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More "Indecent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... everybody in the audience yawn. "Ho, ho!" he said, "the to kalon is not the same for the English and the French." After much reflection he came to the conclusion that beauty is often very relative, just as what is decent in Japan is indecent in Rome, and what is fashionable in Paris, is not fashionable in Pekin; and he saved himself the trouble of composing a ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Mr. Lincoln, as far as my opportunities and observation go, from the frequent imputation of telling indelicate and ribald stories. I saw much of him during his whole Presidential term, with familiar friends and alone, when he talked without restraint; but I never heard him use a profane or indecent word, or tell a story that might not be repeated in the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... reason. I told him I had the headache, and hoped he would inquire no further; but he took a candle, and saw that my cheek was hurt: How comes this wound? said he. Though I was not very guilty, yet I could not think of owning the thing: besides, to make such confession to a husband, was somewhat indecent; therefore I told him, that as I was going to seek for that stuff you gave me leave to buy, a porter carrying a load of wood came so close by me, as I went through a narrow street, that one of the sticks gave ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... dinner. What a hypocrite Society is! Everyone pretended never to have heard me before. I was allotted to Miss HORNBLOWER (worse luck!) and she positively called me "Her own!"—at my age, too! It's indecent. Complained to HORNBLOWER, who now faced round, and maintained that he was the first to bring me out. I could almost have cried. No wonder I fell flat, and injured myself. Why, Sir, SIDNEY SMITH was my godfather, and was always trotting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... Mrs. Bays, straightening up for the purpose of delivering judgment. "Now go to bed at once, you disobedient, indecent girl! I'm ashamed of you, and blush that Mr. Little ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... Russia is the spirit of cynicism. It informs the declarations of her statesmen, the theories of her revolutionists, and the mystic vaticinations of prophets to the point of making freedom look like a form of debauch, and the Christian virtues themselves appear actually indecent.... But I must apologize for the digression. It proceeds from the consideration of the course taken by the story of Mr. Razumov after his conservative convictions, diluted in a vague liberalism natural to the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... discordant manner, and make the most hideous faces. At the commencement, the men appear alone upon the scene of action, but after a short time two female forms dart forward from among the spectators, and dance and rave like two maniacs; the more unbecoming, bold, and indecent their gestures, the greater the applause. The whole affair does not, at most, last longer than two minutes, and the pause before another dance is commenced not much longer. An evening's amusement of this description often lasts for hours. ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... equal to me, provided I must be kept back from the arms of my beloved parents, and their anxious and tender spirits must still be held in suspence. But indeed I must not, I will not, be continually dragged to the presence of the man I hate. It is ungenerous, unreasonable, and indecent. What is the meaning of all this compulsion? Why am I kept here so much against my will? Why am I dragged from place to place, and from object to object? Surely all this cannot be mere caprice and tyranny. There must be in it some dark and guilty meaning that I cannot comprehend. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... have known better. I had often been in England and could have told anybody that you mustn't too abruptly or obviously refer to what the other fellow does, still less to what you do yourself. "It isn't done." It's a sort of indecent exposure. It's one of the invasions of the ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... indecent sights occur in the river, owing to the women bathing without clothes, and either with or near the men. They appear to be indifferent to the concealment of their person, breasts, and hoc genus omne, being freely ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... means of life; she had no right to expose herself picturesquely beneath a crimson glow in all the panoply of ribboned garters and lacy seductiveness. It was silly; it was disgraceful. She ought to have known that only youth and slimness have the right to appeal to the feelings by indecent abandonments. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Arch-Angel rolled; The sooner for their arms; unarmed, they might Have easily, as Spirits, evaded swift By quick contraction or remove; but now Foul dissipation followed, and forced rout; Nor served it to relax their serried files. What should they do? if on they rushed, repulse Repeated, and indecent overthrow Doubled, would render them yet more despised, And to their foes a laughter; for in view Stood ranked of Seraphim another row, In posture to displode their second tire Of thunder: Back defeated to return They worse ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... in less'n half an hour. Magdalene put shorter dresses on her and kept her in white and gave her shoes without any heels, and these little short socks that show a foot or so of bare leg and which is indecent, if fashionable. ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... gown, a gray wig with a fox's tail dangling down his back. He bowed to those below, and began a mock oration. He called Samuel Adams, Doctor Warren, and John Hancock scoundrels, blackguards, knaves, and other vile names. His language was so scurrilous, profane, and indecent that Tom could not repeat it to his mother and Berinthia. Those who listened clapped their hands. Tom and Abraham came to the conclusion that most of the officers of the newly arrived regiments were too vile to be worthy the ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... yelled. "We thought the bishop wanted to worship these sacred and holy things, and lo! he has, with doggish ritual, put them to his teeth for mutilation." While they were raging he quieted them with words which may give us the key to such otherwise indecent behaviour. Suppose they had been having a great Sacramental dispute, and some, as is likely, had maintained against the bishop that the grinding of the Host by the teeth of any communicant meant ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... of Antiques; of the Indecent little Statue there, and of the orders Catherine got to kiss it, with a "KOPF AB (Head off, if you won't)!" from the bantering Czar, whom she had to obey,—is not incredible, after what we have seen. It seems, he begged this bit of Antique Indecency from Friedrich Wilhelm; who, we may ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... repelling this most objectionable and indecent opposition, that our honourable friend displayed his highest qualifications for the representation of Verbosity. His warmest supporters present, and those who were best acquainted with his generalship, supposed that ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... it. She had never seen a baby without a cap before, and the sight was unusual if not indecent. But Miss Kitty was a quick needlewoman, and when the new cap was fairly tied over the thick crop of silky black hair, the baby looked so much less like Puck, and so much more like the rest of the baby world, that it ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... songs are both cheerful and plaintive; but the latter predominate, and are mainly in the minor key. The subjects of their songs are generally sentimental love, and include ditties by young men about their sweethearts; and I believe that some of their songs are indecent, though I am not sure of this. They also have warlike songs; and, when a special event occurs, songs are often composed with reference to it. For example, not long ago a chief was taken by the authorities to Port Moresby, and died there; and songs ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... have the precedents of Defoe and Cobbett for using your own name; but D.D.'s Weekly is unthinkable, and W.C.'s Weekly indecent. Your initials are not euphonious: they recall that brainy song of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... old rumor, but also on the evidence of a pamphlet published in Lisbon in the course of what seems to have been a peculiarly acrimonious controversy between Da Ponte and a theatrical person unnamed, but probably one Francesco. In this pamphlet, which is not only indecorous but indecent, he is referred to as "the celebrated Lorenzo Daponte, who after having been Jew, Christian, priest, and poet in Italy and Germany found himself to be a layman, husband, and ass in London." It remained for Professor Marchesan, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... great-grandfather, as some do their complexion or their temper. Others would be compelled to confess that the belief of a wife or a sister had displaced that which they naturally inherited. No man can be expected to go thus into the details of his family history, and, therefore, it is an ill-bred and indecent thing to fling a man's father's creed in his face, as if he had broken the fifth commandment in thinking for himself in the light of a new generation. Common delicacy would prevent him from saying that he did not get his faith from his father, but from somebody else, perhaps ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... hungry Arab—after many days of waiting In to the Khalifah's Supper Push'd, and got before a Pasty Luscious as the Lip of Beauty, Or the Tongue of Eloquence. Soon as seen, Indecent Hunger Seizes up and swallows down; Then his mouth undaunted wiping— "Oh Khalifah, hear me Swear, Not of any other Pasty Than of Thine to sup or dine." The Khalifah laugh'd and answer'd; "Fool; who thinkest to determine ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... second; but one more step, and slavery could be fastened upon States as they had already fastened it upon Territories. Douglas protesting that to bring such a charge, incapable of proof or disproof, was indecent, Lincoln pointed out that Douglas had similarly charged the administration with conspiring to force a slave constitution upon Kansas; and afterwards took up a charge of Trumbull's that Douglas himself had ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... etc., and the prize of the tontine now lay between the Finsbury brothers. Here was Morris's opportunity at last. The brothers had never, it is true, been cordial. When word came that Joseph was in Asia Minor, Masterman had expressed himself with irritation. 'I call it simply indecent,' he had said. 'Mark my words—we shall hear of him next at the North Pole.' And these bitter expressions had been reported to the traveller on his return. What was worse, Masterman had refused to attend the lecture on 'Education: Its Aims, Objects, Purposes, and Desirability', although ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... affection grew to him: and now within two months, or as it seemed to young Hamlet, less than two months, she had married again, married his uncle, her dear husband's brother, in itself a highly improper and unlawful marriage, from the nearness of relationship, but made much more so by the indecent haste with which it was concluded, and the unkingly character of the man whom she had chosen to be the partner of her throne and bed. This it was, which more than the loss of ten kingdoms, dashed the spirits and brought a cloud over the mind of this ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... morally in her unaccustomed nakedness, and the goddess of Spring, who comes skipping up from beneath the laurel copse, does well to prepare her a mantle, for in the paled tempera colour, against the dismal background of rippled sea, this mediaeval Venus, at once indecent and prudish, is no pleasing sight. In the Allegory of Spring in the Academy of Florence, we again have the antique; goddesses and nymphs whose clinging garments the gentle Sandro Botticelli has assuredly studied from some ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... line of it was fresh news. Quotations from other papers were scarce. Originality was then, as now, the motto of the establishment. Small as it was, the paper was attractive. The story that its first numbers were scurrilous and indecent is not true, as a reference to the old files of the journal will prove. They were of a character similar to that of "The Herald" of to-day, and were marked by the same industry, tact, and freshness, which make the paper to-day the most salable in ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... shall be cared for; the conditional and secondary principle is that this is best effected through the parents. To say that if the parents will not do it, the child must be left to starve, is immoral and indecent. Worse words than those, if such exist, would be required to describe our neglect of illegitimate infancy; our cruelty toward widows and orphans; our utterly careless maintenance of the conditions which produce these hapless beings in ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... Morris's opportunity at last. The brothers had never, it is true, been cordial. When word came that Joseph was in Asia Minor, Masterman had expressed himself with irritation. "I call it simply indecent," he had said. "Mark my words—we shall hear of him next at the North Pole." And these bitter expressions had been reported to the traveller on his return. What was worse, Masterman had refused to attend ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rivers in my time," he said presently, "big and little, pretty and not, clean and soiled, decent and indecent. Yes, boy," said he, "you can take it from me that I've seen the world's darnedest in the matter of rivers, and I have liked them all from Ganges to the Sacramento and back again. There was a time when I didn't ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... warrant was accordingly issued to the judges, requiring them to order execution. He insisted on the nature of his late commission, and on that plea being overruled, submitted with his usual calmness and dignity. The execution, with indecent haste, was ordered to take place on the following morning. In this last stage of life, his greatness of mind shone with even more than its usual lustre. Calm, and fearless without bravado, his behavior and speech expressed the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... at what she felt to be her indecent madness. "Oh! how—how——" And then seeing Nigel's furious start, his mother's glare and all the servants' alarmed stare at her, she rushed staggering to the only creature she felt she knew—her maid Hannah, clutched her and broke ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... please, as they do their stomachs; they are not troubled with bowels, liver, heart, or any other intestines, neither are they encumbered with clothes, nor is there any part of their bodies unseemly or indecent ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... to the Colonists, by the circular letters of the Government, was one which had reference to the indecent flogging of the female slaves, and also a suggestive restraint upon corporal punishment in general. This called forth in a Colonial paper the following, which certainly has the merit of being ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... agoin' to put on play-actor clothes an' go round lookin' indecent, Phoebe Wise, why, you're mistaken—'cause ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... entire man is at the mercy of her beams. We have all seen those disgusting woodcuts to which the following just condemnation refers: "The moon's influence on parts of the human body, as given in some old-fashioned almanacs, is an entire fallacy; it is most untrue and absurd, often indecent, and is a discredit to the age we live in." [370] Most of these inartistic productions are framed upon the assumption of the old alchymists that the physiological functions were regulated by planetary influence. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... during her brother's illness, was highly offended at a behaviour which was so inconsistent with the sober and prudent reserve of his own temper. The recent death of his mother, he declared, made such conduct very indecent. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... our way we met a party of women and girls coming to the fair. Their legs were uncovered half-way up the thigh; but, as we passed, they all carefully covered up their faces. 'Good God!' exclaimed one of the ladies, 'how can these people be so very indecent?' They thought it, no doubt, equally extraordinary that she should have her face uncovered, while she so carefully concealed her legs; for they were really all modest peasantry, going from the village to bathe in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Lucky Spence's Last Advice and the Last Speech of a Wretched Miser, and the form had become a Scottish convention before Burns produced his Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie. As important as any of these was the example set by Ramsay and bettered by Burns of refurbishing old indecent or fragmentary songs. Robert Fergusson (1750-1774) was regarded by Burns still more highly than Ramsay, and his influence was even more potent. In his autobiographical letter to Doctor Moore he tells ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... said Mr. Traveller. "Why should you take it ill that I have no curiosity to know why you live this highly absurd and highly indecent life? When I contemplate a man in a state of disease, surely there is no moral obligation on me to be anxious to know ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... a man, be his birth or quality what it will, the higher the worse, presume to wound a lady's ears with indecent words: if he endeavour, in his expressions or sentiments, to convey gross or impure ideas to her mind: if he is continually pressing for her confidence in his honour: if he requests favours which a lady ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... very indecent are usually done in strictest privacy. The great point is to make sure ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... of his shoulders, Dick turned. Having taken his bow and quiver from David, who could not conceal his indecent joy at the utter humiliation of Ambrosio, whom he hated with a truly British hate, he walked slowly to where Hugh ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... I was bound to get into a hole, and I'm in it now, with one lung, and a wife in prospect to support. I suppose if I were to write down all the decent things I've thought in my life, and put them beside the indecent things I've done, nobody would believe the same man was responsible for them. I'm one of the men who ought to be put above temptation; be well bridled, well fed, and the mere cost of comfortable living provided, and then I'd do big things. But that isn't the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a low voice made some apology or explanation which I failed to catch. It was, of course, not right; it was indecent to laugh on such an occasion, for we were not of the ebullient sort who go to "The Stones" at three o'clock in the morning "for a lark"; but it was very natural in the circumstances, and mentally I laughed myself at the absurdity of the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... read the constitution, and the new member listened to it with attention. The stringent provisions of the sixth article, which forbade swearing, indecent language, and other boyish vices, brought a scarcely visible smile to his lips, and excited a doubt as to the success of the experiment in ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... nother, you gits all yer b—— clothes off. The Gyppies come to light with some booze—filth it was, I bet—an' we both has some, an' you pays 'em about twenty piastres fer it. Then you hooks this Manchester badge and says "Quiis kitir." An' they was tryin' ter push some rude indecent ones on ter yer, an' wishin' ter save yer from the worst like I tells yer the Manchester one was beautiful. An' I says it was what ev'ry patriotic Aussie should wear. You starts skitin' about Australian loyalty and Australia ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... miraculous power preserved the chaste spouses of Christ from the dishonor even of an involuntary defeat. We should not indeed neglect to remark, that the more ancient as well as authentic memorials of the church are seldom polluted with these extravagant and indecent ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... "Christian faith" or the "Christian church," as you will—I take care not to hold mankind responsible for its lunacies. But my feeling changes and breaks out irresistibly the moment I enter modern times, our times. Our age knows better.... What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent—it is indecent to be a Christian today. And here my disgust begins.—I look about me: not a word survives of what was once called "truth"; we can no longer bear to hear a priest pronounce the word. Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... hand, the appearance of the elder aunts almost shocked her. At the first glance they seemed bedizened and indecent in their mixture of rouge and more than middle age; but at the second and the third they became attractive, oddly distinguished. She felt sure of them, of their sympathy, of her ability to please them. It was Aunt Rose who made her feel ill at ease, and it was Aunt Rose of whom she thought ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... stand not only for the improvidence of the poor, but for the neurasthenic yearnings of the rich. Talk about the economy of Nature! Why, nothing in the universe, not even the civilization of man, has ever equalled her indecent prodigality!" ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... Fouillee remarks, it would be more dangerous for the Government to close than to close the churches. As the needs of the Government increase, as M. Fouillee predicts, without much doubt it will claim a monopoly in houses of ill-fame and in the publication of indecent literature; enterprises in which there would be money. And after all, tolerating such things for the profit of certain traders and annexing them to be worked for the profit of the State, is surely much the same thing from a moral point of view. And the financial ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... priest, frothing at the mouth, swooned upon the slanting temple roof, the drums were silent, the jackals had ceased their indecent noise, being intent doubtless upon the task of tearing some body to pieces before the arrival of the hosts of enemy pariah dogs; and Leonie, beautiful, bewitched Leonie, holding the white sari picked out in silver against her breast, held out her hand, and with the sweetest, maddest laugh in all ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... great man's handwriting under the haughty official crest. Meanwhile I discovered an endorsement on a corner of the envelope: 'Don't worry; it's only the chief's fuss.—M—' I promptly tore up the envelope. There are domestic mysteries which it would be indecent and disloyal to reveal, even to one's best friend. The rest of my letters need no remark; I smiled over some and blushed over others—all were voices from a life which was infinitely far away. Davies, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... may remain—the performer on the drum, I have observed, is often very faithful in this respect, though I have failed to discover any special reason why a love of histrionic efforts should be generated by his professional occupation—but the majority of the orchestra clearly manifest an almost indecent alacrity in avoiding all contemplation of the displays on the other side of the foot-lights. They are but playgoers on compulsion. They even seem sometimes, when they retain their seats, to prefer gazing at the audience, rather than at the actors, and thus to advertise ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the first ever built in Paris. But according to the descriptions of all authors who wrote at that period upon the subject, the streets were in a filthy condition in many parts of the city, and the names which have long since been changed were as dirty and indecent; some were absolutely ridiculous; as Did you find me Hard, Bertrand Sleeps, Cut Bread, John Bread Calf (alluding to the leg); the last still exists, as also Bad Advice, Bad Boys, etc. It was in this reign that the first crusade from France ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... he in his personal antipathy to Philip Rainham—the tide of that ancient hostility surged over him again even while he vowed sternly to make the fullest amends—had he not seized with indecent eagerness upon any pretext or occasion to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Dancing was in full swing and the orchestra had just struck up the first strains of that inspiriting new dance—the latest importation from Vienna—a dreamy waltz of which dowagers strongly disapproved, deeming it licentious, indecent, and certainly ungraceful, but which the young folk delighted in, and persisted in dancing, defying the mammas and all ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... determination of not speaking to him. I do not like his having got the entree there, and think him, even old as he is, a dangerous acquaintance for Caroline. Of course you perceive it was Sheridan." Considering that she suspected him of having written and sent grossly indecent letters to that girl of hers, one would have said that he was even more than a dangerous acquaintance. Light-mindedness here spills over into something rather worse. However, there he was, established, and it was no way to dispossess him ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... The old woman's indecent delight faded gradually from her face as she looked at him. Then she rose slowly from her chair and came a step nearer to Dudley, who instinctively recoiled from the threatened touch. She noticed this movement, and ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... was still far from pure, in spite of the improvement which was going on steadily enough, and there is no denying the fact that several of the worst plays of the Restoration could still claim admirers. Even "Sir Courtly Nice," wherein occurs one of the most indecent passages ever penned, and one of the most suggestive of songs, was received without a murmur. Congreve was pardoned for his breaches of decorum, and Dryden was looked upon as quite proper enough for ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... line of trenches, or on a march from a divisional headquarters to the front, the soldiers would begin one of their Rabelaisian songs which have no ending, but in verse after verse roam further into the purlieus of indecent mirth, so that, as one French officer told me, "these ballads used to make the heather blush." After the song would come the great game of French soldiers on the march. The humorist of the company would remark upon the fatigued appearance of a sous- officier ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... after the close of the session, contains a striking narrative of this stormy proceeding, and an almost amusing touch of official undervaluation of Patrick Henry: "In the course of the debate, I have heard that very indecent language was used by a Mr. Henry, a young lawyer, who had not been above a month a member of the House, and who carried all the young members with him."