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More "Indecent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her favors. The first disorder was raised by a blacksmith in a village of Essex. The tax-gatherers came to this man's shop while he was at work, and they demanded payment for his daughter, whom he asserted to be below the age assigned by the statute. One of these fellows offered to produce a very indecent proof to the contrary, and at the same time laid hold of the maid; which the father resenting, immediately knocked out the ruffian's brains with his hammer. The bystanders applauded the action, and exclaimed, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... whatever it is. But if he cannot so ease himself, yet let him wisely premeditate of both their estates; if they be unequal in years, she young and he old, what an unfit match must it needs be, an uneven yoke, how absurd and indecent a thing is it! as Lycinus in [5709]Lucian told Timolaus, for an old bald crook-nosed knave to marry a young wench; how odious a thing it is to see an old lecher! What should a bald fellow do with ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... lived not two miles from where the Squire now was, a lad a couple of years his daughter's senior, seemed in her father's opinion the one person in the world likely to make her happy. But as to breathing such a scheme to either of the young people with the indecent haste that his wife had shown, he would not dream of it; years hence would be soon enough for that. They had already seen each other, and the Squire fancied that he noticed a tenderness on the youth's part which promised well. He was strongly tempted to profit ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... Young Strutt is so like his mother I knew him in the street. I would like to give him a fantasia, but it is not proper for a woman to send for the dancing-girls, and as I am the friend of the Maohn (police magistrate), the Kadee, and the respectable people here, I cannot do what is indecent in their eyes. It is quite enough that they approve my unveiled face, and my associating with men; that is 'my custom,' and they think ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... Squaws came down to ye Edge of ye River, Dancing and Behaving themselves, in ye most Brutish and Indecent manner and taking us prisoners by ye arms, one Squaw on each Side of a prisoner, they led us up to their Village and placed themselves In a Large Circle Round us, after they had Gat all prepared for their Dance, they made us sit down In a Small Circle, about 18 Inches assunder and began ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... his glory, of whom all things are, and man's reasonable being. Such a thing doth suit and become it. Again, other things, as the hatred of God and men, neglect and forgetfulness of him, drunkenness and abasing lusts of that kind, do disagree, and are indecent to it. O how happy was Adam, when holiness and righteousness were not written on tables of stone, but on his heart, and when there was no need of external persuasion, but there was an inward impulse, inclining him strongly, and laying a kind ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... those who believe in God and blacken his character; who credit him with less knowledge than a child, and less intelligence than an idiot; who make him quibble, deceive, and lie; who represent him as indecent, cruel, and revengeful; who give him the heart of a savage and the brain of a fool. These ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... in his army.' Count Rechteren, deputy for Overyssel, complained that, a few days after this battle, when he was riding in his carriage by the gate of M. Menager, the French Plenipotentiary, that gentleman's lackeys insulted his lackeys with grimaces and indecent gestures. He sent his secretary to complain to M. Menager, demand satisfaction, and say that if it were not given, he should take it. Menager replied, in writing, that although this was but an affair between lackeys, he was far from approving ill behaviour ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... among his fellows, tall, white-toothed, generally decorated with a section of slender yellow reed through the septum of his broad-base nose, and with a broad necklace of yellow grass beads round his neck. He wore clothes sometimes, as a concession to the indecent perceptions of the whites (whom for the most part he despised); though he preferred to be otherwise, for he was a fine figure—not a plaster saint by any means, but a hero in his way and well set up, and an artist ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... "Christianity," "Christian faith" or the "Christian church," as you will—I take care not to hold mankind responsible for its lunacies. But my feeling changes and breaks out irresistibly the moment I enter modern times, our times. Our age knows better.... What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent—it is indecent to be a Christian today. And here my disgust begins.—I look about me: not a word survives of what was once called "truth"; we can no longer bear to hear a priest pronounce the word. Even a man who makes the most ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... vanquished by her device of a feigned but continuous hilarity—she would utter a shrill cry, shut tight her little bird-like eyes, which were beginning to be clouded over by a cataract, and quickly, as though she had only just time to avoid some indecent sight or to parry a mortal blow, burying her face in her hands, which completely engulfed it, and prevented her from seeing anything at all, she would appear to be struggling to suppress, to eradicate a laugh which, were she to give way to it, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... joint letter was sent to George III, asking for peace on the principle of "uti possidetis." The two monarchs parted with every manifestation of personal devotion; but on Alexander's return to his capital his elder sister was married with indecent haste to the Duke ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... me not that I act up to it. Sir, said I, let me beg you to forgive me: I am really sorry for my boldness; but indeed you don't use me like a gentleman: and how can I express my resentment, if I mince the matter, while you are so indecent? Precise fool! said he, what indecencies have I offered you?—I was bewitched I had not gone through my purpose last Sunday night; and then your licentious tongue had not given the worst name to little puny freedoms, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... time he performed a probationary exercise by explaining a psalm. His diction was so poetically splendid, that Mr. Hamilton, the professor of divinity, reproved him for speaking language unintelligible to a popular audience; and he censured one of his expressions as indecent, if not profane. This rebuke is reported to have repressed his thoughts of an ecclesiastical character, and he probably cultivated with new diligence his blossoms of poetry, which, however, were in some danger of a blast; for, submitting his productions to some who thought themselves ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... benefit of his coreligionists. Those people were so absolutely free from superstition that they ascribed anything a little out of the common to agencies. As it was their business to know all about the agencies, they were on terms of almost indecent familiarity with manifestations of every kind. Their letters dropped from the ceiling—unstamped—and spirits used to squatter up and down their staircases all night. But they had never come into contact with kittens. Lone Sahib wrote ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... astonishing feats of military prowess, masculine strength, and activity. Indeed, all their dances and musical entertainments seem to be theatrical exhibitions or plays, varied with comic, and sometimes indecent interludes. ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... wearisome with repetition of commonest design, and degraded by their gilded shops, wide-fuming, flaunting, glittering, with apparatus of eating or of dress. Splendor of palace-flank and goodly quay, insulted by floating cumber of barge and bath, trivial, grotesque, indecent, as cleansing vessels in a royal reception room. Solemn avenues of blossomed trees, shading puppet-show and baby-play; glades of wild-wood, long withdrawn, purple with faded shadows of blood; sweet windings and reaches ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... reading at this time Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, called by Ruskin the greatest poem in the English language, but criticized by others as an indecent romance revolting to the purity of many women. Susan had bought a copy of the first American edition and she carried it with her wherever she went. After a hard active day, she found inspiration ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... to-morrow, and will be open for three days. The republican members of assembly for this city will be carried by a greater majority than last year, unless some fraud be practised at the polls. The corporation have bad the indecent hardiness to appoint known and warm federalists (and no others) to be inspectors of the election in every ward. Hamilton works day and night with the most intemperate and outrageous zeal, but ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... fastened, blown dismally by the sooty wind hither and thither, or into the faces of those who ascend and descend. The place is worth your visit, for you are not likely to find elsewhere a spot which, either in costly and ponderous brutality of building, or in the squalid and indecent accompaniment of it, is so far separated from the peace and grace of nature, and so accurately indicative of the methods of our national resistance to the Grace, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... of his disturbed faculties, to discover that it was a face he knew, and somewhat disconcerted at the terror he had manifested, and the indecent attitude in which he had been found, he endeavored to rise and offer some explanation. Lawton received his apologies good-humoredly, if not with much faith in their truth; and, after a short communication upon the state of the valley, the trooper courteously alighted, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... and wrote to Dumas, and what do you think,—by return of post I had a letter from him saying he could not consent to the production of a one-act piece, signed by him, at the Varietes, because his son was then giving a five-act piece at the Gymnase." Then came a string of indecent witticisms by Suzanne Lagier and Dejazet. They were as old as the world, but they were new to me, and I was amused and astonished. These bon-mots were followed by an account of how Gautier wrote his Sunday feuilleton, and how he and Balzac had once nearly come to blows. They had agreed to ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... scholars and good men long deceased, whose munificent endowments have been monstrously perverted from their original purpose, and which, in their distorted condition, are struggled for and fought over with the most indecent pertinacity. Again, I don't like that sort of school—and I have seen a great many such in these latter times— where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged, and where those bright childish faces, which ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... Either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer round that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences which is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself. New truth is only useful to supplement the old; rough truth is only wanted to expand, not to destroy, our civil and often elegant conventions. He who cannot judge had better stick to fiction and the daily papers. There he will get little harm, and, in the ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of this Rebellion, because having won a victory, the slaveholders believed that they could conquer the North. They became more proud and insolent. They manifested their terrible hate by their inhuman treatment of the prisoners captured. They gave the dead indecent burial. The Rebel soldiers dug up the bones of the dead Union men, and carved them into ornaments, which they sent home to their wives and sweethearts. One girl wrote to her lover to "be sure and bring her Old Lincoln's skelp" ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... who was the Clerk or Secretary, rose hereupon from his seat near the centre of the table, and read "the information," which it is unnecessary to give at length, charging the prisoner with using most foul, scandalous, indecent, defamatory, and unseemly invectives, reproaches, and passionate speeches, toward and against the worshipful magistrates and godly ministers of the colony, thereby contriving and designing to bring into contempt, all law, order, religion, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... in repelling this most objectionable and indecent opposition, that our honourable friend displayed his highest qualifications for the representation of Verbosity. His warmest supporters present, and those who were best acquainted with his generalship, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... but not to deny is different from bold affirmation. The prior, whose avowal had also been tacit, looked pained: avowals are painful things. The bishop, more used to avowals, did his best to look shocked; the archdeacon (professionally enough) thought avowal the most indecent part of an indecent business. The Dominicans looked at each other, frankly delighted; the Friars Minor told each other what they had always said. What the people thought can only be guessed, for the nave was in darkness; but when Battista had ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... discovery that, childish as her ignorance was, there was no prejudice in it. If you brought her a fact, she did not say that it was too terrible to be true, or that the Bible said otherwise, or that it was indecent to know about it. Nor, when you met her next, did you discover that she had forgotten it. On the contrary, you discovered that she had followed it to its remote consequences, and was ready with a score of questions as to these. I remember saying to myself, that first automobile ride: "If ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... thorns for her. She chafed under the burden and her joy was indecent when the little boy died. Until then he had believed that the path of duty was wide enough and lined sufficiently with flowers to gratify or at least ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... could not read them to herself without blushing. Shakespeare puts coarse repartees into the mouths of women of stainless virtue. George Sand is not considered an unexceptionable writer; but she tells us in her autobiography that she found among her grandmother's papers poems and satires so indecent that she could not read them through, and yet they bore the names of abbes and gentlemen whom she remembered in her childhood as models of dignity and honor. Voltaire inscribes to ladies of high ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... is no necessity to punish the living, who are innocent, by hanging the dead bodies of criminals in the air. This indecent and inhuman custom, which originated from the days of