"Respectability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the bank, sent his name into the manager, and was at once admitted. The manager was a solid man, semi-bald, with side whiskers, and an air of old English business respectability delightful in these new and pushing days, he received the phantom of the Earl of Rochester with the respect due to ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... manufacturing trade in East and Central London. It is true of the relatively unskilled labour in every form of employment; the miserable writing-clerk, who on 25s. a week or less has to support a wife and children and an appearance of respectability; the usher, who grinds out low-class instruction through the whole tedious day for less than the wage of a plain cook; the condition of these and many other kinds of low-class brain-workers is only a shade less pitiable than the "sweating" of manual ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... day, it preserves signs and tokens of the Principles on which it was founded: its progress having been the gradual and healthy growth of a Pastoral and agricultural colony, undisturbed by the forced marches of gold-mining. In Adelaide middle-class respectability is too strong for larrikinism, and imparts a far healthier social and moral tone than obtains in either Melbourne or Sydney; but for these advantages the little town pays the small but disagreeable price of Philistinism. Want of culture, Pharisees, and narrow-mindedness ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... expressing regret that the meeting was not made up of somewhat different material, of the leading men in all branches of business, and of men of property and reputed respectability, read a long letter from Josiah Quincy, senior, declaring against the law, but at the same time expressing his belief that there was no real ground for alarm, for, in his opinion, the enforcement of the law in Massachusetts ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... into which the barren forms and observances of a dead Puritanism can pen a bitter temper and a fierce pride. She is an elderly matron who has worked hard and got nothing by it except dominion and detestation in her sordid home, and an unquestioned reputation for piety and respectability among her neighbors, to whom drink and debauchery are still so much more tempting than religion and rectitude, that they conceive goodness simply as self-denial. This conception is easily extended to others—denial, and finally generalized as covering anything ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... continued to be directed. A veritable terreur blanche, called by one side brigandage, by the other a holy war, possessed the hills from Vesuvius to the Sila forest. But though there were several foreign noblemen who took part in it, not one Neapolitan of respectability or standing joined the insurgents. The general elections showed in the south, as over the whole country, a large majority pledged to support Cavour. The first act of the new Chamber was to vote the assumption ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... nobles and landholders. Men of all creeds and castes yield to the temptation and magistrates are sometimes startled to find that Honorary Magistrates, Members of District Boards, and others of apparently the highest respectability, are the abettors and secret organizers of robber bands. A modern example of this fact was discovered in the Meerut and Muzaffarnagar Districts of the United Provinces in 1890 and 1891. In this case the wealthy supporters of the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... day on which an intimate and valued female friend of mine saw Mrs. Stafford Molyneux stepping into a brougham, with a splendid bay horse, and without a footman, (mark, if you please, that delicate sign of respectability,) and after a moment's examination of Mrs. S. M.'s toilette, her manners, little dog, carnation-colored parasol, &c., Miss Elizabeth Clapperclaw clapped to the opera-glass with which she had been regarding the new inhabitant of Our Street, came away from the window in a great ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thought, would inherit from their father nothing but his good name, and who possessed nothing but the good principles and industrious habits which his care and affection had imparted to them. They had no near relations, and the friends whom their parents' respectability had gained for them, had families of their own to support, and could offer little but advice and friendly offices: large pecuniary assistance they had it not in their power to impart. One of these friends, who was also Mr Forsyth's executor, took the children into his house till the ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... be urged that he was always a thoroughgoing patriot, [Witness his violently anti-French play, the Reprisal of 1757.] and that, coming from a Calvinistic country where a measure of Tartufism was a necessary condition of respectability, he reproduces the common English error of ignoring how apt a Frenchman is to conceal a number of his best qualities. Two other considerations deserve attention. The race-portrait was in Smollett's day at the very height of its disreputable reign. Secondly, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... business, bought the house in which they lived, and laid by a goodly dot for her son and two daughters. And all the time Corot pere wore the white cravat, a precise smile for customers and an austere look for his family. He held his old position as floorwalker and gave respectability to his good-wife's Millinery and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... 'there the rogue has bested us. Isn't it just like him? What do you suppose he has done? Why, provided himself with a sister of tried respectability and blameless character.' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... attended to protect this group from the thronging multitude, but it needed not. The high respectability and unpretending simplicity of their appearance gave them, even in the eyes of the coarsest of the people, an air of patriarchal dignity, which commanded general regard; and they sat upon the bank which they had chosen for their station by the way-side, as undisturbed as if they had ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... A man of respectability, a tradesman, and a freeholder, in such a serious case as yours, had better have recourse ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... sir." "You see, David, the respectability of the theological class must be kept up, and it will be better that Professor Laird sees you first dressed as a student, rather than as a fisher. Then, as one never knows what may happen, I shall deposit ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... or originally a resident, in the Hartz Mountains; he was the serf of an Hungarian nobleman, of great possessions, in Transylvania; but, although a serf, he was not by any means a poor or illiterate man. In fact, he was rich, and his intelligence and respectability were such, that he had been raised by his lord to the stewardship; but, whoever may happen to be born a serf, a serf must he remain, even though he become a wealthy man; such was the condition of my father. My father had been married for about five years; ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... time before she could summon up resolution to go. She was so much disappointed in this longed-for, dreaded interview with Mary; she had wished to impose upon her with her tale of married respectability, and yet she had yearned and craved for sympathy in her real lot. And she had imposed upon her well. She should perhaps be glad of it afterwards; but her desolation of hope seemed for the time redoubled. And she must leave the old dwelling-place, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... After making due allowances for either element of oddity, a true connoisseur will gratefully appreciate the spontaneous note of enjoyment, the disengagement from ties and duties imposed by temporal respectability, the frank animalism, which connects these vivid hymns to Bacchus and Venus with past Aristophanes and future Rabelais. They celebrate the eternal presence of mirth-making powers in hearts of men, apart ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... attached to a maiden: he spends every hour of the day in her company, wears out his health, and lavishes his fortune, to afford continual proof that he is wholly devoted to her. Then comes a man of the world, a man of place and respectability, and addresses him thus: "My good young friend, love is natural; but you must love within bounds. Divide your time: devote a portion to business, and give the hours of recreation to your mistress. Calculate your ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... it did not interfere with the personal intercourse of the publisher and the poet. Murray afterwards wrote to Scott: "Hunt is most vilely wrong-headed in politics, which he has allowed to turn him away from the path of elegant criticism, which might have led him to eminence and respectability." ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... made me a coward; and I only sat silent as the thought flashed across me, half ludicrous, half painful, by its contrast, of another who once worked at a carpenter's bench, and fulfilled his mission—not by an old age of wealth, respectability, and port wine; but on the Cross of Calvary. After all, the worthy old gentleman gave ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... not for one moment be suffered to outweigh, on an occasion of vital importance, the great mass of evidence now on record quite in accordance with that just stated. One gentleman of unquestionable respectability gives as a reason (seemingly his very strongest) for a change of opinion, that he has been credibly informed that when the cholera broke out on one side of the street in a certain village in Russia, a medical man had a barrier put up by which the communication with the other side was ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... letter! (Reads.) "And so the moth has come too near the candle at last, and has been singed into—shall I say Respectability? I congratulate him, and hope he will be as happy as he deserves to be." What does that mean? Is she congratulating you about ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Catron would say, "and we all sympathize with her deeply; Walker always regards her as a sister." What was this dark history never came out, but its very mystery always thrilled the visitor, and seemed to indicate plainly the respectability of the hostess. An American family without a genteel skeleton in its closet could scarcely add to that gossip which keeps society from forgetting its members. Nor was it altogether unnatural that presently Mrs. Roger Catron lent herself to this sentimental deception, and began to think ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... procured you consideration and respect by making you my singer and companion, and allowing you to play upon the harp at my improvisations? How has not all Rome admired you when you sang the canzones I wrote for you, thereby procuring you honor and respectability, and making you a popular man from a low beggar? Go, you cannot leave me, for you are my ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... and there was no limit to their abuses. Mademoiselle de l'Enclos, while devoting herself to a life of pleasure, followed certain philosophical rules and regulations which removed from the unrestrained freedom of the times the stigma of commonness and conferred something of respectability upon practices that nowadays would be considered horribly immoral, but which then were regarded as nothing uncommon, nay, were legitimate and proper. The cavaliers cut one another's throats for the love of God and in the cause of religion, and the women encouraged ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... address count more with him than money; for money and favor to him are mere snares. I know him well; he will either give us or permit us to take enough to end our days in respectability. ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... my own property went down in the wreck; and the mariner who escapes only with his life can never recur to the scene of his escape without a shudder. Many persons are still living, of the first respectability, who well remember my quitting this country, though very young, on the budding of a brilliant career. Had those prospects been followed up they would have placed me beyond the caprice of fickle fortune. But ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... morning, and flies down the steps with the air of one who has performed her whole duty. Now that she has attained to married respectability, she feels quite free to criticise the rest of the world, and she rejoices in the fact that she does carry more weight ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... doubt wretched enough; but the worldly, prudent, self-restraining man, with his five senses, which he understands how to gratify with tempered indulgence, with a conscience satisfied with the hack routine of what is called respectability, such a man feels no wretchedness; no inward uneasiness disturbs him, no desires which he cannot gratify; and this though he be the basest and most contemptible slave of his own selfishness. Providence will not interfere to ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... pale of the aristocratic Avenue de l'Observatoire. The students of the Montparnasse Quarter consider it swell and will have none of it. The Latin Quarter, from the Luxembourg, its northern frontier, sneers at its respectability and regards with disfavour the correctly costumed students who haunt it. Few strangers go into it. At times, however, the Latin Quarter students use it as a thoroughfare between the rue de Rennes and the Bullier, but except for that and the weekly afternoon visits of parents and guardians ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... chair, and his eyes flashed with indignation. I bowed to the storm, and diverted the force of it, by leading him to expatiate on the influence which religion derived from maintaining the church with great external respectability. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... been a "family of respectability," or a gentleman of position, with a large number of servants, a nice wife, and a few children sprinkled about the domestic picture, I doubt not I should have enjoyed the contemplation of that glowing fire, and rejoiced in the idea of finding myself located in so desirable ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... Paul think himself the chief of sinners was not that he had broken the commandments, for he might have said, and in effect did say, 'All these have I kept from my youth up,' but that, through all the respectability and morality of his early life there ran this streak—an alienation of heart, in the pride of self-confidence, from God, and an ignorance of his own wretchedness and need. Ah! brethren, I do not need ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... no longer appreciate fineness of character and respectability," he sighed. "Effie is heartless. I didn't dare admit it to myself, but she is, she's absolutely heartless. But even if she hasn't got the right feelings, she ought to have the good ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... question. Bear with me just a moment more, for I assure you that I am suffering keenly with you, that my heart is in sorrowful unison with your own. Family pride may be regarded a hobby in this day when refinement and respectability are sneered at, but it is a virtuous hobby, and I have held it so long that I cannot put it down. And now, in so far as there is any question of a financial obligation, we will turn our backs upon it and forget that ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... so, I stepped to the door, and surveyed the scene, which was grand in the extreme; and I felt my blood course through my veins wildly, as old recollections of volunteer service were brought back, when gentlemen of the utmost respectability petitioned for admittance to ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... wreckers on those islands—I've heard that told of them many a time. No doubt their own filth and bad living has brought disease upon them, if there's truth in the tale; and as to this strange woman, giving no testimony or certificate of her respectability, it's a queer thing if she's to begin and teach you religion and duty. It's a bold and impudent letter, and I suppose you've enough sense left, with all your new fangles, to see that you can't do all she asks. What do you think you can do? If you think I'm ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... with the Anti-Slavery cause. We have been unanimous against the common foe, but we are this day in danger of creating division among heartfelt friends. Will our American brethren put us in this position? Will they keep up a discussion in which the delicacy, the honor, the respectability of those excellent females who have come from the Western world are concerned? I tremble at the thought of discussing the question in the presence of these ladies—for whom I entertain the most profound respect—and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... time the homely meal was ready Mr. Talbot had returned from disposing of his horses and servants at a hostel, for whose comparative respectability Mr. Heatherthwayte had answered. The clergyman himself alone sat down to supper with his guests. He would not hear of letting either of his children do so; but while Dust-and-Ashes retired to study his tasks for the Grammar School ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and crowded: though in these respects there is some improvement the further he goes either to the east or the west; but it is near the Castle that he must look for the greatest share of united beauty and respectability. The truth is, the lower part near the quay is of course occupied by tradesmen, for the advantages of business, and convenient landing-places; and as their houses stand at the edge of the water, many parties prefer their ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... those unaesthetic social virtues in the operation of which happiness is found. On the other hand those who pursue happiness conceived merely in the abstract and conventional terms, as money, success, or respectability, often miss that real and fundamental part of happiness which flows from the senses and imagination. This element is what aesthetics supplies to life; for beauty also can be a cause and a factor of happiness. Yet the happiness of loving beauty is either too sensuous to be ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... perhaps insult her if she appeared publicly with them; but she replied boldly and proudly, "Does the duke send for me after this manner, as if I were not