[85] But a far more specific and intense expression ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... beauty or abstract truth. They were reserved and reticent and haughty in social life. They were superstitious, and believed in dreams and omens and talismans. They were hospitable to their friends, but chiefly to display their wealth and pomp. They were coarse and indecent in banquets. They loved money supremely, but squandered it recklessly to gratify vanity. They had no high conceptions of art. They were copyists of the Greeks, and never produced any thing original but jurisprudence. They did not even add to the arts and sciences, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... on your part, young ladies," said she. "It is not right to whisper when other people are present. Something indecent no ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Note, from the above account of the indecent and shocking manner in which the unhappy Negroes are treated, it is reasonable for persons unacquainted with these people, to conclude them to be void of that natural modesty, so becoming a reasonable creature; but ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... which we were looking at the other day; and I think it a remarkable trait of Hogarth's picture, that while it exhibits drunkenness in the most appalling forms, it also forces on attention a most neglected wretched neighbourhood, and an unwholesome, indecent, abject condition of life that might be put as frontispiece to our sanitary report of a hundred years later date. I have always myself thought the purpose of this fine piece to be not adequately stated even by CHARLES LAMB. 'The very houses seem ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... discovered secrets, and plainly knows them, from his wonderful effects of colour on canvas—not merely in words. His portrait of Miss Cushman is a miracle. Gibson's famous painted Venus is very pretty—that's my criticism. Yes, I will say besides that I have seldom, if ever, seen so indecent a statue. The colouring with an approximation to flesh tints produces that effect, to my apprehension. I don't like this statue colouring—no, not at all. Dearest Miss Mitford, will you write to me? I don't ask for a long letter, but a letter—a letter. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... and vindictive, and always unstable. They are bright and merry companions, talkative, inquisitive and restless, busy in their own pursuits, keen sportsmen and naturally independent, absorbed in the chase from sheer love of it and other physical occupations, and not lustful, indecent, or indecently abusive. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... tainted, defiled, contaminated, polluted, vitiated, infected; adulterated, alloyed, sophisticated; unchaste, lewd, indelicate, indecent; barbarous, vulgar, hybrid. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... servitude. He vituperates the poor black man with a coarse brutality which would do credit to a Mississippi slave-driver, or a renegade Yankee dealer in human cattle on the banks of the Potomac. His rhetoric has a flavor of the slave-pen and auction-block, vulgar, unmanly, indecent, a scandalous outrage upon good taste and refined feeling, which at once degrades the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... his character in the domestic relation of a master, on which I shall not enlarge. It is, however, proper to remark, that as his habitual meekness and command of his passions prevented indecent sallies of ungoverned anger towards those in the lowest state of subjection to him, by which some in high life do strangely debase themselves, and lose much of their authority, so the natural greatness ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... sides. Goals were erected and the play was in some respects like lacrosse. Stakes were wagered on the game. This game is also-described by Domenech, [Footnote: Vol. II, p. 196.] who says the women wore a special costume which left the limbs free and that the game was "unbecoming and indecent." Powers [Footnote: Contribution to North American Ethnology, Vol. III, p. 383.] found a game among the Nishinams, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, not far from Sacramento, which in some respects also resembled lacrosse. He says "The 'Ti'-kel' is the only really robust ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... that suggests that he is young and inexperienced. Often he pretends to know things he does not. Nearly every boy, at an early age, is thrown in contact with low-minded persons who think it amusing to persuade the youth to prove he knows indecent things. He thinks it a test of manhood to be acquainted with various vices and so in order to prove his knowledge is led into various indiscretions, which result in the contraction of vile ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... absence of jealousy in their usages towards females. For not only do those who are of the same family and household kiss them ... with salutations and embraces, but even those, too, who have never seen them. And to themselves this appears by no means indecent."[57] The very Queen herself, even in the middle of the most imposing ceremonies, could not help indulging in familiarities contrary to our ideas of decorum, but quite in accordance with the freedom of manners then prevalent. Sir James Melville relates in his memoirs how he was present ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... mind entering the house from the rear, sir, we can go up those steps, there, and through the rear hall," the butler suggested, almost as though he were making some indecent and criminal proposal. ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... the dance begins, accompanied by very monotonous music and singing. The slow movements of the legs and arms of the dancers remind us of certain slow and demure scenes from European ballets. There is nothing indecent in this dance, but we learn that there are other dances ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... admiration as I did for those of Ivan Tourgueneff, and none in whose personality I felt so profound an interest. Tourgueneff is far from being a model novelist, but his tales are written with wonderful power, and yet are neither indecent nor melodramatic nor rasping to the nerves. That the burden of strong natures is in proportion to their strength, that human nature in general is weak, and that the Devil still sometimes appears incarnate in the person of lovely woman, seem to form his theory ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... himselfe that appeires in this case. The tricks also of robbing the bride groomes of their faculty that they can do nothing to the wives is very ordinar heir; as also that of bewitching gentlewomen in causing them follow them lasciviously and wt sundry indecent gestures; and this they effectuat sometymes by a kind of pouder they have and mix in amongs hir wine; some tymes by getting a litle of hir hair, which they boill wt pestiferous herbs; whilk act when its parfaited the women who aught the hair will come strangely, let hir be the modestest woman ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... I met him. I left a director's meeting and vital engagements, with indecent firmness, to meet that ship. At crack of dawn on a raw morning in March I arose and drove miles to a freezing pier to meet it. And presently, as I stood muffled in a fur coat, an elderly, grizzled, small man, grim and unexhilarating—presently ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... wondered at this, since Spanish food is abominable. But drunkards they often are. I should think as many people in proportion get drunk in Seville as in London, though it is only fair to add that their heads are not strong, and very little alcohol will produce in them an indecent exhilaration. ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... pretending to be a mother could turn her back on another mother like that," said Mrs. Carey promptly. "We'll take a pint more milk, and I think you children will have to leave something in your plates now and then, you polish them until it really is indecent." ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... night," or, "I suppose the next choking spell will fetch him." Thus he fought his titanic fight with the gnawing rats of death, and thus I lay listening, myself quickly recovering from a sanguinary and indecent operation.... Did the shrieks of that old man startle me, worry me, torture me, set my nerves on edge? Not at all. I had my meals to the accompaniment of piteous yells to God, but day by day I ate them more heartily. I lay still in bed and read ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... extemporaneous. In the pauses of the dance, any man of the company comes forward and recites, in a sort of low guttural tone, some little story or incident, which is either martial or ludicrous; or, as was the case this evening, voluptuous and indecent; this is taken up by the orchestra and the dancers, who repeat it in a higher strain and dance to it. Sometimes they alternate; the orchestra first performing, and when it ceases, the women raise their voices and make ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... takes chair near her.] It's indecent—at the horse-show, the opera, at races and balls, to meet the man who once—It's not civilized! It's fantastic! It's half baked! Oh, I never should have come here! [He sympathizes, and she grows irrational and furious.] But it's ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... he snorted. "Young's making my lake property a disorderly house. It's positively indecent! I won't stand it any longer. I won't have those squatters there, and your brother can make ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... recognition; officially you are not here at all; officially you do not even exist. To all intents and purposes you are absent from this place, and you ought for your own modesty's sake to reflect that it cannot become a person who is not present here to be taking this sort of public and indecent prominence in a matter in which he is not in the slightest degree concerned. Now, don't dodge again; the bullets are not for you, they are for me; if I want them dodged I will attend to it myself. I never saw a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cannot help warning you of the unhappy consequences that would follow if the Marquis de Montcalm should remain here. I shall keep him by me till I receive your orders. It is essential that they reach me early." "I pass over in silence all the infamous conduct and indecent talk he has held or countenanced; but I should be wanting in my duty to the King if I did not beg you to ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... of low intellect, of a fierce countenance, a saucy, swaggering, insolent manner, debauched in his morals beyond the grossness of that indecent age,—ostentatiously living in public concubinage,—a notorious swearer in public and private. But he knew no law above the will of the hand that fed and could advance him, no justice which might check the insolence ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... years, he said, but in spite of this there was about him something indescribably rural, something of the sod—not the dignity, the sturdiness of it, but rather of the pettiness, the sordidness of it. It showed in his dirty, flapping garments, his unlaced shoes, his stubble beard, in his indecent carelessness in expectorating the tobacco he was ceaselessly chewing. But these, after all, were some of his minor traits. I was soon to get an inkling of one of his major ones—his prodigious meanness. For when I rushed about and finally ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... confusion, leapt from her, and told her he was sorry to see a young woman cast off all regard to modesty; but she had gone too far to recede, and grew so very indecent, that Joseph was obliged, contrary to his inclination, to use some violence to her; and, taking her in his arms, he shut her out of the room, ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... sentiment of modesty in our community that the old-fashioned philosophers used to maintain it was an innate instinct, always present under normal conditions. The fact that every child has to be gradually taught to avoid indecent exposure, ought to have enlightened these philosophers as to their error, which is further made plain to the orthodox by the Biblical story that in the beginning of human life the man and his wife were ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... go home or you won't be in any condition to walk there," said Abel angrily. "It's down right indecent to see a man of your age rocking ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... through which they blow with their noses. It is from two to three feet long, is called ebroo, and produces a kind of droning noise. It is generally made use of at corrobories or dances, some of which express feats of hunting and war, while others are very indecent, and reminded us of similar exhibitions in the East. It was generally remarked that the old clothes given to these savages disappeared in a most mysterious manner. They were understood to be sold to the natives inhabiting the loftier parts of the interior, but of this ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... the surprise of seeing him, nor could she help remarking how remarkably jovial and carefree he appeared, in spite of his lowered voice and studious air of reverence when speaking of the dead man. Moreover, there seemed to her something almost indecent in the haste with which he had arrived on the spot. It had less the appearance of solicitude for the