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More "Indecorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... edge with his thumb. "Low"—Mabel's face twitched. He had persisted in the idiotic and indecorous names, and her face always twitched when he used them—"Low, do you keep my axe for chopping coal or what?" And he addressed Mabel. "I'm getting fat, I think. I don't want the axe to cut lumps off myself, though. I'm going to chop ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... pick up the horrid thing, for fear the nice young man would feel obliged to do it for me; but, in my indecorous haste, I caught hold of the wrong end, and emptied the entire contents on the stone flagging. Aunt Celia didn't notice; she had turned with the verger, lest she should miss a single word of his inspired testimony. So we ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Thea's ways and friends, seemed indecorous to Anna. She not only felt a grave social discrimination against the Mexicans; she could not forget that Spanish Johnny was a drunkard and that "nobody knew what he did when he ran away from home." Thea pretended, of course, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... a minute!" he cried to Henfrey as he passed the prostrate Huxter, and, coming round the corner to join the tumult, was promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl. Somebody in full flight trod heavily on his finger. He yelled, struggled to regain his feet, was knocked against and thrown on all fours again, and became aware that he was involved not in a capture, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... the Deity," as is my custom before resigning myself to sleep, when two cats, of a greedy and vituperative turn, entering at a hole in the wall, leaped up with a flourish a la Catalani, and alighting opposite one another on my visage, betook themselves to indecorous contention for the paltry consideration ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in his arms directly. It might be that Mr Tappertit's heart was really softened by her distress, or it might be that he felt it in some degree indecorous that his intended bride should be struggling in the grasp of another man. He commanded him, on second thoughts, to put her down again, and looked moodily on as she flew to Miss Haredale's side, and clinging to her dress, hid her flushed face ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... sackcloth of Indian lamentation. Meanwhile she makes up a respectable sized bundle of her clothes into the form of a kind of doll-man, which represents her husband. With this she sleeps. To this she converses and relates the sorrows of her desolate heart. It would be indecorous for any warrior, while she is in this predicament, to show her any attentions of gallantry. She never puts on any habiliments but those of sadness and disfigurement. The only comfort she is permitted in this desolate state is, that her budgetted husband is permitted, when ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... the brat!" continued Biddy, shocked at the indecorous language which was put into ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... entering into conversation with them was to listen—one could not help it, they shouted so loudly all the time—to the conversation among themselves. We will not refer to the choice language they used, so inexplicably sacrilegious and indecorous that it would have set on edge the teeth of the coarsest specimens of humanity; but the subject—I say subject in the singular, mark you, for alas! there was only one subject—discussed in all its phases ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... matter of course as to ride out with the cavalcade that went to gather hawthorn. The choice of Valentines was a standing challenge, and the courtiers pelted each other with humorous and sentimental verses as in a literary carnival. If an indecorous adventure befell our friend Maistre Estienne le Gout, my lord the duke would turn it into the funniest of rondels, all the rhymes being the names of the cases of nouns or the moods of verbs; and Maistre ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... source of order and law, may imply a principle of supreme worth both to poetry and religion; but when we are asked to take it as a metaphysical explanation of facts, we are prone, like the judges of Caponsacchi, not to "levity, or to anything indecorous"— ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... reign of Tiberius. Each has mentioned many things omitted by the rest, {6} yet no objection is from thence taken to the respective credit of their histories. We have in our own times, if there were not something indecorous in the comparison, the life of an eminent person, written by three of his friends, in which there is very great variety in the incidents selected by them, some apparent, and perhaps some real, contradictions: yet without any impeachment ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... in some country of our dreams, can describe place and weather, and at moments action, and accompany it all by drum and gong or flute and dulcimer. Instead of the players working themselves into a violence of passion indecorous in our sitting-room, the music, the beauty of form and voice all come to ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... expression of humour. It is more difficult to make them forget their surroundings then, and more desirable to give them a happy lead. Often at the funniest point you will see some small listener in an agony of endeavour to cloak the mirth which he—poor mite—fears to be indecorous. Let him see that it is "the thing" to