the daughter of an honourable man? Shall I go secretly, as if I were but a disgraced woman? That which I do is in all honour and respectability, not from wickedness or weakness, and I am not ashamed that men should see me pass. If I am to be taken to the duke, it shall not be on foot and hidden—fetch, therefore, your palfrey, and let me go as it becomes me." Her dress is thus described:—"She had clothed her gentle body in a fine shift, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... menstruation. Nevertheless the Ahirs enjoy a good social status, owing to their relations with the sacred cow. As remarked by Eha: "His family having been connected for many generations with the sacred animal he enjoys a certain consciousness of moral respectability, like a man whose uncles are deans or canons." [27] All castes will take water from the hands of an Ahir, and in Chhattisgarh and the Uriya country the Rawats and Gahras, as the Ahir caste is known respectively in these localities, are the only caste from whom Brahmans and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... continental Sunday as an orgy of noisy and godless pleasures. She says: "I had a thousand opportunities of noticing that the religious life did not mean a deep life-sanctifying belief, but simply one of those formulas that are a part of 'respectability,' as they understand it both in the family and in society." Nothing proves this better than their truly shocking way of keeping holy the Sabbath day, which is the very reverse of holy, inasmuch as it paves the way to the heaviest ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... said, hurriedly, to an individual in brass buttons and greased hair, whose presence in the building was evidently for a purely ornamental purpose. I was shown into a small glass room like a green-house, where sat two managers, as under a microscope—a living example of frock-coated respectability and industry to half a hundred clerks who were ever peeping that way as they turned the pages of their ledgers and circulated in an undertone ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... by thee be all unworn. Soon luxuries become necessities, But self-denying thrift more joy affords Than all the pleasures of extravagance. A cottage, free from clamorous creditors, Is better than a mansion dunned; a coat, However darned, if paid for, hath an ease, And a respectability beside: Gay, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... more English gentlemen that they should take the trouble of withstanding the continuous pressure exerted by eighty-six Parnellites. Cowardice masks itself under the show of compromise, and men of eminent respectability yield to the terror of being bored concessions which their forefathers would have refused to the threat of armed rebellion. It is unnecessary to explain how this condition of opinion, under which the best and the lowest feelings of human nature are ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... is really quite grand, but ill-kept. Fine oaks make beauty without asking favors. Fine oaks and a fair view make all the beauty of Arlington. It seems that this old establishment, like many another old Virginian, had claimed its respectability for its antiquity, and failed to keep up to the level of the time. The road winds along through the trees, climbing to fairer and fairer reaches of view over the plain of Washington. I had not fancied that there was any such lovely site near the capital. But we have not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... his arm a plaster of Paris casting, that during his begging trips would be filled with cotton upon which a few drops of carbolic acid or some other "medicinally" smelling liquid had been poured, to give the "phoney" broken-arm trick a cloak of respectability. When not at "work" the "dummy" was shoved far above the boy's elbow and tied so that it did not interfere with his playing "tag", ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... for the coarse, water-ground sort. Some day he purposed to turn out the old worn-out machinery and supply its place with modern inventions, but as yet this ambition was remote, and the mill, worked after the process of an earlier century, had raised his position to one of comparative comfort and respectability. He was known to be a man of character and ambition. Already his name had been mentioned as a possible future representative of the labouring classes in the Virginia assembly. "There is no better proof of the ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... that there is any amount of possibility in her. I should not wonder if, some day, a novelist took it into his head to show Becky as she would have been if she had had those thousands a year for which, with their accompanying chances of respectability, she so pathetically sighed. Now Valerie is, and always must have been, a catin, and nothing else. Lisbeth, again, though I admit her possibility, is not, to me, made quite probable. Hulot, very possible ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... man"—I quote from "The Jungle" again—"they have made into the high-priest of property and smug respectability, a divine sanction of all the horrors and abominations of modern commercial civilization! Jewelled images are made of him, sensual priests burn insense to him, and modern pirates of industry bring their dollars, wrung from the toil of helpless women and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Silent Simon married. Even in his youth he had not been attracted by the other sex, and his own qualities certainly did not attract them. Not that there was a word to be said seriously against him. Hard and shrewd though he was, his respectability was extreme and his observance of the conventions scrupulous to a fault. He was an elder of the Kirk, a non-smoker, an abstemious drinker (to be an out and out teetotaler would have been a little too remarkable in those regions for a man of Mr. Rattar's ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... dishonest since then," he remarked navely. "But a year ago I wouldn't have told you this, though it's been in the back of my mind as a rankling sore, growing as I grew in wealth and respectability. I made a bluff at believing that it didn't matter, and that a thing done has an end. Well, now I've made a clean breast of it to the ones who have a right to know. I should like you ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... passed since then, Denison often wishes he could live those seven months in Leasse over again, and let this, his latter-day respectability, go hang; because to men like him respectability means tradesmen's bills, and a deranged liver, and a feeling that he will die on a bed with his boots off, and be pawed about by shabby ghouls smelling ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... former years, but, compared with the family of an ordinary official, their condition anyhow presents a difference. Of late the number of the inmates has, day by day, been on the increase; their affairs have become daily more numerous; of masters and servants, high and low, who live in ease and respectability very many there are; but of those who exercise any forethought, or make any provision, there is not even one. In their daily wants, their extravagances, and their expenditure, they are also unable to adapt themselves to circumstances and practise economy; (so that though) the present external ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... when at the height of his literary and social eclat in London, he married. In February of the following year he was separated from Lady Byron, and left England forever, pursued by the execrations of outraged respectability. In this chorus of abuse there was mingled a share of cant; but Byron got, on the whole, what he deserved. From Switzerland, where he spent a summer by Lake Leman, with the Shelleys; from Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, and Rome, scandalous reports of his intrigues and his wild debaucheries were ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... introduced it. Senator Wright was well selected for the job. For two years he had been groomed as the reformer who would introduce the State-saving Direct Primary Bill. So a railroad regulation measure introduced by Senator Wright might at least be calculated to bear the stamp of respectability. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... loves—all the romance and loveliness that enchant us—are merely accessory. But in "Parsifal" there is nothing superfluous, no rich and lovely embroidery on the dress of the idea to divert us from the idea itself—the idea is as nearly nude as our limited senses and our modern respectability permit. And the idea being what it is, it follows that the play, after the drama once commences, is not only immoral, but also dispiriting and boring, and, to my thinking, inconsequential and pointless. The first act, the exposition, is from beginning to end magnificent: ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... everything, my dear Father, to keep up your health and spirits. Come what may, the conveniences of life, independence, our personal respectability, and the exercise of the intellect and the affections, we are almost certain of retaining; and everything else is a mere superfluity, to be enjoyed, but not to be missed. But I ought to be ashamed of reading you a lecture on qualities ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... himself, and rose painfully. The shock had brought him to himself. He was no longer berserk. He was a middle-aged gentleman of high respectability who had been behaving in a ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... unlimited, and where the back door was left open all night. But about the banker's (he was also a churchwarden, and his wife never smiled at anything less than a joke by the bishop) there was an atmosphere of solid respectability that I felt would be comforting to my nature. My dear child, you will come across cynics who will sneer at respectability: don't you listen to them. Respectability is its own reward—and a very real and ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... ornament. But the Helmsley folk have realized the importance of white paint, and the window-frames, and even the strips of lead that hold the glass together, are picked out in this cheerful fashion. In the broad market-square the houses are large, but their gray respectability is broken by creepers and some pleasant spots of colour. The corner nearest to the church is particularly noticeable on account of a most picturesque gabled house, with a timber-framed upper floor—a style of construction exceedingly rare in these parts of Yorkshire. The old stone ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... turned to behold the Bow Street officer, who had stopped also and appeared to be lost in contemplation of the adjacent chimney pots. And as he stood thus, I was struck by his air of irreproachable respectability and pervading mildness; despite the formidable knotted stick beneath his arm, he seemed indeed to radiate benevolence from the soles of his stout boots to the crown of his ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... convey. When a bachelor decides on marriage, by running over a few pages of our work, he will, in half an hour, be able to select a desirable match; by applying at our office, and giving testimonials of his respectability, he will receive the lady's name and address; and he may then pursue his object with a calm tranquillity of mind, a settled determination of purpose, which are in themselves the heralds and pledges of success. Or, should he meet in society a lady who pleases his taste, before resigning himself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... no very strong Public Opinion up to that limit, but it existed to keep men in order. When the Government said that the Queen's Law must carry up to Bhamo and the Chinese border the order was given, and some men whose desire was to be ever a little in advance of the rush of Respectability flocked forward with the troops. These were the men who could never pass examinations, and would have been too pronounced in their ideas for the administration of bureau-worked Provinces. The Supreme Government stepped in as soon as ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... although the capital, has not a city municipality to give it respectability as such; hence, there is neither mayor nor council (city council I mean) to give character to any public occasion, but His Excellency the President, the Chief Executive of the nation, must always be dragged down from his reserved and elevated position, and made as common as a ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... "to devote so much of his unoccupied time as would be necessary to render waterproof his cabin, which was falling into pieces." Surely, if security of tenure and moderation of rent were alone necessary to ensure happiness, among the tenantry of Mr O'Connell, if any where, comfort and respectability ought to be visible; yet, if we are to credit "the Times commissioner," "on the estates of Daniel O'Connell are to be found the most wretched tenants that are to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... replied Mr. Brown, somewhat annoyed to think that a stockman should want to vouch for his respectability; but I looked at the matter in the light of a good joke, and, riding by the side of Day, I managed to discover the reasons for not wishing to appear before the farm house ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... man of established repute, a short, thick-set, red-faced, loud-voiced, clean-shaven man, with hair cut close to his head, whose calves and whose manner were the secret admiration of Muirtown. Quiet citizens of irreproachable respectability and religious orthodoxy regarded him with a pride which they would never confess; not because they would have spoken or acted as he did for a king's ransom, and not because they would have liked to stand in his shoes when he came to die—considering, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... France were then both at the outset of a new political era, sharply divided from that preceding. The amiable and decorous Louis XVI., with his lovely consort, had just ousted from Versailles the Du Barrys and the Maupeons. George III., a sovereign similar in youth and respectability of character, had a few years before in like manner improved the tone of the English court, and, after the first flush of welcome from his subjects, surprised and delighted to have an Englishman and a gentleman once more upon the throne, was getting over his early lessons ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... but not encumbered the room; in the centre a table looked all of hospitality and welcome that a table can. There was a great store of old fashioned elegance and comfort in Wych Hazel's home; no doubt of it; of old-fashioned state too, and old-time respectability; to which numberless old-time witnesses stood testifying on every hand, from the teapot, the fashion of which was a hundred years ancient, to the uncouth brass andirons in the fireplace. Mr. Falkirk came in as one to whom it ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... character whatsoever. A' this I thocht o' doin, I say; but, on reflection, I changed my mind, an' determined no to gie mysel ony such trouble, but just to let things tak their course, an' trust to my ain conduct, an' the weel-kent respectability o' my faither, for the guid opinion o' the warld. Anent the rumour o' oor bankruptcy, however, I thocht there could be nae harm in puttin in an advertisement or twa, contradictory o't; an' this was accordingly done, in the following ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... don’t intend to come in here by the front door as a matter of law,” said Larry. “Pickering’s merely using the sheriff to give respectability to his manoeuvers for those notes ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... and patched shoes if necessary, but do not pinch or economize on books. If you can not give your children an academic education you can place within their reach a few good books which will lift them above their surroundings, into respectability ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... It was the old, old story. Bills of long standing, threats of suits, letters from collecting agencies, red papers, blue, cream and straw-colored—how he hated them all! Suddenly he came upon a new letter, a square, thick, well addressed letter of unmistakable respectability. ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... which in some measure entitled him to speak out his opinions on life in general in the authoritative manner he generally used; but, of the two, he preferred consorting with younger men, to taking a sober stand of respectability with the elders of the place; and he perceived, without reasoning upon it, that the gay daring spirits were more desirous of his company when Sylvia was by his side than at any other time. One or two of these would saunter up to Haytersbank on a Sunday afternoon, and lounge ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was of the highest respectability: it had been developed at a very early period, and had been elaborated until it accounted well for the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies; its final name, "Ptolemaic theory," carried weight; and, having thus come from antiquity into the Christian ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... his own presence there, he had found the affair tedious, especially that last hour in the drawing-room. It was the sort of place that had always bored him even when he was young, governed by narrow, feminine standards, breathing a ponderous respectability from every curtain fold. Neither of the girls had been attractive. The elder, the small, pale one, was a prim, stiff little thing. The other was nothing but a gawky child; fine coloring—these Californians all had it—but with no charm or mystery. They were like the fruit, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... regard to this that her parents did not believe her statements and did nothing about it. The girl evidently was accustomed to telling falsehoods, although we could get no specific account of them. The parents were very anxious to avoid a scandal, for though they were poor they made much of their respectability . ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... according to our own. Have we gained nothing by the war? Let any man look at the degraded condition of the country before the war,—the scorn of the universe, the contempt of ourselves, and tell me if we have gained nothing by the war. What is our present situation? Respectability and character abroad; security and confidence at home. If we have not obtained, in the opinion of some, the full measure of retribution, our character and Constitution are placed on a solid basis, never ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of approval of the policy of secrecy it doubtless seemed necessary to make an appeal to the general public by editorial utterances, in journals supposed to be impartial and of high standing in other directions. In a New York daily paper which claims to be conducted with special regard for respectability and avoidance of unseemly sensationalism, there appeared, therefore, an editorial opposing all inquiry on the part of the legislature into the methods of animal experimentation. It is worth while to see how matters of history were placed before its readers by one of the most reputable ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... sat by the car window watching the smug, white farm-houses and big red barns of the middle west fly by, their dull respectability, their commonplace prosperity vaguely depressed him. What if he should be sentenced for life to walk up to his front door between two rows of whitewashed rocks, to live surrounded by a picket fence, and to die behind a pair of neat green blinds? But mostly his thoughts were a jumble of ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... interviews between the lovely tutor and her pupil. These were conducted with the same caution as before, and never, so far as could be observed, took place without the presence of the countess of Waldstetten, or some other third person of respectability. But the scenes of these meetings were no longer the scholar's library, or the chemist's laboratory;—the gardens, the groves, were resorted to for amusement, and parties of hunting and fishing, with evenings spent in the dance, seemed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... either entering or departing, poured over the broad flagstones of its marble colonnades. This concourse, although composed in some parts of the same class of people as that assembled before the palace, presented a certain appearance of respectability. Here and there—chequering the dusky monotony of masses of dirty tunics—might be discerned the refreshing vision of a clean robe, or the grateful indication of a handsome person. Little groups, removed as far as ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... to drive them away to make room for the merchants. There is a story told of an "Alley man" during the mania contriving to sell some rotten shares by bowing to Sir Isaac Goldsmid in the presence of his victim. Sir Isaac returned the bow, and the victim at once believed in the respectability of the gay deceiver. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... not, in the presence of his worship, vow and declare that you gave me that horse, and now d'ye talk of taking it back again? Let me tell you, madam, that such paltry thricks ill become a person of your years and respectability, and ought never to be played ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grisette simply an adventuress, graced by a hired mother to give her an air of respectability? No, there was the seal of simple honesty stamped upon her whole person; a care in the details of her simple toilet, which separated her from that venturous class. A wandering princess would not show such exactitude in her dress; she would betray herself by a ragged ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... So, like the man in the Old Testament, 'he turned and went away in a rage.' Many of us would like that there should be a little private door for us in consideration of our position or acquirements or respectability, or this, that, or the other thing. At any rate we are not to be classed in the same category with the poor and the ignorant and the sinful and the savage all over the world. But we are so classed. Do not you and the men in Patagonia ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Mr. Froude, in proposing to himself any such undertaking, fell into error as to the kind of audience he was likely to command, and as to the nature of the impression he was likely to make. The class of persons who listen to him is one of great intelligence and respectability, but it is a class to which the Irish are not in the habit of listening, and which has already formed as unfavorable opinions about the political character of the Irish as Mr. Froude could wish. He will be surrounded during his whole tour by a public ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... Someone was coming along the winding path through the wood. She grasped Columbus by the collar, for he had a disconcerting habit of barking round the legs of intruders if not wholly satisfied as to their respectability. The next moment a figure came in sight, and ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... city, in the face of the besieging army, if any troops could be obtained. Soldiers there were none; but there was the deepest sympathy for Harlem throughout its sister cities, Delft, Rotterdam, Gouda. A numerous mass of burghers, many of them persons of station, all people of respectability, volunteered to march to the rescue. The Prince highly disapproved of this miscellaneous army, whose steadfastness he could not trust. As a soldier, he knew that for such a momentous enterprise, enthusiasm could not ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... He was talking with a Mrs. G——, an Englishwoman, from the hospital at Podgoritza: she was trying to hustle him as one hustles the butcher who has belated the meat. The doctor had let up his efforts since his orgy of respectability in Scutari, and his beard and whiskers were enjoying a half-inch holiday from the razor. With him was a Slav-Hungarian, who recommended us to go home by Gussigne, Plav and Ipek, the best scenery in all Montenegro he said; he himself had ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... country round. He was like every other squire whom I remember in my native county, and I can remember scores of them. He read no books and tolerated the usual conventional breaches of the moral law, but was an intense worshipper of respectability, and hated a scandal. On one point he differed from his neighbours. He was a Whig and they were all Tories. I have said he read no books, and this, on the whole, is true, but nevertheless he did know something about the history of ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... and who knew real warfare, might, on occasion, be serviceable to Monseigneur." Philippe, who could take the tone of all varieties of sycophancy, became in the regions of the highest social life exactly what the position required him to be; just as at Issoudun, he had copied the respectability of Mignonnet. He had, moreover, a fine establishment and gave fetes and dinners; admitting none of his old friends to his house if he thought their position in life likely to compromise his future. He was pitiless to the companions of his former debauches, and curtly refused ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... a Cornish family of the greatest respectability and high antiquity—so say the county records, in which we have every reason to place the most unbounded confidence. The Tregellins have possessed the same estate for I do not know exactly how long; only I suppose it ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... been racking her brains for some way to eliminate the undistinguished Marguerite, to conjure through the very strength of her desire some approach to a proper servitor. If only they had ONE of those estimable beings in Cherry vale! A butler, preferably elderly, and "steeped in respectability" up to his port-wine nose; one who would hover around the table, adjusting this dish affectionately and straightening that, and who, whenever he left the room, left it with a velvet step and an almost inaudible sigh ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... he chose was one Catherine de Romanet, whose family was of great respectability but of small fortune. She is not described as possessing ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... thinks of travelling in any part of Cuba unarmed; even the negro wears his machete—and every man of respectability ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... duty," as he called it—meaning thereby release from the fulfilment of some business engagement subject to penalties affixed by our criminal code. He now draped himself in white linen, dark-coloured clothes, a tall hat, and such outward marks of respectability, if not station, going even so far as to invest in kid gloves and an "umbrellier," as he called that instrument. At first sight, but for his boots, Jim might almost have been mistaken for a real gentleman. About this period, too, he left off vulgar ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... himself, and tried to speak up to the old standard of respectability; but the effort was pitiful to see, had any one been by, who could have understood the pain it caused to restrain cries of ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... France is carried out according to the directions given in guide-books—the writers of which nurse the reader's respectability with the fondest care—will of course conclude that the best hotels in the wine districts are those in which the best wine of the country is to be had. This is an error. The wine in the larger hotels is almost invariably the 'wine ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... was, he did chuckle. "No, Edith; ladies don't," he said, significantly. (Such was the innocent respectability of 1903!) ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the length and breadth of Persia. Omar died in the height of his popularity, but shortly after his death the city of Naishapur became a temperance town. Even yet the younger Omar might have lived and sung at Naishapur had not a fanatical sect of Sufi women, taking advantage of the increasing respectability of the once jovial city, risen in a body against the house of Omar and literally razed it to the ground with the aid of hatchets, which were at that time the peculiar weapon of the sex and sect. It is said that the younger ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... garments, at any rate, and perhaps nobody would notice. She was only desirous that he should make a good impression on the Doctor. And all that could be done to that end was done, many friends contributing, by way of little presents, to the comfort and respectability of the invalid. "Here is a leather pouch," said one, "that I bought of a pedler the other day. I don't want it; but as you are going to travel, may be you can make use of it, Walker; take it, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... while here and there, in sheltered nooks, the solitary ones sipped their wine or beer. Everything, so far as we could see, was orderly and quiet, and we were told that the place was one of eminent respectability. It is only after witnessing the habits of the people, in their homes and places of popular resort, that one is prepared to appreciate the enormous consumption of beer, averaging four glasses per day to every man, woman, and child ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... undersized, ugly, starved looking, hard working, honest poor creatures: Liz and I would have half-murdered them if mother hadn't half-murdered us to keep our hands off them. They were the respectable ones. Well, what did they get by their respectability? I'll tell you. One of them worked in a whitelead factory twelve hours a day for nine shillings a week until she died of lead poisoning. She only expected to get her hands a little paralyzed; but she died. The ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... multitude applauded Oates and his confederates, hooted and pelted the witnesses who appeared on behalf of the accused, and shouted with joy when the verdict of Guilty was pronounced. It was in vain that the sufferers appealed to the respectability of their past lives: for the public mind was possessed with a belief that the more conscientious a Papist was, the more likely he must be to plot against a Protestant government. It was in vain that, just before the cart passed from under their feet, they resolutely affirmed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... also. But very many persons who are political Liberals are social Tories: they venerate the aristocracy; they batten daily upon the "Court Circular"; they cling to class distinctions in theory, and still more in practice; they strain towards "good society" and social conformity; their ideal is "respectability." Indeed, it appears to me that comparatively very few English people are free from some tincture of Toryism in either political or social sentiment, or both: one knows many Radicals, some Democrats, and even a few theoretic Republicans; but it by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... when that essentially modern creature, the English or American girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite inns as if into a drawing-room at home, the French painter owned himself defenceless; he submitted or he fled. His French respectability, quite as precise as ours, though covering different provinces of life, recoiled aghast before the innovation. But the girls were painters; there was nothing to be done; and Barbizon, when I last saw it and for the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were packed with the drift and refuse of a great City. For here the smug respectability of the shops were cast aside, and you were deep in the romance of traffic in merchandise fallen from its high estate—a huge welter and jumble of things arrested in their ignoble descent from the shops ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... old, going down the Ohio to the Mississippi and maintaining themselves by cutting wood for passing steamboats until disabled by malarial fever. Thomas took the lead in the juvenile prodigals' return to relatives and respectability, and was kindly received by his bachelor uncle. Since then he had worked in Cummins Jackson's mill and upon his farm as diligently as he sought to "get an education" in the "old field ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... conception of life-long continence as an ideal has also gone; at the best it is regarded as a mere matter of personal preference. And the conventional simulation of universal chastity, at the bidding of respectability, is coming to be regarded as a hindrance rather than a help to the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that he elaborated a formula of roundabout spoliation and general division, which he took from his Anarchist predecessors, and gave it a much needed, though rather transparent, cloak of scientific respectability. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... corresponding portraits of individuals: there is the family picture of the father and mother and the old servant of the timocratical man, and the outward respectability and inherent meanness of the oligarchical; the uncontrolled licence and freedom of the democrat, in which the young Alcibiades seems to be depicted, doing right or wrong as he pleases, and who at last, like the prodigal, goes into a far country (note here the play of language by which ...
— The Republic • Plato
... example how minute antiquarian research may shake our faith in the facts most pointedly averred by general history. It is remarkable also to observe how, in defending a system, which was probably at first adopted as a mere literary exercise, Mr. Walpole's doubts acquired, in his own eyes, the respectability of certainties, in which he could not brook controversy." Prose Works; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Ordinarily they would have bluffed it off, and laughingly declared they were no worse than other men. But the eyes of the Master were on them—kind eyes, patient always, but keen and sharp as a surgeon's knife; and measuring themselves up with the sinless Son of God, their pitiful little pile of respectability fell into irreparable ruin. They forgot all about the woman and her sin as they saw their own miserable sin-eaten, souls, and they slid out noiselessly. When they were gone Christ asked the woman ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... I hired a man and a donkey. The donkey was my passport to respectability, and I was more comfortable too, being able to take more bedding with me. I was warned against going to Ch'ao Yang, sixty miles, the roads being represented as unsafe; but I went and found no trouble, though there was a severe ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... people of eminent respectability, and were much distressed at the actions of their son, from whom they had expected so much. He had begun life with bright prospects, had entered into business with his own capital, but had failed after a short career, owing to his extravagant habits and his inattention to ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... shocked. "No, wife, you misjudge me. It is a rough world, and we must take queer cuts to fortune, but once I get there, respectability for me and a seat in the village church, provided, of course, that it is orthodox. I know that you come of the people, and your instincts are of the people, but I can never forget that my grandfather was a gentleman," ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... distinctly unwelcome encounter. The mare had already commenced a sixfold scrutiny with nostrils, eyes and daintily-pricked ears; one ear made hurried little backward movements to hear what Elaine was saying about the eminent niceness and respectability of the approaching caravan, but even Elaine felt that she would be unable satisfactorily to explain the elephants and camels that would certainly form part of the procession. To turn back would seem rather craven, and the mare might take ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... by what does not affect themselves with a laugh or a shrug of indifference; he only must stay and labor till the wrong thing is put right. And how often had he been jeered at by the vulgar of his time; how Common-Sense had pointed the finger of scorn at him; how Respectability had called him crazed! John Brown at Harper's Ferry is only a ridiculous old fool; his effort is absurd; even gentlemen in the North feel an "intellectual satisfaction" that he is hanged, because of his "preposterous ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the fifty-eight acre farm for fifty years. Two generations had been bred, if not born, on the holding at Ballinascarthy, just beyond the bridge. They had been decent people. They had paid their rent, and if his sisters had received good portions it was no more than their due, considering the respectability of their family. Was he, after his people had held the land for fifty years, to have it "raised on him" to nearly double Griffith's valuation? Was it just to increase the rent because his father and mother were dead? All these ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... so he kept papers on sale that would help enlighten the workers. Among these were the "Seattle Union Record," "The Industrial Worker" and "Solidarity." To put it plainly, Tom was a