sorrowing relatives than the eagerness of a vulture swooping down upon a good square meal it had long been hoping ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the first and truest step towards womanliness. When this has not been taken, and a girl is therefore unkind to her social inferiors out of fear of what rumor will say,—"the fume of little hearts,"—I blush for an indecent girlhood, and I grieve for an unpromising, unchristian womanhood. We know that encouragement, not intimacy, the gentle rebuke of a bow or a greeting, are more helpful to arouse the sparks of womanliness than the cold stare or averted head. Next to the respect of woman for woman, ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... is their chief characteristic and which seems never to desert them, withal they were cursing the country with lurid metaphors quite refreshing after a month of unimaginative, monotonous Cockney swearing. The Cockney has one oath, and one oath only, the most indecent in the language, which he uses on any and every occasion. Far different is the luminous and varied Western swearing, which runs to blasphemy rather than indecency. And after all, since men will swear, I think I prefer blasphemy to indecency; there is an audacity ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... those of Venice—pander to their Governments' wishes in this respect, conscious that there is a sycophancy in slander contrasted with which the ordinary sycophancy of flattery is as water to wine; they diligently send home every scrap of indecent or scandalous rumour they can pick up in the Roman ante-chambers, however unlikely, uncorroborated, or unconcerning the business of ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the time, to run a preliminary career of dissipation. What a proof of the licentiousness of these times is to be found in the fact, that young Lord Buckhurst, Sir Charles Sedley, and Sir Thomas Ogle were fined for exposing themselves, drunk and naked, in indecent postures on the public street! In 1665, the erratic energies of Buckhurst found a more legitimate vent in the Dutch war. He attended the Duke of York in the great sea-fight of the 3d June, in which Opdam, the Dutch admiral, was, with all his crew, blown up. He is said to ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... one sort of intoxication. Even before the most seductive reveries I have remained mindful of that sobriety of interior life, that asceticism of sentiment, in which alone the naked form of truth, such as one conceives it, such as one feels it, can be rendered without shame. It is but a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine. I have tried to be a sober worker all my life—all my two lives. I did so from taste, no doubt, having an instinctive horror of losing my sense of full self-possession, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... while. I was hurt to see half the ornaments of the chapel, and the reliquaries, and in short a thousand trifles, exposed to sneers. I am buying a few to keep for the founder's sake. Surely it is very indecent for a favourite relation, who is rich, to show so little remembrance and affection. I suppose Strawberry will have the same fate! It has already happened to two of my friends. Lord Bristol got his mother's house from his brother, by persuading her ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... when he thought him not in a condition to defend himself, much less to make any reprisals: his resentment therefore against him was no less implacable than it had been against Augustus,—But the emperor had also disobliged him. Count Zobor, the chamberlain, had taken very indecent and unbecoming liberties with his character, in the presence of his own Ambassador at Vienna; and that court had given shelter to 1500 Muscovites, who having escaped his arms, fled thither for protection. As he was now so near, ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... come and talk to him about it till he gets ashamed, then they all forgive him and have a feast. They're lovely people, so kind and gentle. But you'll get awfully tired of them in about a month. They have absolutely no respect for anybody's privacy. In fact, it seems slightly indecent to them for anybody to ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... scourged, with Mumbo's rod, amidst the shouts and derision of the whole assembly; and it is remarkable, that the rest of the women are the loudest in their exclamations on this occasion against their unhappy sister. Daylight puts an end to this indecent and ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... worth looking through, for the more intelligent editors of the days to come will edit this department just like any other, and classify their advertisements in a descending scale of freshness and interest that will also be an ascending scale of price. The advertiser who wants to be an indecent bore, and vociferate for the ten millionth time some flatulent falsehood about a pill, for instance, will pay at nuisance rates. Probably many papers will refuse to print nasty and distressful advertisements about people's insides at all. The entire paper ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... only one of the arts that can not be prostituted to a base use. We hear of bad books, of the "Index Expurgatorius," and in every State there are laws against the publication of immoral books and indecent pictures. We also hear of orders issued by the courts requiring certain statues to be removed or veiled, but no indictment can be brought against music. It is the only one of the arts ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... amusements any better for the wickedness connected with them. The spectacle of a sweet little child singing hymns, and repeating prayers, of a pious old Uncle Tom dying for his religion, has filled theatres night after night, and proved that there really is no need of indecent or improper plays to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... thus set up, though satisfactory, so far as it went, was in many respects deficient. It did not comprise humility; it scarcely seems to have comprised purity. The religious sculptures of the Egyptians were grossly indecent; their religious festivals were kept in an indecent way; phallic orgies were a part of them, and phallic orgies of a gross kind. The Egyptians tolerated incest, and could defend it by the example of the gods. Osiris had ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... editions of classics, and all such serious matters, while at stalls and windows close beside them (and, possibly, at the same stalls) there were books with title-pages displayed, indicating them to be of the most indecent kind. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... point of view we would prefer that ladies' dresses should be worn more loosely, so that the figure should be less prominent. I am aware that this is a view which my American friends do not share. It is very curious that what is considered as indecent in one country is thought to be quite proper in another. During the hot summers in the Province of Kiangsu the working women avoid the inconveniences and chills of perspiration by going about their work with nothing on the upper ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... easily recognizable as those of Mademoiselle de Scudery. This, no doubt, added greatly to the immediate piquancy of the allusions. The interest they would excite may be inferred from the fact that King James, in 1596, wished to have the author prosecuted and punished for his indecent handling of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, under the name of Duessa.[294] To suit the wider application of his plan's other and more important half, Spenser made all his characters double their parts, and appear in his allegory as the impersonations ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... to the healths of Mrs. Babbitt, Miss Babbitt, and the Other Children were softly paternal, but Babbitt had nothing with which to answer him. It was indecent to think of using the "How's tricks, ole socks?" which gratified Vergil Gunch and Frink and Howard Littlefield—men who till now had seemed successful and urbane. Babbitt and Frink sat politely, and politely did Eathorne observe, opening his thin lips just wide enough to dismiss ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Having the most bewitching of duchesses for his mistress, and seeing her commit any folly for him—secret follies, of course—had turned Lucien's head with happiness. The lover's pride had inspired the poet. And the Duchess had treasured these touching letters, as some old men keep indecent prints, for the sake of their extravagant praise of all that was least ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... work, its main outline must be given here in order to trace the subsequent course of the anti-Christian secret tradition in which, as we shall see, it has been perpetuated up to our own day. Briefly, then, the Toledot Yeshu relates with the most indecent details that Miriam, a hairdresser of Bethlehem,[86] affianced to a young man named Jochanan, was seduced by a libertine, Joseph Panther or Pandira, and gave birth to a son whom she named Johosuah or Jeschu. According to the Talmudic authors of the Sota and the Sanhedrim, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... recreation of the judgment, the jubilee of reason. It was the result of a real good, suitably applied. It commenced upon the solidity of truth and the substance of fruition. It did not run out in voice or indecent eruptions, but filled the soul, as God does the universe, silently and without noise. It was refreshing, but composed, like the pleasantness of youth tempered with the gravity of age; or the mirth of a festival managed with the silence ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... or "Coopers" (TONNELIERS), with a desperate attempt at wit by pun,—get their Adieu in words withal. This is the famed CONGE DE L'ARMEE DES CERCLES ET DES TONNELIERS; a short metrical Piece; called by Editors the most profane, most indecent, most &c.; and printed with asterisk veils thrown over the worst passages. Who shall dare, searching and rummaging for insight into Friedrich, and complaining that there is none, to lift any portion of the veil; and say, "See—Faugh!" The cynicism, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... whilst yet thou hast a spark of Virtue shining in thee, fly the temptations of this young Hypocrite; the Love that she pretends with so much zeal and ardour, is indecent, unwarrantable and unlawful; first indecent, as she is Woman—for thou art Woman—and beautiful Woman—yes, very beautiful Woman; on whom Nature hath shew'd her height of Excellence in the out-work, but left thee ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... 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 ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... presence if the great good nature of her face had not made it impossible for her to express anything but kindliness. Her arms were like legs of mutton, her breasts like giant cabbages; her face, broad and fleshy, gave you an impression of almost indecent nakedness and vast chin succeeded ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... straw hat—until, finally, it got away from North Baxter Court forever. Which was as it should be. Then tumult. Probably you are not in a position to know that few spectacles are more hideous than the unrestrained grief of the poor. The things they said and did—it was unhuman, indecent. I can't describe it. As I was leaving, after a pretty bad half hour, I met the doctor at the door—one of these half-drunken quacks who live on the ignorant. That child died of diphtheria. I knew it, and he admitted it. The funeral was this breathless ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... writer than such as these; but it cannot be denied that he seems to have been somewhat inclined to accept the illogical inference which would argue that because some wit is dirty all dirt must be witty—because humor may sometimes be indecent, indecency must always be humorous. "The clartier the cosier" was an old proverb among the northern peasantry while yet recalcitrant against the inroads of sanitary reform: "the dirtier the droller" would seem to have been practically the no less irrational ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... help them. But if they are what you say, she ought—well, she ought to be all the more careful to live in a modest and retired way, instead of, as I understand, making herself the rival of Lady Henry. I never heard anything so preposterous—so—so indecent! She shows no proper sense, and, as for you, I deeply regret you should have been brought into any contact with such ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that I occupied myself in marking out possible careers for a good many of them as I studied their faces. There was not much fun of the healthy kind; fat, comfortable, middle-aged men laughed so heartily at the faintest indecent allusion that the singers grew broader and broader, and the hateful music-hall songs grew more and more risky as the night grew onward. By the way, can anything be more loathsomely idiotic than the average music-hall ditty, with its refrain and its quaint stringing together of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... employ their time, either by listening in public places, to catch up an accidental word; or in corrupting men's servants to discover any unwary expression of their master; or thrusting themselves into company, and then using the most indecent scurrilous language; fastening a thousand falsehoods and scandals upon a whole party, on purpose to provoke such an answer as they may turn to an accusation. And truly this ungodly race is said to be grown so ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... "If you have any more where you've been livin' you can put them on; but I hope in my heart the sun peels your back before you arrive, an' I hope when you do arrive the' 'll be enough women awake to give you a raw-hidin' for bein' indecent. ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... correspondent to call "Ann Veronica" "pornographic," which is most distinctly libellous. But possibly the correspondent and the newspaper felt themselves secure in Mr. Wells's disdain. "Ann Veronica" is not pornographic. It is not even indecent. It is utterly decent from end to end. It is also utterly honest. It is not one of Mr. Wells's major productions. But if a work of an honourable and honoured artist is to be damned because it happens to be inferior ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. Yet he cannot be called a writer of comedy, like MoliEre. He resembles Rabelais and Swift more than any other modern writers, and has their indignant wit, indecent jokes, and pungent sarcasms. He paints, like Juvenal, the vices and follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high places of fashion and power. His dialogues have been imitated by Fontanelle and Lord ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... said: "When women gather around voting booths on election days with sandwiches and coffee, they present an indecent spectacle to the public." The man who goes with gun in hand and shoots down another in defense of his country is a hero. The mother lion or bear that defies the hunter's bullets and dies in defense of her young we can ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... the least interesting. It is indecent to be so sorry for yourselves when you have so many good ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Candia, wherein the King had just permitted his own kinsmen to go and win laurels for themselves. He was already a full colonel of dragoons, and one of the captains of the guard. The King, who till then liked him well enough, considered such a proposition indecent, and, gauging or not gauging his intentions, he postponed until a later period these aspirations of Lauzun to the post of prince ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... filthy and indecent, what could be said of the books! There was not a foulness or obscenity and indecency that was not openly, shamelessly treated in the bluntest of phraseology. Thousands of penny, two-penny, and three-penny editions of utter obscenity were ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... Obtrusive-panted, splay-foot, slattern-shape, Of grim Medusa-faced Immodesty, Caged cumbrously in a stiff, swaying, swollen, Shin-scarifying, hose-revealing frame Of wide-meshed metal, like a monster mousetrap— Hideous, indecent, awkward! Oh, I knew her— This loathly revenant, revisiting The glimpses of the moon. She shamed my sight, And blocked my way, and marred my young men's art, Twenty years syne and more. 'Twas CRINOLINA, The long-abiding, happily banished horror We hoped to see no more. Shall she return ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... his character; second, that Despin might pay the expenses of preparing and making out writings; and third, that the said Robin, the notary, may be equally punished for using expressions in his acts hurtful and indecent to persons of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... greedy haste to pounce upon. So characteristic, after living away all these years; though Madame de Maluet has tried to make Ellaline believe he's coming back to settle down because of a letter she wrote, reminding him respectfully that after nineteen it's almost indecent for a girl to be kept ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... seat gazed at him with almost indecent expectancy. The skipper dropped some sugar into his coffee, and stirring it in a meditative fashion, ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... the aesthetic sense is a struggle, a conflict, a war, a contradiction, going on in the heart of things. The aesthetic sense does not only reveal loveliness and distinction; it also reveals the grotesque, the bizarre, the outrageous, the indecent and the diabolic. If we prefer to use the term "beauty" in a sense so comprehensive and vast as to include both sides of this eternal duality, then we shall be driven to regard as "beautiful" the entire panorama of life, with its ghastly contrasts, with its appalling evil, ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... scattered along the coast; whereat the honorable East India Company was in a pretty state of fuss and feathers. Rumor, growing with the telling, has it that Avary is going to marry the Indian princess, willy-nilly, and will turn rajah, and eschew piracy as indecent. As for the treasure itself, there was no end to the extent to which it grew as it passed from mouth ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... should be no melodrama. Into that placid and speculative air real life tumbles with a resounding shock and the many souls that have been building, these many years, with careful elaboration, walls of defence and protection find themselves suddenly naked and indecent before the world. For that army of men who use Cambridge as a gate to the world in front of them the passage through the narrow streets is too swift to afford more in after life than a pleasant reminiscence. ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... rush into this," Gunderson said slowly. "Without a ship they're not going to get far. Hold off, and keep taking pictures. Maybe we can get something stronger on Gray than just an indecent exposure, or at least get some pictures that could be interpreted as more than just that. Get pictures of as many colonists as possible, too, ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... much as cheerfulness—an indecent, extravagant sort of quality, which had no relation to facts. The mixture of his desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming torture; and lately the thought had come to him that perhaps Irene knew she was being shadowed: It was this which finally decided him to go and see for himself; to go ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the earnest desire of the board of lady managers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition that there be no indecent dances or improper exhibits in the Midway during the exposition, and that the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company be urged to use the utmost care in awarding the concessions for shows, in order that there may be no ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... and allegories. And if some scenes seem to us indelicate, yet after comparison with other authors of his times, Chretien must be let off with a light sentence. It is certain he intended to avoid what was indecent, as did the writers of narrative poetry in general. To appreciate fully the chaste treatment of Chretien one must know some other forms of mediaeval literature, such as the fabliaux, farces, and morality plays, in which courtesy ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... the women were gone; they were now rid of the scum of the convention!! Other clergymen spoke in the same strain. A motion was made by Dr. Snodgrass that the committee assign some part of the work of the World's Convention to women, which called out from Mr. Barstow some remarks too indecent for repetition. The motion was withdrawn. The gall and bitterness, the ridicule and vulgarity of the Rev. D.D.'s being expended on some of the grandest women our nation could boast, they adjourned, after deciding to hold a four ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... from writing a line to express her indignation at the very unjustifiable manner in which the minority of thirteen members obstructs the progress of business.[55] She hopes that every attempt will be made to put an end to what is really indecent conduct. Indeed, how is business to go on at all if such vexatious opposition prevails? At all events, the Queen hopes that Sir Robert will make no kind of concession to these gentlemen, which [could] encourage them to go ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... statute was upheld by the Supreme Court on the same assumption, in the case of a person indicted for publishing an article encouraging and inciting what the jury had found to be a breach of State laws against indecent exposure. Again, one notes the total absence of any reference to the clear and present danger rule. But not all State enactments survived judicial review prior to the adoption of the clear and present danger test. In 1927 the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... flannels and the well-known blazer of the Tooting Bec Cricket Club. They shot gulls in the harbour, and made themselves a public nuisance by constant repetition of a tag from a music-hall song, with an indecent sub-intention. Their behaviour towards the young women of this town was offensive. Seen in juxtaposition with the natural beauties of this coast, they helped one to realise how small a thing (under certain ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... or you won't be in any condition to walk there," said Abel angrily. "It's down right indecent to see a man of your age rocking about ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... months, or, as it seemed to young Hamlet, less than two months, she had married again, married his uncle, her dear husband's brother, in itself a highly improper and unlawful marriage, from the nearness of relationship, but made much more so by the indecent haste with which it was concluded and the unkingly character of the man whom she had chosen to be the partner of her throne and bed. This it was which more than the loss of ten kingdoms dashed the spirits ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... things—with a clasp-knife. And that other man, the farm-hand, shifty-eyed and mean, always half drunk, a bad citizen: they would be sure to be foremost in affairs like this. They had precious little respect for the law as law. And here they were, making the holy night indecent with bestial behavior. Again a sick qualm shook Peter: Mosely was calmly putting four severed black fingers into his coat pocket. Oh, where was the sheriff? ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... a bad eminence," Keith would remark. "What did you say about the book I lent you the other day? You said it was morbid and indecent; you said that no clean-minded person would car to read it. And yet, after an unnecessary amount of arguing, you were forced to admit that the subject was interesting and that the writer dealt with it in an interesting manner. What ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... meaningless conversation. God said, "a man shall not wear that which pertains to a woman neither shall a woman put on a mans garment for all that do such things are an abomination unto God" women will then see the vulgarity and immodesty and sin in dressing in male attire or in any other form of indecent ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... vile, crimson pamphlet was on sale in the radical book-stores of the middle west. We shall not give the title, for it is too foul and indecent. On page 4 it warns its readers "not to forget this fact, celibacy, absolute continence from want of desire congenial or acquired, monkish asceticism are pathological states, diseased states of mind or body." Further on, ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... ground, she declared to each and all their future—their fortune, good or bad. I did not stop to see the result of the ceremony. The slaves carry these mysteries with them in their servitude, and the practice of such indecent and profane things tolerated by the Muslims of the coast. The Moors and Arabs, indeed, have great faith in these mysteries, and resort to ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... in terror at what she felt to be her indecent madness. "Oh! how—how——" And then seeing Nigel's furious start, his mother's glare and all the servants' alarmed stare at her, she rushed staggering to the only creature she felt she knew—her maid Hannah, clutched her and broke down into ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... soars among the stars. His religion exhausts itself in ejaculations and rebukes, and knows no medium between the ecstatic and the sententious. If it were not for the prospect of immortality, he considers, it would be wise and agreeable to be indecent or to murder one's father; and, heaven apart, it would be extremely irrational in any man not to be a knave. Man, he thinks, is a compound of the angel and the brute; the brute is to be humbled by being reminded of its "relation to the stalls," and frightened into moderation ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... islands—which is very menacing, although it is not declared in Espana—is that both the villages of your Majesty and those of encomenderos are places where the curacy is so ill-supplied with chalices and ornaments that it is a shame to see them. Many of the churches are so indecent that when I visited them, from pure shame I was obliged to command that they be torn down; they were not fit to be entered by horses. There are two principal causes for this: the first is that the encomenderos are penurious ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... gazing fiercely toward the door: prouder Themistocles could not have appeared in the Olympic games after the battle of Salamis. Dona Consolacion yawned in a corner, exhibiting a dirty mouth and jagged teeth, while she fixed her cold, sinister gaze on the door of the jail, which was covered with indecent drawings. She had succeeded in persuading her husband, whose victory had made him amiable, to let her witness the inquiry and perhaps the accompanying tortures. The hyena smelt the carrion and licked herself, wearied by ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... before—blots that Amos had