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More "Indelicate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'It is indelicate and base of Captain Baskelett to complain and to hint. Nevil had to submit to the same; and Captain Baskelett took his revenge on the housedoor and the bells. The house was visited by the police ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that my aunt Legge listens to any such unworthy gossip!" I indignantly cried. "My life on it, Anneke Mordaunt never contemplated so indelicate a thing!" ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... is Isaiah. The grand thunder-roll of that righteousness, like the lion-roar of Jehovah above the guilty world, utters coarse words. Amidst the bolted lightnings of that sublime denunciation, coarse thoughts, indelicate figures, indecent allusions, flash upon the sight, like gross imagery in a midnight ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... shook her head, blushing as she untied her "fascinator." She was fond of apple toddy, but she regarded the taste as an indelicate one, and would as soon have admitted, before ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... married man or a widower who had lost his wife or some tragedy like the nobleman with the foreign name from the land of song had to have her put into a madhouse, cruel only to be kind. But even if—what then? Would it make a very great difference? From everything in the least indelicate her finebred nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen women off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse men with no respect for a girl's honour, degrading the sex and being ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... therefore suspected of having purposely recommended one. The sale of Dunkirk was justly imputed to him. For the war with Holland, he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his arrogant deportment, the indelicate eagerness with which he grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he squandered them, his picture gallery, filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which had once been the property of ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which reared ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... understand! I'm afraid you've been very much upset. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was; but I felt it would be perhaps indelicate." ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... Scotch nation; cow-stealing, for example, which is very little better than drabbing baulor; whilst the softer part is mostly about the slips of its females among the broom, so that no upholder of Scotch poetry could censure Ursula's song as indelicate, even if he understood it. What do ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... card-playing clergyman ought to be stripped of his gown without hesitation. Any right-minded person would recoil with horror at such a character. It is a great disgrace to the profession; no clergyman ought to enter into any kind of improper dissipation. Your ideas are very light and indelicate." ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... Lacey did in the seclusion of her chamber it would be indelicate to disclose. Moreover, I am not minutely aware of all the intricacies of the employment of those mysterious means by which she accomplished the charming effect that she did in some intuitive way presently accomplish; and at any rate I decline the ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... if these were to be her company. This occasioned some little embarrassment. An Indian lady, sister of the Chief Joseph Brant, who was present with her daughters, observing the bustle, inquired what was the matter, and being informed, she cried out, 'This must be a very indelicate lady to think of such a thing; she shows her own arms and elbows to all the men, and she pretends she cannot look at these officers' bare legs, although she will look at my husband's bare thighs for hours together; she must think of other things, or she would see no more shame in a man showing ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... so indelicate as to require them on such an occasion. A short time ago I conversed with an old centurion, who was in service by the side of Vespasian, when Titus, and many officers and soldiers of the army, and many captives, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... window, alarmed by the fierce flare of the shop-front. When my aunt Lisa came back from the kitchen she was quite frightened, and thought I'd set the fat in the shop on fire; and she considered the appearance of the turkey so indelicate that she turned me out of the place while Auguste re-arranged the window after his own idiotic fashion. Such brutes will never understand the language of a red splotch by the side of a grey one. Ah, well! that was my masterpiece. I ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... valuable, their worth should be derived from the style of the workmanship, or from some accidental circumstance, rather than from the inherent and solid richness. Especially never offer to a lady a gift of great cost: it is in the highest degree indelicate, and looks as if you were desirous of placing her under an obligation to you, and of buying her good will. The gifts made by ladies to gentlemen are of the most refined nature possible: they should be little articles not purchased, but deriving a ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... Francine had asked for her wages. Such a demand, indelicate in its simplest form, had been further aggravated by a respectful but clear ultimatum. It was pay, or do the cooking, and if the first was impossible, the second was both impossible ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... unrestrained either by justice or by shame. He had the effrontery to ask for a thousand louis more, in order to enable him to bring his niece, Madame Denis, the ugliest of coquettes, in his company. The indelicate rapacity of the poet produced its natural effect on the severe and frugal King. The answer was a dry refusal. "I did not," said his Majesty, "solicit the honour of the lady's society." On this, Voltaire went off into a paroxysm of childish ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... arrived the boy had begun to understand he must see to all that unaided. For his mother was ill, how deeply and in what manner he could not tell. He shrank, indeed, from all clear thought, let alone speech, on the subject, as from something indelicate, in a way irreverent. Her beauty remained to her, notwithstanding a gradual wasting as of fever. A peculiar, very individual grace of dress and of bearing remained to her likewise. But she was uncertain in mood, the victim of strange fancies, a being almost alarmingly far removed ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... courts of law are not equal to, and history shows, that, in England, impeachment has been an engine more of passion than justice. A great ball is to be given here on the 22nd, and in other great towns of the Union. This is, at least, very indelicate, and probably excites uneasy sensations in some. I see in it, however, this useful deduction, that the birth-days which have been kept, have been, not those of the President, but of the General. I enclose, with the newspapers, the two acts of parliament ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... dost, thee'll have enow to do, I can tell thee." This was one of the little incidents of his life upon which he was accustomed to advert with pleasure; and often has he, with much good humour, contrasted it with the rude and indelicate conduct of persons of great pride and importance. No man that ever lived required less entreaty to oblige his convivial friends with his charming singing. Of the families where he was treated with friendship and free hospitality he delighted ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... little indelicate for me to be here on this occasion before an assemblage of voters, for the reason that the ablest newspaper in Colorado—the ablest newspaper in the world—has recently nominated me for President. It is hardly fit for me to preside at a discussion ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... what blunt direct methods the lower classes employ in affairs of the heart. In our walk in life the sending of such lines to a gentleman who had not declared himself would be considered almost indelicate. However, I wrote out the absurd lines for the girl without comment, and rescued Henry's volume of Byron, which I felt would not improve in appearance by contact with the meat chopper, knife-board and other miscellaneous objects which she keeps in the kitchen drawer. It is a pity Netta does ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... they never tried to find out what the "drem" was. As Peter said, they were "ladies" in the best and truest sense of that much abused appellation. Full of fun and frolic and mischief they were, with all the defects of their qualities and all the wayward faults of youth. But no indelicate thought or vulgar word could have been shaped or uttered in their presence. Had any of us boys ever been guilty of such, Cecily's pale face would have coloured with the blush of outraged purity, Felicity's golden head would have lifted itself in the haughty indignation of insulted womanhood, ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Kate, that I have ventured to come here in your brother's company. It is not only unkind of you to talk to me in this way, but worse than that—it is indelicate." ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... term which came to us from our forefathers is more seemly to our mind than the modern Latin importation. Nowadays any word is better than one drawn from our old English tongue. We may not speak of anything so indelicate as a belly, but we can mention an abdomen in the politest society. Provided we denote them by their Latin or Greek names, we may even mention any parts of our viscera (I may not say bowels) without raising a blush. Mention them in English, ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... such a manner as may be least offensive to his feelings, and so as not to have the appearance of officiousness nor obtrusion on my part. I hope you will be able to do this, as I should be very sorry to do any thing by him that may be deemed indelicate. The sum Murray offered and offers was and is one thousand and fifty pounds:—this I refused before, because I thought it more than the two things were worth to Murray, and from other objections, which ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... indeed essential articles of food), the "calloo-calloo" performs such valuable service that it is highly commended. Those who are familiar with the unreflective omnivority of the blacks and their indelicate appetites generally, may with difficulty credit the fact that in those districts in which the bird is recognised as a trustworthy guide it is honoured, and under no circumstances will they kill it. Of course, the blacks of North Queensland in native worth have not much ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the appointment of missionaries to hold services in every ward, and the sending out of what were really confessors, appointed for every block, to inquire of all—young and old—concerning the most intimate details of their lives. The printed catechism given to these confessors was so indelicate that it was suppressed in later years. These prying inquisitors found opportunity to gain information for their superiors about any persons suspected of disloyalty, and one use they made of their visitations was to urge the younger sisters to be married ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... cavendish tobacco. Mrs. Smith was at any rate much too good for Shand. Surely she must have been a lady, or her voice would not have been sweet and silvery? And though she did bristle roughly against the ill-usage of the world, and say strong things, she was never absolutely indelicate or even loud. And she was certainly very interesting. How did it come to pass that she was so completely alone, so poor, so unfriended and yet possessed of such gifts? There certainly was a mystery, and it would certainly be his fate, and not the ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... creature so charming, at once deformed by a crooked back and an excrescent shoulder.' Arnaud was found and taken back to his parents. 'The bitterest consciousness of his deformity was derived from their indelicate, though, perhaps, insensible alteration of conduct.... Of his person he continued to speak as of an abhorrent enemy.... "Were a blessing submitted to my choice, I would say, [said Arnaud] be it my immediate dissolution." "I think," said his mother, ... "that you could wish better." "Yes," adjoined ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... After a multitude of expedients had been adopted and rejected as impracticable, Julia resorted to the course of committing her inquiries to paper, most solemnly enjoining her friend never to expose her weakness to Mr. Stanley. This, thought Julia, she never could do; it would be unjust to me, and indelicate in her. So Julia wrote as follows, first seeking her own apartment, and carefully locking the door, that she might devote her whole attention ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... they will tell each other's names without hesitation." In the whole of the East Indian Archipelago the etiquette is the same. As a general rule no one will utter his own name. To enquire, "What is your name?" is a very indelicate question in native society. When in the course of administrative or judicial business a native is asked his name, instead of replying he will look at his comrade to indicate that he is to answer for him, or he will say straight out, "Ask him." The superstition ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... opulent in good advice, as becomes a man of his station; for he has mastered most of the obstacles in a business career, and by leading a prudent and temperate life has established himself so well that he owns his own house and furniture, and is only slightly behind on his license. It would be indelicate to give statistics as to his age. Mr. Hennessy says he was a "grown man whin th' pikes was out in forty-eight, an' I was hedge-high, an' I'm near fifty-five." Mr. Dooley says Mr. Hennessy is eighty. He closes discussion on his own age with the remark, "I'm old ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... exceedingly plain expression is, so far from seeming gross or indelicate, considered as a very ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... that you see, madam, I have made this digression for the sole purpose of setting your mind at ease on the score of Isabella's gowns, frocks, hose, and those other articles of the "inner temple" whose names I dare not even think of, or whose existence it would be impolite and indelicate ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... told a slightly indelicate anecdote of a "dresser" she had had at the theatre, and then another young woman (the same who "adored the men who went to the deuce for a woman") repeated the terms of an advertisement she had seen in a Church newspaper: "A parlour-maid ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... graceful, fine, exquisite, minute, slender; refined, sensitive, fastidious, dainty; critical, ticklish. Antonyms: See indelicate. