devout and holy men, as well under the Law as under the Gospel, moved either by the express command of God, or by the secret inspiration of the blessed Spirit, and acting agreeably to their own reason and sense of the natural decency of things, have erected houses for the public worship of God, and separated them from all unhallowed, worldly, and common uses, in order to fill men's minds with greater reverence for His glorious Majesty, and affect their hearts with ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... Summoning of the military to discuss declaring a military zone around the White House! Women could not advance on drawn bayonets. And if they did . . . What a picture! Common decency told the more humane leaders that this would never do. I daresay political wisdom crept into ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... all. By the purity and general decency of their own lives. I tell you, Jim, that the unscrupulous greed of the educated is as dangerous and vile as the murderous envy of the Bolsheviki. We've got to reform ourselves before we can educate others. And unless we begin by conforming to the Law of Love and Service, some day the Law of Hate ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... while he was in utter darkness, and did not even know which way they went, as the leathern curtains were carefully drawn down, so that nothing could be seen from within, or without. The small page remained at his post on the carriage step, but spoke never a word, and Leander could not with decency question him, much as he would have liked to do so. He knew that his surroundings were luxurious, for his exploring fingers told him that the soft, yielding cushions, upon which he was resting, were covered with velvet, and his feet sank into a thick, rich ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... prison was daily visited at certain hours by a concourse of people of the country, come to exult over our distress, or—it is more tolerant to suppose—their own vicarious triumph. Some moved among us with a decency of shame or sympathy. Others were the most offensive personages in the world, gaped at us as if we had been baboons, sought to evangelise us to their rustic, northern religion, as though we had been savages, or tortured us with intelligence of disasters to the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... degenerated into wantonness and extravagance, more particularly the immoderate length of their petticoats, with which they sweep the ground, be restrained to a moderate fashion, agreeably to the decency of the sex, under pain of the sentence of excommunication." "Velamina etiam mulierum, quae ad verecundiam designandam eis sunt concessa, sed nunc, per insipientiam earum, in lasciviam et luxuriam excreverunt, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the rich soil of prosperity: impoverish the land and the bloom withers. If there are cases that seem to you otherwise, it is simply because the pressure has not been great enough; sufficient nourishment has not yet been withdrawn from the soil. Dignity, decency, honor, fade away when man or woman is reduced to shabby, shameful, degrading, cruel wretchedness. Before the clamors of the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... degraded. This creature, Minnie Merle, had an infirm grandmother, who, in order to save the reputation of the unfortunate girl, appealed so adroitly to Cuthbert's high sense of honour, that her arguments, emphasized by the girl's beauty and helplessness, prevailed over reason, and—I may add—decency and one day when almost mad with brandy and morphine he consented to call her his wife. Neither was of age, and my son was not only a minor (lacking two months of being twenty), but on that occasion was utterly irrational and irresponsible, as I am prepared to prove. They intended to conceal ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Arthur had the decency to sit with Em and to bring her things to eat, but he munched grimly at his own fodder. Orson tagged along and sat on the same sofa. It was surprising how much noise the guests made while they consumed their food. The laughter and clatter contrasted with ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... unbelievingly. "Duff, we've seen enough of you to-night to know that an Apache has ten times as much honor as you have, and a rattlesnake has twenty times as much decency. You lying, miserable, white-livered, smooth-tongued, poisonous reptile in human form. If you open your mouth to say another word you'll have me so wild that I'll pull the trigger of this automatic before I intend ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... best the workingman can hope for as a result of his own labor under the very best conditions. To attain that level of comfort and decency he must deny himself and his wife and children of many things which they ought to enjoy. It is not too much to say that none of your fellow-workmen in Pittsburg, men known to you, your neighbors and comrades in labor, ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... five persons would cost $322.25 a year at prices prevailing in Fall River in October, 1919. While the prices given are comparatively low and the quantity allowed is not excessive, clothing may be purchased for less and the requirements of decency and comfort at an American standard may be met with fewer articles. As a matter of fact, a large proportion of families in Fall River do not spend so much as this for clothing, since many of them make certain garments at home or buy them ...
