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More "Improper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would seem to have been as jovial and sociable as a club-room. The present marshal, not liking the arrangements, removed all the Federal prisoners to the Tombs, where they could be kept more securely and excluded from seeing improper visitors. The men who were engaged in the slave-trade were in the habit of visiting their friends in 'Eldridge Street,' and holding regular carousals. They were permitted to visit there, it is said, at late hours in the evening, and as early as seven o'clock in the morning. A man residing ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... improper to anticipate upon the voyage so far as to state what was the result of keeping in the parallel of 37 deg., in the month of November. From the Cape of Good Hope to the island Amsterdam, the winds were never so strong ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... disrespectful, pert, saucy, impertinent, impudent, insolent. Importance, consequence, moment. Impostor, pretender, charlatan, masquerader, mountebank, deceiver, humbug, cheat, quack, shyster, empiric. Imprison, incarcerate, immure. Improper, indecent, indecorous, unseemly, unbecoming, indelicate. Impure, tainted, contaminated, polluted, defiled, vitiated. Inborn, innate, inbred, congenital. Incite, instigate, stimulate, impel, arouse, goad, spur, promote. Inclose, surround, encircle, circumscribe, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Governor, now addressing me, "it would be improper for me to indicate what course I shall pursue in regard to it if it should come to me for my signature. Yet I may go so far as to say that the defect it seeks to remedy seems to me a real one. Come in and see ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Challenged, I would reiterate it word for word, if I knew I should go from this pulpit to my grave. And I dare any Christian to draw from what I have written, or from what I have said to-day, license for improper conformity to the world. If you do so, depend on it, you and not I will be condemned. And I rejoice especially to-day, in having assumed this position; because I have never had so good ground from which to counsel you as to your intercourse with the world of pleasure. If I ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... Law the Almighty Himself ordained that lighted chandeliers should adorn the tabernacle.(428) Assuredly, that cannot be improper in the New Dispensation which ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... it can be persuaded to pour smoothly like liquid, and not to look like a streaked and broken off slice of dough. In days when envelopes were unknown, all letters had to be sealed, hence when envelopes were made, the idea obtained that it was improper to use both gum-arabic and wax. Strictly speaking this may be true, but since all envelopes have mucilage, it would be unreasonable to demand that those who like to use sealing wax have ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... materials as to mislead the reader in respect to the real owner of any one of them: for, in the statistical view of life and manners which I occasionally present, my clerical profession has taught me how extremely improper it would be, by any allusion, however slight, to give any uneasiness, however trivial, to any individual, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... any right in the room, nor in cadet barracks, for that matter. Prescott's first swift conclusion was that some scoundrel was there for wholly improper purposes. ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... the execution of this design, it may not be improper to cast our eyes backward on the earliest ages of European discoveries, and take a slight view of the first and most distinguished adventurers to the western world. This will serve to introduce future occurrences, and contribute towards ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... nomination. They go to the election itself to find an official ballot with two machine candidates for each office, and no hope of electing, even were it possible to nominate, a third. In the old days, when they discovered that an improper candidate had been nominated, on the very eve of election they could arouse themselves and defeat him; under all these complicated systems it is too late. One necessity for such legislation, however, arises from the Australian ballot itself; when that ballot carries party designations, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... petitioner journeyed towards his hotel, your petitioner soliloquized thus: 'Senator W—— is evidently afraid of Justice ——, with whom I have had a difficulty, and he possesses neither the manly independence of a freeman, nor moral nor physical courage, and he is, therefore, an improper person (possibly infamous) for such a high and responsible position, and my rights as a citizen are not safe in the keeping of such a poltroon and conniving attorney, and he is probably disqualified to hold the high and responsible office of Senator ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... will and discretion of the heirs of the family.' Obstacles, however, occurred in carrying out these directions, principally on account of the difficulty of access to the library, and the unsuitableness of the room in which it was deposited, it being described as 'a narrow little room, damp, and improper for preserving the books and papers.' An agreement was therefore made, by virtue of an Act of Parliament (5 Anne, cap. 30), with Sir John Cotton, grandson of the Sir John Cotton who died in 1702, for the purchase of the inheritance of the house where the library was ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... management of their money transactions. But, whilst the Twelve, on this occasion, appealed to the suffrages of the Brotherhood, they reserved to themselves the right of confirming the election; and they might, by withholding ordination, have refused to fiat an improper appointment. Happily no such difficulty occurred. In compliance with the instructions addressed to them, the multitude chose seven of their number "whom they set before the apostles, and, when they had prayed, they laid ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Western people apparently were centered in the south-flowing Mississippi; they seemed to have at the time little in common with the East. So long as Spain held the mouth of the river, many Western leaders thought it not improper that the West should ally itself with that power; when our government finally purchased the Spanish claim, the Western men had no further complaint. See Roosevelt's treatment of the Spanish conspiracy, in his Winning of the West, III., ch. iii.