laugh, and that ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... coming here to impose upon your good uncle! You know that no one has been here—not a soul;—and as for yourself, you have been too busy looking after a certain gentleman ever to think of your poor uncle;—that you have;—taking advantage of his illness to behave in so indecorous a manner. I would have told him every thing, but I was afraid of making ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... is, I think, the little Jewess I purchased from Hassan Bey in Sidon, but how can one be sure? Still, this is certainly Judith, and this is Myrina. I have half a mind to look again for that mole, but I suppose it would be indecorous. Lord, how one's women do add up! There must be several scores of them in all. It is the sort of spectacle that turns a man to serious thinking. Well, but it is a great comfort to reflect that I dealt fairly ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... great amity, insomuch, that the inhabitants of a street seem only to compose one family, and are particularly circumspect in their behaviour to females, as it would be reputed exceedingly disgraceful to use any indecorous language to a married woman. The natives are of a most peaceable disposition, and no way addicted to strife or quarrelling, and altogether unused to arms, which they do not even keep in their houses. They are extremely hospitable to foreign merchants, whom they entertain kindly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... whose pure and delicate countenance was fortunately not yet disfigured by paint. This child, as well as the others, was dressed in the same way as the women; and I remarked that the Persian dress was really, as I had been told, rather indecorous. The corset fell back at every quick movement; the silk or gauze chemise, which scarcely reached over the breast, dragged up so high that the whole body might be seen as far as the loins. I observed the same with the female servants, who were engaged in making tea ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... true or not, there is little doubt that the style and character of the room a man sits in insensibly affects his manner and his bearing, and that the habits which would not be deemed strange in the low-ceilinged chamber, with the sanded floor and the "mutton lights," would be totally indecorous in the richly-carpeted room, a blaze of wax-light, and glittering with decoration. Now this alternating between Club and Cafe spoils men utterly. It engenders the worst possible style—a double manner. The over-stiffness here and the over-ease ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... her stately brows, and the twenty rosy lips were all tightly pursed up, to prevent the indecorous exhibition which the wicked courtier had provoked. But it would not do: one and all the twenty lips broke into a smile,—but a smile so tortured, constrained, and nipped in the bud, that it only gave an expression of pain to the features it ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... behaved with as much propriety as if they had possessed the whitest of cuticles, being quiet, serious, and attentive; nor did I detect anything indecorous on the part of the spectators, beyond an occasional smile or whisper by the younger negroes, whose soft-skinned, dusky faces and white eyeballs glanced upward at the six couples with admiring curiosity, and at us, visitors, with that appealing glance peculiar ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Rev. Mr. Whitmore advanced to the coach door like a man in two minds. "Ah, I see—a funeral!" he exclaimed as a mute advanced—assailed from each coach window, as he passed, with indecorous obloquy—to announce that the cortege was ready to start. For the last two minutes heads had been popping out at these windows—heads with dyed ringlets and heads with artificially coloured noses—and their owners demanding to know if Ben Jope meant ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Christian miracles is the fruit of a wicked heart and of a soul enslaved to sin. Thus do estimable and well-meaning men, deceived and deceiving one another, utter base slander in open church, where it is indecorous to reply to them,—and think that they are bravely delivering a ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... baroque, rococo. rough diamond, tomboy, hoyden, cub, unlicked cub[obs3]; clown &c. (commonalty) 876; Goth, Vandal, Boeotian; snob, cad, gent; parvenu &c. 876; frump, dowdy; slattern &c. 653. V. be vulgar &c. adj.; misbehave; talk shop, smell of the shop. Adj. in bad taste vulgar, unrefined. coarse, indecorous, ribald, gross; unseemly, unbeseeming[obs3], unpresentable[obs3]; contra bonos mores[Lat]; ungraceful &c. (ugly) 846. dowdy; slovenly &c. (dirty) 653; ungenteel, shabby genteel; low, common, hoi polloi[Grk] &c. (plebeian) 876; uncourtly[obs3]; uncivil &c. (discourteous) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... highroads, which only need a little deft and adroit adaptation of the hospitable feature which I have made the subject of this paper, to assume an air of modest grace, in place of the present indecorous ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... walks he caught himself thinking deeply about her, while the blood coursed with unwonted heat through his veins. He marked her entrance into the dining room or salon by his heart stopping suddenly and then racing on in wild, irregular beats, and if he looked at her the indecorous thought came to him that it would be a joy to stroke those firm, round cheeks, to pass one's fingers gently over those swelling lips, but more especially to bury one's