— The Cost of Living Among Wage-Earners - Fall River, Massachusetts, October, 1919, Research Report - Number 22, November, 1919 • National Industrial Conference Board
... an annual provision for life; but he dying soon after, she lost the benefit of his generous design. She appeared to be a woman of good sense, and genteel behaviour, and to bear the inconveniencies of a low fortune with decency ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... noted among savage as well as among civilized women. The comparatively evanescent character of modesty has led to the argument (Venturi, Degenerazioni Psico-sessuali, pp. 92-93) that modesty (pudore) is possessed by women alone, men exhibiting, instead, a sense of decency which remains at about the same level of persistency throughout life. Viazzi ("Pudore nell 'uomo e nella donna," Rivista Mensile di Psichiatria Forense, 1898), on the contrary, following Sergi, argues that men are, throughout, more modest than women; ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... For us to live together any longer would be an obscene joke. Let's end it while we still have some sanity and decency left. ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... against the "horrible profanity" and "devilish inventions" of the lords of misrule, morrice, and May-day dancers, whom he accused of tripping about the church, even during the hours of service, and of figuring in costumes which, by their texture and scantiness, outraged ordinary notions of decency. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... have once tasted of palled wine, we stay not to examine it glass by glass. But while they affect to shine in trifles, they are often careless in essentials. Thus, their Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency, that he will rather expose himself to death, than accuse his stepmother to his father; and my critics I am sure will commend him for it. But we of grosser apprehensions are apt to think that this excess of generosity is not practicable, but with fools and madmen. This was good manners ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... will labour to reconcile the grossest contradictions in the writings accounted sacred by the Hindoos, and will stoop to the meanest artifices in order to apologise for the numerous glaring falsehoods and horrid violations of all decency and decorum, which abound in almost every page. Any thing, it seems, will do with these men but the word of God. They ridicule the figurative language of Scripture, but will run allegory-mad in support of the most worthless productions that ever were published. I should think it time lost ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... of Whitman's aims to do with decency or indecency, with modesty or immodesty? These are social or conventional virtues; he represents mainly primary qualities and forces. Does life, does death, does nature, respect our proprieties, our conventional veils and illusions? Neither ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... Politician, not that of a man of religion. Such reforms as he might have been prepared to introduce would not have been the outcome of any lofty idealism, but only such as seemed to be dictated by public decency. As a Statesman, he was alive to the advantages of education, desired much of the wealth of the Church to be turned into that channel, and founded colleges, which he staffed with men of the new school ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... riveted on the work upon her knee), was of middle age or beyond it, of medium size, of square and sturdy make, and homely to the very verge of ugliness. She was dressed plainly if not commonly in black, but there was a general air of decency about her that seemed to place her beyond the sphere of servitude. She wore spectacles set in tortoise-shell frames, and she wore her iron-gray hair straight back behind small, funnel-shaped ears, and gathered into the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... I mean. You saw me at the milliner's that day. And night before last, Ethel. We're all disgusted. If you must go about with people like that, please have some sense of decency." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Perfect consistency, I admit, we are not to expect in human affairs. But, surely, there is a decent consistency which ought to be observed; and of this the right honourable gentleman himself seems to be sensible; for he asks how, if we admit sugar grown by Brazilian slaves, we can with decency continue to stop Brazilian vessels engaged in the slave trade. This argument, whatever be its value, proceeds on the very correct supposition that the test of sincerity in individuals, in parties, and in governments, is consistency. The right honourable gentleman feels, as we must ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... make any farther reply. Her father felt that quite enough had been said about it, and was prepared to give the twenty pounds, under the idea that he might be thought to have made a stout fight upon the subject. "He does want them very badly—for decency's sake," said the poor wife, thus winding up her plea. Then Mr. Grey got out his check-book and wrote the check for twenty pounds. But he made it payable, not to ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... as far as decency permits, for no one is so impressed by external magnificence as the Spaniard. But full dress uniform and orders are enough; an ambassador's sash and they might suspect I took them for the children they are. Children are not always ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... death, Lord Lovat awoke about three in the morning, and then called for a glass of wine and water, as was his custom. He took the greatest pains that every outward arrangement should bear the marks of composure and decency,—a care which may certainly incline one to fancy, that the heroism of his last moments may have had effect, in part, for its aim, and that, as Talleyrand said of Mirabeau, "he dramatized his death." But, it must be remembered, that in those days, it was the custom and the aim of the state ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... makes my mere passing suggestion into a positive proposal. And then he calculates how much a pair of breeches for a growing lad of twenty feet high or so will cost. Just as though he really believed—Ten pounds, he reckons, for the merest decency. Curious this Caterham! So concrete! The honest, and struggling ratepayer will have to contribute to that, he says. He says we have to consider the Rights of the Parent. It's all here. Two columns. Every Parent has a right ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... who have been so warped by party, or by an anxiety to pay their court to the Prince, as to venture to do so, certainly deserve the severest reprehension. The meeting of Parliament was much the fullest, in both Houses, I ever saw; and in the House of Peers, the greatest decency I ever witnessed, considering the hopes and fears of each party. There were but seven Bishops (among whom Chester was one) present, which is a proof that crows soon smell powder. I took the opportunity of coming down here to settle my private affairs, which my sudden departure had ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... heads—so did the girl. You know my slender wrists—they were almost powerless from the strain, but that girl! her wrists seemed made of iron. She held and held, until the little wretches gave way and returned to a sense of decency." ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... all its incredible crudity the story of the relations of this gently-bred girl with the drunken farmer who, to her knowledge, had previously betrayed her own servant-girl, I think even Miss SINCLAIR would be revolted. Her exposure of certain secret things which common decency agrees to leave in silence is a treachery to her sex, not excusable on grounds of physiological interest; and I, for one, who was loud in my praise of the fine qualities of her great romance, The Divine Fire, confess to a sense of almost personal sorrow that such high gifts as hers, which still ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... which we have just noticed. The technical morality of these is extremely accommodating, indeed (in its conventional and normal form) very low. But it is redeemed by an exquisite grace and charm, by true passion, and also by a great decency and accomplishment of actual diction. Coarse language—very rare in the romances, though there are a few examples of it—is rarer still in the elaborate formal lyric of the twelfth and thirteenth century in French. In the fabliaux, which are only a very little later, and which seem ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... how allied to our frame. For, as Tillotson expresses it,'Though some men pour out oaths as if they were natural, yet no man was ever born of a swearing constitution.' But it is a custom, a low and paltry custom, picked up by low and paltry spirits who have no sense of honor, no regard to decency, but are forced to substitute some rhapsody of nonsense to supply the vacancy of good sense. Hence the silliness of the practice can only be equalled by the silliness of those ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... triumph was assured. In the course of the protracted debate which followed, Disraeli, with all the virulence of a disappointed place-hunter, attacked Sir Robert Peel with bitter personalities and barbed sarcasm. On this occasion, throwing decency and good taste to the winds, and, to borrow a phrase of his own, 'intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity,' and with no lack of tawdry rhetoric and melodramatic emphasis, he did his best ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... commenced this downhill course, has been gradually increased; so that in the second year, what had been quite sufficient to please his palate and produce all the desired effects in the first, was then insipidly small; and more so in the third year, if, mayhap, he could with any decency lay claim to the title of temperate drinker so long. Jack, this is a fearful reflection for one of this class of the slaves of alcohol; but let him think upon it when quite free from excitement, say after two or three days' abstinence—if he can abstain that long just to cool off for reflection—and ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... case their horror was deepened by the circumstance that the assailants sometimes were African semi-savages—the Senegalese whom France brought to Greece, as to other parts of Europe, oblivious of the most rudimentary dictates of decency and sound policy. On one occasion (22 Feb.) the coloured libertines paid for their lust with their lives: a patrol of a dozen of them ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... name of religion and not so long ago—indeed are perhaps doing now and daily—deeds so vile that mere decency cannot face describing them. It is a question if mere decency (by which I mean the good instinct of civilised man) will not in the end purge faith clean of religion; if, while men dispute and hate and inflict cruelty for religion, they are not all the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... had he done so. No; the doctors had time to congregate around his bed; Lady Scatcherd was allowed a period of nurse-tending; the sick man was able to say his last few words and bid adieu to his portion of the lower world with dying decency. As these last words will have some lasting effect upon the surviving personages of our story, the reader must be content to stand for a short while by the side of Sir Roger's sick-bed, and help us to bid him God-speed on the ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... edge of the table. She has her own place set, without fork or spoon, but with her glass. She eats of every course that is brought on, from the soup to the dessert, always waiting for her turn to be served and behaving with a discretion and decency that it is to be wished were more frequently met with in children. She turns up at the first sound of the bell, and when we enter the dining-room we are sure to find her already in her place, standing on her chair, her paws on the edge of the table, and holding ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... "but I can't hear such words in connection with—with a lady for whom I have the deepest respect. You are heated now, Sir, and I can make every allowance for your natural vexation. But I must ask you not to overstep the bounds of decency." ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... retirement of Captain Anson baseball loses its most dignified and courageous figure—a man who has striven through a number of years to preserve the national game in all its best phases and a man who has fought for decency and gentlemanly conduct on the field, and by whose efforts the club of which he has been typical for a long time has come to be known as one of the most dignified organizations on the National League diamond. His retirement ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... the pathetic on the grand scale, and after taking in its beauty you feel as little at liberty to go away abruptly as you would to leave church during the sermon. You may be as little of a formal Christian as Fra Angelico was much of one; you yet feel admonished by spiritual decency to let so yearning a view of the Christian story work its utmost will on you. The three crosses rise high against a strange completely crimson sky, which deepens mysteriously the tragic expression of the scene, though I remain perforce vague as to whether this lurid background be a fine intended ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... national barbarism: within these beautiful walls is the ugliest church that was ever beheld—if it had been hewn out of the side of a hill it could not have been more dismal; there was no neatness, nor even decency, and it appeared to be so damp, and so completely excluded from fresh air, that it must be dangerous to sit in it; the floor is unpaved, and very rough. What a contrast to the beautiful and graceful order apparent in every part of the ancient design and ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... awoke with a shudder, as there came back to him many a memory of lofty pitying words, with which he had gently drawn aside the cloak of seemliness wherein some sinner had sought to wrap his sin. His dream of the perfect joint-life, what was it but a sham tribute to decency, a threadbare garment for the hideousness of naked passion? Had he taught himself to contemplate such a life, and shaped himself for it, it might be a worthy life—not the highest, but good for men who were not made for saints. But as it was, it seemed to him but a glazing over of his crime. ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... that for once the individual he referred to would have the decency to restrain himself, because the resolution he (Didlum) was about to have the honour of proposing was one that he believed no right-minded man—no matter what his politics or religious opinions—could possibly object to; and he trusted that for the credit of ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
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