barbarism, reflects an indelible disgrace upon a civilized age. The intention, no doubt, was laudable; to prevent the commission of crimes, but does ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... figure in the annals of mankind - unparalleled for three good reasons: first, because he was a man known to his contemporaries in a halo of almost historical pomp, and to his remote descendants with an indecent familiarity, like a tap-room comrade; second, because he has outstripped all competitors in the art or virtue of a conscious honesty about oneself; and, third, because, being in many ways a very ordinary ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that everybody knew this before the publication of "The Man Shakespeare," and for the sake of a mystified posterity it may be well to explain that there was once a school of criticism that thought it indecent to pry into that treasure-house of individuality from which, if we reject the nursery hypotheses mentioned above, it is clearly obvious that authors derive their works. That the drama must needs be closely related to the dramatist ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... rejected with contempt, in two indecent lines, sung with absolute frankness and producing a furore in the audience. The ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of Secretary, or, more properly, writer of the Apostolic Letters, to a Pope who was a poisoner. John XXIII. was even worse than that: he was a most atrocious violator of laws, human and divine; and some crimes he committed were so heinous that it would be indecent to place them before the public. One can imagine how agreeable must have been the occupation to that Pope of a military rather than an ecclesiastic turn, and fonder of deeds of violence and bloodshed than of acts of meekness and Christianity, when he was presiding at Constance over that General ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... complexion or their temper. Others would be compelled to confess that the belief of a wife or a sister had displaced that which they naturally inherited. No man can be expected to go thus into the details of his family history, and, therefore, it is an ill-bred and indecent thing to fling a man's father's creed in his face, as if he had broken the fifth commandment in thinking for himself in the light of a new generation. Common delicacy would prevent him from saying that he did not get his faith ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... laugh exceedingly; but he laughed only (I presume) because every body else did, and relates the story, I fear, merely to make it a national laugh; for the harangue was certainly very ill placed, and the mirth it produced, very indecent, at a time a Peer of the realm was to be brought forth, accused of murder; and the untimely death of a valuable and virtuous young man, revived ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... new earth where should be planted the seeds of a mighty nation, strong in justice and simple right, wise, temperate, brave; an enlightened people, serving God in spirit and in truth, not with the slavish observance of prelatist and papist, nor with the indecent familiarity of the Independent; loyal to their governors, but exercising the God-given right of choosing those who are to rule over them; a people amongst whom liberty shall walk unveiled, and to whom Astraea shall come again; a people as free as the eagle I watched this morning, soaring higher ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... legal assassination of Anne Boleyn, which could be brought about only through the "cooking" of a series of charges that could have originated nowhere out of her husband's vile mind, and which led to the deaths of six innocent persons. "The indecent haste" of the King's marriage with the Seymour, Mr. Froude says, "is usually considered a proof entirely conclusive of the cause of Anne Boleyn's ruin. To myself the haste is an evidence of something very different. Henry, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... started in to be low and always got loud before they stopped. Ariadne added several new words to her vocabulary at this time, from hearing them so constantly repeated. When her dolls were bad now, she shook them and called them "Indecent! indecent!" and asked them, with as close an imitation as she could manage, of Great-Aunt Hollister's tone, "What do you suppose people are thinking! What do you suppose people are thinking!" Or she knocked them into a ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... ashamed, then they all forgive him and have a feast. They're lovely people, so kind and gentle. But you'll get awfully tired of them in about a month. They have absolutely no respect for anybody's privacy. In fact, it seems slightly indecent to them for ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... works which doth this world adorn, There is none more fair and excellent Than is man's body, both for power and form, Whilst it is kept in sober government, But none than it more foul and indecent, Distempered through misrules and passions base, It grows a monster and incontinent, Doth lose his dignity and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... piece, in which an heroic interest is fused with a genuine spirit of low comedy. Yet Pepys's unqualified commendation of it presents a problem. Massinger's play, like the cognate work of Fletcher, offers much episode which is hardly less indecent than those early specimens of Restoration comedy of which Pepys disapproved. A leading character is a frowsy wife who faces all manner of humiliation, in order to enjoy, behind her elderly husband's back, the embraces ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... indecent, obscene, tainted, defiled, gross, indelicate, polluted, tarnished, dirty, immodest, lewd, stained, unchaste, filthy, impure, mixed, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... ashamed, a little shy, what with his gray hairs, his paternity, that there should still be a thrill in his heart, a sense of flight in him. At fifty-eight to feel like a schoolboy going home, it seemed—well, not indecent, indecorous. This thing of returning to Antrim had been a matter of pure reason, and then suddenly his heart had spread ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... moderation be known unto all men." There is a right and a wrong way of being merry. There is a mirth, which is no mirth; whereof it is written, in the midst of that laughter there is a heaviness, and the end thereof is death. Drunkenness, gluttony, indecent words and jests and actions, these are out of place on Christmas-day, and in the merriment to which the pure and holy Lord Jesus calls you all. They are rejoicing in the flesh and the devil, and ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... forbidden voices, Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil, Voices indecent by me ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... or, Memoirs of Caroline, Princess of Hasburgh, a Political and Amatory Romance' (3 vols., 1811). The letters, which purport to be written from Caroline to Charlotte, and contain (vol. ii. pp. 152-181) an attack on the Lady Jersey, who attended the princess, are absolutely dull, and scarcely even indecent. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... to fester round it in his mind. Has dreadful struggles—with himself about impure thoughts.... Then you set Grundy with hot ears,—curious in undertones. Grundy on the loose, Grundy in a hoarse whisper and with furtive eyes and convulsive movements—making things indecent. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... pomp, and the Romans contributed to render it as brilliant as possible. The bells pealed from the churches; the artillery thundered from Saint Angelo; there were bull-fights; the most immoral and indecent comedies were performed; and the delighted populace shouted before the Vatican, "Long live Pope Alexander! long live Lucretia, Duchess of Este!" Faustus huzzaed with the best of them, and said to the Devil: ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... went to sleep before Siegfried was born, and when he kisses her he seems to be quite a man! By the way, Brunhilde was put to sleep for interfering somehow or other in the love affairs of Siegfried's mother and father, who are really sister and brother. If you think of it, the story is extremely indecent, but operatic things never seem to be shocking; music, apparently, covers a multitude of naughtiness, like charity is reported to do. Very likely that's why Mrs. —— is always doing so much for institutions and what not—for her sins, I suppose. I always thought ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... chance of 'avin' 'is 'ead blowed off if 'e looks up over the edge. I've 'ad enough o' dug-outs an' observin' from the trenches, an' Coal-Box dodgin' to last me a bit, an' it's a pleasant change to be ridin' a decent 'orse on a most indecent apology for a road, an' not a Jack Johnson in sight, even if they are ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... loiter in wait on the front steps of the Legislative Assembly Building in the city of New Austin, Continent of Sam Houston, and did approach the decedent, addressing him in abusive, obscene, and indecent language, and did set upon and attack him with the machete aforesaid, causing the said decedent, S. Austin Maverick, ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... but, at a later stage of the disease, they sometimes take place every night. In aggravated cases, the seminal sacs are so weakened that the warmth of the bed, friction of the clothing, reading obscene literature, viewing indecent pictures, indulging in lewd conversation, or even being in the presence of women, produces a waste of semen—many times unattended by erections. When there is great weakness, seminal discharges may be induced by lifting heavy weights, pressure ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... talking, and the evil it leads to. S. Paul speaks about it very plainly when he says, speaking of the things that should not be named amongst Christians, "neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor jesting, which are not convenient." Now, boys, all indecent words and conversations are wrong—they are sinful, unmanly, degrading. I know you cannot help hearing much that is wrong. Shame, be it said, to the men of England—yes, men who talk of advancement and freedom, men who are fathers of families, that they too often make or allow the talk of the ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... author of "The Luck of Roaring Camp"—that wonderful blending within the limits of a short story of humor, pathos and tragedy—which, incredible as it may seem, met with but a cold reception from the local press, and was even branded as "indecent" and "immodest!" ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Women run mad for the Loss of their Fathers. It is more natural to suppose, that like Chimene in the Cid, her great Sorrow proceeded from her Father's being kill'd by the Man she lov'd, and thereby making it indecent for ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... (In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a voice of pained protest) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... easily distinguished, however, as unnatural timidity. The individual seems to have not the slightest appreciation of propriety. He commits openly the most uncouth acts, if he does not manifest the most indecent unchastity of manner. When spoken to, he stares rudely at the person addressing him, often with a very unpleasant leer upon his countenance. In some few cases there seems to be a curious combination of conditions. While mentally fearful, timid, and ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... landlord, "move out of the way, and allow the corpse to pass out. Let me have no indecent conduct; let everything be as it ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... cousin of the unhappy child who was murdered, or rather his sister, for I was educated by and have lived with his parents ever since and even long before his birth. It may therefore be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion, but when I see a fellow creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character. I ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... Friar devoured their charms: Had his Penitents consulted those Interpreters, He would have needed no other means of expressing his desires. For his misfortune, they were so strongly persuaded of his continence, that the possibility of his harbouring indecent thoughts never once entered their imaginations. The climate's heat, 'tis well known, operates with no small influence upon the constitutions of the Spanish Ladies: But the most abandoned would have thought it an easier ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... shameful kind. The shock he gave me was one of sorrow, for he had been a friend. But it was still more one of amazement that such a thing could have happened to such a man. Later I came to understand. When his effects were being sold there was found in his study cupboard a great pile of indecent French plays and novels. That was what did it. In secret he had for years debauched his mind, and inevitably in the end his thoughts brought forth fruit. That experience taught me once for all how certain it is that the inner world of thoughts ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... following day. "But you must see Lady Lufton first, of course," said Fanny, as soon as all this was settled. Mark would have avoided this if he could have decently done so, but he felt that it would be impolitic, as well as indecent. And why should he be afraid to tell Lady Lufton that he hoped to receive this piece of promotion from the present Government? There was nothing disgraceful in a clergyman becoming a prebendary of Barchester. Lady Lufton herself had always been very civil to ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... "how I hate you to mix with that rowdy lot like you do; and you know that I look on the csardas as indecent and vulgar. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... mother wear caps like other people—makes them for her herself, I believe—instead of that extraordinary Popish veil—so like a nun's, I call it—though even she has not been able to get her to do anything to her hair." Like most of her contemporaries, Mrs Jardine regarded it as almost indecent to display grey or white hair, and herself wore a "front" which could hardly be considered an attempt at deception, so transparently artificial ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... coquettishly, and then execute an unlovely dance with him. In between these diverting procedures a chorus would come on, a score or so of highly-painted women, hopping and gliding about, each time clad in new costumes more cunningly indecent than the last. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Forty, "profane swearing, filthy conversation, and indecent behavior" are forbidden. The document indicates an obvious intention to effect a revolution by a restrained and regulated ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... into the churche, and there make many mad toies and trifles, to the trouble of good people in the divine service, and specially woulde he be most busye in the time of most silence, while the priest was at the secretes of the masse aboute the levacion." After proof of his indecent behaviour, he proceeds, "Whereupon I beinge advertised of these pageauntes, and beinge sent unto and required by very devout relygious folke, to take some other order with him, caused him, as he came wanderinge by my doore, to be taken by the connstables and bounden to a tree in ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... of euphemisms, besides the superstitious fear of bringing misfortune by mentioning it too plainly, is the fear of being vulgar or indecent. Through this feeling words which are quite proper at one time pass out of use among refined people. English people do not freely use the word "stomach" in conversation, and are often a little shocked when they hear French people describing their ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... ... My dear fellow, with money our patrons pay well for that very thing which they later on call indecent. You get as much decency from us for money as you get from other people, but believe me, we ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... could swear who is at the bottom of this indecent talk of hers. I found his picture cut out of the school magazine and pasted in her diary. She's a changed child since that Lindsley came to the High School the year ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to shrug my shoulders. Suddenly changing his tone and bearing, the artist turned to me seriously with a question which, in my opinion, was also indecent: ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... The sudden death, the indecent haste of the funeral, and the non-holding of an inquest upon the body, strengthened the suspicions that were afloat. Rumour, instead of whispering, began to speak out; and the relatives of the deceased openly expressed their belief that ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... exhausted, the issue should be left to God. Recriminations, painfully petty in their nature, followed. The Government were charged with a premeditated design to commit wide and indiscriminate slaughter, and the weakness, in which were shrouded deep national shame and guilt, was made matter of indecent boast. The Government, aware of the unexpected advantage, followed up the blow. Mr. O'Connell took shelter in the sacredness of the Hall, which, he imagined, he had guarded against the encroachments of arbitrary power, and thither they followed him. ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... postponement of a Licensing Bill which had much support in the Liberal party. Sir Charles persevered, and made a very able speech, to which no serious answer was given. He entirely destroyed the pretence that the Conference had met without a "foregone conclusion," and stigmatized the indecent haste which could not wait to secure the presence of France even as an assenting party to this acceptance of an act of repudiation. But the House was dominated by dislike for anything which seemed to hint at opening up a new European ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... As a noun, it means the common people, the lower orders, the multitude, the many; as an adjective, it means coarse, low, unrefined, as "the vulgar people." The sense in which it is misused is that of immodest, indecent. The wearing, for example, of a gown too short at the top may be indecent, but ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... tried to cheat Nincan!" "You want to build a watch-house!" "You have an old ewe at home now, that you did not come honestly by!" "You denied your own hand!"—with other ribaldry still more gross and indecent. But the most singular part of the scene was a number of little boys, dressed in black and white, who all wore badges of the parties to which they belonged, and were provided with a syringe, and two canteens, one filled with rose-water, and the other with a black liquid, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... than two months, she had married again, married his uncle, her dear husband's brother, in itself a highly improper and unlawful marriage, from the nearness of relationship, but made much more so by the indecent haste with which it was concluded, and the unkingly character of the man whom she had chosen to be the partner of her throne and bed. This it was, which more than the loss of ten kingdoms, dashed the spirits and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... afflictions of thy mother be a warning and an example unto thee; and since I am denied life to educate and bring thee up, let this dreadful monument of my death suffice to warn you against yielding in any degree to your passion, or suffering a vehemence of temper to transport you so far even as indecent words, which bring on a custom of flying out in a rage on trivial occasions, till they fatally terminate in such acts of wrath and cruelty as that for which I die. Let your heart, then, be set to obey your Maker ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... preposterous as unfounded, has lately found its way abroad, stating that I meditated a gross and indecent insult upon the dignity of the legislature, by using an influence which I am supposed to possess, for the purpose of introducing an improper character into the formation of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... them all out of shape. Have you ever heard a real ingrowing Englishman start a word in the roof of his mouth and then back away from it as if it was red-hot and had prickles on it? It's interesting. They seem to think it is indecent to come brazenly ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... line. We can imagine him crying, "Why in the name of death and conscience should it be tragic to be a widow but comic to be a widower?" But the rationalistic method is here applied quite wrong as regards the production of a drama. The most dramatic point in the affair is when the open and indecent rack-renter turns on the decent young man of means and proves to him that he is equally guilty, that he also can only grind his corn by grinding the faces of the poor. But even here the point is undramatic because it is indirect; it is indirect ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... age, but also by reference to the physical development of individuals. Our majesty, however, has deemed it not unworthy of the purity of our times to apply in the case of males also the moral considerations which, even among the ancients, forbade in the case of females as indecent the inspection of the person. Consequently by the promulgation of our sacred constitution we have enacted that puberty in males shall be considered to commence immediately on the completion of the fourteenth year, leaving unaltered the rule judiciously ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... he said aloud as Arthur turned from the window. "Of course there'd be no end to the ridicule. Didn't the chap on Harper's, when I was elected for the Senate, rig me out as a gladiator, without a stitch on me, actually, Artie, not a stitch—most indecent thing—and show old Cicero in the same picture looking at me like John Everard, with a sneer, and singing to himself: a senator! No, I couldn't stand it. I give up. I've got as high as my kind can go. But there's one thing, if ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... to myself," said Lady Arabella, who, though she did not absolutely doubt her husband's word, gave him credit for having induced and led on Sir Omicron to the uttering of this opinion. "Doctor Thorne has behaved to me in so gross, so indecent a manner! And then, as I understand, he is absolutely encouraging ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... mockery from the womenkind. You would have thought I had now all the more reason to pursue my common practice, since I had met this young lady in the city street, seemingly following a prisoner, and accompanied with two very ragged indecent-like Highlandmen. But there was here a different ingredient; it was plain the girl thought I had been prying in her secrets; and with my new clothes and sword, and at the top of my new fortunes, this was more than I could swallow. The beggar on horseback ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the square, which now waves so pleasantly with its elms and poplars. The cruel second James, afterwards king, wanted him beheaded before his own house, but the cynical second Charles was not quite so cruel as that, and rejected the proposed dramatic fancy "as indecent," Burnet says. So Lord Russell, after Tillotson had prayed with him, "laid his head on the block at a spot which the elms and poplars now hide, and it was cut ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... in the course of what seems to have been a peculiarly acrimonious controversy between Da Ponte and a theatrical person unnamed, but probably one Francesco. In this pamphlet, which is not only indecorous but indecent, he is referred to as "the celebrated Lorenzo Daponte, who after having been Jew, Christian, priest, and poet in Italy and Germany found himself to be a layman, husband, and ass in London." It remained ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Ali Adil peremptorily demanded from Hussain Nizam Shah the restoration of the fortresses of Kallian and Sholapur; and on the latter's contemptuous refusal (he "sent back a reply so indecent in expression as to be unfit to relate." says Firishtah) another war ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... which we all agreed in deploring, was, according to Mr. Carmady, the desire of a sinless people for sin. A strange accusation. The people, according to Mr. Carmady, were leaving Ireland because they wished to indulge in indecent living. Mr. Carmady did not use these words; the words he used were "The joy of life," but the meaning of ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... house in the village which was remarkable from its wretchedness. It had an air of indecent poverty about it, which long prevented my attempting an entrance; but at length, upon being told that I could get chicken and eggs there whenever I wanted them, I determined upon venturing. The door being opened to my knock, I very nearly abandoned my almost blunted ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... demon and wound his pride. This might simply precede the exorcism proper. To accomplish this purpose of offending the demons, the most blasphemous and obscene epithets were used by the exorcist, which were allowable and perfectly proper when addressing demons. Most of these are so indecent that they cannot be printed, but the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... of that Kind: But I had the Fate of your Quaker, in meeting with a rude Fellow in a Stage-Coach, who entertained two or three Women of us (for there was no Man besides himself) with Language as indecent as was ever heard upon the Water. The impertinent Observations which the Coxcomb made upon our Shame and Confusion were such, that it is an unspeakable Grief to reflect upon them. As much as you have declaimed against Duelling, I hope you ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... they lead in our public life to the embitterment of nation against nation. What is the ruling principle of the interior and domestic conduct of each nation to-day—even within its own borders—but an indecent scramble of class against class, of individual against individual? To rise to noisy power and influence, and to ill-bred wealth and riches, by trampling others down and profiting by their poverty is—as Ruskin long ago told us—the real and prevailing motive ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... pigeon-holes, in which so many millions of pious aspirations and abortive complaints sleep their last sleep. But the War has penetrated even here, and Mr. BALDWIN was able to announce, with a cheerfulness that some of the older officials probably regard as almost indecent, that already a vast quantity of material has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... you doing, Josie?" asked her grandfather again, "dressed up in that indecent manner and talking and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... blessed principle of self-determination was in fetters. Chapter iii. lays down that all inscriptions must have the approval of the civic body. You are warned that they will not approve of sentences or words which are indecent, and that they prohibit all expressions and allusions that might give offence to anyone, to moral corporations, to religions, or which are notoriously false. No doubt, in practice, they waive the last stipulation, so that the survivors may give ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... the Poet Laureate and historiographer of William III., was a Norfolk man. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. It is said by Noble that he was an honest man. Of course he was. Chalmers accuses him of indecent conversation, or Lord Rochester would not have said that he had more wit and humour than any other poet. I am afraid he confers little honour on his native county. 'Others,' wrote Dryden in one ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... I think it is fearfully indecent for you to begin upon these things already! It only happened last night, and—and it sounds ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... divided into chapters which are arranged alphabetically by subject, with the exception of the seventh book, consisting of amatory epigrams, which is not subdivided. In a prefatory note to this book he says he has omitted all indecent or unseemly epigrams, {polla en to antigrapso onta}. This {antograpso} was the Anthology of Cephalas. The contents of the different books are ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... simply think that I have chosen to remain in my own house, Ellen. I don't see anything strange or indecent about that." ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... sea, out of a totally unknown little town in an island one has never seen before? What were (besides sugar) the interests of that crumb of the earth, its gossip, its topics of conversation? To draw him on business at once would have been almost indecent—or even worse: impolitic. All I could do at the moment was to keep on in the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... anything that suggests that he is young and inexperienced. Often he pretends to know things he does not. Nearly every boy, at an early age, is thrown in contact with low-minded persons who think it amusing to persuade the youth to prove he knows indecent things. He thinks it a test of manhood to be acquainted with various vices and so in order to prove his knowledge is led into various indiscretions, which result in the contraction of vile habits ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... filed out to the foot of the Michaelsberg 20,000 foot and 3,000 horse, who laid down their arms before the Emperor, some with defiant rage, the most part in stolid dejection, while others flung them away with every sign of indecent joy.