hands in that flood of silken hair. These various discoveries rather took him aback, and resulted in increasing his reserve almost ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... went to her father, as she always did when any weight lay on her mind. Nothing was said about any injustice, because that might lead to more of it, as well as be (from a proper point of view) most indecorous. Nevertheless, it was felt between them, when her pretty hair was shed upon his noble waistcoat, that they two were in the right, and cared ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... wedded life, in scenes finely studied from the domestic interior. How far the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are to be ascribed to him is doubtful; it is certain that these licentious tales reproduce, with a new skill in narrative prose, the spirit of indecorous mirth in their Italian models. The Petit Jehan de Saintre is certainly the work of Antoine de la Salle; the irony of a realist, endowed with subtlety and grace, conducts the reader through chivalric ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... which she was wont to bestow on those she found stupid. She was an odd-tempered, free-mannered woman, deeply crafty, absolutely unmoral, and yet with a true kindliness of heart and a thorough understanding of human nature which, together with her ready laugh, her clever, indecorous anecdotes and sharp wit, made her attractive. For these traits people forgave her her ugly face and fifty years of a past even less reputable than was usual ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... giggle Sara rose. Accepting the proffered guidance to the seat of the all-wise Amarna, she proceeded to hustle her amiable conductor over the grass toward the grotto at a most indecorous rate of speed, born of her ardent determination to test the mettle of the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... far, but was literally kicked free from and by, the frightened and uncontrolled animal. The continual kickings I received—some on my legs and body, but mostly upon that portion of the frame which it is considered equally indecorous to present either to a friend or an enemy—at length bent one or two of the nail-heads which held me, and, tearing the upper leather off my boot, which fortunately was old, ripped it off, leaving me at length free. As I lay on my excoriated back, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... of the services the people hurried out with indecorous confusion, eager to communicate their pent-up amazement, and conscious of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil. Some gathered in little circles, huddled closely together, with their mouths all whispering in the centre; some went homeward ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Denis, "your indecorous interruption has stamped you with the signature of genuine ignorance and vulgarity; still, I say, we must have some conversation on that subject immediately. Yes, I love your daughter a thousand times better than nay ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... a few moments vainly scrutinising the masks in her immediate neighbourhood. Their eyes gleamed uncannily through the slits in the black silk, and when she intercepted a direct glance, it was hastily lowered or averted, as if there were something indecorous ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... in a sad perplexity at her father's offer. She pleaded her youth unsuitable to marriage, the recent death of Tybalt, which had left her spirits too weak to meet a husband with any face of joy, and how indecorous it would show for the family of the Capulets to be celebrating a nuptial feast, when his funeral solemnities were hardly over: she pleaded every reason against the match, but the true one, namely, that she was married already. But lord Capulet was deaf to all ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... anyhow, even if only to express the ideas of others. Suppose the governor comes and asks, "Why is it the judge stammers?" And they'd say, let's assume, "It's a paralytic stroke." "Then bleed him," he'd say. And it would be highly indecorous, in ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... dark. Though she would have walked out on the Brodnyx road at midnight without putting the slightest strain on either her courage or her decorum, the well-lighted streets of a town became to her vaguely dangerous and indecorous after dusk had fallen. "It wouldn't be seemly," she repeated to herself in the loneliness and dullness of the lounge, ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... the noiseless tenor of our way, finding in life if not great and gaudy pleasures, at least content and relief from many of the vexations that gnaw away the lives of the multitude. Though it was acknowledged a long time ago to be—indecorous—an abominable thing for a man to commend his ways; though his mode of living may not commend itself to others; though it may seem blank and colourless, thin and watery, devoid of expectation, and the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... hours beforehand, and caused it to be kept, in fear that another might deprive him of it; the churches were so full, that it was hardly possible to move in them. The eagerness to obtain room was so great, that indecorous and even scandalous scenes took place among the wives of the populace; they quarrelled for chairs and seats with a ferocity, qui les mettoit souvent hors du cercle de la politesse civile et Chretienne." (Perhaps, as a townsman, he is ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... the evening Phyllis went about