never thought of trying to remove. The stovepipe had parted and hung trembling from the ceiling, while the small blackboard in the corner was scrawled all over with rude and indecent figures, the handiwork of the electors aforesaid. Pray do not think I have painted this picture in too high colors, you fastidious ones, who dwell in fine houses and live in towns and have never seen sights like these. I have not. There are ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... as sinfulness of this habit, deprecates it with a qualification at which it is impossible to repress a smile. It savours so much of "beating the Devil round a bush." Thus he says—"May God preserve me from the indecent, ignoble, criminal slavery, to the mean delight of smoking a weed, which I see so many carried away with. And if ever I should smoke it, let me be so wise as to do it, not only with moderation, but also with such employment of my mind, as I may make that action ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... should not be felt in the manipulation of political primary meetings and nominating conventions. The use by these officials of their positions to compass their selection as delegates to political conventions is indecent and unfair; and proper regard for the proprieties and requirements of official place will also prevent their assuming the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... pathetic instance of a man of the nineteenth century speaking of one who was almost his exact prototype, in virtues and graces as in weaknesses and disabilities of temperament, during the seventeenth. It would, of course, have been indecent for Mr Arnold to bring this parallel out, writing as he did in his own name and at the moment, and I do not find any reference to it in the Letters; but I can remember how strongly it was felt at the time. His own interest ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... have been a teacher of youth for many years, and never till now did I have the pain of seeing a pupil of mine choke in his breakfast-cup with such deplorable ill-breeding. It's pure greediness, sir, and you will have the goodness to curb your indecent haste in consuming your food for the future. Your excellent father has frequently complained to me, with tears in his eyes, of the impossibility of teaching you to behave at meals with ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... assuring her that every word or act of disrespect of which any were guilty towards the wife of the sovereign was an offence against his own person, and was likely to entail upon the culprit a very severe penalty. He then reproached her for her indecent expressions; and especially for her having more than once declared that had she not been treated with injustice, she should have been in the place occupied by "the fat banker's daughter;" [277] and finally, he reprimanded her very severely for ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... which was established ages ago by worthy scholars and good men long deceased, whose munificent endowments have been monstrously perverted from their original purpose, and which, in their distorted condition, are struggled for and fought over with the most indecent pertinacity. Again, I don't like that sort of school—and I have seen a great many such in these latter times— where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged, and where those bright childish faces, which it is so very good for the wisest among us ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... another was thrown into the House which was not disposed of for nearly two months. The debates upon it, Madison said in one of his letters, "were shamefully indecent," though he thought the introduction of the subject into Congress injudicious. The Yearly Meeting of Friends in New York and in Pennsylvania sent a memorial against the continued toleration of the slave trade; and this was followed the next day by a petition from the ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... happy. If there is anything in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, my dear Stafford, your future embodiment will be that of a Newfoundland dog. Such an extremely strong passion for cold water is almost—er—indecent. I've had a lovely morning in the library; and your father is still at work with his correspondence. I asked him what he thought of Lord Palmerston's aphorism: that if you left your letters unanswered long enough they answered themselves; and he admitted it was true, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... friendship. I know the merchants of these ports will make a clamor, because the franchise covers their contraband with all the world. Has Monsieur de Moustier said any thing to you on this subject? It has never been mentioned to me. If not mentioned in either way, it is rather an indecent proceeding, considering that this right of free port is founded in treaty. I shall ask of M. de Montmorin, on the first occasion, whether he has communicated this to you through his minister; and if he has not, I will endeavor ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... with perfect good temper, offered him a free admission, and asked him to hear the lecture and decide for himself whether there was any harm in it. Mr. Farnaby turned his head away from the ticket as if it was something indecent. "Sad! sad!" That was his ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... new set of thoughts in my mind. I began to suspect that Pleyel had built his accusations on some foundation unknown to me. "I may be a stranger to the grounds of your belief. Pleyel loaded me with indecent and virulent invectives, but he withheld from me the facts that generated his suspicions. Events took place last night of which some of the circumstances were of an ambiguous nature. I conceived that these ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... her indecent eyes at him and put her head on one side as she replied: "Whatever I am, I'm the wife of Judge Van Dorn; so I'm quite respectable now—whatever I was once. Isn't that lawvly, dawling!" She began talking in ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... relinquishing and hating their heavenly King; and the latter was parabolically spoken, and rather intended to denote the certain and necessary consequences of sin, than any express judgment against it. But to represent the Almighty as avenging the sins of the guilty on the innocent, was indecent, if not blasphemous, as it was to represent him acting against the first principles of natural justice, and against the original notions of right and wrong, which he himself had implanted in our minds; by which we were to judge not only in all matters ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the following year I was able to form a true judgment of them. They are, in general—I mean the lower order—divided into bucks and prigs; of which the first, though inconceivably ignorant, and sometimes indecent in their morals, yet I held them to be most tolerable, because they were unassuming, and had no other affectation but that of behaving themselves like gentlemen. The other division of them, the prigs, are ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... with which, in philosophical literature, metaphysical questions are discussed directly and on their own merits. Almost always they are handled as if through a heavy woolen curtain, the veil of previous philosophers' opinions. Alternatives are wrapped in proper names, as if it were indecent for a truth to go naked. The late Professor John Grote of Cambridge has some good remarks about this. 'Thought,' he says,'is not a professional matter, not something for so-called philosophers only or for professed thinkers. The best philosopher is the man ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... and even, in the true sense, palatial, rooms, the utterly squalid and ill-bred portion of the people. There should, indeed, be refuges for the poor from rain and cold, and decent rooms accessible to indecent persons, if they like to go there; but neither of these charities should be part of the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... 'So indecent!' she murmured. 'My dear,' she said, when she had steered Hazel past the shop, 'you want a nice cup of tea. And I do hope,' she went on softly, putting a great deal of cream in Hazel's cup as she would have ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... landlord, "move out of the way, and allow the corpse to pass out. Let me have no indecent conduct; let everything be ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... came here to-night," said a lady. "I am now convinced of the necessity of the pomps of marriage and of wedding fetes; a scene like this is very bare and sad. If I may say what I think," she added, in a whisper to her neighbor, "this marriage seems to me indecent." ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... account, professedly that of an eye-witness, the conduct of the young Chevalier (who, he acknowledges, had, by the advice of the Duke of Perth, sent to Edinburgh for surgeons,) was, in the highest degree, unfeeling and indecent. He stood by the road-side, his horse near him, "with his armour of tin, which resembled a woman's stays, affixed to the saddle; he was on foot, clad as an ordinary captain, in a coarse plaid, and large blue bonnet, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... dried his mouth, some. And then he went on to state that this meetin' wuz called to show to the world, abroad and nigh by, the burnin' indignation this body felt, as a society, at the turrible sufferin's and insults bein' heaped onto their male brethren in England by the indecent and disgraceful doin's of the militant Suffragettes, and to devise, if possible, some way to help their male brethren acrost the sea. "For," sez he, "pizen will spread. How do we know how soon them very wimmen who had to be spit on and struck and tore to pieces ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... of Defoe and Cobbett for using your own name; but D.D.'s Weekly is unthinkable, and W.C.'s Weekly indecent. Your initials are not euphonious: they recall that brainy song ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the gravest offences imaginable, it behoved him anyhow not to have broached the subject to her! Yesterday, one would scarcely believe it, a fight occurred in the school-room, and some pupil or other who attends that class, somehow insulted him; besides, in this business, there were a good many indecent and improper utterances, but all these he went and told his sister! Now, sister-in-law, you are well aware that though (our son Jung's) wife talks and laughs when she sees people, that she is nevertheless imaginative and withal ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... aspects of Mr. Choate's mind and character which he must have known could not be intelligently discussed in a book so swiftly and lightly executed. No such notion seems to have occurred to him. He has rattled off his "Reminiscences" with a confidence which may be justly called indecent and impertinent. The result is what might have been expected. We have so many pages of voluble, superficial, and exceedingly tedious talk about Mr. Choate,—and that is the whole of it. For our own part, we have been not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mort Dieu!" he roared, with a most indecent exhibition of temper in one so placed. "I have had enough of your contradictions. You forget, ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... bamboo thinned from the inside, through which they blow with their noses. It is from two to three feet long, is called ebroo, and produces a kind of droning noise. It is generally made use of at corrobories or dances, some of which express feats of hunting and war, while others are very indecent, and reminded us of similar exhibitions in the East. It was generally remarked that the old clothes given to these savages disappeared in a most mysterious manner. They were understood to be sold to the natives inhabiting the loftier parts ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... 1836, and educated at home and at a private school. In 1860 she resolved to study medicine, an unheard-of thing for a woman in those days, and one which was regarded by old-fashioned people as almost indecent. Miss Garrett managed to obtain some more or less irregular instruction at the Middlesex hospital, London, but was refused admission as a full student both there and at many other schools to which she applied. Finally she studied anatomy privately at the London hospital, and with some of the professors ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... his place. Madame la Duchesse de Berry, who was in the family way, kept her bed; and in order that she should not be seen there when people came to pay her the usual visits of condolence, the room was kept quite dark. Many ridiculous scenes and much indecent laughter, that could not be restrained, thus arose. Persons accustomed to the room could see their way, but those unaccustomed stumbled at every step, and had need of guidance. For want of this, Pere ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... law and order against which, petition in hand, they were so obstinately setting themselves. What was all his popularity worth, if by the mouths of little children his name was to be thus cried in the streets? It was scandalous, indecent; and yet—was ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... in the most perfectly matter-of-fact way, and I trembled. I feared lest this display of what Miss Hallam would consider little short of indecent laxity and Bohemianism, would shock her so much that I should lose everything by it. It was not ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... realist but he was also a deeply moral man. He went to Yurt and said, "It's indecent! Couldn't the two of you control yourselves at least a ...