[32] As if the elements themselves conspired to enhance the brilliance of Napoleon's triumph, the sun, which had been obscured for days by storm-clouds and torrents of rain, now shone brightly forth, bathing the scene in the mild radiance of autumn, lighting ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... sentence of death. A most feeling intercession was made in his behalf, but in vain; all that could be obtained was a few days delay of the execution, which otherwise would have been hurried on in the most indecent manner. Col. Hayne died, not indeed the death, but with the spirit of a soldier, and a martyr in the cause of civil liberty; he met his fate calmly on the gibbet. The character of Balfour was already so black ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... is to be found almost exclusively in Heine's love-affairs, decent and indecent. Now the pain of disappointed love is the motive and the theme of very many of Hoelderlin's and Lenau's lyrics, poems which are heavy with Weltschmerz, while most of Heine's are not. To speak only of the ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... with satisfaction. "I wouldn't want an agent of mine arrested for indecent exposure." ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... descriptions of all authors who wrote at that period upon the subject, the streets were in a filthy condition in many parts of the city, and the names which have long since been changed were as dirty and indecent; some were absolutely ridiculous; as Did you find me Hard, Bertrand Sleeps, Cut Bread, John Bread Calf (alluding to the leg); the last still exists, as also Bad Advice, Bad Boys, etc. It was in this reign ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... of breath in a moment, and so was overtaken and vanquished by her device of a feigned but continuous hilarity—she would utter a shrill cry, shut tight her little bird-like eyes, which were beginning to be clouded over by a cataract, and quickly, as though she had only just time to avoid some indecent sight or to parry a mortal blow, burying her face in her hands, which completely engulfed it, and prevented her from seeing anything at all, she would appear to be struggling to suppress, to eradicate a laugh which, were she to give way to it, must inevitably ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... you are on fire with theology you'll not write it to Rogers, who wouldn't be an inspiration; you'll write it to Twichell, because it will make him writhe and squirm & break the furniture. When you are on fire with a good thing that's indecent you won't waste it on Twichell; you'll save it for Howells, who will love it. As he will never see it you can make it really indecenter than he could stand; & so no harm is done, yet a vast advantage ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was accordingly issued to the judges, requiring them to order execution. He insisted on the nature of his late commission, and on that plea being overruled, submitted with his usual calmness and dignity. The execution, with indecent haste, was ordered to take place on the following morning. In this last stage of life, his greatness of mind shone with even more than its usual lustre. Calm, and fearless without bravado, his behavior and speech expressed the piety and resignation ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... freedom and seeking to make a better world, will not permit the indecent and unclean forces of reaction to mask themselves forever behind the plea that it is necessary to keep her in ignorance to preserve her purity. In the birth-control movement, she has already begun to fight for her right to have, without legal ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... duty, urging the same reason, that the criminal was in communion with another Church. The man, himself, seemed stupid and speechless all the way, yet when he was turned off, the reverend Ordinary tells us, he went off the stage crying out aloud, O Lord! etc. This seems to me a very indecent way of concluding a dying speech, but as it is that which is generally used, I shall not stay to bestow any further reflections upon it. He died on the 19th of May, 1729, being ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... not avoid, the exposure which the short skirts of the ballet-dancer are intended to make, and which, taking to myself all the shame of both the prudery and the coarseness if I am wrong, I call an indecent exposure. In the glare and glamour of gas-light, it is flash and clouds and indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight it is not. Indeed, I do not know that I will say "almost." Anything which tends to remove from woman ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... in Benares—so-called "temples" that should minister to man's holier nature, with so-called "priests" to act as guides to their foulness—that could give lessons to a third-rate Bowery den. No wonder that the Government of India, when it made a law against indecent pictures and carvings, had to make a special exception for Hindu "religious"(!) pictures. There is a limit, however, even to the endurance of the British Government, and at the Nepalese Temple I was told that the authorities do not allow such structures to be built ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... beams. We have all seen those disgusting woodcuts to which the following just condemnation refers: "The moon's influence on parts of the human body, as given in some old-fashioned almanacs, is an entire fallacy; it is most untrue and absurd, often indecent, and is a discredit to the age we live in." [370] Most of these inartistic productions are framed upon the assumption of the old alchymists that the physiological functions were regulated by planetary ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... 1784, il mourut en 1885, ayant ete toute sa vie un objet d'horreur pour les teetotallers; car de quel oeil en verite pouvaient-ils considerer un homme qui buvait chaque jour une bouteille de porto, et a qui la Providence permettait de se bien porter? C'etait indecent... ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... purpose of appointing inspectors of prisons. In the report of these inspectors, which was printed by Messrs. Hansard, it was stated, that amongst other books in use by the prisoners, one published by John Joseph Stockdale, in 1827, was of the most disgusting nature, the plates being obscene and indecent in the extreme. In 1836, Stockdale brought an action against Messrs. Hansard for the sale of this report, on the ground that the allegation therein contained about the work was a libel. The defendants pleaded two ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Hopkins, but in psalms and hymns which are both sense and poetry, such as would sooner provoke a critic to turn Christian than a Christian to turn critic;' they were to sing 'not lolling at their ease, or in the indecent posture of sitting, but all standing before God, praising Him lustily and with a good courage;' there was to be 'no repetition of words, no dwelling on disjointed syllables.'[717] Wesley was much struck with the remarkable decorum with which ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... me I could not help taking a great deal of notice of this lady, and began to lust for her, and of course took to talking to her about Sarah. She was nothing loth, and asked me curious, and at last down right indecent questions about her, but not in smutty language. Hannah when there used to laugh at the questions and my replies; they made my cock stand, which perhaps was what Louisa intended, or it may only have been curiosity without ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... but only to give us a new demonstration that the great body of our people are stable, patriotic, and law-abiding. 5 No political party can long pursue advantage at the expense of public honor, or by rude and indecent methods, without protest and fatal disaffection in its own body. The peaceful agencies of commerce are more fully revealing the necessary unity of all our communities, and 10 the increasing intercourse of our people is promoting mutual respect. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... hear all Barty had to say of his gay life among the beauty, rank, and fashion of Blankenberghe. She was very civil to the handsome Irish Madame de Cleves, nee O'Brien, and listened politely to the family history of the O'Briens and that of the de Cleveses too: and learnt, without indecent surprise, or any emotion of any kind whatever, what she had never heard before—namely, that in the early part of the twelfth century a Rohan de Whitby had married an O'Brien of Ballywrotte; and other prehistoric facts of equal ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... chief of the state. This high officer soon dispelled any delusive doubts which, for the purpose of securing his election, he had permitted to be ventilated during the late Presidential campaign, that he would at least see fair play in the struggle between Slavery and Freedom in Kansas. With indecent zeal and unscrupulous partisanship, he concentrated all the energies of his administration, and employed the whole force of the influence and the patronage of the nation, to obtain the indorsement by Congress of the Lecompton ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... "Indecent haste, I call it," pronounced Miss Whalley severely, "with the earth still fresh on his poor dear grandfather's grave! A May wedding too! ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... mishandled. She poured out a blood-curdling story into semi-sympathetic ears. Barbara made short work of her contention that Jaffery ought to have respected her as he would have respected the wife of a living friend, characterising it as morbid and indecent nonsense; and with regard to the physical violence she declared that it would have served her right had ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... more handsome; but this may vary according to circumstances. They were, however, not so troublesome in begging for beads and other presents, nor so forward to bestow their favours on the new comers, though at our landing and putting off, some of the common sort frequently performed an indecent ceremony, which is described in the accounts of former voyages, but without any of the preparatory circumstances which Ooratooa practised. We had likewise much less reason to extol the hospitality of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... town is governed by the lowest of the people, and from the time of the Stamp Act to this hour has been and is in the hands of the mob." He represented the friends of the Government as very desponding, on seeing, unchecked, the imperial power treated with a contempt not only indecent, but almost treasonable. Of such cast were letters read to George III. in his closet, and made the basis of royal instructions which it was claimed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the world-renowned Fat Man from Spoonville. His was rather a difficult role to fill gracefully, because the squashy pillow would persist in bulging out between his trousers and his coat in a most indecent manner; and it kept him busy most of ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... Howe had shown more moderation. He had, of course, precedent on his side. Nothing which he wrote was so bad as the language of Queen Elizabeth to her councillors, or of Frederick the Great to Voltaire. He was neither more savage than Junius, nor more indecent than Sir Charles Hanbury Williams in his attacks on King George II. But times had changed. Mouths and manners had grown cleaner, and much of Howe's banter is over-coarse for present-day palates. But of its effectiveness there is no doubt. He fairly drove the unhappy Falkland out of the province. ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... did penetrate his mind that it was indecent to accept all this wild gratitude, but there was built within him no intention of positively declaring himself lacking in all credit, or at least, lacking in all credit in the way their praises defined it. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... like his mother I knew him in the street. I would like to give him a fantasia, but it is not proper for a woman to send for the dancing-girls, and as I am the friend of the Maohn (police magistrate), the Kadee, and the respectable people here, I cannot do what is indecent in their eyes. It is quite enough that they approve my unveiled face, and my associating with men; that is 'my custom,' and they ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... of placing the State at the head of different rituals for the purpose of controlling them all, and proclaiming an ethical code to be binding on all denominations. The British ruler, while avowedly Christian, ignores all religions administratively, interfering only to suppress barbarous or indecent practices when the advance of civilisation has rendered them obsolete. Public instruction, so far as the State is concerned, is entirely secular; the universal law is the only authorised guardian of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... these wicked youths in Andover was brought before the magistrate, and it was charged that he "Sported and played and by Indecent Gestures and Wry Faces caused laughter and misbehavior in the Beholders." The girls were not one whit better behaved. One of "ye tything men chosen of ye town of Norwich" reported that "Tabatha Morgus of s'd Norwich Did on ye 24th day February it being Sabbath on ye Lordes ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... into Old Mexico. No sign labels the boundary; the vacuum of continent goes on, you might think, to Patagonia. Symptoms of neighboring Mexico basked on the sand heaps along Sharon's spacious avenues—little torpid, indecent gnomes in sashes and open rags, with crowning-steeple straw hats, and murder dozing in their small black eyes. They might have crawled from holes in the sand, or hatched out of brown cracked pods on some weeds that trailed through the broken bottles, the old shoes, and the wire fences. Outside ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... are those who believe in God and blacken his character; who credit him with less knowledge than a child, and less intelligence than an idiot; who make him quibble, deceive, and lie; who represent him as indecent, cruel, and revengeful; who give him the heart of a savage and the brain of a fool. These ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... erected and the play was in some respects like lacrosse. Stakes were wagered on the game. This game is also-described by Domenech, [Footnote: Vol. II, p. 196.] who says the women wore a special costume which left the limbs free and that the game was "unbecoming and indecent." Powers [Footnote: Contribution to North American Ethnology, Vol. III, p. 383.] found a game among the Nishinams, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, not far from Sacramento, which in some respects also resembled lacrosse. He says ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... recounting of which is not without touches of Rabelais, of the Moyen de Parvenir, perhaps of the rising fancies about the occult, which generated Rosicrucianism and "astral spirits" and the rest of it—a whole farrago, in short, of matters decent and indecent, congruous seldom and incongruous often. It is not like Sterne, because it is dull, and at the same time quasi-romantic; while "sensibility" had not come in, though we shall see it do so within the limits of this chapter. It has a resemblance, though ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... causing the growth of a feeling that religious buildings should not be used for secular purposes. John Evelyn, who gives us our fullest account of the opening ceremony at the Sheldonian, notes that it might be thought 'indecent' that the Act should be held in a 'building set apart for the immediate worship