in a queer-keyed, almost light-hearted frame of mind. It was only the reaction from the long-expected terror that was over now, but it felt indecorous. It was just as well, however. Some one's head had to be kept. The servants were upset, of course, and there were many arrangements to be made. She and Mr. De Guenther worked steadily together, telephoning, ordering, guiding, straightening out all the tangles. There never was a wedding, she ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... ashamed, a little shy, what with his gray hairs, his paternity, that there should still be a thrill in his heart, a sense of flight in him. At fifty-eight to feel like a schoolboy going home, it seemed—well, not indecent, indecorous. This thing of returning to Antrim had been a matter of pure reason, and then suddenly his ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... had set me laughing; and, indecorous though it was, for the life of me I could not ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... occasion in their prologues to lecture the audience upon their conduct in the theatre, exhorting them to more seemly manners, and especially informing them that nothing of an indecorous nature would be presented upon the scene. The prologue to "The Woman Hater," above mentioned, pronounces "to the utter discomfort of all twopenny gallery men," that there is no impropriety contained in the play, and bids them depart, if they have been ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the apparently serious propositions or assertions of Mr. Whistler. How far the witty tongue may be thrust into the smiling cheek when the lecturer pauses to take breath between these remarkably brief paragraphs it would be certainly indecorous and possibly superfluous to inquire. But his theorem is unquestionably calculated to provoke the loudest and the heartiest mirth that ever acclaimed the advent of Momus or Erycina. For it is this—that [38]"Art and Joy go together," ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... the same subject or class of subject. She had also in her predecessors the example of drawing largely on that perennial and somewhat facile source of laughter—the putting together of incidents and phrases which even by those who laugh at them are regarded as indecorous. But of this expedient she availed herself rather less than any of her forerunners. She had further the example of a generally satirical intent; but here, too, she was not content merely to follow, and her satire is, for the ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... after scene of furious harlequinade with the monarch as clown, and of tragic relief in the torture chamber with the monarch as pantomime demon committing real atrocities, not forgetting the indispensable love interest on an enormous and utterly indecorous scale. Catherine kept this vast Guignol Theatre open for nearly half a century, not as a Russian, but as a highly domesticated German lady whose household routine was not at all so unlike that of Queen Victoria as might ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... the services the people hurried out with indecorous confusion, eager to communicate their pent-up amazement, and conscious of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil. Some gathered in little circles, huddled closely together, with their mouths all whispering in the centre; some went homeward alone, wrapped in ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... another smile, however, for Mr. Edgar Marten; and yet another one for Don Francesco who, as she passed near him, profited by the occasion to give her a paternal semi-proprietary chuck under the chin, accompanying the indecorous movement with ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... and inhuman may be the superstition which brands such exaltations of natural passion as shameful and indecorous, there is at least as much common sense in disparaging love as in setting it up as a panacea. Even the mercy and loving-kindness of Shelley do not hold good as a universal law of conduct: Shelley himself makes extremely short work of Jupiter, ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... things of life generally do," replied the doctor. "Good-morning. I'm going to be so indecorous as to hurry home for a bath and a breakfast instead of catching cold standing out here on a wet street discussing other ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... chronicler, should be received with great caution, and are introduced here as simple hearsay. That the commander, however, took a handkerchief and attempted to show his guest the mysteries of the sembi cuacua, capering in an agile but indecorous manner about the apartment, has been denied. Enough for the purposes of this narrative, that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to bed with many protestations of undying friendship, and then, as the gale had abated, took his leave of the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... neighbourhood, or brought from other places. They dwell together in great amity, insomuch, that the inhabitants of a street seem only to compose one family, and are particularly circumspect in their behaviour to females, as it would be reputed exceedingly disgraceful to use any indecorous language to a married woman. The natives are of a most peaceable disposition, and no way addicted to strife or quarrelling, and altogether unused to arms, which they do not even keep in their houses. They are extremely hospitable to foreign merchants, whom ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... there was no medium in them; they were either very indecorous or very