—R. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... point of guessing it, but you know no word that fits this answer, Madame Deschars not being likely to have allowed anything improper. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... whole generations; and there are tens of thousands of fathers and mothers who could hold up the garment of their slain boy, truthfully exclaiming, "It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him." There has, in all ages and climes, been a tendency to the improper use of stimulants. Noah took to strong drink. By this vice, Alexander the Conqueror was conquered. The Romans at their feasts fell off their seats with intoxication. Four hundred millions of our race are opium-eaters. India, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... person's, where there was a little too much of that sort of flippant wit, or rather smartness, which becomes the parochial Joe Miller of boards and offices. You must not be grave, because it might lead to improper discussions; and to laugh without a joke is a hard task. Your professed wags are treasures to this species of company. Gil Blas was right in censuring the literary society of his friend Fabricio; but nevertheless one or two ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... many sweet things to one another, talked about the future, and told each other our inmost thoughts; and I was undoubtedly truly in love, for not a single improper fancy rose in my mind in the presence of my dear who loved me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... What are the results of failing to take the proper camera distance, having improper light and allowing the ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... difficulty, has caused more disputes both among antient and modern philosophers, than this concerning the efficacy of causes, or that quality which makes them be followed by their effects. But before they entered upon these disputes, methinks it would not have been improper to have examined what idea we have of that efficacy, which is the subject of the controversy. This is what I find principally wanting in their reasonings, and what I shall here ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Iambic; and with us, is Blank Verse, or the Measure of Verse kept exactly, without rhyme. These numbers, therefore, are fittest for a Play: the others [i.e., Rhymed Verse] for a paper of Verses, or a Poem [p. 566]. Blank Verse being as much below them, as Rhyme is improper for the Drama: and, if it be objected that neither are Blank Verses made ex tempore; yet, as nearest Nature, they ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... because he is not nasty, but quite the exact opposite when not irritated. And we could not think it ungentlemanly of him to say we were like jam, because, as Alice says, jam is very nice indeed—only not on furniture and improper places like that. My father said, 'Perhaps they had better go to boarding-school.' And that was awful, because we know Father disapproves of boarding-schools. And he looked at us and said, 'I ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... high priest made. But it does not seem to me to be necessary to set down the names of the seventy [two] elders who were sent by Eleazar, and carried the law, which yet were subjoined at the end of the epistle. However, I thought it not improper to give an account of those very valuable and artificially contrived vessels which the king sent to God, that all may see how great a regard the king had for God; for the king allowed a vast deal of expenses for these vessels, and came often to the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... said the other, "an improper use of it is. You should be more cautious, John, in using it, for the punishment of any animal barring a horse. I have heard, by the way, many complaints ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... required in good English, clear and definite, like the questions. Pupils who say, "An improper fraction is 'where' the numerator is greater than the denominator"; "A compound sentence is 'when' it has two or more independent clauses," should be led to restate their answers in clear ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... "No, Effi, nothing improper. Certainly not in the presence of your mother, for I know you so well. You are a fantastic little person, you like nothing better than to paint fanciful pictures of the future, and the richer their ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... by Lieutenant Cushing contained but fifty pounds of powder; but it did its work to a charm. There was no chance of its failing in his hands. The entire arrangement is exceedingly ingenious, and it would be manifestly improper ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... dear friend, Dr. Holland, and dedicated his last poem to him. This expression, "I shall CULTIVATE you," we hear constantly, and it strikes me as oddly as our Western "BEING RAISED." Indeed, I hear improper Anglicisms constantly, and they have nearly as many as we have. The upper classes, here, however, do SPEAK English so roundly and fully, giving every LETTER its due, that ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... of an advocate, though he acquired infinite honour by it, did not however please him. The reasons of his dislike we have in a letter to Daniel Heinsius, dated July 21, 1603. "Besides that law-suits are improper for a peaceable man, what doth he derive from them? They