of God'[30], and this was 'the inducement for building this noble pile'. Wren had shown his design to the Royal Society in 1663, and it had been much commended; he was only a little more than thirty years ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... grew flushed and excited, and I am afraid that I occupied myself in marking out possible careers for a good many of them as I studied their faces. There was not much fun of the healthy kind; fat, comfortable, middle-aged men laughed so heartily at the faintest indecent allusion that the singers grew broader and broader, and the hateful music-hall songs grew more and more risky as the night grew onward. By the way, can anything be more loathsomely idiotic than the average music-hall ditty, with its refrain ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... he had been trapped by the enemies who were determined to ruin him? She knew he had a contempt for men who wasted their energies in futile dissipations. He was too clean, too much a son of the wind-swept desert, to care anything about the low pleasures of indecent and furtive vice. He was the last man she knew likely to be found enjoying ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... After describing the greatness of the assembly, the profusion of the offerings, and the many strange peculiarities of the worship, he observes, "The whole produced on my mind sensations of the greatest honor. The dress of the singers, their indecent gestures, the abominable nature of the songs, the horrid din of their miserable drum, the lateness of the hour, the darkness of the place, with the reflection that I was standing in an idol temple, and that this immense multitude of rational and immortal creatures, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... that the poor brute had served him well in its way. He cut up and smoke-dried the flesh, and the intolerable pangs of hunger compelled me to share the loathsome food with him. We were not only indecent, it seemed to me, but cannibals to feed on the faithful servant that had been our butcher. "But what does it matter?" I argued with myself. "All flesh, clean and unclean, should be, and is, equally ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... cared nothing about religion, who were ready to fight for synodical government, for Episcopacy, for Popery, just as Mac Callum More might be pleased to command, fit allies for the people of God? The manifesto, indecent and intolerant as was its tone, was, in the view of these fanatics, a cowardly and worldly performance. A settlement such as Argyle would have made, such as was afterwards made by a mightier and happier deliverer, seemed to them not worth a struggle. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Town in an Act or two: But our prying, curious Sparks can't rest here, but must be for peeping into Chambers, Closets, and Withdrawing-Rooms, ay, and into Beds too (sometimes with the Ladies in 'em) and have all things brought openly upon the Stage, tho' never so improper, and indecent. But this Objection may yet be better answer'd by Instances; and first for the Unity of Time, we may mention the Play call'd, The Adventures of Five Hours, the whole Action lasting no longer (much less a day, the extent ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... concerning the art of love were too abstruse to delight a generation steeped in amorous casuistry and allegories. And if some scenes seem to us indelicate, yet after comparison with other authors of his times, Chretien must be let off with a light sentence. It is certain he intended to avoid what was indecent, as did the writers of narrative poetry in general. To appreciate fully the chaste treatment of Chretien one must know some other forms of mediaeval literature, such as the fabliaux, farces, and morality plays, in which courtesy imposed no restraint. ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... constitution of a democratic nature, which he believed was directly sanctioned by God. He attacked the morals of the clergy and of the people and, besides renovating his own order, suppressed not only public immorality but all forms of frivolity. The people burned their cards, false hair, indecent pictures, and the like; many women left their husbands and entered the cloister; gamblers were tortured and blasphemers had their tongues pierced. A police was instituted ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... all agreed in deploring, was, according to Mr. Carmady, the desire of a sinless people for sin. A strange accusation. The people, according to Mr. Carmady, were leaving Ireland because they wished to indulge in indecent living. Mr. Carmady did not use these words; the words he used were "The joy of life," but the meaning of the ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... it is in Godalming, London, and other vortices of human passions, but the stately measure of a minuet. Delights are deliberate and have lingering ends. A hen would scorn to hatch a chicken with the indecent haste of her sister in the ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... to posters has undergone very little change. The Metropolitan Police Act 1839 (2 and 3 Vict. cap. 47) first put a stop to unauthorized posting, and the Indecent Advertisements Act of 1889 (sec. 3) penalized the public exposure of any picture or printed or written matter of an indecent or obscene nature. But in general practice there is hardly any limitation to the size or character of poster advertisements, other than good taste and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... naked, tied to a post, and severely scourged with Mumbo's rod, amidst the shouts and derisions of the assembly; and it is remarkable, that the rest of the women are loudest in their exclamations against their unhappy sister. Daylight puts an end to this indecent and unmanly revel. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs—they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... there is a mixture of old and young, who are so placed that as the young are set near others, so they are mixed with the more ancient; which, they say, was appointed on this account: that the gravity of the old people, and the reverence that is due to them, might restrain the younger from all indecent words and gestures. Dishes are not served up to the whole table at first, but the best are first set before the old, whose seats are distinguished from the young, and, after them, all the rest are served alike. The old men distribute to the younger any ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... alone, and Amalia did all the talking, Louisa, broken and passive, unconsciously assumed the habit of judging and criticising everything. Frau Vogel did not fail to tell her what she thought of Christophe's conduct. Louisa's calmness irritated her. She thought it indecent of Louisa to be so little concerned about what put him beyond the pale: she was not satisfied until she had upset her altogether. Christophe saw it. Louisa dared not reproach him: but every day she made little timid remarks, uneasy, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... a realist but he was also a deeply moral man. He went to Yurt and said, "It's indecent! Couldn't the two of you control yourselves at least a little? Twelve ...
— Zen • Jerome Bixby
... from a perfect right to have everything their own way. It is worthy of mention, that, even in their own village, and on all other occasions where we had an opportunity of observing them, they acted with perfect propriety, and although some indecent allusions were now and then made by the men, this was never done in the presence of the women. Of their marriages we could find out nothing—one man appeared to have two wives, but even this was doubtful. The circumstance of children being ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... special character. A pastie on the R key, for example, would remind the user that it is used to generate the rho character. The term properly refers to nipple-concealing devices formerly worn by strippers in concession to indecent-exposure laws; ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... and, accordingly, he turned it to account with all his usual mastery and haughtiness. "He had now," he said, "an additional reason for asserting the authority of the House, and defining the boundaries of Right, when the deliberative faculties of Parliament were invaded, and an indecent menace thrown out to awe and influence their proceedings. In the discussion of the question, the House, he trusted, would do their duty, in spite of any threat that might be thrown out. Men, who felt their native freedom, would not submit to a threat, however high the authority from which it might ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... his wife is given a seat in the Assembly and who, introducing "his new family," thunders against clerical celibacy.[2220] Crowds of men and women are permitted to traverse the hall letting out political cries. Every sort of indecent, childish and seditious parade is admitted to the bar of the house.[2221] To-day it consists of "citoyennes of Paris," desirous of being drilled in military exercises and of having for their commandants "former French guardsmen;" to-morrow children ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of those of France. Unbounded adulation of the sovereign, bombastical carmina on occasion of the birth, wedding, accession, victories, fetes, treaties of peace, and burial of potentates, love-couplets equally strained, twisted compliments to female beauty, with pedantic, often indecent, citations from ancient mythology, chiefly characterized this school of poetry. Martin Opitz, A.D. 1639, the founder of the first Silesian school,[1] notwithstanding the insipidity of the taste of the day, preserved ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... did what was wrong, and liked it—nearly always. But I suppose I was fated. I was bound to get into a hole, and I'm in it now, with one lung, and a wife in prospect to support. I suppose if I were to write down all the decent things I've thought in my life, and put them beside the indecent things I've done, nobody would believe the same man was responsible for them. I'm one of the men who ought to be put above temptation; be well bridled, well fed, and the mere cost of comfortable living ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thing. I need not mention the manner in which I transgressed God's holy laws; all the neighbours know it, and must have told you long ago. I could have borne reproof, but they turned my sorrow into indecent jests, and, unable to bear their coarse ridicule, I made companions of my dogs and gun, and went forth into the wilderness. Hunting became a habit. I could no longer live without it, and it supplies the stimulant which I lost when I renounced ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... this much let me say: that Right whaling on the Nor'-West Coast, in chill and dismal fogs, the sullen inert monsters rafting the sea all round like Hartz forest logs on the Rhine, and submitting to the harpoon like half-stunned bullocks to the knife; this horrid and indecent Right whaling, I say, compared to a spirited hunt for the gentlemanly Cachalot in southern and more genial seas, is as the butchery of white bears upon blank Greenland icebergs to zebra hunting in Caffraria, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Then: "Dal," she said, "I do hate singing before that sort of audience. It is like giving them your soul to look at, and you don't want them to see it. It seems indecent. To my mind, music is the most REVEALING thing in the world. I shiver when I think of that song, and yet I daren't do less than my best. When the moment comes, I shall live in the song, and forget the audience. Let me tell you a lesson I once ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... sooner for thir Arms, unarm'd they might Have easily as Spirits evaded swift By quick contraction or remove; but now Foule dissipation follow'd and forc't rout; Nor serv'd it to relax thir serried files. What should they do? if on they rusht, repulse 600 Repeated, and indecent overthrow Doubl'd, would render them yet more despis'd, And to thir foes a laughter; for in view Stood rankt of Seraphim another row In posture to displode thir second tire Of Thunder: back defeated to return They worse abhorr'd. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... report, as preposterous as unfounded, has lately found its way abroad, stating that I meditated a gross and indecent insult upon the dignity of the legislature, by using an influence which I am supposed to possess, for the purpose of introducing an improper character into the formation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... But not just yet. Nigel isn't in the mood for anything of that kind. Besides, wouldn't it look almost indecent? Travelling for pleasure, sight-seeing, so soon afterwards? It's a little dull for me, of course, but I think Nigel's quite right to lie low and see no one just for two or ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... had warmed his hands sufficiently to be able to transfer them from the fire, he lifted the right palm, and with an indecent jocularity of spirits, accosted the ci-devant ornament of "The Asinaeum" with a sounding slap on his back, or some such ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... India Company was in a pretty state of fuss and feathers. Rumor, growing with the telling, has it that Avary is going to marry the Indian princess, willy-nilly, and will turn rajah, and eschew piracy as indecent. As for the treasure itself, there was no end to the extent to which it grew as it passed from ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... Wise are thy words, and just are all thy ways. Now immolate the tongues, and mix the wine, Sacred to Neptune and the powers divine, The lamp of day is quench'd beneath the deep, And soft approach the balmy hours of sleep; Nor fits it to prolong the heavenly feast, Timeless, indecent, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... this was done, Cooper said that he had received notice of a dangerous design; that some seditious persons had made "indecent proposals" to the general; and of such proposals he desired that the council might have a ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... howl continually in a most discordant manner, and make the most hideous faces. At the commencement, the men appear alone upon the scene of action, but after a short time two female forms dart forward from among the spectators, and dance and rave like two maniacs; the more unbecoming, bold, and indecent their gestures, the greater the applause. The whole affair does not, at most, last longer than two minutes, and the pause before another dance is commenced not much longer. An evening's amusement of this description often ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... universally of a dark polished hue, nicely combed and plaited, and tied behind with ribbons, but never disguised by powder; and the brightness of their skins round the temples, clearly appears through their dark hair. Though amours are universal at Lima, the men are very careful to bide them, and no indecent word or action is ever permitted in public. They usually meet for these purposes, either in the afternoon at the Siesta, or in the evening in calashes on the other side of the river, or in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... victory than scrupulous in the means by which they had gained it. The night after the vote was taken they formed in a wild and drunken procession, and visited the residences of the Governor and the other free-State leaders, with loud and indecent ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Germans gave themselves up to the worst excesses. Angered doubtless by the remark which an officer had addressed to a soldier, against whom a young girl of 19, Mlle. Helene Proces, had made complaint on account of the indecent treatment to which she had been subjected, they burned the village and made a systematic massacre of the inhabitants. They began by setting fire to the house of an inoffensive householder, M. Jules Gand, and by shooting this unfortunate ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... Gonfaliero with the Council of Eight. On a gibbet in the form of a cross hung three chains, and combustibles were piled beneath. Sad and solemn was the silence of the vast throng assembled in the Piazza, excepting where members of the factions were raging like wild beasts and venting indecent blasphemies. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... writing a line to express her indignation at the very unjustifiable manner in which the minority of thirteen members obstructs the progress of business.[55] She hopes that every attempt will be made to put an end to what is really indecent conduct. Indeed, how is business to go on at all if such vexatious opposition prevails? At all events, the Queen hopes that Sir Robert will make no kind of concession to these gentlemen, which [could] encourage them to go on in ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... but running out upon the alarm of this firing, the first thing I saw was Mr Cozens on the ground weltering in his blood: he was sensible, and took me by the hand, as he did several others, shaking his head, as if he meant to take leave of us. If Mr Cozens' behaviour to his captain was indecent and provoking, the captain's, on the other hand, was rash and hasty. If the first was wanting in that respect and observance which is due from a petty officer to his commander, the latter was still more unadvised in the method he took for the enforcement of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... about to return to the saloon where, until supper, they could dance and amuse themselves, the young maiden turned with calm composure and indifference to Count Belleville. "Sir, I forbid you to molest me with your presence, and I counsel you no longer to offend my ears with these indecent romances, which you have no doubt learned upon the streets of Paris. But if, believing that I am unprotected, you still dare to insult me, I Inform you that my father has this moment arrived, and will certainly relieve me from your disagreeable and troublesome society." ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... "move out of the way, and allow the corpse to pass out. Let me have no indecent conduct; let everything be as it ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Stephen Spike is a prodigious willian, as his best friend must own! Well, I gave him a thump on the head that he'll not forget this v'y'ge. To think of carryin' off that pretty Rose Budd in his very arms, in so indecent a manner! Yet, the man has his good p'ints, if a body could only forget his bad ones. He's a first-rate seaman. How he worked the brig till he doubled the reef, a'ter she got into open water; and how he made her walk off afore the wind, with stun'sails alow and aloft, as soon as ever he could ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... students' mistresses, ordinary strumpets, and the poor but virtuous, by far the majority belonging to those classes which have a poor reputation. Yet the conduct of those women was in every respect proper. There were no indecent gestures, and not a loud word spoken which would have been out of place in a drawing-room. Not a woman addressed one of the ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... added to his chagrin, that having, in conjunction with Pope and Arbuthnot, produced, in 1717, a comedy, entitled "Three Months after Marriage," to satirise Dr Woodward, then famous as a fossilist; the piece, being personal and indecent, was not only hissed but hooted off the stage. The chief offence was taken at the introduction of a mummy and a crocodile on the stage. To divert his grief, he, at the suggestion of Lord Burlington, who paid his expenses, rambled into Devonshire, went ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Fein Rebellion, and the movement to which it gave birth has ever since assumed the same name. It is not my intention to dwell on the grave incidents that followed, the prolonged agony of "the shootings of the Rebel leaders," the assassination of Mr Sheehy-Skeffington, the indecent scenes in the House of Commons when the Nationalist members behaved themselves with sad lack of restraint—cheering Mr Birrell's prediction that "the Irish people would never regard the Dublin Rebellion with the same feelings with which they regarded previous rebellions," ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... a thin quarto of sixty-six pages, printed by S. and J. Ridge of Newark. The "advertisement" is dated the 23rd of December 1806, but before that date he had begun to prepare a second collection for the press. One poem ("To Mary") contained at least one stanza which was frankly indecent, and yielding to advice he gave orders that the entire issue should be thrown into the fire. Early in January 1807 an expurgated collection entitled Poems on Various Occasions was ready for private distribution. Encouraged by two critics, Henry Mackenzie and Lord Woodhouselee, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Indecent language and grossly immoral situations should be excluded from the stage. When this is not done, as is frequently the case, the drama, instead of uplifting, degrades humanity. This fact has brought the stage into disrepute with many excellent ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... quickly done, it was conveyed close to it. I then opened a prayer-book, and, amid showers of tears, read the funeral service over the remains of my valued master. Not a single person listened to this peculiarly distressing ceremony, the slaves being at some distance, quarrelling and making a most indecent noise the whole time it lasted. This being done, the union jack was then taken off, and the body was slowly lowered into the earth, and I wept bitterly as I gazed for the last time upon all that remained of my generous ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the outraged feeling of a parent, which says that it seems somehow wrong, almost indecent, for offspring to feel passion. It had been all right for her and her generation, but incomprehensible in her own parents, and now it was equally so when she saw it beginning to work out in her children. She supposed vaguely, confronted by the fact that the race went on multiplying, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... conviction combined by the Senate, prior to the bringing of an accusation by the House of Representatives, the constitutional body for the preferment of an impeachment of the President—and was an improper, and not far removed from an indecent proceeding on the part of the Senate. In effect, the President was thereby condemned by the Senate without trial, and his later arraignment was simply to receive sentence-it being solely upon the removal of Mr. Stanton that the impeachment ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... and absence of jealousy in their usages towards females. For not only do those who are of the same family and household kiss them ... with salutations and embraces, but even those, too, who have never seen them. And to themselves this appears by no means indecent."[57] The very Queen herself, even in the middle of the most imposing ceremonies, could not help indulging in familiarities contrary to our ideas of decorum, but quite in accordance with the freedom of manners then prevalent. ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... a symbol for me, and the less none because of his animal humour, his queer indecent side, and because of such lapses into utter meanness as that which made him sound the note of the begging-letter writer even in his "Dedication," reminding His Magnificence very urgently, as if it were the gist of his matter, of the continued ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Eye. God Bogey is a great convenience to the nursery-maid who wants to leave Fear to mind her charges and enforce her disciplines, while she goes off upon her own aims. But indeed, the teaching of God Bogey is an outrage upon the soul of a child scarcely less dreadful than an indecent assault. The reason rebels and is crushed under this horrible and pursuing suggestion. Many minds never rise again from their injury. They remain for the rest of life spiritually crippled and debased, haunted by a fear, stained with ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... Hawkridge ventured far enough to peer in at a cabin window. Blackbeard was at table, together with his first mate, the chief gunner, the acting sailing-master, and the captain of the sloop. They were exceeding noisy, singing most discordantly and laughing at indecent jests. Suddenly Blackbeard whipped two pistols from his sash and fired them under the table, quite ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... ye Squaws came down to ye Edge of ye River, Dancing and Behaving themselves, in ye most Brutish and Indecent manner and taking us prisoners by ye arms, one Squaw on each Side of a prisoner, they led us up to their Village and placed themselves In a Large Circle Round us, after they had Gat all prepared for their Dance, they made us sit down In a Small Circle, about 18 Inches assunder and ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... they all forgive him and have a feast. They're lovely people, so kind and gentle. But you'll get awfully tired of them in about a month. They have absolutely no respect for anybody's privacy. In fact, it seems slightly indecent to them for anybody to ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... of government, law and religion, and leave our country a naked waste for usurped authority to range in, uncontrolled and unresisted." Despite the warning of Fox that the remedy now proposed was worse than the evil which it sought to avert; despite the pleas of Grey and Sheridan against indecent haste in hurrying on this arbitrary measure, it was forced through every stage in the Commons at that single sitting; finally, at half-past three in the morning, the numbers of the Whig protestors sank to 13, while the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... language and second in the language of the Hebrews, Frederick called his fellow- lodgers together earlier than usual on the evening before Thanksgiving Day. He explained to them, in the patois which they used together, that it would be indecent for them to carry this supply of food farther than next Monday for their own purposes. He told them that the occasion was one of exuberant thanksgiving to the God of heaven. He showed them that they all had great reason for thanksgiving. And, in short, he made three heads of a discourse ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... thankful Consent, Behold the Hand-maid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy Word[l]. Jonah the Prophet, tho' favour'd with such immediate Revelations, and so lately delivered, in a miraculous Way, from the very Belly of Hell[m], was thrown into a most indecent Transport of Passion, on the withering of a Gourd; so that he presumed to tell the Almighty to his Face, that he did well to be angry even unto Death[n]: Whereas this pious Woman preserves the Calmness and Serenity of her Temper, when she had lost a Child, a Son, an only ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... Whisper fills a Patron's Ear, Who smiles unpleas'd, and mourns without a tear.[43] Persuasive, tho' a woful Blockhead he: Truth dies before his shadowy Sophistry. For well he knows[44] the Vices of the Town, The Schemes of State, and Int'rest of the Gown; Immoral Afternoons, indecent Nights, Enflaming ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... pricks his ear. "Do you hear him?" says he.—"I hear," says I, "I hear and tremble." Now, to apply. Conshy has been nudging me for this half hour to hold my tongue regarding Aaron Bang's sea—sickness.—"It is absolutely indecent," quoth he. "Can't help it, Conshy; no more than the extra tumbler; those who are delicate need not read it; those who are indelicate won't be the worse of it."—"But," persists Conshy—"I have other hairs in your neck, Master Tommy—you are growing a bit of a buffoon ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... appointed to examine further witnesses in behalf of the abolition of the Slave Trade, This motion was no sooner made, than Mr. Cawthorne rose, to our great surprise, to oppose it. He took upon himself to decide that the House had heard evidence enough. This indecent motion was not without its advocates. Mr. Wilberforce set forth the injustice of this attempt, and proved, that out of eighty-one days which had been given up to the hearing of evidence, the witnesses ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... Silenus, some Pan, others the Satyrs, all drest in suitable masquerade. Many of them were mounted on asses; others dragged goats(59) along for sacrifices. Men and women, ridiculously dressed in this manner, appeared night and day in public; and imitating drunkenness, and dancing with the most indecent gestures, ran in throngs about the mountains and forests, screaming and howling furiously; the women especially seemed more outrageous than the men; and, quite out of their senses, in their furious(60) transports invoked ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... the same editorial from the Whig, appears from the following. A portion, which we omit, is too foully indecent for republication: ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... the blessed principle of self-determination was in fetters. Chapter iii. lays down that all inscriptions must have the approval of the civic body. You are warned that they will not approve of sentences or words which are indecent, and that they prohibit all expressions and allusions that might give offence to anyone, to moral corporations, to religions, or which are notoriously false. No doubt, in practice, they waive the last stipulation, so that the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... choruses of the Negroes, but did not themselves dance. After the circular dance, came off reels of couples. These were danced with great spirit, nay, violence: there was no dancing of a person singly. None of the dancing was indecent, like the Moorish; the lower part of the body and legs now and then assumed steps and positions like the well known ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... influence of another; and to prove it, that every act of my administration would be tortured, and the grossest and most insidious misrepresentations of them be made, by giving one side only of a subject, and that too in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero—to a notorious defaulter—or even to a ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the passage with which Sterne's work closed shows increased perception and