expensive. I have been positively assured that eighteen francs were paid for what was called a parish-funeral, and not unfrequently a quarrel arose between the agent of the rector and the relations of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... tenor of our way, finding in life if not great and gaudy pleasures, at least content and relief from many of the vexations that gnaw away the lives of the multitude. Though it was acknowledged a long time ago to be—indecorous—an abominable thing for a man to commend his ways; though his mode of living may not commend itself to others; though it may seem blank and colourless, thin and watery, devoid of expectation, and the hope ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... brow, and the conventional nothings upon our lips, is depressing in the extreme. It may be injudicious, but it is certainly allowable, to look sad when the bank that holds our all suddenly falls; but for a woman to acknowledge in her face that the bank of her affections is broke is most indecorous, and shows a want of proper spirit and proper pride pitiful to witness. She may scream if she is pinched; but neither sign nor cry must show ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... mortal foe is ruined irretrievably, we betray no indecorous exultation, but smile complacently and say, "We are not surprised;" or, if we have the chance, give him a last push to send him over the precipice on whose brink he is staggering. But as for any violent demonstration—bah! the Vendetta is going out of fashion, even ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... distinguished from anecdote, does not concern itself with superficial appearances alone. Literature is revelation. Modern literature is indecorous revelation. It is the duty of the earnest author to tell you what you would not have seen—even at the cost of some blushes. And the thing that you would not have seen about this young man, and the thing of the greatest moment to this story, the thing that ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... and again, to express a satisfaction in meeting me once more in this social way, that she would have thought it indecorous to express by words. I thanked her exactly in the same language ; and, without a syllable being uttered, she said, "I rejoice you are no longer a courtier!" and I answered, "I love you dearly for preferring me in my old ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... To write verses for May-day seems to have been as much a matter of course as to ride out with the cavalcade that went to gather hawthorn. The choice of Valentines was a standing challenge, and the courtiers pelted each other with humorous and sentimental verses as in a literary carnival. If an indecorous adventure befell our friend Maistre Estienne le Gout, my lord the duke would turn it into the funniest of rondels, all the rhymes being the names of the cases of nouns or the moods of verbs; and Maistre Estienne would make reply ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the women alone. I was then called in, with my uncle, to go through the ceremony, and strict injunctions were made me not to laugh, nor even to smile, while it lasted; for ill luck would attend the marriage if anything so indecorous took place ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... they danced—up to the northward, all men making way for them as, with hand-bag and umbrella flying in her left hand, she was dragged forward on an indecorous run by Phoebe, who held ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... (which I had seen before at Paris); the Venus victrix; the Venus Anadyomene; Hercules and Nessus, a superb groupe; a young Bacchus; and an exquisitely chiselled group representing Pan teaching Olympus to play the syrinx, tho' the attitude of the former is rather indecorous from not being in a very quiescent state; a fine statue of Leda with the swan; a Mercury, both worthy of great attention. I remarked also in particular a statue of Marsyas attached to a tree and flayed. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... afternoon of this day a clergyman, whose name it would be highly indecorous in me to mention, descanted on the aspect of Spiritualism from his point of view in the Church of England. I understood the purport of the paper to be (1) that he claimed the right of members of the Church of England to investigate the phenomena; (2) that, if convinced of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... a feast was in preparation. I supposed so only, for it would have been indecorous to enquire into the meaning of what I saw. No person, among the Indians themselves, would use this freedom. Good breeding requires that the spectator should patiently wait ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... must say that I was not a little surprised at its contents; indeed, I thought so much about it that I revoked at Lady Betty Blabkin's whist-party, and lost four shillings and sixpence. You say that you have a child at your house belonging to your cousin, who married in so indecorous a manner. I hope what you say is true; but, at the same time, I know what bachelors are guilty of; although, as Lady Betty says, it is better never to talk or even to hint about these improper things. I cannot imagine why men should consider themselves, in an unmarried state, as absolved ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... vices of the man increased the contempt which was produced by the feeble policy of the sovereign. The indecorous gallantries of the Court, the habits of gross intoxication in which even the ladies indulged, were alone sufficient to disgust a