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... leave of her, perhaps for ever, that she complied. On that occasion, she placed in my hands a neatly-written manuscript in her own handwriting, which she said contained all the particulars I required. Circumstances have since occurred that render it not indelicate in me to publish the narrative, which I do ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... to me, 'This is only a temple; I am trying to find a house.' And then he told me with indelicate haste that the lamp outside his house was green, and that there was a red post at ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... mercenary loves in whose midst she lived; and on the very second day I had destroyed this hope, and paid by impertinent irony for the love which I had accepted during two nights. What I had done was therefore not merely ridiculous, it was indelicate. I had not even paid the woman, that I might have some right to find fault with her; withdrawing after two days, was I not like a parasite of love, afraid of having to pay the bill of the banquet? What! I had only known Marguerite for thirty-six hours; I had been her lover for only twenty-four; ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... negative and the other positive, I recall. Looking into the book after attaining years of maturity, I found it to contain many incidents of a character that would not be admitted into a modern work. Yet I read it through without ever noticing or retaining any impression of the indelicate side of the story. The other impression was a feeling of horror that a man fighting a duel and finding himself, as he supposed, mortally wounded by his opponent, should occupy his mind with avenging his own death instead of making his ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... particular—very well done. Mr. Leigh Hunt has not failed in the Manciple's Tale, which I myself modernised many years ago; but though I much admire the genius of Chaucer as displayed in this performance, I could not place my version at the disposal of the editor, as I deemed the subject somewhat too indelicate for pure taste to be offered to the world at this time of day. Mr. Horne has much hurt this publication by not abstaining from the Reve's Tale. This, after making all allowance for the rude manners of Chaucer's age, is intolerable; and by indispensably softening down the incidents, he has killed ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... pronounced a legitimate orator, though it must be acknowledged, that in what remains of his compositing, he is clumsy without strength, and violent without spirit. He was the first that deviated from the great masters of his art. He despised all method and regular arrangement; indelicate in his choice of words, he paid no regard to decency; eager to attack, he left himself unguarded; he brandished his weapons without skill or address; and, to speak plainly, he wrangled, but did not argue. And yet, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... make my subscription for Mr. Scott's widow, &c. thirty instead of the proposed ten pounds; but do not put down my name; put down N.N. only. The reason is, that, as I have mentioned him in the enclosed pamphlet, it would look indelicate. I would give more, but my disappointments last year about Rochdale and the transfer from the funds render me more economical ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... reading of the older editions. It may be so; but who can doubt that it is a mistake for 'my father's child,' meaning herself? According to Theobald's note, a most indelicate anticipation is put into the mouth of Rosalind without reason;—and besides, what a strange thought, and how out ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... not his own exuberant genius become a fatigue to himself and to his readers? Are not, perhaps, his characters too real? and do they not often degenerate, without motive, from the sublime into the ridiculous? Would Hamlet have appeared less interesting or less mad had he not spoken indelicate and cruel words to Ophelia? Would Laertes have seemed less grieved on hearing of the death of his sister had he not made so unnecessary a ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... into consternation by the scandalous behaviour of her black cat, Caesar, who chose suddenly to terminate a long and outwardly respectable career as Miss Carpenter's familiar by having kittens under the horse-hair sofa in the parlour. Incidentally this indelicate and ungentlemanly behaviour temporarily unloosed the hinges of Miss Carpenter's reason, so that my supper suffered that evening, and for several days she wandered round the house with blank and witless eyes. Perhaps I should have warned her, for I had latterly come ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... on the same principle her occasional freedoms of speech serve to deepen our sense of her innate delicacy; they being manifestly intended as a part of her disguise, and springing from the feeling that it is far less indelicate to go a little out of her character, in order to prevent any suspicion of her sex, than it would be to hazard such a suspicion by keeping strictly within her character. In other words, her free talk bears much the same relation ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... hips, and with a lace cap pinned onto her hair, in the Catalan fashion, who looked strong and bold, and who had a certain amount of gracefulness about her, and with a pretty, but untidy head, was urging them to undo the strings of their great leather purses, and replied to their somewhat indelicate jokes in a shrill voice, as she sat on the knee of the youngest, and allowed him to kiss her and to fumble in her bodice, without any signs ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... solved the labour question with discrimination polished, So poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished - (They are going to abolish it in England.) The Chamberlain our native stage has purged, beyond a question, Of "risky" situation and indelicate suggestion; No piece is tolerated if it's costumed indiscreetly - In short, this happy country has been Anglicised completely! It really is surprising What a thorough Anglicising We've brought about - Utopia's quite another land; In her enterprising movements, She is England - with improvements, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... very hard in this. The match was to be broken off without any notice to him; and when he requested, at any rate, to hear this decision from the mouth of the only person competent to make it, he was told that it was indelicate for him to wish to do so. ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... contemporaries have been dreadfully scandalised at the indelicate scenes which take place on the sands at Ramsgate, where, it seems, a sort of joint-stock social bathing company has been formed by the duckers and divers of both sexes. Situations for obtaining favourable views are anxiously sought after by elderly gentlemen, by whom opera glasses ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the half-ironical, half-mischievous merriment of these patrician revellers; their witticisms were brilliant and pointed, but never indelicate; and if their darker passions were roused, and ready to run riot, they showed as yet no sign of it. They ENJOYED—yes! with that selfish animal enjoyment and love of personal indulgence which all men, old and young without exception, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... district was deluged with anonymous letters, all referring to the alleged passion of the curate for the vicar's daughter, and the intrigue they were carrying on together. Some of the letters were frankly indelicate in their expression and, as the whole parish seethed with the scandal, the vicar appealed ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... all horrified—not moved with grief, this time, but shocked. It seemed such a repulsive and indelicate step to take. Which it was. And which, in her curious perverseness, Alvina must have intended it to be. Mrs. Houghton assumed a remote air of silence, as if she did not hear any more, did not belong. She lapsed far away. She was really very weak. Miss Pinnegar said: "Well really, if she ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... me give a reason for every thing. Well then, I think that it is indelicate in women to leave their proper sphere and descend to the level of men, and this any woman must do in assuming the masculine garb. If I am not mistaken, the common law bears me out, and inflicts a penalty upon such deviations from established ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... don't know how it was,—I hope he did not think me indelicate,—but I asked him, I believe, to sit down, or pointed to a chair. He sat down, and, instead of having recourse to observations upon the weather, or hackneyed criticisms upon the theatre, he entered readily into a conversation worthy a man ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... to the Wedgewoods, which you recommend, would be indelicate and unmeaning. If, after four or five years, I shall have finished some work of importance, which could not have been written, but in an unanxious seclusion, to them I will dedicate it; for the public will have owed the work to them who gave me the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... O fye Seignior, how can you make use of so indelicate an Expression. A Lady's Nudities, why, you might as well have said— I vow it is almost plain English, I protest such an Expression is enough to get your ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... find you the same," and there stopped. She ascribed the difficulty to her own mental and clerical defects, but I think it lay quite as much in the nature of the relation. How was she to express confidence when she distrusted? how express distrust when her maidenly promptings told her it was an indelicate solicitation? She could say Brindle had gone dry and the blind mare had foaled, or that crops were good; but what was that to say when her heart was thirsting and drying up? She blotted the paper and her eyes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... that her self-imposed labours saved them the expense of a schoolmaster and chaplain [14which they had become bound by law to appoint], made a proposal to her of an annual salary of 12L. a year; but they did it in so indelicate a manner as greatly to wound her sensitive feelings. She shrank from becoming the salaried official of the corporation, and bartering for money those serviced which had throughout been labours of love. But the Gaol Committee coarsely ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... negative description of one of the characteristics of charity is sufficiently comprehensive, if exhibited in all its details, to fill a volume. It conveys the idea of an exquisite propriety of deportment, free from everything indelicate, obtrusive, repulsive, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... looked around her timidly. "Sister Phoebe did not wish me to mention it," she said, in a low tone. "She thinks it—indelicate. But—you are so kind, Doctor Strong, and you are a physician. Poor little Vesta has had a disappointment, a ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... circumstances under which our emotions may be excited. A man may smile at his own misfortunes after they are over—sometimes our laughter seems scarcely directed against anyone, and in the most profane and indelicate humour there is ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... walked slowly away. She was considering something, debating something within herself. Should she go in and dine alone in the restaurant? By doing so she would certainly make those two who had treated her badly uncomfortable; she would probably spoil the rest of their evening. Should she do that? Some indelicate devil prompted her, urged her, to do it. It would "serve them right," she thought. Adela Sellingworth especially deserved a touch of the whip. But it would be an undignified thing to do. They would never know of course why she had come alone to the Bella Napoli! They would think that, ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... married, you say,' pursued the Alderman. 'Very unbecoming and indelicate in one of your sex! But never mind that. After you are married, you'll quarrel with your husband and come to be a distressed wife. You may think not; but you will, because I tell you so. Now, I give you fair ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... over a thing like this and she tried to argue with herself without avail. It seemed to her that if she went about in neglige like that she would lower herself. How? There was nothing unwomanly in flowing hair, there was nothing indelicate. No, but women of her class never appeared before men in that fashion, ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... has been indelicate enough to tell you about our family affairs. Of course you have sufficient discretion to disbelieve such ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... of tenderness which swept over him at the anticipation of this was hurled back by an uncomfortable thought. What if Matilda were to refer to the ring? But no; his Matilda would do nothing so indelicate. ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... the country to keep a love affair a secret as long as possible; if it is discovered and talked about by outside gossips, half its delight and charm is gone; indeed it is considered indelicate to show any signs of love-making in public. It is true that this secrecy often leads to serious mischief, but, on the other hand, there is much to be said for the sensitive modesty of the Welsh maiden, when compared with an English girl's ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... there, you can't understand any of them, hardly, and so you go about as hungry for talk as you do here. I like to look at a Russian or a German or an Italian—I even like to look at a Frenchman if I ever have the luck to catch him engaged in anything that ain't indelicate—but LOOKING don't cure the hunger—what ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... fence—as I get nearer and nearer I feel something rising and rising within me that enables me to face anything; and so when I had confronted the bull for a little time I felt inclined to carry the war into the enemy's country, and advance upon him. But of course all this is very indelicate and unfeminine; and it would have been far more virtuous and lady-like to have run shrieking away like Miss Molasses, or laid down and given in at once like poor Lady Scapegrace, who was quite resigned to being tossed and ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... of September, Nineteen Hundred Four, Haeckel was a delegate to the Freethinkers' Congress at Rome. To hold such a convention in the Eternal City, right under the eaves of the Vatican, was surely a trifle "indelicate," to use the words of the Pope. And it was no wonder that at the close of the Congress the Pope at once ordered a sacred ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... repose from their exertions, after the termination of one of these wild dances, the women of the tribe will occupy their place; but in general their postures and movements are indelicate in the extreme. But modesty is hardly to be looked for in ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... a love without gallantry,—a love without anything of that fine flower of youthfulness and gentility which places it, if not among the virtues, among the ornaments of life. Instead of this passion, naturally allied to grace and manners, they infuse into their youth an unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medley of pedantry and lewdness,—of metaphysical speculations blended with the coarsest sensuality. Such is the general morality of the passions to be found in their famous philosopher, in his famous work of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of her intention to leave us. And, if you will allow me to make a suggestion, I would charge you not to let him suspect, when you meet, that you for a moment imagine he was in Madeleine's confidence. It would be highly indelicate,—the very supposition would be derogatory to her dignity. I have said all that was necessary to him, and, as he had nothing to do with the affair, it is a topic which cannot with propriety be ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... those in Germany as in England, who saw in Sterne's works only a mine of vulgar suggestion, arelation sometimes delicate and clever, sometimes bald and ugly, of the indelicate and sensual, is a foregone conclusion. Undoubtedly some found in the general approbation which was accorded Sterne's books a sanction for forcing upon the public the products ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... again. Their apparent reconciliation was the outcome of a drama shrouded in secrecy. Seguin, hard up and in debt, cast off by Nora, who divined his approaching ruin, and preyed upon by other voracious creatures, had ended by committing, on the turf, one of those indelicate actions which honest people call thefts. Du Hordel, on being apprised of the matter, had hastened forward and had paid what was due in order to avoid a frightful scandal. And he was so upset by the extraordinary muddle in which ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... to be indelicate, George," said Mr. Stiles, reprovingly, as he paused at the door of the house. "Let's sit down ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... influence over you and was afraid that you would force yourself, from gratitude, to respond to my love, would try to rouse in your heart a feeling which was perhaps absent, and I did not wish that ... because it would be tyranny ... it would be indelicate (in short, I launch off at that point into European, inexplicably lofty subtleties a la George Sand), but now, now you are mine, you are my creation, you are pure, you are good, you ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... as I was in some sort by the idea which had taken hold of me, that the Gironacs, through a false and indelicate idea of advancing my welfare, were endeavouring to promote a liking between myself and the Count, I cannot deny, that the evening on the whole, was a pleasant one, and that, if at first it had been my impression that De Chavannes was agreeable, entertaining, and well-bred, I was now prepared to ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... Ireland, when you know the difficulty of escape? I have had, since I saw you last, two or three domiciliary visits from Whitecraft and his men, who searched my whole house and premises in a spirit of insolence that was, most indelicate and offensive. Hastings and I have sent a memorial to the Lord Lieutenant, signed by some of the most respectable Protestant gentry in the, country, in which we stated his wanton tyranny as well as his oppression of his Majesty's subjects—harmless and loyal ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... so tenderly upon Mr. Belcher's arm! And he felt that no woman who was not either shabbily perverse, or a fool, could misinterpret her. He knew that his wife had been annoyed at finding Mrs. Dillingham in the house. He dimly comprehended, too, that her presence was an indelicate intrusion, but her ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... you are! How you put things!" He tried but failed to keep the offended look from his face, and Kate knew perfectly well how hard he was striving not to think her indelicate. But she ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... proprieties. Miss Swinkerton was strongly of opinion that bygones should be allowed to be bygones, and was author of a theory which found much acceptance among the villas—namely, that Lady Tristram would consider any reference to her immediate predecessor as inconsiderate, indeed indelicate, and not such as might be expected to proceed from ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... humiliating necessity of ushering his polished friends into the wretched asylum of penury, the Poet led the way with tardy reluctancy, while his visitors regretted every step of ascent, under the appalling circumstance of giving pain to adversity; yet they felt that to recede would be more indelicate than to advance. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... bold assertion, which was so unprecedented in her experience that for a moment she could not utter a word; and when she did speak she avoided a direct reply, because she thought any discussion on the subject of marriage, except from the sentimental point of view, was indelicate. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... is perfectly appropriate to the theme. A vain, ill-mannered, and untrustworthy egotist, defending his own sordid doings with his own cheap and weather-beaten philosophy, is very likely to express himself best in a language flexible and pungent, but indelicate and without dignity. But the peculiarity of these loose and almost slangy soliloquies is that every now and then in them there occur bursts of pure poetry which are like a burst of birds singing. Browning does not hesitate to put some of the most perfect lines that he or ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... choosing—the man Meadows, perhaps, or—" (He stopped short of mentioning Ned Faringfield, whose trustworthiness on either side he was warranted, by much that he had heard, in doubting.) "In any case," he resumed, "'twould be indelicate to imply that her judgment of men, her confidence in any one, could have been mistaken. We'd best merely tell her, then, that the rebels were on the alert, and fell upon us before we could ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... immediate heir. Earlier in the year, indeed, the queen had been delivered of another son, Augustus Frederic, the late duke of Sussex, and no mention had then been made of an address, and therefore to have presented one on this occasion, would have been invidious, if not indelicate. This motion, therefore, proved abortive. Wilkes, however, with his friend Oliver, succeeded in obtaining from the court of alderman a resolution "that a frequent appeal to the people by short parliaments was their undoubted right, as well as the only ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the front windows, and made to stand up there, with their faces toward the company, and to receive the congratulations of a mighty procession of friends, who all used the same formulas, except the very old ones, who were delicately indelicate. ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... journey to Brundusium, and his account of his bad dinner; nor in his dirty, low quarrel between one Rupilius, whose words, as he expresses it, were full of poisonous filth; and another, whose language was dipped in vinegar. His indelicate verses against old women and witches have frequently given me great offence; nor can I discover the great merit of his telling his friend Maecenas, that, if he will but rank him in the class of lyric poets, his lofty head shall touch the stars. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... in this last matrimonial observation has not been to advise all men of superiority to seek for women of superiority and we do not wish each one to expound our principles after the manner of Madame de Stael, who attempted in the most indelicate manner to effect a union between herself and Napoleon. These two beings would have been very unhappy in their domestic life; and Josephine was a wife accomplished in a very different sense from this ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... profuse to see for pendant light, A tea-pot dangle in a lady's ear; And 'twere indelicate, although she might Swallow two whales and yet the moon ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... trust that you will retain your supremacy, for I know—I know," he repeated with emphasis—"that Mrs. Allistair has used some methods not altogether—sportsmanlike, may I say? And now"—rapidly shifting once more—"I trust I will not seem indelicate if I inquire whether it is in the scope of your present plans, perhaps at house-parties at the estates of titled friends, to meet ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... showing Pitt as Adam conducting Eve to the nuptial bower in the garden of Eden, while behind it squatted Satan as a toad, leering hatred through the features of Fox. It is to be hoped that Auckland did not know of this indelicate cartoon when he replied to Pitt. That letter has very properly been destroyed. But we have Pitt's second letter to Auckland, in which he again assures him how deeply he is affected by hearing of "the sentiments of another person, unhappily too nearly interested in the subject in question." He adds ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... "kicking himself" because time was passing and he could not find words delicate enough in which to clothe an indelicate request,—one outrageous in its present connection, yet from some points of view, definitively his own, a most urgent and ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... peculiar to her type, she never once permitted her mind to stray to her crowning beatitude—the hope of a child; for, with that sacred inconsistency possible only to fixed beliefs, though motherhood was supposed to comprise every desire, adventure, and activity in the life of woman, it was considered indelicate for her to dwell upon the thought of it until the condition had become too obvious ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... "It's indelicate it's indecent, that's what it is. Didn't I get my clothes, and weren't we to have been married by the Reverend Dwight Johnstone, out in Salem, Ohio? And didn't he go out there and have old Johnstone marry him to somebody else? The wretch! If ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... believing that Governments are accustomed to publish in their various white, gray, or orange papers "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." This is nowhere done, for there are many bits of information which come to a Government through its diplomatic connections which it would be indelicate, discourteous, or unwise to give to the public. The official documents on American foreign relations and all white, gray, or orange papers are "edited." They are understood to be so by Congress, Parliament, the Reichstag, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Indelicate friend that he was, Ernest pounced upon the note and took possession of it. The Scottish youth, furious, flung himself upon the treacherous French boy; on which Monsieur de l'Estorade, a thousand leagues from ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... to the fire. The silence of that smile brought their comradeship sharply home to him. It was as if she understood his weariness and knew that the fire was infinitely comforting. Anthony frowned; he did not wish to be understood. It was irritating—indelicate. ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... introductory chapters are of that elephantine facetiousness which pleased our great-grandfathers, but which is exceedingly tedious to modern taste; and the humor of the book occasionally has a breadth that is indelicate to our apprehension, though it perhaps did not shock our great-grandmothers. But, notwithstanding these blemishes, I think the work has more enduring qualities than even the generation which it first delighted gave it credit ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to sleep with me." Nevertheless, the women still display intense curiosity in seeing "The Christian," and will declare, "By G—d, you are beautiful, more handsome than our men." They admire the most trifling thing I have, and add, "God alone brought you amongst us." Their language, though indelicate to us, is not so to them. It is the undisguised speech ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... household had not fallen to pieces its frequenters gradually returned to it, wearing indeed the air of people who had never really remained away from it. There had been natural reasons enough for considerate absence from a house of bereavement and a desolate widow upon whose grief it would have been indelicate to intrude. As Feather herself had realized, the circle of her intimates was not formed of those who could readily adjust themselves to entirely changed circumstances. If you dance on a tight rope and the rope is unexpectedly withdrawn, where are you? You cannot continue dancing ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... are far from being indelicate or unchaste. On the banks of the Niger, they are tolerably industrious, have a considerable share of vivacity, and at the same time a female reserve, which would do no discredit to a politer country. They are modest, affable, and faithful; an ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... remarked the Governor turning from a leisurely survey of the dwelling. "Perfectly easy! Archibald Bennett was neatly sewed into your coat pocket by your tailor as I observed when I rubbed my hands over your waistcoat to see if you wore a badge. Your bill-fold is there intact—it's rather indelicate of you to feel for it! If I'd meant to rob you I'd have biffed you on the head long ago and thrown ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... the basis of many a double meaning. There is, in fact, no lyric song describing natural scenery that may not have beneath it some implied, often indelicate, allusion whose riddle it takes an adroit and practiced mind ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... conscience does not reproach you. No, not one bit. Positively you are not aware of anything reprehensible or even indelicate in what you are about. Thinking of the matter, as you carefully scan the books of record, you regard it precisely as you would any other investigation. To you it is essential that the girl you are to marry should have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... virile member. This word has been the subject of much debate among the learned. Some read solopachium, meaning a "mannikin eighteen inches high"; Saumasius proposes salopygium, a "wagtail"; several editors have salaputium, an indelicate word nurses used to children when they fondled them, so that the exclamation would mean, "what a learned little puppet!" Thus Augustus called Horace ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... commanded, his grasp tightening on Pigot's arm. "Forgive my recalling that meeting to your memory. It was indelicate of me. Nevertheless you would do well to listen to what I have ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... nothing the matter with you," he said, with a leer. Others, though coarse, were kindly in their familiarity, and Sifton, with gentle face, remained to help her bear the jests of the more uncouth and indelicate of her admirers. ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the severest labor, has been systematically robbed of her earnings, which have gone to build up her master's power, and she has found herself in the condition of the slave, deprived of the results of her own labor. Taught that education for her was indelicate and irreligious, she has been kept in such gross ignorance as to fall a prey to superstition, and to glory in her own degradation. Taught that a low voice is an excellent thing in woman, she has been trained to a subjugation of the vocal organs, and thus lost the benefit ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... not in his hearing; for having lighted his pipe, he staggered off as fast as he could. We shall therefore transcribe no more of her speech, as it approached still nearer and nearer to a subject too indelicate to find any place in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... all been engaged in the same way, and their marriages had gone off in regular sequence to their engagements. There had never been any secret with them about their affairs. On this matter the practice is very various among different people. There are families who think it almost indelicate to talk about marriage as a thing actually in prospect for any of their own community. An ordinary acquaintance would be considered to be impertinent in even hinting at such a thing, although the thing were an established fact. The engaged young ladies only whisper the news ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... "it is astonishing, the quantity of victuals these boarders consume. It is so unfeminine and indelicate for young ladies to have appetites. I declare it quite shocks me to see the large slices of bread and butter disappearing down Jenny Andrews' little throat, and, as for that Charles Seaton, I believe he would eat ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... half-unconsciously purify materials like those which Hesiod presents in the crudest form? Mr. Grote says: "How far these stories are the invention of Hesiod himself it is impossible to determine. They bring us down to a cast of fancy more coarse and indelicate than the Homeric, and more nearly resemble some of the holy chapters ((Greek text omitted)) of the more recent mysteries, such, for example, as the tale of Dionysus Zagreus. There is evidence in the Theogony itself that the author was acquainted with local legends current both at Krete and at ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... as I think proper," replied the lady; "and I'll thank you for none of your indelicate insinuations." So saying, the lady bounced out of the room into her own, and our midshipmen then made a noise in the passage, to intimate that they had come in. They found Mr Hicks looking very red and vice-consular indeed, but he recovered ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... like all women. I have my—my weaknesses. I should like to bear a noble name. Can you not on the occasion of our marriage change your name somewhat?" She blushed as if she had proposed something indelicate. ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... herself," Ransom remarked; whereupon Doctor Prance rejoined, "Well, I guess she'll have to pay for it!" She appeared to regret her own half-dollar, and to be vaguely impatient of the behaviour of her sex. Ransom became so sensible of this that he felt it was indelicate to allude further to the cause of woman, and, for a change, endeavoured to elicit from his companion some information about the gentlemen present. He had given her a chance, vainly, to start some topic herself; ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... appearance, and their style of conversation; but Friend Hopper was remarkably free from such faults. He was exceedingly pure in his mind, and in his personal habits. He never alluded to any subject that was unclean, never made any indelicate remark, or used any unseemly expression. There was never the slightest occasion for young people to feel uneasy concerning what he might say. However lively his mood might be, his fun was always sure to be restrained by the nicest sense of ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... know. No, he is not tactful; yet, have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... to,' said Sir Philip, 'is her avowed preference for this parson. Surely it is very indelicate in any lady to let all the world know with whom she ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... satisfying himself that he had quite a right to do so; and he stood abashed in the presence of the superscription on the envelope somewhat as if Miss Barbara F. Simpson, Upper Ashton Falls, N. H., were there to see him tampering with her correspondence. It was indelicate, and he felt that his whole behavior had been indelicate, from the moment her laugh had wakened him in the night till now, when he had invaded her room. He had no more doubt that she was the taller ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... an essay on Byron. In an essay on Byron, Byron is (or ought to be) mentioned many times. I expect, nay exact, that Bryon shall be mentioned again and again. But my undergraduate has a blushing sense that to call Byron Byron twice on one page is indelicate. So Byron, after starting bravely as Byron, in the second sentence turns into 'that great but unequal poet' and thenceforward I have as much trouble with Byron as ever Telemachus with Proteus to hold and pin him back to his proper self. Half-way down the page he becomes 'the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... habit of Clara and Ada, his maids, squeezing at the gate from positions dangerous to modesty into which their ardent young men have thrust them—it is their habit, thus placed, to excuse themselves from indelicate embraces by telling alarming tales of Mr. Marrapit's "carrying on" should they be late. He is a "fair ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... am going to tell you something which you may perhaps think indelicate, but yet I know that I am ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the most remarkable discovery, I think, in Physical Astronomy.'—In discussing points relating to the discovery of Neptune, I made an unfortunate blunder. In a paper hastily sent to the Athenaeum (Feb. 18th) I said that Arago's conduct had been indelicate. I perceived instantly that I had used a wrong expression, and by the very next post I sent an altered expression. This altered expression was not received in time, and the original expression was printed, to ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... without ceremony, and converse more like an equal than an inferior; and if he has a petition he talks in a loud and boisterous tone and fearlessly sets forth his claims. Both the peasantry and the better classes are often coarse and indelicate in their language, and many of the proverbs, which they are fond of introducing into conversation, are extremely gross. In general the Marathas, and particularly the cultivators, are not possessed of much activity or energy of character, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... out his own character, of a young, gay, rakish spark, blessed with parts and abilities. His works are loose, tho' not so grossly libertine, as some other wits of his time, and leave not so pernicious impressions on the imagination as other figures of the like kind more strongly stampt by indelicate and heavier hands.' ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... another year prevented that plan. My next scheme, (for to my restless, ambitious mind London was become a bed of thorns) was to visit the far-famed Peak in Derbyshire, where the Devil sits, they say, without breeches. This my purer mind rejected as indelicate. And my final resolve was a tour to the Lakes. I set out with Mary to Keswick, without giving Coleridge any notice; for my time being precious did not admit of it. He received us with all the hospitality in the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the country. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... what he thought, that it was almost indelicate in her to be here so often. He was out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... against him,' continued Lady Clonbrony, 'is what I have just heard from Grace, who was really hurt by it, too, for she is the warmest friend in the world: I allude to the creature's indelicate way of touching upon a tender PINT, and mentioning an amiable young heiress's name. My dear Colambre, I trust you have given me credit for my inviolable silence all this time upon the PINT nearest my heart. I am rejoiced to hear you ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Dudley Warner, once near neighbor to Mark Twain, that there is no culture west of Buffalo, was indelicate if not unkind; and residents of Omaha aver that it is open to argument. But the fact stands beyond cavil that what art we possess is traceable to our masters, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... have stooped to quote Shakespeare, considering him very irreligious and sometimes quite indelicate, and having forbidden the reading of him in the Gordon family. Nevertheless the unspoken thought of her mind was his—that the ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... shocks: to the vertebrae; to the nerves; to moral sensibility; and, more potent and permanent, to personal dignity. This last was the shock Jon received, coming thus on his mother. He became suddenly conscious that he was doing an indelicate thing. To have brought Fleur down openly—yes! But to sneak her in like this! Consumed with shame, he put on a front as brazen ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mother, and five or six young ladies, who act as bridesmaids. According to their mode of salutation, we must gallop up to them repeatedly. See! the ladies cover their faces, and scream their thanks; and as it is extremely indelicate to gaze upon the bride, we must cast our eyes on the ground, wheel our horses round, and gallop back again. You will ask, 'Is that all; and where is the bridegroom?' Ah! poor fellow! he has been parading the streets all the day, with a crowd after him, dressed in all the finery ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... with zest. Colonel Drew took in Mrs. Valentine and his content was assured; Mr. Van Winkle and the beautiful Miss Valentine were side by side, and no one could say he looked unhappy; Mr. Cromwell went in with Mrs. Savage; and the same delicate tact—in some cases it was almost indelicate—was displayed in the disposition of ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... he didn't know what to do; he did nothing but storm at everybody, for my lady, with her head under the clothes, was serving him out at no small rate. She wouldn't, she declared, allow any man to come into the cabin to hoist her up again. So indecent, so indelicate, so shocking,—she was ashamed of Sir Hercules,—to send for the men; if they didn't leave the cabin immediately, she'd scream and she'd faint—that she would—there was no saying what she wouldn't do! Well, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... be governed. The same unhappy psychological condition which makes the dance an unclean thing in their jaundiced eyes renders it impossible for them to enjoy art or literature when the subject is natural, the treatment free and joyous. The ingenuity that can discover an indelicate provocative in the waltz will have no difficulty in snouting out all manner of uncleanliness in Shakspeare, Chaucer, Boccacio—nay, even in the New Testament. It would detect an unpleasant suggestiveness ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the mask has an indescribably unpleasant effect. Several persons have indirectly questioned the Marchese on this subject, but he evades or turns off their enquiries with all the tact of a consummate man of the world. Of course it would be indelicate, if not unfeeling, to ask her about it. Meantime the public amuses itself with all sorts of absurd suppositions. First it is a vow; then she has got a pig's face; then her waiting-maid had said that she had once caught her unmasked, and that her face was covered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... got shot," Doris Rives informed him. "With a charge of BB's, in a most indelicate portion of his anatomy. He was out hunting, the last day of small-game season, and somebody mistook him for a turkey. Nothing really serious, but he's face down in bed, cursing hideously in German, English, Russian, Italian and French, mainly ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... to seem thoughtless or indelicate, but I want you to know that I can lick the whole bunch of you with one hand tied behind my back and the other in a sling. Not that I have any intention of doing it, and I apologize to the ladies for mention of the subject, but it may help us to an understanding. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... him to-day," she went on, "that he's got to marry her. There's nothing indelicate about my saying that, because they've never met. But it'll work in his brain, you see if it doesn't, like yeast in new bread! Then I'll bring them together, and then, ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... youth; he saw the grosser facts of life, so often lamentable and tender, in the spirit of a Voltaire doubled by a Rabelais. There is honest and also shocking laughter in these early illustrations. A fantaisiste, graceful, delicate—and indelicate—emerged after the lad went up to Paris, as if he had stepped out of the eighteenth century. Rops summed up in his book plates, title-pages, and wood-cuts, illustrations done in a furious speed, all the elegance, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... I confess that I felt a little nervous about this, for I dreaded an encounter with that horrible Mrs. Wattles. She talks and talks and talks to me whenever she sees me, and insists upon asking the most indelicate questions. She is a perfect savage. But no matter; let me get on. As I crawled upstairs, I heard her in her room abusing her poor husband in the most disgusting terms. I held my breath and crept up. I found the trunk ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... Celeste. "Too high a regard! Truly, she behaves very ridiculously! Why, she positively waylays pa! so indelicate in a woman, you know!" with sublime unconsciousness of ever having indulged in the pastime of waylaying herself! "Such an old creature, too! she is always coming and wanting to mend his old ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... he. 