procure him hatred from those against whom he pleads, small acknowledgments from his clients, and not much honour with the Public. Add to this, that the time spent in things so little agreeable, might be employed ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... not from any lower motive. Thus the proper motive of Fortitude is the conviction that death is an evil, the risk of which is to be left out of count as a circumstance relatively inconsiderable, when there is question of the defence of certain interests dearer to a good man than life. An improper motive would be anger, which, however useful as an accessory, by itself is not an intellectual motive at all, and therefore no motive of virtue. The recklessness of an angry man is not Fortitude. It is not Fortitude to be ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... and daughters would not then be misbehaving themselves in public. "It was not without painful emotions of shame," said this outraged Roman gentleman, "that I just now made my way to the Forum through a herd of women. Our ancestors thought it improper that women should transact any private business without a director. We, it seems, suffer them to interfere in the management of state affairs, and to intrude into the general assemblies. Had I not been ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... is suggested as not improper that in constructing a loyal State government in any State the name of the State, the boundary, the subdivisions, the constitution, and the general code of laws as before the rebellion be maintained, subject only to the modifications made necessary by the conditions hereinbefore ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... rehearsal without loss of time. I was so much intoxicated with this encouragement, that I overlooked the mysterious conduct of Mr. Marmozet, and attended the manager at the time appointed, when, to my infinite confusion, he pronounced my play improper for the stage, and rejected it accordingly. As soon as I could recollect myself from the disorder into which this unexpected refusal had thrown me, I expressed a desire of hearing his objections, which were so groundless, indistinct, and unintelligible, that ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... bounds of his authority, was determined to take a peep into the historical chest, where he knew he should find all his actions recorded. Having made use of a variety of arguments, in order to convince the two censors that there could be nothing improper in the step he was about to take, as, among other things, he assured them, he was actuated with the desire only of being made acquainted with his greatest faults, as the first step to amendment, one of these gentlemen is said to have answered ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... patterns of a kaleidoscope. To all these mental phenomena, or states of our consciousness,[18] Descartes gave the name of "thoughts,"[19] while Locke and Berkeley termed them "ideas." Hume, regarding this as an improper use of the word "idea," for which he proposes another employment, gives the general name of "perceptions" to all states of consciousness. Thus, whatever other signification we may see reason to attach to the word "mind," it is certain that it is a name which ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... use a dibble for transplanting. With this tool it is so easy to make a hole, and to press the soil against the plant dropped in that hole! But I believe that many of the failures in transplanting result from the improper use of this tool. Unless the dibble be properly operated the plant may be left suspended in a hole, the sides of which are more or less hard and impervious to the tiny, tender rootlets that strive to penetrate them. From my own observation of the use of this ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... Europe. And so the Athenians were the Frenchmen of Greece. Whilst they spent their "leisure time"[36] in the place of public resort, the porticoes and groves, "hearing and telling the latest news" (no undignified or improper mode of recreation in a city where newspapers were unknown), whilst they are condemned as "garrulous," "frivolous," "full of curiosity," and "restlessly fond of novelties," we must insist that a love of study, of patient thought and profound ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... still prevail to a great extent. Even now, perhaps, one-half of them die before they reach their second year. The poor little things are often carried about with their bare heads exposed to the scorching rays of a vertical sun. Exposure to the night-damps also, and above all stuffing them with improper food, are evils which often make us wonder that the mortality among them is not greater than it is. The Samoans were always fond of their children, and would have done anything for them when ill; but, with the exception of external applications for skin diseases, they had no proper remedies ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... a quarrel at Ischl between King Edward VII and the Emperor Franz Josef. It was said that King Edward had rudely walked out of the Royal box at the theatre where he was the Emperor's guest, in the middle of the performance, and had given as an excuse that the performance was improper. The consular youths refused to believe any play could be too highly flavoured for the King of England, judging by pieces which they knew he had witnessed, and declared there had been a political quarrel. This was later officially denied. In any: case the result was the same—friction ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... Adelle he had always been, if not exactly a parent, at least an older brother or uncle,—in some category of relationship other than that of young love. That he should thus hastily be professing ardent sentiments towards her seemed a trifle improper. Beneath these superficial feelings there were, of course, some deeper ones;—for instance, a slight sense of humor in his clumsy management and a feeling of gratification that at last the unknown had arrived. And a something else not wholly ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... greatly. Oh! says I, that we had but a post here as we have in England; there we can communicate our thoughts at a distance to each other without any trouble, and for little charge! What a country is this to live in! and what an improper creature am I to live in it! Had I but the graundee, I would have found her out by this time, be she where she would; but, whilst every one about me can pass, repass, and act as they please, I am fixed here like one of my trees, bound to the spot, or, upon removal, to die in the attempt. Alas! why ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... frequently and very erroneously used in the sense of rest, remainder. It properly means the excess of one thing over another, and in this sense and in no other should it be used. Hence it is improper to talk about the balance of the edition, of the evening, of the money, of the toasts, of the men, etc. In such cases we should say the ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... Majesty's ships, Admiral Palmquist was also directed to invite me and the captains of the squadron to dinner on this day, being the anniversary of the King's birth-day. Knowing that government have not as yet acknowledged the present sovereign, it would have been improper for me to appear on so public an occasion: I accepted the invitation, intending to excuse myself as I might find necessary. On Baron Palmquist returning my visit yesterday he noticed it was the anniversary of his sovereign's birth-day. ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... disgrace the government." Mr. Jefferson's opinion of the treaty is well known from his rhetorical letter to Rutledge, which, in two or three lines, contains the adjectives, unnecessary, impolitic, dangerous, dishonorable, disadvantageous, humiliating, disgraceful, improper, monarchical, impeachable. The Mazzei letter, written not long after the ratification, displays ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... religious duty incumbent upon all. Among Mohammedan people generally it is still considered a duty. Hebrew celibacy was unheard of, and they have a proverb, 'He who has no wife is no man.' In Egypt it is improper and even disreputable for a man to abstain from marriage when there is no just impediment. For an adult to die unmarried is regarded as a deplorable misfortune by the Chinese, and among the Hindus of the present day a man who remains single ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... very poor customers, these gentlemen have tried to be still more economical. Under pretence of having caught the mocha of the establishment in improper intercourse with chicory, they have brought a lamp with spirits-of-wine, and make their own coffee, sweetening it with their own sugar; all of which is an insult ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... sleeper woke with a quick start, rubbed his eyes, looked round, and fixed them upon the policeman so haughtily that that discriminating functionary probably thought that it was not from sheer necessity that so improper a couch had been selected, and with an air of greater respect he said, "You have been drinking, young man,—can you ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Effingham, one who has seen as much of society as you, can scarcely ask that question seriously. I do not think I have done so improper a thing, since I was fifteen; and, dear me! dear me! how to escape is the question. You have permitted your partner to go, and I do not see a gentleman of my acquaintance near us, to give ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... caulking of fittings, while done the same as a straight pipe, is far more difficult. The improper making of these joints is the cause of many leaks. A long sweep fitting is caulked without a great deal of difficulty. If a short bend fitting is used, the matter of caulking is difficult. The fitting is so short that it is ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... do it, right or wrong, proper or improper, although there is no impropriety in it. Improper becomes proper ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... clavicle, where the weight of the arm carries the shoulder downwards, forwards, and medially. After the break has taken place and the force has ceased to act, displacement may be produced by rough handling on the part of those who render first aid, the careless or improper application of splints or bandages, or by the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... and advantage of a great portion of our suffering fellow creatures, to be colonized; but while we thus express our approbation of a measure laudable in its purposes, and beneficial in its designs, it may not be improper in us to say, that we prefer being colonized in the most remote corner of the land of our nativity, to being exiled to a foreign country—and whereas the president and board of managers of the said Society have been pleased to leave it to the entire discretion ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Rosecrans's reply were both characteristic of the men. Halleck, fresh from the results of a large law practice in California—principally devoted to the establishment of the validity of land grants in favor of his clients, in the success of which large contingent fees were gained—saw nothing improper in such an offer to an officer of sufficient ability and standing to be in command of one of the armies of the United States. With Rosecrans, all the honest, generous impulses of a high-principled, honorable gentleman, who had imperiled his life on many a battlefield, fighting solely ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... could rely upon the credit of public statements, that in another country the Parliament had been told of the absolute determination of His Majesty to guarantee this loan. This was a language which he considered as very unbecoming, when addressed to the representatives of the nation, and as highly improper in Ministers, who were of course responsible for whatever proceeded from the Throne. Before such a determination had been expressed, he should have