appreciation for the subtleness of Sterne's indecent suggestions, or, perhaps, agrowing lack of timidity or scruple in boldly repeating them. It is probable that the continuation by Eugenius, which had come into his hands during this period, had, with its resumption of the point, reminded Bode of the inadequacy and inexactness ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... agere volens a senatoribus projectus est, is the concise expression of Gregory of Tours, (l. ii. c. xi. in tom. ii. p. 168.) An old Chronicle (in tom. ii. p. 649) mentions an indecent jest of Avitus, which seems more applicable ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Chicago, said to be the most influential and richest ward in the world, are nearly two miles of indecent resorts. Since a district in this ward was thrown open to this most diabolical commerce, blameless Chicago virgins have been lured to apartments on Wabash avenue, under the shadow of churches of cathedral importance, and then ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Buck. We are here on a serious errand. It ought to interest you vitally because of the position you occupy in the world of business. We are launching a campaign against the extravagant, ridiculous, and oftentimes indecent dress of the working girl, with especial reference to the girl who works in garment factories. They squander their earnings in costumes absurdly unfitted to their station in life. Our plan is to influence them in the direction of neatness, modesty, and economy in dress. At present each tries ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... a theme that I can only hope here to touch his work at a point or two, leaving the proof of my sayings mostly to the honesty of the reader. It will not require so great an effort of his honesty now, as it once would, to own that Zola's books, though often indecent, are never immoral, but always most terribly, most pitilessly moral. I am not saying now that they ought to be in every family library, or that they could be edifyingly committed to the hands of boys and girls; one of our first publishing houses is about to issue an edition ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... man's feelings were all governed by his excessive affection for his mistress and that a vain hope of enjoying, with Lady Harriet Wentworth, that retirement which he had so unwillingly abandoned, induced him to adopt a conduct, which he might otherwise have considered as indecent. At any rate it must be admitted that to cling to life is a strong instinct in human nature, and Monmouth might reasonably enough satisfy himself, that when his death could not by any possibility benefit either the public or his friends, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... laudable enthusiasms that you killed in me, but because you represent what are the most execrable and hideous things under the sun to me, hypocrisy and falsehood. Yes, in that worldly masquerade, that mass of false pretences, of grimaces, of cowardly, indecent conventions which have sickened me so thoroughly that I am running away, exiling myself in order to avoid seeing them, that I prefer to them the galleys, the gutter, or to walk the street as a prostitute, your mask, O sublime Jenkins, is the one that inspires the greatest ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... with torpid beer when she overlays her child, we stifle the law of the soul because its crying is such a nuisance. Like a new baby, a new thought is fractious, restless, and incalculable. It saps our strength; it gives us no peace; it exposes a wider surface to pain. There is something indecent, uncontrolled, and unconscionable about it. Our friends like it best when it is asleep, and they like us ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... so poignant, he heard the driver of the cab asking where he wanted to go now. "Oh, back again!" But before they had gone a mile he corrected the address, in an impulse of which next moment he felt thoroughly ashamed. What he was doing indeed, was as indecent as if he were driving from the funeral of his wife to the boudoir of another woman. When he reached the old Square, and the words "To let" stared him in the face, he felt a curious relief, though it meant that he would not see her whom to see for ten minutes he felt he would give ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... off de Luynes, and the valets who played cards on his coffin were hardly more indecent in their callousness than de Luynes' enemies. The Cardinal's Hat arrived with many gracious compliments to the Bishop of Lucon, who then gave up his diocese. Soon he rustled in flame-coloured taffeta at fetes and receptions, for wealth and all the rewards of office came to him. ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... dances, that he complained to Sandoval, who reported to Cortes that the good Father was grumbling and scolding out of all measure. Our general, always prudent in his proceedings, came up to Olmedo, affecting to disapprove of the indecent conduct of his guests, and requested of him to order a solemn mass and thanksgiving, and to give the soldiers a sermon on their religious and moral duties. The good father was quite delighted at this proposal; and accordingly the crucifixes and the image of the blessed Virgin were carried ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... eating was over, "if I may be permitted to get upon my legs for two minutes, I am going to propose a toast to you." The real patron of the feast had actually not yet swallowed his last bit of cheese. The thing was indecent in the violence ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... adoption. Municipal control of the variety theatres (formerly called music halls) has been very far from liberal, except in the one particular in which the Lord Chamberlain is equally illiberal. That particular is the assumption that a draped figure is decent and an undraped one indecent. It is useless to point to actual experience, which proves abundantly that naked or apparently naked figures, whether exhibited as living pictures, animated statuary, or in a dance, are at their best not only innocent, but refining in their effect, whereas those actresses ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... it. We know not what is meant by beauty or grandeur. Here under the glass roof stand white forms of undraped men and women—casts of antique statues—but we care as little for the glory of art as for that of nature; we have a vague feeling that, for some reason or other, antiquity excuses the indecent, but further than ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... headquarters of men of fashion and of politics; the Grecian of men of legal learning; Will's of men of Letters. The Tatler was successful from the start. It was novel in form and in spirit; it was sprightly without being frivolous, witty without being indecent, keen without being libelous or malicious. In the general license and coarseness of the time, so close to the Restoration and the powerful reaction against Puritanism, the cleanness, courtesy, and good taste which characterized the journal had all the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... thoughts of late had crushed everything else out of his memory—he had forgotten its existence. And now, in all the pomp and parade of authorship, it was sent into the world! Now, now, when it was like an indecent mockery of the Bed of Death—a sacrilege, an impiety! There is a terrible disconnection between the author and the man—-the author's life and the man's life—the eras of visible triumph may be those of the most intolerable, though ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from the King downwards. But there was always a feeling of insecurity on the part of those who had any benefices in their gift, and a corresponding feeling on the part of those who were candidates for preferment. This led to a vicious system, whereby appointments were made with almost indecent haste to every vacant cure; institution was granted to an applicant for a benefice with the least possible delay after a vacancy had once been made known; the patron was willing to exercise his right in ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... not well acquainted with the habits of the greater ape, but it would probably be unwise, and perhaps indecent, to imitate him, even if "we also are his offspring." We might as well revert to polyandry and paint, because our Celtic or Pictish ancestors, if we had any, practised the one and wore the other. However, petulances like the verse on the greater ape are rare in In Memoriam. To declare ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... colour on canvas—not merely in words. His portrait of Miss Cushman is a miracle. Gibson's famous painted Venus is very pretty—that's my criticism. Yes, I will say besides that I have seldom, if ever, seen so indecent a statue. The colouring with an approximation to flesh tints produces that effect, to my apprehension. I don't like this statue colouring—no, not at all. Dearest Miss Mitford, will you write to me? I don't ask for a long letter, but ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... presence if the great good-nature of her face had not made it impossible for her to express anything but kindliness. Her arms were like legs of mutton, her breasts like giant cabbages; her face, broad and fleshy, gave you an impression of almost indecent nakedness, and vast chin succeeded to vast chin. I do not know how many of them there were. They fell away voluminously into the capaciousness of her bosom. She was dressed usually in a pink Mother Hubbard, and she wore all day long a large straw hat. But when she let down her hair, which she did ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... to him all, and more than all, that justice could require; there was a point of humiliation beyond which no human creature should be asked to suffer. To be caught making love to Mrs. Levitt and being called an old imbecile! And then to be pelted with indecent laughter. And, in any case, it was not her, Barbara's, place to punish him or judge him. She had had no business to catch him, no business, in the first instance, ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... of trade, written from Williamsburg a few days after the close of the session, contains a striking narrative of this stormy proceeding, and an almost amusing touch of official undervaluation of Patrick Henry: "In the course of the debate, I have heard that very indecent language was used by a Mr. Henry, a young lawyer, who had not been above a month a member of the House, and who carried all the young members with him."[85] But a far more specific and intense expression of antipathy came, a few weeks later, from the Reverend William Robinson, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... perfect security, as far as this house was concerned; and they returned to their repose. They are now, as they were on the eve of General Gascoyne's motion, awaiting the issue of the deliberations of Parliament, without any indecent show of violence, but with anxious interest and immovable resolution. And because they are not exhibiting that noisy and rapturous enthusiasm which is in its own nature transient, because they are not as much excited as on the day when the plan of the Government was first made ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from the above account of the indecent and shocking manner in which the unhappy Negroes are treated, it is reasonable for persons unacquainted with these people, to conclude them to be void of that natural modesty, so becoming a reasonable creature; but those who have had intercourse with the Blacks ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... any that has since been written on the subject. Ouida was sure that the wickedness of d'Annunzio was such that the only work of his which will become known to the English public in general will be the Vergini delle Rocce, because "(as far as it has gone) it is not indecent. The other works could not be reproduced in English." In proof of her contentions Ouida disclosed the fact that the French versions of the trilogy, "The Child of Pleasure," "The Victim," and "The Triumph of Death," were bowdlerized. At the same time she ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... quite indecent! I should blush, I suppose. But love is never ashamed—How people ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... vogue among Americana and other neutrals in Germany, and are by no means unkind, are regarded by Germans as a sort of sacrilege. These same people do not hesitate to circulate the most horrible and indecent pictures of President Wilson, King George, President Poincare, and especially of Viscount Grey of Falloden. The Tsar is usually depicted covered with vermin. The King of Italy as an evil-looking dwarf with a dagger in his hand. Only those who have ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... imputation of telling indelicate and ribald stories. I saw much of him during his whole Presidential term, with familiar friends and alone, when he talked without restraint; but I never heard him use a profane or indecent word, or tell a story that might not be repeated in ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... of death and conscience should it be tragic to be a widow but comic to be a widower?" But the rationalistic method is here applied quite wrong as regards the production of a drama. The most dramatic point in the affair is when the open and indecent rack-renter turns on the decent young man of means and proves to him that he is equally guilty, that he also can only grind his corn by grinding the faces of the poor. But even here the point is undramatic because it is indirect; it is indirect ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... laws of the physical world, against the rage of the winter and the liberty of the sea. They did not exempt him from the influence of that most pernicious of superstitions, a presumptuous fatalism. They did not preserve hint from the inebriation of prosperity, or restrain him from indecent querulousness in adversity. On the other hand, the fanaticism of Cromwell never urged him on impracticable undertakings, or confused his perception of the public good. Our countryman, inferior to Bonaparte in invention, was far superior to him in wisdom. The French Emperor is among ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Jews were admitted to the city on payment of bribes, and the pope himself shamelessly cast aside all show of decorum, living a purely secular and immoral life, and indujging in the chase, dancing, stage plays and indecent orgies. One of his boon companions was Jem, the brother of the sultan Bayezid, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... baths, so far back were the principles of modesty traced by our ancestors. Among the Greeks, on the contrary, what an absurd system of training youth is exhibited in their gymnasia! What a frivolous preparation for the labors and hazards of war! what indecent spectacles, what impure and licentious amours are permitted! I do not speak only of the Eleans and Thebans, among whom, in all love affairs, passion is allowed to run into shameless excesses; but the Spartans, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... questions followed—as to his hair; long or short? Had he a pair of scales with him? As before, Joan of Arc answered these futile, and sometimes indecent, questions with her