'You see if I don't. When I say a thing I mean it. I will be your brother.' And he took her hand, caressing it, and showing her that he was not in the least afraid of her. He was blunt in his bearing, saying things which her father would have called indelicate and heartless, as though they gave him no effort, and placing himself at once almost in a position of ascendency. This Clara had not intended. She had thought that her farmer cousin, in spite of the superiority of his prospects as heir to the property, would have acceded ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... There is nothing indelicate about riding on both sides of a horse, if they once get used to it. But they have got to get over this superstition that to ride on horseback a woman must put her limbs up ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... the theatre was too contemptible for mention, and in the pantomime, or rather spectacle, became latterly so indelicate, that I found it necessary to withdraw. I should hope that the performances are not always of the same character: perhaps something must be allowed for the occasion. The French, however, have no idea of humour as separated from indecencies. ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... mean, Randal?" demands his aunt, with a snort that would have done credit to a war-horse. "To whom are you addressing your remarks? Are you calling me indelicate?" ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... the bowl, there arose by degrees fanciful tales with which the Saxons and their successors amused themselves after their dinner, and round the blazing hearth. In the tenth century the clergy found stories to amuse the post-prandial hour—extravagant, indelicate, or profane—such were the times, but marking improved activity of thought. Thus they enjoyed such a tale as that a "prophet" went to Heriger (Archbishop of Mayence about 920) and told him he had been to the nether ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... MORE POLITE TO WOMEN.—So far from being in the least gross or indelicate, its proper exercise is pure, chaste, virtuous, and even an ingredient in good manners. It is this which renders men always more polite towards women than to one another, and more refined in their society, and which ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... indelicate and inconsiderate of Fred to tell any one that it was my fault that he was doing anything so foolish," she said, with true feminine deceit, "but he has taken the very worst possible means to make me care for ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as nothing less than a broad axe would satisfy them; but after standing their market three days, la pucelage fell to an old razor, a pair of scissors, or a very large nail. Indeed this trade was pushed to so great a height, that the quarter-deck became the scene of the most indelicate familiarities. Nor did the unfeeling mothers commiserate with the pain and suffering of the poor girls, but seemed to enjoy it as a monstrous good thing. It is customary here, when girls meet with an accident of this kind, that a council of ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... seemed unable to represent his enemies except in extremely tight trousers or in none; he was equally unable to represent them without thrusting a sword or bayonet, spluttering blood, into the more indelicate parts of their persons. This was the leit-motif of the war as the German humorists presented it. "But," said Mr. Britling, "these things can't represent anything like the general ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... be found in these places. The price of admission is low, and strange as it may sound, almost any beggar can raise it. People have no idea how much of the charity they lavish on street beggars goes in this way. The amusement afforded at these places ranges from indelicate hints and allusions ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... already said, the cunts of my aunt and cousins, young ladies and others bathing, etc. (and as I shall tell of, have since seen a noble lady frig herself.) I have seen in fact modest ladies at their most decent, as well as the most indelicate of their toilet performances, and think I prefer looking at them under such circumstances, rather than at the beautiful voluptuous creatures who undress willingly in my presence, for those are so intent on displaying their ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... the winter in Paris, away from them; from time to time—as the custom of the city dictated—he would be taken for perfunctory little walks in the Bois and would be told to "run and play" if he asked indelicate questions concerning the ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... half-dozen groomsmen to the long glass between the front windows, and made to stand up there, with their faces toward the company, and to receive the congratulations of a mighty procession of friends, who all used the same formulas, except the very old ones, who were delicately indelicate. ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... it indelicate to mention Mary but she did say there were "other vicious deceits of which we are well aware, my young man," warning him that in years to come old age would bring nothing but remorse and terror, ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... remain in Ireland, when you know the difficulty of escape? I have had, since I saw you last, two or three domiciliary visits from Whitecraft and his men, who searched my whole house and premises in a spirit of insolence that was, most indelicate and offensive. Hastings and I have sent a memorial to the Lord Lieutenant, signed by some of the most respectable Protestant gentry in the, country, in which we stated his wanton tyranny as well as his oppression ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... be still more indelicate in her manner, so that Chia Lien could not refrain himself from making a full exhibition of his warm sentiments. When their tete-a-tete had come to a close, they both went on again to vow by the mountains and swear ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... severe but grossly indelicate satire upon the profligacy of Brahmans assuming the character of religious mendicants. It satirizes also the encouragement given to vice by princes, the inefficacy of ministers, and the ignorance of ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... Wedgewoods, which you recommend, would be indelicate and unmeaning. If, after four or five years, I shall have finished some work of importance, which could not have been written, but in an unanxious seclusion, to them I will dedicate it; for the public will have owed the work to them who gave me the power ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... invitation, and less clear-headed than usual, was sufficiently trusting to accept. She soon, however, discovered that his Excellency's intentions were strictly dishonourable, for he made her, she afterwards said, "a most indelicate proposition." Her response was to laugh in his face, and to tell him that "she had no wish to become his toy." Thereupon, Paskievich, furious at such a repulse (and unaccustomed to being thwarted by anyone, must less by a ballet-dancer), ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... as Reardon sought for it, was obvious. Biffen had no ordinary coat beneath the other. To have referred to this fact would have been indelicate; the novelist of course understood it, and smiled, but ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... not speaking the particular word. "If you like me because you think she doesn't, it isn't a bit true: she does like me awfully!"—that would have been the particular word; which there were at the same time but too palpably such difficulties about his uttering. Wouldn't it be virtually as indelicate to challenge her as to leave her deluded?—and this quite apart from the exposure, so to speak, of Kate, as to whom it would constitute a kind of betrayal. Kate's design was something so extraordinarily special to Kate that he felt himself shrink from the complications involved ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... conduct, as well as her own heart, was before her in the same few minutes. She saw it all with a clearness which had never blessed her before. How improperly had she been acting by Harriet! How inconsiderate, how indelicate, how irrational, how unfeeling had been her conduct! What blindness, what madness, had led her on! It struck her with dreadful force, and she was ready to give it every bad name in the world. Some portion of respect for herself, however, in spite of all these demerits—some ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... thrice she waved her wand around; When I, endow'd with greater skill, And less inclined to do you ill, Mutter'd some words, withheld her arm, And kindly stopp'd the unfinish'd charm. But though not changed to owl or bat, Or something more indelicate; Yet, as your tongue has run too fast, Your boasted beauty must not last. No more shall frolic Cupid lie In ambuscade in either eye, From thence to aim his keenest dart To captivate each youthful heart: No more shall envious misses pine At charms now flown, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... relieved," continued Atherton, "of the sense I've had that it was indelicate in me to keep it, while I felt as I've grown to feel—towards you." He stopped: "If I take it back, you must come with it!" ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... five-dollar bill would Bob have removed his coat, though there had never been a time in his young life when he would have welcomed more a greenback. He did not intend to be indelicate while alone with a young woman in a bedroom. The very thought of it made him scarlet to the roots of ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... are very seldom to be seen among them. Many Frenchmen, as was already observed, are rough and even ferocious in their manners; and the language and behaviour of most of them, particularly in the presence of women, appears to us very frequently indelicate and rude; yet there are limits to this freedom of manner which they never allow themselves to pass. Go where you will in Paris, you will very seldom see any disgusting instances of intoxication, or any material difference of manner, between those who are ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... example, which is very little better than drabbing baulor; whilst the softer part is mostly about the slips of its females among the broom, so that no upholder of Scotch poetry could censure Ursula's song as indelicate, even if he understood it. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... society, because their vanity and self-love tell them that these belong only to themselves, and men like themselves in dress, station, and way of life; others are disgusted with the naked language of some of the most interesting passions of men, because either it is indelicate, or gross, or vulgar; as many fine ladies could not bear certain expressions in the 'Mother' and the 'Thorn,' and, as in the instance of Adam Smith, who, we are told, could not endure the ballad of 'Clym ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Grant's character," said George W. Childs, "was his purity. I never heard him express an impure thought, or make an indelicate allusion in any way or shape. There is nothing I ever heard him say that could not be repeated in the presence of women. If a man was brought up for an appointment, and it was shown that he was an immoral man, Grant would not appoint him, no matter how great ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... lived; and on the very second day I had destroyed this hope, and paid by impertinent irony for the love which I had accepted during two nights. What I had done was therefore not merely ridiculous, it was indelicate. I had not even paid the woman, that I might have some right to find fault with her; withdrawing after two days, was I not like a parasite of love, afraid of having to pay the bill of the banquet? What! I had only known Marguerite for thirty-six hours; ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... arm! And he felt that no woman who was not either shabbily perverse, or a fool, could misinterpret her. He knew that his wife had been annoyed at finding Mrs. Dillingham in the house. He dimly comprehended, too, that her presence was an indelicate intrusion, but her ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... to her ever to have to admit that she had been personally wrong,—some mixture of pride and principle, which was strong enough to keep her stedfast in her promised obedience. She would do nothing that could be thrown in her teeth; nothing that could be called unfeminine, indelicate, or undutiful. But she had high ideas of what was due to herself, and conceived that she would be wronged by her father, should her father take advantage of her sense of duty to crush her heart. She had her own rights and her own privileges, with which grievous and cruel ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... not have been spoken in the presence of the most pure and sensitive—except,' he adds, 'on one occasion. He was then forced by others to repeat a negro story which, though free from all evil de sexu, was indelicate. He did it with great resistance. His example gave me a hatred of all ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Miss Blake, and of course your wishes must be obeyed. But as regards this will, do not think me indelicate for mentioning it, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... Mrs. Fisher had supposed, know how to behave. Now it appeared that she did not know, for was this behaving, to come dressed—no, undressed—like that to a meal? Such behaviour was not only exceedingly improper but also most inconsiderate, for the indelicate creature would certainly catch a chill, and then infect the entire party. Mrs. Fisher had a great objection to other people's chills. They were always the fruit of folly; and then they were handed on to her, who had done nothing at all to ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... to this town [Williamstown, Mass.], being quartered at a small log hut, I was convinced in how innocent a view the Americans look upon that indelicate custom they call bundling. Though they have remarkable good feather beds, and are extremely neat and clean, still I preferred my hard mattress, as being accustomed to it; this evening, however, owing to the badness of the roads, and the weakness of my mare, my servant ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... isn't himself to-night. He hasn't the spirit to swear. Did you hear the good thing he said Monday night about Miss MOORE? It was devilish good. Says he—" (Repeats an indelicate joke.) ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... this as the reading of the older editions. It may be so; but who can doubt that it is a mistake for 'my father's child,' meaning herself? According to Theobald's note, a most indelicate anticipation is put into the mouth of Rosalind without reason;—and besides, what a strange thought, and how out of ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... of him on whom she practised her arts. The profuse display of the bust and shoulders in those days, when the ladies of the court left so little to the imagination of the amorous monarch on whose heart so many of them had designs, must have impaired the effect meant to have been achieved by the indelicate exposure; for—hear it ye fair dames, with whose snowy busts and dimpled shoulders the eyes of your male acquaintance are as familiar as with your faces!