thorn in the side of the local respectability because of his modest efforts to make people thing. And his doom ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... not expect to gain a princely fortune; he expects to earn a comfortable subsistence, and, at the same time, accumulate enough to shelter him in a rainy day, and be enabled to walk life's busy stage in comfort and respectability, and, as occasion may demand, relieve the wants of his less ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... thus suffered under these contending feelings, Magdalen, the widow of the slaughtered man, entered the court, wrapt in a deep mourning veil, and followed and supported by five or six women of good (that is, of respectability) dressed in the same melancholy attire. One of her attendants held an infant in her arms, the last pledge of poor Oliver's nuptial affections. Another led a little tottering creature of two years, or thereabouts, which looked with wonder and fear, sometimes ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... private capital put him beyond fear of reverses. Profoundly conscious of social limits, he felt it a subject for gratitude that there was nothing to be ashamed of in his calling, which he might fairly regard as a profession, and he nursed this sense of respectability as much on his daughter's behalf as on his own. Rose was an only child; her mother had been dead for years; her kinsfolk on both sides laid claim to the title of gentlefolk, but supported it on the narrowest margin of independence. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... freer air, amid broader ways, in a district of dwelling-houses only; the roads seem abandoned to milkmen, cat's-meat vendors, and costermongers. Here will be found streets in which every window has its card advertising lodgings: others claim a higher respectability, the houses retreating behind patches of garden-ground, and occasionally showing plastered pillars and a balcony. The change is from undisguised struggle for subsistence to mean and spirit-broken leisure; hither retreat the better-paid of the great slave-army when they are free ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... ill-furnished cottage which they had erected with their own hands when they first landed, and although they sold the finest silks and brocades to the wives and daughters of the other wealthy settlers, they themselves wore only the plainest and most sombre fabrics that consisted with respectability. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... confined, smoothshaven lawns. Sagging, slipping, eager-to-keep-up-appearances but fighting-a-losing-game lawns. Ragged, weedy, dissolute lawns. Halfbare, repulsively crippled, hummocky lawns. Bright lawns, insistent on former respectability and trimness; yellow and gray lawns, touched with the craziness of age, quite beyond all interest in looks, content to doze easily in the sun. If Miss Francis' mixture was on the upandup and she hadnt introduced a perfectly unreasonable ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the business of the Military Secretary's Department. The M.S. Department holds tenaciously to the dogma that maladministration is the child of precipitancy and that deliberation stamps official procedure with the hall-mark of respectability. In later stages of the war one never was gazetted to an appointment until after one had passed on to the next one. But a gunner "dug-out," Colonel "Bill" Elliot, had been roped into the Department on mobilization, having been similarly roped ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... sacred Word has led people into the disgraceful fanaticism of promiscuous kissing. Such is not a kiss of love, but a kiss of lust. Everything done in the order of the kingdom of heaven is done in the perfection of decency and respectability. How natural for the fond husband to embrace and kiss the beloved wife, and the devoted mother her child, the brother his sister, all because love exists consistent with natural relation. But the strongest tie of love that binds hearts ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... prosperity and happiness of the community. That the different governors have been allowed to prosecute this system without opposition for so many years, could only have arisen from the peculiar constitution of this colony; but its population has now attained a degree of consequence and respectability, which will not much longer tamely permit such an unprecedented deviation from all constitutional authority; and the best way to obviate the unpleasant circumstances of the contest, to which a continuance of the present system must shortly ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... recruits coming daily. The avarice and extravagance of the Court pressed upon the great stratum of middle life, which in time bore down upon the lower sphere with crushing weight, while many of its numbers, weary of the eternal struggle, relaxed their hold on respectability and fell into the pit of crime and moral death. The inhabitants of this realm presented a picture of ferocity and despair, which must necessarily prove a frightful element in a revolution. The social cellar was only waiting for the signal when its ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... although the inveterate hunter will encounter a surfeit of Barmecides' feasts. Nearly every book-hunter has been more or less of a bookstaller, and the custom is more than tinctured with the odour of respectability by the fact that Roxburghe's famous Duke, Lord Macaulay the historian, and Mr. Gladstone the omnivorous, have been inveterate grubbers among the bookstalls. Macaulay was not very communicative to booksellers, and when ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... see!" he said. "Aren't I a great hand at restoring you to respectability? Stand up! There, you look as ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Far on in middle age, when men begin to lie down with the bestial goddesses, Comfort and Respectability, the strings of his nature still sounded as high a note as a young man's. He loved the harsh voice of duty like a call to battle. He loved courage, enterprise, brave natures, a brave word, an ugly virtue; everything that lifts ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in which the priestly and military professions were held in Egypt placed them far above the rest of the community; but the other classes had also their degrees of consequence, and individuals enjoyed a position and importance in proportion to their respectability, their talents, or ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... from these he received both pecuniary aid and the promise of future support. Through their friendly offices, his two sons, who had been sent out by a generous friend, were placed in situations of respectability and emolument. But the thoughts of the poet himself were directed towards Britain. He sailed from Jamaica, with a thousand plans and schemes hovering in his mind, equally vague and indefinite as had been ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... difficulty relative to copyright would be removed; but this course of operation would be in direct opposition to the views of publishers who advocate this treaty on the ground that it would add to "the security and respectability of the trade." They would prefer to pay for the copyright of every foreign book, because it would bring with it monopoly prices and monopoly profits, both of which would need to be paid by the consumers of books. To ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... describes the stuffy little room— Vulgar flat smooth respectability: Not so the burst of landscape surging in, Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair Is, plain enough, the younger personage Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft The sash, spreads wide and fastens back to wall Shutter and shutter, shows you England's ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... person could attend to, and not enough to support two families. While a citizen of St. Louis and engaged in the real estate agency business, I was a candidate for the office of county engineer, an office of respectability and emolument which would have been very acceptable to me at that time. The incumbent was appointed by the county court, which consisted of five members. My opponent had the advantage of birth over me ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... across the world rough men call me Slue-Foot. Perhaps my deformity has reacted upon my soul and twisted that. Perhaps if my countenance had been homely and rugged I would have walked the beaten paths of respectability. But the two together!" ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... speeches. Preachers forgot their calling; instead of preaching love, they advocated hatred. The German saloon, being lowly and harmless, must go. In their stead came the mirrored bar with its greater influence for the spread of intemperance but clothed with more respectability outwardly. Public officials were embarrassed, cajoled and threatened. The malcontent, the meddler, the demagogue, had injected their baneful innovations into ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... he has been promoted!' said the Darning-needle. 