people whose manners were beginning to be strongly tinctured with austerity. But these were trifles. Crimes of the most frightful kind had been discovered; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his return to his garret, Marius cast his eyes over his garments, and perceived, for the first time, that he had been so slovenly, indecorous, and inconceivably stupid as to go for his walk in the Luxembourg with his "every-day clothes," that is to say, with a hat battered near the band, coarse carter's boots, black trousers which showed white at the knees, and a black coat which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... come out of this baptism unharmed. The incident nearly suffocates the company, for there is not a soul among them who would not sooner suffer the pangs of dissolution than laugh outright. As for me, I am nearly expiring with the merriment that consumes me and my efforts to prevent indecorous explosion. The young woman, after having wiped me dry, once more presents the cream-jug, this time with both hands, but I can only murmur faintly in my trouble, "Thanks, no—no more cream." This appears ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... punchers who rode in for miles around to see this latest importation of Raidler's. He was an absolutely new experience to them. He explained to them all the intricate points of sparring and the tricks of training and defence. He opened to their minds' view all the indecorous life of a tagger after professional sports. His jargon of slang was a continuous joy and surprise to them. His gestures, his strange poses, his frank ribaldry of tongue and principle fascinated them. He was like a ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... trumpet's call to horse; and his dishevelled grey locks and half-arranged dress, though they showed zeal and haste, such as he would have used when Charles I. called him to attend a council of war, seemed rather indecorous in a pacific drawing-room. He paused at the door of the cabinet, but when the King called on him to advance, came hastily forward, with every feeling of his earlier and later life afloat, and contending in his memory, threw himself on his ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... unhappy as any of them, for she had felt strongly drawn towards her uncle as her kindest friend, and the sense of his loss renewed the old sorrow she had experienced at her own parents' death. But she had no time and no place to cry in. On her devolved many of the cares, which it would have seemed indecorous in the nearer relatives to interest themselves in enough to take an active part: the change required in their dress, the household preparations for the sad feast of the funeral—Lois had to arrange all under her aunt's ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... who was present, expressed her surprise at this indecorous avowal; when the young lady replied, with great naivete—"I never saw grandmamma in my life. I cannot be expected to feel any ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... fashion of his day, yet we have determined to print them here, partly as belonging to the res gestae of this collection, and partly as a warning to their putative author which may keep him from such indecorous pranks ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... not allow to her or to himself that his hopes ran with hers; love is not business with a man as it is with a woman; he feels it indecorous and indelicate to count upon it openly, where she thinks it simply a chance of life, to be considered like another. All that Kenton would say was, "I see no reason for telling her just yet. She will have to know in due time. But let her enjoy ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in London, where he was afterwards City Chronicler, married Mary Morbeck, and died; was fond of collaboration, and received assistance in his best work from Drayton, Webster, Dekker, Rowley, and Jonson; his comedies are smart and buoyant, sometimes indecorous; his masques more than usually elaborate and careful; in the comedy of "The Spanish Gypsy," and the tragedies of "The Changeling," and "Women beware Women," is found the best fruit ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sailors in their behavior in the presence of women; and they say that this good trait is still strongly observable even in the present race of seamen, greatly deteriorated as it is. On shipboard, there is never an indecorous word or unseemly act said or done by sailors when a woman can be cognizant of it; and their deportment in this respect differs greatly from that of landsmen of similar position in society. This is remarkable, considering that a sailor's female acquaintances ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Kader against the French, and four districts had elected the Emir for their chief. Called on Hateetah. Whilst there, an old lady of eighty years of age came in and got up to dance before me in the indecorous Barbary style, and then begged money. Seeing she had outlived her wits and took a great fancy for one of my buttons, I cut it off and gave it her to the annoyance of Hateetah, the Consul scolding me for ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... swiftness the details of my "affair" passed through my memory, it was only by an effort that I restrained an indecorous shout. He was correct. I could call to mind no single feature that had been "regular," from the thief who was not a thief and had flown out of my window like a conjurer, to the fight in Prezelay castle where I had ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... climb in through the ventilator, but this