—the charms of nature, however beautiful, fall short of the ideal perfection accorded to ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... months, Lispeth made daily pilgrimage to Narkunda to see if her Englishman was coming along the road. It gave her comfort, and the Chaplain's wife, finding her happier, thought that she was getting over her "barbarous and most indelicate folly." A little later the walks ceased to help Lispeth and her temper grew very bad. The Chaplain's wife thought this a profitable time to let her know the real state of affairs—that the Englishman had only promised his love to keep her ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... The Nights are often coarse and indelicate, and sometimes even gross it is a mistake to suppose that they are demoralising in the same way that a French novel of the Zola type is, or might be. Indeed, what we would call its impropriety is only a reflection of the naive freedom with which talk is to this day ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... fire. The silence of that smile brought their comradeship sharply home to him. It was as if she understood his weariness and knew that the fire was infinitely comforting. Anthony frowned; he did not wish to be understood. It was irritating—indelicate. ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... dollars—all, however, secured by city warrants; still, he kept bank accounts elsewhere, and was generally a borrower. I instructed Nisbet to insist on his reducing his line as the notes matured, and, as he found it indelicate to speak to Meiggs, I instructed him to refer him to me; accordingly, when, on the next steamer-day, Meiggs appealed at the counter for a draft on Philadelphia, of about twenty thousand dollars, for which he offered his note and collateral, he was referred to me, and I explained ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Dave Darrin. He was disgusted enough over the action of the first class cadets, but, being in the service himself, he felt it indelicate in him to criticise the action of the cadets of the United ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... difficult to say whether they trespass most against decency by the gestures they exhibit, or by the verses which they recite. The walls of the pagodas were covered with paintings in a style no less indelicate." (Others of the deities of the East are of an austere and gloomy character, to be propitiated by victims, sometimes by human sacrifices, and by voluntary torments of the most excruciating kind. Voyage de Gentil. vol. i. p. 244—260. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... next scheme (for to my restless, ambitious mind London was become a bed of thorns) was to visit the far-famed peak in Derbyshire, where the Devil sits, they say, without breeches. This my purer mind rejected as indelicate. And my final resolve was a tour to the Lakes. I set out with Mary to Keswick, without giving Coleridge any notice; for my time, being precious, did not admit of it. He received us with all the hospitality tality in the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... frivolous, and not always chaste. To produce a comic effect, to make his readers laugh is his sole desire. Friend and admirer of Dante, he attained to a high degree of skill in the sonnet. In neo-Hebraic poetry, his works mark the beginning of a new epoch. Indelicate witticisms and levity, until then sporadic in Jewish literature, were by him introduced as a regular feature. The poetry of the earlier writers had dwelt upon the power of love, their muse was modest and chaste, a "rose of Sharon," a "lily of the valleys." Immanuel's was of coarser fibre; his witty ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... having a private lecture to herself," Ransom remarked; whereupon Doctor Prance rejoined, "Well, I guess she'll have to pay for it!" She appeared to regret her own half-dollar, and to be vaguely impatient of the behaviour of her sex. Ransom became so sensible of this that he felt it was indelicate to allude further to the cause of woman, and, for a change, endeavoured to elicit from his companion some information about the gentlemen present. He had given her a chance, vainly, to start some topic herself; but he could see that she had no interests beyond the researches from which, this evening, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... understand he must see to all that unaided. For his mother was ill, how deeply and in what manner he could not tell. He shrank, indeed, from all clear thought, let alone speech, on the subject, as from something indelicate, in a way irreverent. Her beauty remained to her, notwithstanding a gradual wasting as of fever. A peculiar, very individual grace of dress and of bearing remained to her likewise. But she was uncertain in mood, the victim of strange fancies, a being almost alarmingly far removed from ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... at the place where he designed to embark his troops on the Danube. By a well-concerted stratagem, he seized a fleet of light brigantines, [31] as it lay at anchor; secured a apply of coarse provisions sufficient to satisfy the indelicate, and voracious, appetite of a Gallic army; and boldly committed himself to the stream of the Danube. The labors of the mariners, who plied their oars with incessant diligence, and the steady continuance of a favorable ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... rising within me that enables me to face anything; and so when I had confronted the bull for a little time I felt inclined to carry the war into the enemy's country, and advance upon him. But of course all this is very indelicate and unfeminine; and it would have been far more virtuous and lady-like to have run shrieking away like Miss Molasses, or laid down and given in at once like poor Lady Scapegrace, who was quite resigned to being tossed and trampled upon, and only gave ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... say the truth, my child. Hurts are not new to me. No, my Karen, no. It is nothing for us to speak of. I understand. But your husband, Karen, he must have found it thoughtless in me, indelicate, to force myself in when he had hoped so strongly for ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... parents, who lived a long way off, were always writing and asking all sorts of indelicate questions; they were longing to have a grandchild. Louisa ought to remember that the institution of marriage existed for the benefit of the children, not the parents. Louisa held that this view ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... than they do for rights which are personal and essential. Not a few there are in our country, who, while they have no scruples against robbing the laborer of the hard earned results of his patient industry, will be shocked by the extremely indelicate manner of bringing your name before the public. Believing this to be the case, and wishing to meet every reasonable or plausible objection to my conduct, I will frankly state the ground upon which I justfy(sic) myself in this ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... how can you make use of so indelicate an Expression. A Lady's Nudities, why, you might as well have said— I vow it is almost plain English, I protest such an Expression is enough to get your Farce hiss'd off ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... gives us the reason why Sterne's admirers nowadays are often divided in their allegiance to him. A frequent part of his humour deals very flippantly with subjects that are what we have been taught to consider indelicate or objectionable. It is worse than useless to try to explain this foible of his away, because he was aware of it and did it on purpose. He said that "nothing but the more gross and carnal parts of a composition ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... seen." Permission was accordingly granted for a surgical operation upon the nose, but "as to the fracture in one of the doll's legs, it was never certainly known how that was remedied, as the young ladies thought it very indelicate to mention anything about the matter." The misadventures of the doll include its theft by a monkey in the West Indies, and at this interesting point the only available copy of the tale is cut short by the loss of the last four pages. The charm of this book lies largely in the ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... ludicrous prescriptions (for the book contains 400 pages), but the most curious unfortunately happen to be the most indelicate. Besides this, I am afraid the subject is scarcely worthy of much space in such an important and useful work as "NOTES ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... of the phrase would have been projected downward; but, as you must have perceived, the melody terminates in a tone of something like hope. There is no assurance in it—do not misunderstand me; there is no particular lady projected in the musical text—that would have been indelicate, for we do not know at the moment precisely the date when Bluebeard hung up his last wife; but there is a groping discontent. At the opening of the drama we have not been informed whether Bluebeard ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... opinion that bygones should be allowed to be bygones, and was author of a theory which found much acceptance among the villas—namely, that Lady Tristram would consider any reference to her immediate predecessor as inconsiderate, indeed indelicate, and not such as might be expected ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... obligations we owed him, wrung from me a slow consent that I would one day comply with his wishes, I made it my condition that I should not be pressed to a hasty accomplishment of my promise; and now he avails himself of his interest with my only remaining relative to hurry me with precipitate and even indelicate importunity. There is more selfishness than generosity, my lord, in ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... as useless as it would be indelicate to seek to penetrate in detail the incidents and special causes which produced in his mind this darkness as of the valley of the shadow of death. There was probably nothing worth recording in them; we are only concerned with their effect upon a character which was to be hereafter ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... I recall. Looking into the book after attaining years of maturity, I found it to contain many incidents of a character that would not be admitted into a modern work. Yet I read it through without ever noticing or retaining any impression of the indelicate side of the story. The other impression was a feeling of horror that a man fighting a duel and finding himself, as he supposed, mortally wounded by his opponent, should occupy his mind with avenging his own death instead of ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... have no idea of the variety of circumstances under which our emotions may be excited. A man may smile at his own misfortunes after they are over—sometimes our laughter seems scarcely directed against anyone, and in the most profane and indelicate humour ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... than there was about my breakfast bowl of bread and milk. It was just simply, innocently, and gloriously funny; and it has long been my belief that the time at which it is best that a reader should make acquaintance with our rather indelicate old classics is the time of innocence, when no grossness of suggestion has a meaning, though the mind is fully open to the reception of all the reader's own experience teaches ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... "No indelicate language, if you please, sir," interrupted the widow, "I won't put up with it in my house, I can tell you—ho, ho, Mr Vanslyperken," continued the widow, working herself into a rage, "that won't do ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... tenderness which swept over him at the anticipation of this was hurled back by an uncomfortable thought. What if Matilda were to refer to the ring? But no; his Matilda would do nothing so indelicate. ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... own ideas of generosity were extremely refined, he was shocked at the indelicate insinuations of Mrs. Trunnion, and felt all the pangs of an ingenuous mind that labours under obligations to a person whom it contemns. Far from obeying her injunction, or humbling himself by a submissive answer to her ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... sentiment, he was ejected from his vicarage in 1648, and went to London, where he assumed the lay habit. In 1647 he published Hesperides, a collection of small poems of great lyric beauty, Anacreontic, pastoral, and amatory, but containing much that is coarse and indelicate. In 1648 he in part atoned for these by publishing his Noble Numbers, a collection of pious pieces, in the beginning of which he asks God's forgiveness for his "unbaptized rhymes," "writ in my wild, unhallowed times." The best comment upon his works may be found in the words ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Lionel's proud heart, in which ungrateful anger could not long find room, had smitten him for so ill a return to well-meant and not indelicate kindness. And, his wounded egotism appeased by its very outburst, he had called to mind Fairthorn's allusions to Darrell's secret griefs,—griefs that must have been indeed stormy so to have revulsed the currents of a life. And, despite those griefs, the great ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a very productive author, whose pastorals have been collected by Mostowski, together with those of Kochanowski, Simonides, and other classical poets; and Wenceslaus Potocki, the author of novels, poetry, and more especially epigrams, not without merit, but frequently licentious and indelicate. Among the poets of this age, who are in some measure distinguished by Polish critics, we find also a lady. Elizabeth Druzbacka, a poetess of high rank, but without a literary education or a knowledge of ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... Suppose Sir Walter [Scott] instead of putting the conversation into the mouths of his characters, had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We should have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the unconsciously indelicate all ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... Houghton, gigantic in its proportions, had its purposes. He there assembled his supporters; there, for a short time, he entertained his constituents and coadjutors with a magnificent, jovial hospitality, of which he, with his gay spirits, his humourous, indelicate jokes, and his unbounded good-nature, was the very soul. Free conversation, hard-drinking, were the features of every day's feast. Pope ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... University College, who chose with Boswell to act in opposition to a very sound bit of advice given by Johnson soon afterwards—perhaps with some reference to the proceeding. "Never speak of a man in his own presence; it is always indelicate and may be offensive." The two, however, discussed Johnson without reserve. The Master said that he would have given Johnson a hundred pounds for a discourse on the British Constitution; and Boswell suggested that Johnson should write two volumes of no great bulk upon Church and State, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... I think proper," replied the lady; "and I'll thank you for none of your indelicate insinuations." So saying, the lady bounced out of the room into her own, and our midshipmen then made a noise in the passage, to intimate that they had come in. They found Mr Hicks looking very red and vice-consular ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... England.) We have solved the labour question with discrimination polished, So poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished - (They are going to abolish it in England.) The Chamberlain our native stage has purged, beyond a question, Of "risky" situation and indelicate suggestion; No piece is tolerated if it's costumed indiscreetly - In short, this happy country has been Anglicised completely! It really is surprising What a thorough Anglicising We've brought about - Utopia's quite another land; In her enterprising movements, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... grossness, or rudeness of character, is unseemly. This negative description of one of the characteristics of charity is sufficiently comprehensive, if exhibited in all its details, to fill a volume. It conveys the idea of an exquisite propriety of deportment, free from everything indelicate, obtrusive, repulsive, or unamiable. ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... marking an automatic close of the subject. Deeply as I admired both women, I shrank from the idea of their meeting. It seemed curiously indelicate, in view both of my former engagement to Eleanor and of Lola's frank avowal of her feelings towards me before what I shall always regard as my death. It is true that we had never alluded to it since my resurrection; ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... times be unavoidably compelled to hear a vulgar word spoken or an indelicate allusion made; in every instance maintain a rigid insensibility. It is not enough that you should cast down your eyes or turn your head, you must act as if you did not hear it; appear as if you did not comprehend it. You ought ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... under the same arbitrary circumstances.—The law of the constitution is, that every person arrested shall be interrogated within twenty-four hours; but as these imprisonments were the work of the republican Ministers, the Convention seemed to think it indelicate to interpose, and these citizens of a country whose freedom is so much envied by the Manchester Society, will most likely remain in durance as long as their confinement shall be convenient to those ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... beatitude—the hope of a child; for, with that sacred inconsistency possible only to fixed beliefs, though motherhood was supposed to comprise every desire, adventure, and activity in the life of woman, it was considered indelicate for her to dwell upon the thought of it until the condition had become too obvious for ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... and not until the sudden death of her husband did she begin even remotely to fall in love with the man. But when he was once safely dead she worshipped his memory with an ardour which would have seemed to her indelicate had he been still alive. For sixteen years she had worn a crape veil on her bonnet, and she still went occasionally, after the morning service was over on Sunday, to place fresh flowers on his grave. Now that his "earthly nature," against which she had ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... not difficult to describe how the gross remains are detruded by the motion of the intestines, which contract and dilate; but that must be declined, as too indelicate for discourse. Let us rather explain that other wonder of nature, the air, which is drawn into the lungs, receives heat both by that already in and by the coagitation of the lungs; one part is turned back by respiration, and the other is received into a place called ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... for pendant light, A tea-pot dangle in a lady's ear; And 'twere indelicate, although she might Swallow two whales and yet the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... it!" replied Celeste. "Too high a regard! Truly, she behaves very ridiculously! Why, she positively waylays pa! so indelicate in a woman, you know!" with sublime unconsciousness of ever having indulged in the pastime of waylaying herself! "Such an old creature, too! she is always coming and wanting to mend his old clothes and stockings! Poor pa actually has to lock himself ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... impenetrable one indeed, if it could have been disguised to the two sisters here—yet, I beseech you, my dear, almost on my knees I beseech you, let not the audacious, the insulting Greville, have ground given him to suspect a weakness in your Harriet, which indelicate minds know not how to judge of delicately. For sex-sake, for example-sake, Lucy, let it not be known, to any but the partial, friendly few, that our grand-mamma Shirley's child, and aunt Selby's niece, has been ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... boys was killed, and there was the letter to be written to his parents. Three Tommies who knew him best were to attempt this. They made innumerable beginnings. Each of them was afraid of blundering, of causing unnecessary pain by an indelicate revelation of the facts. There was a feminine fineness about their concern which was beautiful to see. The final draft of the letter was a little masterpiece, not of English, but of insight; such a letter as any one of us would have wished his own parents to receive under like circumstances. ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... of the obstacles in a business career, and by leading a prudent and temperate life has established himself so well that he owns his own house and furniture, and is only slightly behind on his license. It would be indelicate to give statistics as to his age. Mr. Hennessy says he was a "grown man whin th' pikes was out in forty-eight, an' I was hedge-high, an' I'm near fifty-five." Mr. Dooley says Mr. Hennessy is eighty. He closes discussion on his own age with ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... market three days, la pucelage fell to an old razor, a pair of scissors, or a very large nail. Indeed this trade was pushed to so great a height, that the quarter-deck became the scene of the most indelicate familiarities. Nor did the unfeeling mothers commiserate with the pain and suffering of the poor girls, but seemed to enjoy it as a monstrous good thing. It is customary here, when girls meet with an accident of this kind, that a council of matrons is held, and ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... flirtations, but regarded them indulgently, very much as if they had been the irresponsible friskings of a lamb in a meadow. Waitstill had more than the usual reserve in these matters, for in New England at that time, though the soul was a subject of daily conversation, the heart was felt to be rather an indelicate topic, to be alluded to as seldom as possible. Waitstill certainly would never have examined Patty closely as to the state of her affections, intimate as she was with her sister's thoughts and opinions ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... rendered miserable by the simple question: What would become of us if the circulating libraries ceased to exist? It is a horrid and almost indelicate supposition, but let us be brave and face the truth. On this earth of ours nothing lasts. Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse. Imagine the utter wreck overtaking the morals of our beautiful country-houses should the circulating libraries ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... other half naked in order to get to their respective resting-places; another of its being common for men and women, not being relations, to undress together in the same room, without any feeling of its being indelicate; another of cases where women have been delivered in bed-rooms crowded with men, young women, and children; and others mention facts of these crowded bed-rooms much too horrible to be alluded to. Nor are these solitary instances, but ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... against Denis prevailed among the womankind, who, having all preserved their own healths intact for the occasion (and each by her own account was a chronic invalid), felt it was extremely inconsiderate, not to say indelicate, of "a great man like him" to spoil everything by being laid up at ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... tragedy like the nobleman with the foreign name from the land of song had to have her put into a madhouse, cruel only to be kind. But even if—what then? Would it make a very great difference? From everything in the least indelicate her finebred nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen women off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse men with no respect for a girl's honour, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... a Counsellor of State,—a place which he resigned last year for that of a grand master of the ceremonies at the present Imperial Court. His ancient inveteracy against your country has made him a favourite with Bonaparte. The indelicate and scandalous attacks, in 1796 and 1797, against Lord Malmesbury, in the then official journal, Le Redacteur, were the offspring of his malignity and pen; and the philippics and abusive notes in our present official Moniteur, against your Government and country, are frequently his patriotic ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the crowd on her deck, when there was a sound of a rolling chain and a slight rocking of the boat, which provoked an indelicate man near me to take off his helmet and pretend to be sick in it. There was a rumbling of the engines as their wheels began to revolve, and a throbbing of the Redbreast's heart as though she found difficulty in getting under way with such ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... can leave no lasting impression on his great mind," said I; "while this statue will for ever remain, a memorial of his great deeds; and yet the complaint is general that the statue is indelicate—as if, forsooth, this was the first statue exhibited in 'puris naturalibus' in England. I really regard it as the senseless ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... that—?" Then she stopped as sharply as if a hand had compressed her throat. A vivid mantle of colour rose in her face; she made a motion of rising, of flight, but sank back weakly. "It is criminally indelicate to speak to you of this," he said, "but it was absolutely necessary. I want to marry you; in that circumstance a lie would be fatal, later ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... not reproach you. No, not one bit. Positively you are not aware of anything reprehensible or even indelicate in what you are about. Thinking of the matter, as you carefully scan the books of record, you regard it precisely as you would any other investigation. To you it is essential that the girl you are to marry should have money. If she ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... The German caricaturist seemed unable to represent his enemies except in extremely tight trousers or in none; he was equally unable to represent them without thrusting a sword or bayonet, spluttering blood, into the more indelicate parts of their persons. This was the leit-motif of the war as the German humorists presented it. "But," said Mr. Britling, "these things can't represent anything like the general state ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... abruptly to present myself. Then I saw that the poor little house was very shabby. I felt a sudden doubt of my right to intrude; for curiosity had been my motive, and curiosity here seemed singularly indelicate. While I hesitated, a figure appeared in the open doorway and stood there looking at me. I immediately recognized Caroline Spencer, but she looked at me as if she had never seen me before. Gently, but gravely and timidly, I advanced to the doorstep, and then I said, ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... "Delicate!" she snapped. "It's indelicate it's indecent, that's what it is. Didn't I get my clothes, and weren't we to have been married by the Reverend Dwight Johnstone, out in Salem, Ohio? And didn't he go out there and have old Johnstone marry him to somebody else? The wretch! ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... awkward revelations were made during this discussion. A medical student had the candor to write and say that he had been at a lecture, and the professor had told an indelicate story, and, finding it palatable to his modest males, had said, 'There, gentlemen: now, if female students were admitted here, I could not have told you this amusing circumstance.' So that it was our purifying influence he dreaded ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... character was his purity in every way. I never heard him express or make an indelicate allusion in any way or shape. There is nothing I ever heard that man say that could not be repeated in ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... offensive to his feelings, and so as not to have the appearance of officiousness nor obtrusion on my part. I hope you will be able to do this, as I should be very sorry to do any thing by him that may be deemed indelicate. The sum Murray offered and offers was and is one thousand and fifty pounds:—this I refused before, because I thought it more than the two things were worth to Murray, and from other objections, which are ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... about their personal appearance, and their style of conversation; but Friend Hopper was remarkably free from such faults. He was exceedingly pure in his mind, and in his personal habits. He never alluded to any subject that was unclean, never made any indelicate remark, or used any unseemly expression. There was never the slightest occasion for young people to feel uneasy concerning what he might say. However lively his mood might be, his fun was always sure to be restrained by the nicest sense of natural propriety. He shaved, ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... author does not, however, design to entertain his readers with accounts of the mistakes which, have arisen respecting it; because many of them, he is convinced, would be received with incredulity; and he could not, without an indelicate exposure ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... power to read it. My tears, excited by the most agonising conflicts, obscured the letters, and nearly blotted out those sentiments which will be impressed upon my mind till the latest period of my existence. Still, I felt shocked and mortified at the indelicate idea of entering into any pecuniary engagements with a prince, on whose establishment I relied for the enjoyment of all that would render life desirable. I was surprised at receiving it; the idea of interest had never entered my ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... you wanted to avoid thanks and that, as the saying is, your right hand should not know... something of