— Zen • Jerome Bixby
... K.C.M.G., etc., and the prize of the tontine now lay between the Finsbury brothers. Here was Morris's opportunity at last. The brothers had never, it is true, been cordial. When word came that Joseph was in Asia Minor, Masterman had expressed himself with irritation. "I call it simply indecent," he had said. "Mark my words—we shall hear of him next at the North Pole." And these bitter expressions had been reported to the traveller on his return. What was worse, Masterman had refused to attend the lecture on "Education: Its ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you are not going to send the letter. When you are on fire with theology you'll not write it to Rogers, who wouldn't be an inspiration; you'll write it to Twichell, because it will make him writhe and squirm & break the furniture. When you are on fire with a good thing that's indecent you won't waste it on Twichell; you'll save it for Howells, who will love it. As he will never see it you can make it really indecenter than he could stand; & so no harm is done, yet a vast advantage ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... how this condition arose may be answered very briefly. The Church ordained that marriage is indissoluble, but, this being found impossible to maintain in practice, the State stepped in with a way of escape—a kind of emergency exit. But what a makeshift it is! how flagrantly indecent! how inconsistent! Adultery must be committed. To escape the degradation of an unworthy partner another partner must first be sought, and love degraded in an act of infidelity. Adultery is, in fact, a State-endowed offence against morality, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... enough of his disturbed faculties, to discover that it was a face he knew, and somewhat disconcerted at the terror he had manifested, and the indecent attitude in which he had been found, he endeavored to rise and offer some explanation. Lawton received his apologies good-humoredly, if not with much faith in their truth; and, after a short communication upon the state ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... but Vasari tells no characteristic stories concerning their friendship. It may be remarked that Il Lasca describes Piloto as a "most entertaining and facetious fellow," assigning him the principal part in one of his indecent novels. The painter Giuliano Bugiardini ought to be added to the same list. Messer Ottaviano de' Medici begged him to make a portrait of Michelangelo, who gave him a sitting without hesitation, being extremely partial to the man's company. At the end of two ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the above account of the indecent and shocking manner in which the unhappy Negroes are treated, it is reasonable for persons unacquainted with these people, to conclude them to be void of that natural modesty, so becoming a reasonable creature; ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... this child been placed, His little stage in the vast theatre, And there he sate surrounded with a throng Of chance spectators, chiefly dissolute men 360 And shameless women, treated and caressed; Ate, drank, and with the fruit and glasses played, While oaths and laughter and indecent speech Were rife about him as the songs of birds Contending after showers. The mother now 365 Is fading out of memory, but I see The lovely Boy as I beheld him then Among the wretched and the falsely gay, Like ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... control of the variety theatres (formerly called music halls) has been very far from liberal, except in the one particular in which the Lord Chamberlain is equally illiberal. That particular is the assumption that a draped figure is decent and an undraped one indecent. It is useless to point to actual experience, which proves abundantly that naked or apparently naked figures, whether exhibited as living pictures, animated statuary, or in a dance, are at their best not only innocent, but refining in their effect, whereas those actresses ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... to his hair; long or short? Had he a pair of scales with him? As before, Joan of Arc answered these futile, and sometimes indecent, questions with her wonderful patience. At one moment she could not help exclaiming how supremely happy the sight of her saints made her; it seemed as if a sudden vision of her beloved saints had been vouchsafed her in the midst of that crowd ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... fair? Why should they there transport that sex beyond decency, which in all other climates is the most decent? And leave in so cool and defensive a state, that sex, which in all other climates is apt to be the most offensive and indecent? To whatever length the spirit of intrigue may be carried in Asia and Africa, however the passions of the women may prompt them to excite desire, and to throw themselves in the way of gratification, we have the strongest ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... 21, 1850. Surrendered by Edward D. Ingraham, United States Commissioner. The case was hurried through in indecent haste, testimony being admitted against him of the most groundless character. One witness swore that Gibson's name was Emery Rice. He was taken to Elkton, Maryland. There, Mr. William S. Knight, his supposed owner, refused to receive Gibson, saying ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... truth, of wealth, of poverty, everybody considered it out of place and somewhat queer, while his mother and aunt, with good-natured irony, called him notre cher philosophe. When, however, he was reading novels, relating indecent anecdotes or seeing droll vaudevilles in the French theatre, and afterward merrily repeated them, everybody praised and encouraged him. When he considered it necessary to curtail his needs, wore an old coat and gave up wine-drinking, everybody considered ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... I. "If you have any more where you've been livin' you can put them on; but I hope in my heart the sun peels your back before you arrive, an' I hope when you do arrive the' 'll be enough women awake to give you a raw-hidin' for bein' indecent. Now git." ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... himself; you see the hurry, the passion, the precipitation, the confusion, into which Mr. Hastings is thrown by the perplexity of detected guilt; you see, my Lords, that, instead of defending himself, he rails at his accuser in the most indecent language, calling him a wretch whom they all knew to be the basest of mankind,—that he rails at the Council, by attributing their conduct to the worst of motives,—that he rails at everybody, and declares the accusation to be a libel: in short, you see plainly that the man's ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in repelling this most objectionable and indecent opposition, that our honourable friend displayed his highest qualifications for the representation of Verbosity. His warmest supporters present, and those who were best acquainted with his generalship, supposed that the moment was come when he would ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... the assembly, the profusion of the offerings, and the many strange peculiarities of the worship, he observes, "The whole produced on my mind sensations of the greatest honor. The dress of the singers, their indecent gestures, the abominable nature of the songs, the horrid din of their miserable drum, the lateness of the hour, the darkness of the place, with the reflection that I was standing in an idol temple, and that this immense multitude of rational and immortal creatures, capable ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... return to my main subject.—The ancients used to keep the great Feast of the goddess Flora on the 28th of April. It lasted till the 3rd of May. The Floral Games of antiquity were unhappily debased by indecent exhibitions; but they were not entirely devoid of better characteristics.[048] Ovid describing the goddess Flora says that "while she was speaking she breathed forth vernal roses from her mouth." The same poet has represented her in her garden with the Florae gathering flowers and the Graces ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... warmth to the body. There was no thought given to the necessity for covering the body, for every part of the human anatomy was as commonplace as nose, fingers and toes. But now clothing is commanded as a means of hiding our bodily contour. Prudery has come in and branded the human anatomy as indecent and consequently ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... nodded his head. And then he looked glum. 'Twas indecent to wring his secret from his bosom before a single brave ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... but incontrovertably its the Devill himselfe that appeires in this case. The tricks also of robbing the bride groomes of their faculty that they can do nothing to the wives is very ordinar heir; as also that of bewitching gentlewomen in causing them follow them lasciviously and wt sundry indecent gestures; and this they effectuat sometymes by a kind of pouder they have and mix in amongs hir wine; some tymes by getting a litle of hir hair, which they boill wt pestiferous herbs; whilk act when its parfaited the women who aught the hair will come ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... answer, a faint scuffle, and a snatch at the handle. This was indecent; so Percy stood up, made three strides of it to the door, and tore ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... for that strong sense of man's double being which must at times come in upon and overwhelm the mind of every thinking creature. I had even written one, "The Travelling Companion," which was returned by an editor on the plea that it was a work of genius and indecent, and which I burned the other day on the ground that it was not a work of genius, and that "Jekyll" had supplanted it. Then came one of those financial fluctuations to which (with an elegant modesty) I have hitherto referred in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all forgive him and have a feast. They're lovely people, so kind and gentle. But you'll get awfully tired of them in about a month. They have absolutely no respect for anybody's privacy. In fact, it seems slightly indecent to them for anybody to ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... it. Even he with his infernal talent couldn't do anything with it. Unscrupulous as he was, and I assure you he'd stick at nothing (he'd "take" his mother's last agony if he "wanted" it badly enough), indecent as he ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... hours. After a while the dance begins, accompanied by very monotonous music and singing. The slow movements of the legs and arms of the dancers remind us of certain slow and demure scenes from European ballets. There is nothing indecent in this dance, but we learn that there are other ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... to firing occasionally, they called us all sorts of bad names, made indecent gestures, and aggravated us, so that between 3 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon, by an inexplicable concert of action, and with a serious breach of discipline, a large number of the men and many of the officers broke en masse from the camp with loud yells and charged the offending savages. As soon ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and indecent. It is unsocial and uneconomic. It is immoral and unpatriotic. Toward women the Progressive party proclaims the chivalry of the State. We propose to protect women wage-earners by suitable laws, an example of which is the minimum wage for women workers—a wage which ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... life. Beside the literary affectation, he sometimes adopts the more offensive affectation—unfortunately not peculiar to any period—of the youth who wishes to pass himself off as deep in the knowledge of the world. Pope, as may be here said once for all, could be at times grossly indecent; and in these letters there are passages offensive upon this score, though the offence is far graver when the same tendency appears, as it sometimes does, in his letters to women. There is no proof that Pope ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... experienced a thrill as the great ship set down and two men emerged therefrom. A thrill tinged with a guilt-sense, because emotional experiences were rare in an isolated life and seemed somehow indecent. ...
— Say "Hello" for Me • Frank W. Coggins
... thought he was in the hell of the heathen; but it was still worse when a priest disguised as Bacchus, his face smeared with dregs of wine, entered the pulpit, and, taking a text from Boccaccio's Decameron, preached an indecent discourse, presently, with a skilful turn, going on to narrate a legend about St. Peter. It began in a poetical way, like other legends, but then made Peter come to an alehouse and cheat the ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... I know she heard I was ill, and that's why she came. A little indecent, I think, Mr. Caudle; she might wait; I shan't be in her way long; she may soon have the key ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... Bold words, coarse expressions, indecent allusions, brought the color to his cheeks so quickly that Dr. Barbesol had nicknamed him "the thermometer of modesty." Was he as innocent as he looked? ill-natured people asked themselves. Was it the mere presentiment of unknown and shameful mysteries or else indignation at the relations ordained ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... don't look so much, but we are sixty). Well, be it so. We were handsome once—is this vanity at sixty? if so, our grey hairs are a hatchment for the past. We were "swells once!—hurrah!—we were!" Stop, this is indecent—let us be calm—our action was like the proceeding of the denuder of well-sustained and thriving pigs, he who deprives them of their extreme obesive selvage—vulgo, "we cut it fat." Bond-street was cherished by our smile, and Ranelagh was rendered happy by the exhibition of our symmetry. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... their gyrating and centrifugal hoops make a most operatic drapery-display. I saw scores and scores of public waltzing-girls last summer, and among them all I saw but one who understood the art, or, at any rate, who practised the art, of avoiding an indecent exposure. In the glare and glamour of gas-light it is only flash and clouds and indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight, it is not. Do I shock ears polite? I trust so. If the saying of shocking things might prevent the doing of shocking things, I should be well content. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... General Scott, and another, sitting bolt upright at a card-table, staring hideously; the birth of Christ; the trial of Christ; Abraham Lincoln, dead and ghastly, upon a bier; and other groups, all revolting beyond description. The only decently executed thing in this Sacred Museum was highly indecent; it was a young lady in wax, who, before lying down, had forgotten to put on her night-gown. There was a most miserable Happy Family; one or two monkeys, still and dejected; a dismal, tired rooster, who wanted to go to roost, but could not in that glare of gas, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... Every woman looks more soft and feminine in a decollete gown. And is there any of the animal lines known pleasanter to the eye than the contour of shapely arms? Some there are who cry down evening dress as being immodest and indecent. These will be found among those whose chest and arms will not admit of being displayed, or among those who, not having been reared to the custom, dislike it with many other things from ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... understood, moreover, that what is revealed by the aesthetic sense is a struggle, a conflict, a war, a contradiction, going on in the heart of things. The aesthetic sense does not only reveal loveliness and distinction; it also reveals the grotesque, the bizarre, the outrageous, the indecent and the diabolic. If we prefer to use the term "beauty" in a sense so comprehensive and vast as to include both sides of this eternal duality, then we shall be driven to regard as "beautiful" the entire panorama of life, with its ghastly contrasts, with its appalling ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... ribald conversation in their presence, and it has yet to be proved that they took offence at this unbecoming liberty. The songs which were composed at Carnival time were dedicated to the ladies especially, and yet in all literature it would be difficult to find anything more indecent. Society was simply in a crude state so far as its ideas of decency and delicacy were concerned, and both men and women were often lacking in what are now considered to be the most elementary notions of ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... and all too common since the rise of the sex-hygiene movement. Undoubtedly a considerable amount of the celibacy in sensitive women may be traced to ill-balanced mothers and teachers who, in word and attitude, build up an impression that sex is indecent and bestial, and engender in general a ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... as unfounded, has lately found its way abroad, stating that I meditated a gross and indecent insult upon the dignity of the legislature, by using an influence which I am supposed to possess, for the purpose of introducing an improper character into the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... letter was sent to George III, asking for peace on the principle of "uti possidetis." The two monarchs parted with every manifestation of personal devotion; but on Alexander's return to his capital his elder sister was married with indecent haste to the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... with it? I see nothing indecent about it: I think it a very charming umbrella," says Molly, examining the article in question with a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... to punish the living, who are innocent, by hanging the dead bodies of criminals in the air. This indecent and inhuman custom, which originated from the days of barbarism, reflects an indelible disgrace upon a civilized age. The intention, no doubt, was laudable; to prevent the commission of crimes, but does ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... may. But not just yet. Nigel isn't in the mood for anything of that kind. Besides, wouldn't it look almost indecent? Travelling for pleasure, sight-seeing, so soon afterwards? It's a little dull for me, of course, but I think Nigel's quite right to lie low and see no one just for two or ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... the same name. It is not my intention to dwell on the grave incidents that followed, the prolonged agony of "the shootings of the Rebel leaders," the assassination of Mr Sheehy-Skeffington, the indecent scenes in the House of Commons when the Nationalist members behaved themselves with sad lack of restraint—cheering Mr Birrell's prediction that "the Irish people would never regard the Dublin Rebellion with the same feelings with which they regarded previous rebellions," cheering still more ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... me to London, I went to St. James's Church last Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behaviour during the whole service was so pert, languishing, and absurd; she flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld hers (and very bright they are) still staring at me. I fell in with her afterwards at Court, and at the playhouse; and here ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... In the rest, the grandeur of former days was marked by the most beautiful tapestry on some part of the walls, while other parts had been laid bare and daubed over with caps of liberty, and groupes of soldiers and guillotines, and indecent inscriptions. The nitches for statues, and the frames of pictures, were seen empty. The objects which formerly filled them were dashed ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... nothing but the truth. As for the men, they are the dirtiest set of fellows I ever saw, and most of them, especially the Officers, very unlike Gentlemen. The dress of the women, with few exceptions, is highly indecent; in London, even in Drury Lane, I have seen few near so bad. Before I left England, I had heard, but never believed, that some Ladies paraded the streets in men's Clothes. It is singular that in the first genteel-looking ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... be, many years. Now, if ever we should be able to form some notion of that unparalleled figure in the annals of mankind - unparalleled for three good reasons: first, because he was a man known to his contemporaries in a halo of almost historical pomp, and to his remote descendants with an indecent familiarity, like a tap-room comrade; second, because he has outstripped all competitors in the art or virtue of a conscious honesty about oneself; and, third, because, being in many ways a very ordinary person, he has yet placed himself before the public eye with such ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... taken with indecent laughter, and turned away, while ninety summers observed, "Of course them boys would cut the wire ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... say of his gay life among the beauty, rank, and fashion of Blankenberghe. She was very civil to the handsome Irish Madame de Cleves, nee O'Brien, and listened politely to the family history of the O'Briens and that of the de Cleveses too: and learnt, without indecent surprise, or any emotion of any kind whatever, what she had never heard before—namely, that in the early part of the twelfth century a Rohan de Whitby had married an O'Brien of Ballywrotte; and other prehistoric facts ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... he returned to his fleshy tabernacle, make a minute relation of what he had seen. Hermotimus had enemies, who, one time when his body had lain unanimated unusually long, beguiled his wife, made her believe that he was certainly dead, and that it was disrespectful and indecent to keep him so long in that state. The woman therefore placed her husband on the funeral pyre, and consumed him to ashes; so that, continues the philosopher, when the soul of Hermotimus came back again, it no longer found its customary ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... even then cause their bodies to be dug up and vilified. Often have we heard the crown officers aspersing and vilifying them; and some so late as 1775 visited and treated the graves with marks of indignity too indecent to be detailed." ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... then, in the politest possible manner, told me that a great dearth of food was oppressing the land—so much so, that pretty cloths only would purchase grain. I now wished to settle my hongo, but the great chief could not hear of such indecent haste. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... (seeing her for the first time) And who are you when you're at home? I took you for the doctor. 'Ow dare you come to my 'ouse, dressed in that indecent way? (crosses C.) We're respectable in Marmalade Street—I'm ashamed of my lodger for lettin' you in—'e just shall tell that story now, or pay ...
— Oh! Susannah! - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Mark Ambient
... doubtful subject,—a "delicate and burning question," as reviewers for the press say when they want to praise some personal friend's indecent novel and pass it into decent households,—and Helmsley let it drop. He devoted himself to the consideration of his breakfast, which was excellent, and found that he had an appetite to ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Crebillon, prove the facility with which he could imitate Voltaire, while his lucubrations must be considered as far inferior to the short tales of the latter author. For the most part too free, too indecent, in short, to show their faces beside some elaborately serious fragments which form what are called his works, they figure in the work we have just named under the title of Recueil de ces Messieurs; Aventures des Bals des Bois; Etrennes de la St. Jean; Les Ecosseuses; les Oeufs ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... frothing at the mouth, swooned upon the slanting temple roof, the drums were silent, the jackals had ceased their indecent noise, being intent doubtless upon the task of tearing some body to pieces before the arrival of the hosts of enemy pariah dogs; and Leonie, beautiful, bewitched Leonie, holding the white sari picked out in silver against her breast, held out her hand, ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... asked, and his voice had ever that pleasant undertone of laughter which endears. "You villain, have you been making love to Elsin Grey, that she should come babbling of Mr. Renault, Mr. Renault, Mr. Renault ere I had set foot in my own hallway? It was indecent, I tell you—not a word for me, civil or otherwise, not a question how I had 'scaped the Skinners at Kingsbridge—only a flutter of ribbons and a pair of pretty hands to kiss, and 'Oh, Cousin Coleville! Is Mr. Renault kin to me, too?—for I ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... dinner-parties, sitting among five or six women, to all of whom her father spoke familiarly. There were actresses, dancers or singers, who, after dinner, would settle themselves down to smoke with their elbows on the table absorbed in the indecent stories so keenly relished by their host. Fortunately, childhood is protected by a resisting candour, by an enamel over which all impurities glide. Felicia became noisy, turbulent, ill-behaved, but without being touched by all ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... is to look to the belly; for it is what goes into a man that ruins him. By avoiding murderous food, we may hope to become centenarians. And why not? The golden streets will not be torn up and we need be in no indecent haste to travel even on them. The satisfactions of this life are just beginning for us; and we shall be wise to endure this world for as ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... hands into his trowsers pockets, and remembers the time when he thought it would be indecent to go naked in the New Jerusalem! Trowsers, forsooth! Yes, here they are, pockets and all; and he dives his hands in deeper, jingling something which strongly resembles cash; and struts about and hobnobs with Addison, Spencer, Sterne, old Dean Swift, and he asks himself, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... their means the allurement which the wholly or especially the half-undraped form has for us, becomes softened and purified. The enjoyment of beauty itself is the enjoyment of something divine; and it is only through a coarse, indecent, and already infected imagination, belonging to a general sensuality, that it degenerates into excitement."[13] "Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of beauty and grace, amid fair ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... instruction, at which he laughs, and says that in this matter he perfectly agrees with us. He expresses his strong opinion as to Dickens's reading of the "Murder of Nancy" (Oliver Twist), which he characterizes as "repulsive and indecent." ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... quarter of a century since! She sat, A spectral, scraggy, beet-nosed, ankle-less, Obtrusive-panted, splay-foot, slattern-shape, Of grim Medusa-faced Immodesty, Caged cumbrously in a stiff, swaying, swollen, Shin-scarifying, hose-revealing frame Of wide-meshed metal, like a monster mousetrap— Hideous, indecent, awkward! Oh, I knew her— This loathly revenant, revisiting The glimpses of the moon. She shamed my sight, And blocked my way, and marred my young men's art, Twenty years syne and more. 'Twas CRINOLINA, The long-abiding, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... months. Now we have had from time to time, most menacing letters from indignant clients, protesting that we have been unfaithful to all the tenets and duties of a Manhattan journalist because we have with indecent candour confessed an affection for both Brooklyn and Philadelphia. We lay our cards on the table. We can't help it. Philadelphia was the first large city we ever knew, and how she speaks to us! And there's a queer thing about Philadelphia, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... for several years he gave abundant proof that he was an able scholar. His temper was very steady and composed; he could reason upon the most subtle points with great solidity, and when every one else was warm his temper was never ruffled. At any time when indecent heats or wranglings happened to fall in when reasoning, it was his ordinary custom to say, "Enough of this, let us go to some other subject; we are warm, and can dispute no longer with advantage." Perhaps he had the greatest mixture of fervent zeal and sweet calmness ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the wealth and situation of the departed can permit the consolation or the vanity of a high mass, the body is immediately committed to the tomb. Such at least is the practice at Rome; and there are few who have not witnessed with disgust the indecent haste of the few attendants by whom this portion of the last rites is usually despatched. In the country, and in smaller towns, the corpse is usually exposed for at least a day: I know few exceptions, from Trent to Naples. It is generally an affecting ceremony. One of the most touching instances ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... fruitless as the assaults of the winds upon the mountain's rocky ridge, he at length abandoned the project. The conduct of Louis XVIII. was but little calculated to inspire his subjects with respect, or to restore their fading fidelity. Having reached Lille on the 22d, on the next day he fled, with indecent haste, towards the frontier, not remaining long enough, even if his faculties had been sufficiently collected to do so, to give final or further instructions to the lieutenant-general. Terror of Napoleon occupied his every thought; and the wings of the wind ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... to notice in these remarkable messages that as the game develops, all disguise is thrown to the four winds, and the central and only important point, namely the prompt election and enthronement of Yuan Shih-kai as Emperor, insisted on with almost indecent directness, every possible precaution being ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
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