was nailed down, and then as a last resort the "smoking machine" was brought into action. This was an "infernal machine," employed in hazing students who had in any way offended the opinion of the class, especially by indecorous subservience to the authorities or informing against their fellow students. The latter was a rare offense and never pardoned. The smoking machine consisted of a short length of stove-pipe with a nozzle at each end, into one of which was introduced a bellows, and the other ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... of which Romanticism had made such good use at its best. But what it exaggerated most of all was the Romantic neglect of classical decorum, in the wider as well as the narrower sense of that word. Classicism had said, "Keep everything indecorous out." Naturalism seemed sometimes to say, "Let nothing that ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... an odd-tempered, free-mannered woman, deeply crafty, absolutely unmoral, and yet with a true kindliness of heart and a thorough understanding of human nature which, together with her ready laugh, her clever, indecorous anecdotes and sharp wit, made her attractive. For these traits people forgave her her ugly face and fifty years of a past even less reputable than was usual in the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... that we never were a crowd, never either too many or too few, always the right people WITH the right people- -there must really have been no wrong people at all—always coming and going, never sticking fast nor overstaying, yet never popping in or out with an indecorous familiarity? How was it that we all sat where we wanted and moved when we wanted and met whom we wanted and escaped whom we wanted; joining, according to the accident of inclination, the general circle or falling in with a ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... candle, and saw my cheek was hurt: "How comes this wound?" said he. Though I did not consider myself as guilty of any great offence, yet I could not think of owning the truth. Besides, to make such an avowal to a husband, I considered as somewhat indecorous; I therefore said, "That as I was going, under his permission, to purchase some silk stuff, a porter, carrying a load of wood, came so near to me, in a narrow street, that one of the sticks grazed my cheek; but had not done me much hurt." This account put my husband ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Chattox and Nance Redferne were at the bottom of it. As to the portrait of Isole de Heton, it was found under the table, and it was said that Nicholas himself had pulled it down; but this he obstinately denied, when afterwards taken to task for his indecorous behaviour; and to his dying day he asserted, and believed, that he had danced the brawl with Isole de Heton. "And never," he would say, "had mortal man ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... far beneath the surface of social history to discover that the irregularity in question is only a partial revival of the practice of our grandfathers and grandmothers, much as a crinoline may be regarded as a modified reproduction of the hoop. Junius thus denounces the Duke of Grafton's indecorous devotion to Nancy Parsons: "It is not the private indulgence, but the public insult, of which I complain. The name of Miss Parsons would hardly have been known, if the First Lord of the Treasury had not led her in triumph through the Opera House, even in the presence ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... him backwards; and, shaking away the grasp that was fixed upon his collar, seized his brother's wrist, so as to prevent the accomplishment of his purpose. In this unnatural and indecorous strife the corpse of their father was reft of its covering and the hand discovered lying upon ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... that the story contains no indecorous stimulants; nor is it filled with unmeaning and inexplicated incidents sounding upon the sense, but imperceptible to the understanding. When anxieties have been excited by involved and doubtful events, they are afterwards ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... the style and character of the room a man sits in insensibly affects his manner and his bearing, and that the habits which would not be deemed strange in the low-ceilinged chamber, with the sanded floor and the "mutton lights," would be totally indecorous in the richly-carpeted room, a blaze of wax-light, and glittering with decoration. Now this alternating between Club and Cafe spoils men utterly. It engenders the worst possible style—a double manner. The over-stiffness here and the over-ease there ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... such an odd sensation in my life as the touch of Carlotta's fresh young arms upon my face and the perfume of spring violets that emanated from her person. I released myself swiftly from her indecorous demonstration. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... niger, and Macacus rhesus and nemestrinus, turn this part of their bodies, which in all these species is more or less brightly coloured, to him when they are pleased, and to other persons as a sort of greeting. He took pains to cure a Macacus rhesus, which he had kept for five years, of this indecorous habit, and at last succeeded. These monkeys are particularly apt to act in this manner, grinning at the same time, when first introduced to a new monkey, but often also to their old monkey friends; and after this mutual display they begin to play ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
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