'I remain here; I am too fine. But that is my pride, which is a sign of respectability!' And she sat there very proudly, thinking ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... "the working class" were few and far between, there entered by hundreds people who looked as if they were the responsible owners of snug little businesses in the provision, stationery, or "general" line. An air of profound respectability, combined with the enjoyment of ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... might be soft in her affections but she never swerved from her duty as she saw it. Alexina was a darling wayward child, who only needed a firm hand to guide her along that proud secluded old avenue of the city's elect, until she had ambled safely to established respectability ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... anybody who was; she has simply been reared with the notion that 'people' always have mutton once a week. What, have you never noticed that with 'people,' to eat mutton once a week is a sort of guarantee of respectability? I do not refer to chops of course, which are not wholly inconsistent with depravity. But the ability to eat mutton in its roasted form, by some odd law of nature, connotes the habit of paying your pew-rent regularly and of changing your ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... not fit for a child like that to go alone so late,' said Mr. White, who perhaps had imbibed Italian notions of the respectability of an escort. 'I will walk down ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... long used to pen-holding, had an odd habit of standing off on end. I observed that they always removed or settled their hats with both hands, and wore watches, with short gold chains of a substantial and ancient pattern. Theirs was the affectation of respectability;—if indeed there be ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... is a self-made man. By his unaided energies he surmounted the difficulties that stood in the way of his advancement, and has achieved distinction by a career of great usefulness. His father was a man of high respectability, and most excellent character. He was a farmer in moderate circumstances, and being well advanced in life, and declining in health, when his youngest son, the tenth of twelve children, determined to acquire a liberal education, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... rattle of the bones, and, occasionally, the curses, not loud but deep, which broke in upon the repose of the long nights at Newton-le-Moor. She ceased to exert herself to regulate the expenditure of the house, to preserve its respectability, to wipe out the signs of its master's ruin. Old Miles might strive to keep up appearances, but his mistress no longer aided and abetted him. It had become a matter of indifference to Mrs. Gervase whether the dragged ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the home of honorable families, extolled for respectability almost to affectation, now learned the disorderly ways of noisy cafes, the luxury of champagne suppers, in over-decorated restaurants, became intimately acquainted with the theaters—gaining doubtful introductions to expensive mistresses. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... masters. The conception of Mendoza Limited I trace back to a certain West Indian colonial secretary, who, at a period when he and I and Mr Sidney Webb were sowing our political wild oats as a sort of Fabian Three Musketeers, without any prevision of the surprising respectability of the crop that followed, recommended Webb, the encyclopedic and inexhaustible, to form himself into a company for the benefit of the shareholders. Octavius I take over unaltered from Mozart; and I hereby authorize any actor who impersonates him, to sing "Dalla sua ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... a great show of black cattle—I mean of ministers; the narrowness of their stipends here obliges many of them to enlarge their incomes by taking farms and grazing cattle. This, in my opinion, diminishes their respectability, nor can the farmer be supposed to entertain any great reverence for the ghostly advice of a pastor (they literally deserve the epithet) who perhaps the day before overreached him in a bargain. I would not have you to suppose there are no exceptions to this ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... respectability are of the passive order, whereas to manage Aunt Jane demands aggressive and continuous action. Hence the bolt from the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... the difference of an l. What I chiefly complain of, however, is that the London editor prefaced my paper with these words:—"The following is an article communicated to the Columbian Magazine, a journal of respectability and influence in the United States, by Mr. Edgar A. Poe. It ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... forego the occasion to urge its importance to the credit of the Government in a financial point of view. The great necessity of resorting to every proper and becoming expedient in order to place the Treasury on a footing of the highest respectability is entirely obvious. The credit of the Government may be regarded as the very soul of the Government itself—a principle of vitality without which all its movements are languid and all its operations embarrassed. In this ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... soliciting a peace and while awaiting the decision. The sincerity with which a peace will be observed, depends much, Scipio, on the person by whom it is sought. Your senate, as I hear, refused to grant a peace in some measure because the deputies were deficient in respectability. It is I, Hannibal, who now solicit peace; who would neither ask for it unless I believed it expedient, nor will I fail to observe it for the same reason of expedience on account of which I have solicited it. And in the same manner as I, because the war was commenced ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... these peculiar qualities have almost, though not altogether, disappeared. Probably conversation has suffered a like change; and we may ascribe it generally to a lowering of the social temperature, to the habits of reserve, respectability, and conventional self-restraint that in these days govern so largely the intercourse of men. Something may be due to cautious expurgation of passages which tell against the writer, or might offend modern taste; yet in other respects contemporary editors have ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... by turns in us. The harmless spark of electricity that greets the touch of one's hand on a metal knob on a winter's day is one with the bolt of lightning that wrecks a giant oak. The selfish impulse, the narrow prejudice, the ignorant suspicion, the callous indifference, the self-satisfied respectability, which frequently dominate us and determine our decisions, are one with that cruel combination of motives which drove the nails in the hands and feet of the Son of God. Still further, the suffering of ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... my son; for I have reasoned with him. His grief is neither for thy deeds nor what is said of thee, but for some words thrown at him by the English missionary. He set such store by his respectability and the esteem in which the Franks all held him, that now, in his humiliation, none but Allah ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the result is astounding. Yet even as we catch our breath we realise that her remarks were probably justified. It is hard for us moderns to remember how crudely hideous were the sins which she faced. In these days, when we are all reduced to one apparent level of moral respectability, and great saintliness and dramatic guilt are alike seldom conspicuous, we forget the violent contrasts of the middle ages. Pure "Religious," striving after the exalted perfection enjoined by the Counsels, moved habitually among moral atrocities, and bold vigour of speech ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... red house, in one of the villages of New England, lived the heroine of our story. She had every advantage of rank and wealth, for her father was a deacon of the church, and owned sheep, and oxen, and exceeding much substance. There was an appearance of respectability and opulence about all the demesnes. The house stood almost concealed amid a forest of apple trees, in spring blushing with blossoms, and in autumn golden with fruit. And near by might be seen the garden, surrounded by a red ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with years and respectability, stood well back from the river, to whose brink the smooth, green lawn swept in scarcely perceptible undulation. The river here was broad, almost resembling an arm of the sea it was moving languidly to join. There was no haste about it, and no fret of ever active current; ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... saved you from the distress, which Sir William must every day feel, in knowing that his excellent wife sold her jewels to get a house for him; whilst his own relations, great as they are in the foolish world's eye, would have left a man of his respectability and age, to have lodged in the streets. Did the Duke, or any of them, give him ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... Roland, an austere philosopher, of an ancient family, to whom Sophie had often referred. Manon admired his intellect and his respectability; and when, after some two or three years, he made an offer of marriage, she was ready to accept; but M. Philipon bluntly and insolently refused his consent, through a strong personal dislike which he had conceived for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various |