wonderful patience. At one moment she could not help exclaiming how supremely happy the sight of her saints made her; it seemed as if a sudden vision of her beloved saints had been vouchsafed her in the midst of that ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... as well as in his temporal capacity. But bad as were the compositions of Valla, they were harmless when compared with the books and pamphlets of Beccadelli, the Panormite, who devoted himself almost exclusively to what was indecent and repulsive. Poggio Bracciolini in his work, /Facetiae/, and Filelfo, though not equally bad, belong to the same category. In the hands of these men the Renaissance had become, to a great extent, a glorification of Pagan immorality. Their books were condemned by many of the religious ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... he hired lodgings and a trusty servant for her. A number of Lord P.'s letters were then read, which abounded in vicious ideas, obscenities, and gross figures sketched with the pen. Miss B., then in tears, stated, that she had been shut up with Lord P. with her mother's knowledge, when indecent attacks were made by him upon her on a sofa; and that her mother urged her to become his mistress, saying she should have an allowance of 500L. a-year. The mother strongly denied these assertions, and, after the magistrate had animadverted ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... against him. But he cannot think that his unfortunate misdemeanor, circumstanced as he was, merits a severer punishment. He can show that pains were at these times taken to lead him on, when bereft of his senses, to subjects which were likely to call forth improper or indecent expressions. The defender must further urge, that not being originally educated for the church, he may, before he assumed the sacred character, have occasionally permitted himself freedoms of expression which are reckoned less culpable {p.191} among the laity. Thus he may, during that time, have ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... man whom the King delighted to honor, this is he, then!" King Friedrich has quitted Town, some while ago; returned to Potsdam "January 30th." Glad enough, I suppose, to be out of all this unmusical blowing of catcalls and indecent exposure. To Voltaire he has taken no notice; silently leaves Voltaire, in his nook of the Berlin Schloss, till the foul business get done. "VOLTAIRE FILOUTE LES JUIFS (picks Jew pockets)," writes he once to Wilhelmina: "will get out of it by some GAMBADE (summerset)," writes ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... consequence of his grief, felt such wrath rise within him the like of which he had never experienced before. It was for this that like a vulgar person, he addressed the preceptor's son who was worthy of every respect, in such unworthy, indecent, bitter, and harsh language. Addressed, from wrath, in such harsh and cruel words by Partha, O king, Drona's son, that foremost of all mighty bowmen, became highly angry with Partha and especially with Krishna. The valiant Aswatthaman, then, staying ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... convention!! Other clergymen spoke in the same strain. A motion was made by Dr. Snodgrass that the committee assign some part of the work of the World's Convention to women, which called out from Mr. Barstow some remarks too indecent for repetition. The motion was withdrawn. The gall and bitterness, the ridicule and vulgarity of the Rev. D.D.'s being expended on some of the grandest women our nation could boast, they adjourned, after deciding to hold a four days' convention, beginning the 6th of September. The other ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... advantage may be the result?" And Algernon Sidney said, nearly a century later: "I have ever had it in my mind that when God cast me into such a condition as that I cannot save my life but by doing an indecent thing, he shows me the time has come wherein I should resign it." And when that time came he did resign it; for every gentleman instinctively serves justice and liberty. He feels himself personally disgraced ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... nothing but the truth. As for the men, they are the dirtiest set of fellows I ever saw, and most of them, especially the Officers, very unlike Gentlemen. The dress of the women, with few exceptions, is highly indecent; in London, even in Drury Lane, I have seen few near so bad. Before I left England, I had heard, but never believed, that some Ladies paraded the streets in men's Clothes. It is singular that in the first genteel-looking person I spoke to in Paris to ask my way, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... all virtue and religion are openly reviled; and can they not watch one half hour to hear them defended? Is this to deal like a judge (I mean like a good judge), to listen on one side of the cause and sleep on the other? I shall add but one word more. That this indecent sloth is very much owing to that luxury and excess men usually practise upon this day, by which half the service thereof is turned to sin; men dividing their time between God and their bellies, when, after a gluttonous meal, their senses dozed and stupefied, they retire to God's house to ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... three hundred and fifty years after the building of the city. The people had revels and brutal debauches at which rude compositions filled with raillery and gross invective were sung, accompanied with indecent action and lascivous gestures. But the raillery they used was so personal and calumnious that riots constantly ensued from the resentment of the injured parties, in consequence of which the senate passed a law, in the three ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... Lodgings for a Penny. He delighted in scenes of low life. The vulgar dialect was not only a fund of humour for him; but seems to have been acceptable to his nature, as appears from the many filthy ideas, and indecent ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... facetious pantomime dances here on this day every week—admired by some, the Jews especially. To the more classic taste, many of his movements—his recoil, especially—are wanting in the true antique severity—might be called, perhaps, on the whole, indecent. Still the weary pilgrim must be amused. Let ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... and chafed and fretted under restraint. Insanity returned upon her with redoubled force, soon after. She used blasphemous and indecent language, and cut up her blankets to make pantaloons. She picked the lock of her room, and tried various plans of escape. When Friend Hopper went to see her again, some weeks later, he found her in the masculine attire, which she ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... days in Valmy. And sometimes when I sing I remember where I am and stop suddenly. It is as indecent as if one sang in the house of the dead. Soon I shall always remember and not sing at all. And I do not ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... stage was filthy and indecent, what could be said of the books! There was not a foulness or obscenity and indecency that was not openly, shamelessly treated in the bluntest of phraseology. Thousands of penny, two-penny, and three-penny editions of utter obscenity were issued daily. And the vitiated taste of the great ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... disregarded all private and inferior concerns: and when we take into view the great work which we have gone through, and feel, as we ought to feel, the just importance of it, we shall then see, that the little wranglings and indecent contentions of personal parley, are as dishonorable to our characters, as they ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... anointed their lawful prince always recommended the duty of allegiance; and the spiritual censures were denounced on the heads of the impious subjects who should resist his authority, conspire against his life, or violate by an indecent union the chastity even of his widow. But the monarch himself, when he ascended the throne, was bound by a reciprocal oath to God and his people that he would faithfully execute his important trust. The real or imaginary faults of his administration ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... heads," says Duclos, "and was set on making great examples; he was convinced that noble blood, when it is guilty, should be shed rather than common blood. Nevertheless there was considered to be something indecent in the cession by the king to the Duke of Burgundy of the constable's possessions. It seemed like the price of the blood of an unhappy man, who, being rightfully sacrificed only to justice and public tranquillity, appeared to be so ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... doubtful subject,—a "delicate and burning question," as reviewers for the press say when they want to praise some personal friend's indecent novel and pass it into decent households,—and Helmsley let it drop. He devoted himself to the consideration of his breakfast, which was excellent, and found that he had an appetite to ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... activities. Not in the least upset by their uncomplimentary references to himself, Ludwig instructed his librarian, Herr Lichenthaler, to collect all the pasquinades, lampoons, squibs, and caricatures (many of them far from flattering, and others verging on the indecent) that appeared and have them sumptuously bound. It was not long before enough had been assembled to fill half a dozen volumes. His idea was "to preserve for posterity all this mountain of mud, as a witness of Bavaria's shame." That somebody else was responsible ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... guilty, Knox," he confessed, in a murmured aside. "For any Englishman, fictitious characters excepted, to possess a knowledge of Chinese is almost indecent." ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... next tale are omitted by Lane (iii. 254) on "account of its vulgarity, rendered more objectionable by indecent incidents." It has been honoured with a lithographed reprint at Cairo A.H. 1278 and the Bresl. Edit. ix. 193 calls it the "Tale ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Coquebert. "But just now he talked of me in a manner quite indecent Should I have deceived Coquebert I certainly would not have done it with the vicar, out of regard for ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... wonderful blending within the limits of a short story of humor, pathos and tragedy—which, incredible as it may seem, met with but a cold reception from the local press, and was even branded as "indecent" and "immodest!" ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... charms: Had his Penitents consulted those Interpreters, He would have needed no other means of expressing his desires. For his misfortune, they were so strongly persuaded of his continence, that the possibility of his harbouring indecent thoughts never once entered their imaginations. The climate's heat, 'tis well known, operates with no small influence upon the constitutions of the Spanish Ladies: But the most abandoned would have thought it an easier task to inspire with passion the marble Statue of St. Francis ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... inside her brain. She could not get over the surprise of seeing him, nor could she help remarking how remarkably jovial and carefree he appeared, in spite of his lowered voice and studious air of reverence when speaking of the dead man. Moreover, there seemed to her something almost indecent in the haste with which he had arrived on the spot. It had less the appearance of solicitude for the sorrowing relatives than the eagerness of a vulture swooping down upon a good square meal it had long been hoping for. Had Chalmers ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... system subversive of all human virtue and happiness, and, whether he meant it or not, certainly led the way to political freedom. On the same principle we may learn that BOCCACCIO would not have written so many indecent tales had not the scandalous lives of the monks engaged public attention. This we may now regret; but the court of Rome felt the concealed satire, and that luxurious and numerous class in society never recovered from ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... sooner for their arms; unarmed, they might Have easily, as Spirits, evaded swift By quick contraction or remove; but now Foul dissipation followed, and forced rout; Nor served it to relax their serried files. What should they do? if on they rushed, repulse Repeated, and indecent overthrow Doubled, would render them yet more despised, And to their foes a laughter; for in view Stood ranked of Seraphim another row, In posture to displode their second tire Of thunder: Back defeated to return They worse abhorred. Satan beheld their plight, And to his mates thus in derision called. ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... them. The spectacle of a sweet little child singing hymns, and repeating prayers, of a pious old Uncle Tom dying for his religion, has filled theatres night after night, and proved that there really is no need of indecent or improper ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... these senses that he could throw himself down anywhere and sleep, that he could swallow anything in the way of food or drink. The rats nearly drove him crazy.... Yet, what had once been to him a torture, the indecent, nerve-rasping publicity of the soldier's life, had now become a compensation. It was not so much in companionship, like his friendly intercourse with Phineas and Mo, that he found an anodyne, but in the consciousness of being magnetically affected by the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... decided what Mary, Eliza and herself should wear at the wedding, and mentally arranged every detail of the coming domestic upheaval. Having exhausted all these subjects, she began in quite indecent fashion to select names for her future nieces and nephews. The first boy should be Webster Howe. What a grand old name it would be! She prayed he would be tall like Martin, and have Lucy's eyes and hair. Ah, what a delight she and Mary and Eliza would have bringing up Martin's son and baking ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... watery minds as hers were regarded as semi-imbecile, pitied as intellectual cripples, and wisely kept in the background of society; but, bless me! in this generation they skip and prance to the very edge of the front, pose in indecent garments without starch, or crinoline, or even the protection of pleats and gathers; and insult good, sound, wholesome common sense with the sickening affectations they are pleased to call 'aesthetics.' Don't ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... was thinking, reading, speaking of God, of truth, of wealth, of poverty, everybody considered it out of place and somewhat queer, while his mother and aunt, with good-natured irony, called him notre cher philosophe. When, however, he was reading novels, relating indecent anecdotes or seeing droll vaudevilles in the French theatre, and afterward merrily repeated them, everybody praised and encouraged him. When he considered it necessary to curtail his needs, wore an old coat and ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
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