that sort, in fact. I thought of so many possibilities that I put off considering it, but still thought it indelicate to show you that I knew your secret. But another idea struck me again that Sofya Semyonovna might easily lose the money before she noticed it, that was why I decided to come in here to call her ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Byron, Byron is (or ought to be) mentioned many times. I expect, nay exact, that Bryon shall be mentioned again and again. But my undergraduate has a blushing sense that to call Byron Byron twice on one page is indelicate. So Byron, after starting bravely as Byron, in the second sentence turns into 'that great but unequal poet' and thenceforward I have as much trouble with Byron as ever Telemachus with Proteus to hold and pin him back to his proper self. Half-way down the page ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... "I did not come to the theatre to be insulted," she said, hesitating whether she should rise from her seat. Frank Escott was constantly guilty of such indelicate and stupid speeches, and it would be easy to cite instances in which his conduct was equally unpractical. Were friends to speak ill of any one he was especially intimate with, he would answer them in the ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... household, condemned to the severest labor, has been systematically robbed of her earnings, which have gone to build up her master's power, and she has found herself in the condition of the slave, deprived of the results of her own labor. Taught that education for her was indelicate and irreligious, she has been kept in such gross ignorance as to fall a prey to superstition, and to glory in her own degradation. Taught that a low voice is an excellent thing in woman, she has been trained to a subjugation of the vocal organs, and thus lost ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... would quit the room if these were to be her company. This occasioned some little embarrassment. An Indian lady, sister of the Chief Joseph Brant, who was present with her daughters, observing the bustle, inquired what was the matter, and being informed, she cried out, 'This must be a very indelicate lady to think of such a thing; she shows her own arms and elbows to all the men, and she pretends she cannot look at these officers' bare legs, although she will look at my husband's bare thighs for hours together; she must think of other things, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... her hair, in the Catalan fashion, who looked strong and bold, and who had a certain amount of gracefulness about her, and with a pretty, but untidy head, was urging them to undo the strings of their great leather purses, and replied to their somewhat indelicate jokes in a shrill voice, as she sat on the knee of the youngest, and allowed him to kiss her and to fumble in her bodice, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... I am a native of Venice. At the moment I am the Prime Minister of the Chinese Empire. Eh, what d'ye say? What I'm doing here in Pekin? H'm. (Puts his hand in front of his mouth.) Venice got too hot for me. An ind-indelicate affair. My wife of course, you guess my meaning. (To the PRINCE.) This, your Royal Highness, is the place you have heard so much of. Have a good look at it, please. Make yourself quite at home. Yes, quite right, ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... neither (for example) do we judge by the flight of birds when we declare the circumstances to be "auspicious" for such and such an undertaking. Again, we are never to "retire" for the night, but always to "go to bed." If, as is commonly alleged, Americans say "retire" because they consider it indelicate to go to bed, the feeling and the expression are alike foolish. But I do not believe that either is at all common in America. On the other hand, one may retire for the night without going to bed. In the case of ladies especially, the interval ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... are my friend, own honestly—don't you think there is something forward, something indelicate, in this haste to forgive? Women should never sue for reconciliation: that should always come from us. They should retain their coldness till wooed to kindness; and their pardon, like their love, should "not unsought ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... anything of that fine flower of youthfulness and gentility, which places it, if not among the virtues, among the ornaments of life. Instead of this passion, naturally allied to grace and manners, they infuse into their youth an unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medly of pedantry and lewdness; of metaphysical speculations blended with the coarsest sensuality. Such is the general morality of the passions to be found in their famous philosopher, in his famous work of philosophic gallantry the "Nouvelle Eloise." ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... lunar inequalities, the most remarkable discovery, I think, in Physical Astronomy.'—In discussing points relating to the discovery of Neptune, I made an unfortunate blunder. In a paper hastily sent to the Athenaeum (Feb. 18th) I said that Arago's conduct had been indelicate. I perceived instantly that I had used a wrong expression, and by the very next post I sent an altered expression. This altered expression was not received in time, and the original expression was printed, to my great sorrow. I could not then apologize. But at what appeared to be the first opportunity, ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... Carewe, this conversation strikes me as being indelicate, to say the least of it. I've only been married two and a half years, and my family is naturally a ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... me; but what did I care? She knew I knew all: and indeed, I believe, so strong was her prejudice against me, that she thought I was an indelicate villain, capable of betraying a lady, which I would scorn to do; so that she trembled before me as a child before its schoolmaster. She would, in her woman's way, too, make all sorts of jokes and sneers at me on reception ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Westerfield, at parting, not half an hour after that young person's shameless forgetfulness of the claims of modesty, duty and gratitude had been first communicated to her. To say that this was the act of an inconsiderate woman, culpably indiscreet and, I had almost added, culpably indelicate, is only to say what she has deserved. On the next occasion to which I feel bound to advert, her conduct was even more deserving of censure. She herself appears to have placed the temptation under which he fell in her husband's way, ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... Rather an indelicate and unpleasant thought, too, for an "honest" woman to advertise so brazenly. The tight skirts and diaphanous garments were plainly a return to "sex." The ultra feminine felt they were going to lose something in this agitation for equality. ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... hope so!" exclaimed her mother. "A female of fifteen run with a boy, indeed! The very idea is indelicate. Now, as soon as thou hast put on thy slippers and goloe-shoes, go to thy father, who has been told of thy misbehaviour, and who will reprove thee for it." And with this last damper on the "lightness of young people," as Mrs. Meredith phrased ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... pride, spoiling a passage from Keats)— Vainly your voice on the ears of impregnable Laureate-makers, Rang as the sinuous sea rings on a petrified coast; Vainly your voice with a subtle and slightly indelicate largess, Broke on an obdurate world hymning the advent of Me; When from the 'commune of air,' from 'the exquisite fabric of Silence,' I, a superior orb, burst ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... he, in a hurried tone, "it would be an idle compliment to say that you are not likely to love in vain; perhaps it is indelicate in me to apply a general remark; and yet—yet I cannot but fancy that I have discovered your secret, and that you are not insensible to the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you go about as hungry for talk as you do here. I like to look at a Russian or a German or an Italian—I even like to look at a Frenchman if I ever have the luck to catch him engaged in anything that ain't indelicate—but LOOKING don't cure the hunger—what ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... conducting Eve to the nuptial bower in the garden of Eden, while behind it squatted Satan as a toad, leering hatred through the features of Fox. It is to be hoped that Auckland did not know of this indelicate cartoon when he replied to Pitt. That letter has very properly been destroyed. But we have Pitt's second letter to Auckland, in which he again assures him how deeply he is affected by hearing of "the sentiments of another person, unhappily too nearly interested ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... sad to see how many children are to be found in these places. The price of admission is low, and strange as it may sound, almost any beggar can raise it. People have no idea how much of the charity they lavish on street beggars goes in this way. The amusement afforded at these places ranges from indelicate hints and allusions to ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... pardons for the trouble I gave you yesterday. Upon more mature deliberation, and the advice of a sensible friend, I began to think it indelicate in me to throw upon you the odium of confirming Mr. Colman's sentence. I therefore request you will send my play back by my servant; for, having been assured of having it acted at the other house, though I confess yours in every respect more to my wish, yet it would ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... unjust, this is cruel," I exclaimed; "Alice herself is not more pure than I am from an indelicate thought, or an evil design. You wrong me; I do not deserve such language; and even from you I will not endure it. Forgive me, dearest uncle, forgive me; but indeed you do me a grievous injustice." I seized his hand and ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... be real or affected. Diffidence is self-distrust; modesty, a humble estimate of oneself in comparison with others, or with the demands of some undertaking. Modesty has also the specific meaning of a sensitive shrinking from anything indelicate. Shyness is a tendency to shrink from observation; timidity, a distinct fear of criticism, error, or failure. Reserve is the holding oneself aloof from others, or holding back one's feelings from ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... familiar. But certainly, to the inhabitants of Otaheite, our eating parties, where the sexes at times vie with each other in the management of knife and fork, and where it usually happens that a woman presides, would seem as unaccountable and as indelicate, as a certain social exhibition, already mentioned as occurring amongst them, appeared to be to those who witnessed it. And perhaps it is less easy, than at first sight may be imagined, to justify one more than the other. Of actions ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... whimsically. "I almost forget how to speak in plain words now," he said. "We have grown so polished in these latter days, that mere bald truth would be hissed as indelicate. But for the memory of those early years, when we expended as much law and thought over the ownership of a hay-byre as we should now over the fate of a rebellious city, I will try and speak plain to you even now, Deucalion. Tell me, old friend, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... covered them, timing her graceful steps to the clang of the silver cymbals which she waved and clashed with her bare arms above her stately head, and showing off the beauties of her form in attitudes more classically graceful, more studiously indelicate, than the most ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... two years of her ministrations, the borough magistrates of Yarmouth, knowing that her self-imposed labours saved them the expense of a schoolmaster and chaplain [14which they had become bound by law to appoint], made a proposal to her of an annual salary of 12L. a year; but they did it in so indelicate a manner as greatly to wound her sensitive feelings. She shrank from becoming the salaried official of the corporation, and bartering for money those serviced which had throughout been labours of love. But the Gaol ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... sent upstairs to give notice to the light-hearted guests that they must be down in their respective motors within ten minutes on pain of not finding any conveyances to take them home. The mutineers were nearly all private chauffeurs in the employ of the personages to whom they sent this indelicate ultimatum. The resourceful host, however, warded off the danger and placated the rebellious drivers by inviting them to an improvised little banquet of pates de foie gras, dry champagne, and other delicacies. The general temper of the proletariat remained unchanged. Tales ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... (both desirable and indeed essential articles of food), the "calloo-calloo" performs such valuable service that it is highly commended. Those who are familiar with the unreflective omnivority of the blacks and their indelicate appetites generally, may with difficulty credit the fact that in those districts in which the bird is recognised as a trustworthy guide it is honoured, and under no circumstances will they kill it. Of course, the blacks of North Queensland in native ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... but without their assistance. It was so with the Misses Brooke, and especially with Miss Martha. Fully aware of the end which she in her own mind proposed to our acquaintance, my long conversation with the merchant struck her as an indelicate readiness to accept attentions which had matrimony in her perspective, and which she had designed to be the gradual result of sundry well-chaperoned and studiously incidental interviews at the Cottage. And when, so far from thankfully accepting ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... do all the commandments and statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.' Is this the real reason? The third, fourth, and fifth chapters of Hosea are a piece of immodest confession. The indelicate type might apply in a hundred senses to a hundred things. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does not exceed in clearness the oracles of Delphos. The historical proof that Moses, Isaiah, and Hosea did write when they are ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Kate has been indelicate enough to tell you about our family affairs. Of course you have sufficient discretion to disbelieve ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... stray hint or an indelicate expression for the poor fellow's two shillings. The fraud, was complete. It was not like the ground coffee, pepper and mustard in a London shop—in which there is as often as not a pinch of real coffee, mustard and pepper to a pound of chicory and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
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