wished to have had something also like a positive determination from His Imperial Majesty to make the exertions which were to be the conditions ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... time and change of circumstances have wrought a remarkable alteration in the appearance of the poor widow, it may not be improper to notice it here. When first brought under consideration, she was a miserable and forlorn object; squalid in attire, haggard in looks, and emaciated in frame. Now, she was the very reverse of all this. Her dress, it has just been said, was neatness and simplicity itself. Her figure, though ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... than Canajoharie. And would you believe it, the consent being forthcoming, she came back and said she wouldn't go—absolutely declined! She rested on the fine point in ethics that, while it was not improper to tell the fib, it would be highly sinful to take advantage of it! So we strolled over the campus and she showed me the sights, while those funeral beasts champed their bits at so much per hour. She was a Connecticut girl, and I made a note ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... off their neckcloths or coats lest they should catch cold, and then kept them for dinner. After the meal they were allowed to go into the open and play, and to walk about in the house of their grandparents, or do whatever else they cared to, provided it was not improper or forbidden. The dyer, who always ate with them, questioned them about school and impressed upon them what they ought to learn. In the afternoon, they were urged by their grandmother to depart even before it was time, so that they should ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... the Use of SPECTACLES adapted to suit every variety of Vision by means of SMEE'S OPTOMETER, which effectually prevents Injury to the Eyes from the Selection of Improper Glasses, and is extensively ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... many flights of sparrows let loose in this opera, that it is feared the house will never get rid of them, and that in other plays they may make their entrance in very wrong and improper scenes, so as to be seen flying in a lady's bedchamber, or perching upon a king's throne; besides the inconvenience which the heads of the audience may sometimes suffer for them. I am credibly informed that there was once a design of casting into an opera the story of Whittington and his Cat, and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... probable that the judiciary law of Gracchus imposed the new class of judices directly on the civil courts. The judex of private law still retained his character of an arbitrator appointed by the consent of the parties, and it would have been improper to restrict this choice to a class defined by statute. But the practical monopoly of jurisdiction in important cases, which senators seem to have acquired, was henceforth broken through, and the judex in civil suits was sometimes taken from the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... to become some young lady's husband. It meant that the "lecture" of this great female philosopher had produced its effect,—that Miss Redbud had waked to a consciousness of the fact, that she was a "young lady," and that her demeanor toward Verty was improper. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... if the Inquest were to pass against the plaintiff, he who avowed the taking in the common pasture would have the return of the beasts and the amends, and not the lord of the pasture, and that would be improper. But this does not hold good where the King is the lord of the common pasture, and several persons holding of him in socage have common, because in that case anyone having common may avow a good distress. The reason is because the King ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... difficulty arose. Mrs. Captain Waters declared it would be decidedly improper for two ladies to ride alone. The remedy was obvious. Perhaps young Mr. Tuggs would be gallant enough to ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... own person, but was fined one mana of silver, and for knocking out the tooth of such a man he was fined one-third of a mana. If two members of the same class were engaged in a quarrel, and one of them made a peculiarly improper assault upon the other, the assailant was only fined, the fine being larger if the quarrel was between members of the upper class. But if such an assault was made by one man upon another who was of higher rank than himself, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... uptown. In his haste, and governed perhaps by some subconscious recollection of the humourist's attractive shaggy tweeds, he allowed himself to be fitted with an ochre-coloured suit of some fleecy checked material grotesquely improper for his unassuming figure. It was the kind of cloth and cut that one sees only in the windows of Nassau Street. Happily he was unaware of the enormity of his offence against society, and rapidly transferring his belongings to the new pockets, he paid down the purchase price and fled ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... Dennison and his partner were judged improper objects of mirth, Jack Wilson had resolved to execute some jokes on Lismahago, and after supper began to ply him with bumpers, when the ladies had retired; but the captain perceiving his drift, begged ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... him has heard him say that when he entered office he resolved to quit business because he learned so much as head of the War Industries Board that it would be improper for him ever to go into the market again. There is more to it than that; public life has given him a profound distaste for mere money-making. He wrote to Senator Kenyon the other day that he had not ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... guests, but for safety's sake guarded and watched more carefully than usual. Only the tapestried corridor running the length of the great colonnade to the royal apartments was left unguarded, since in that place there is no possibility of improper intrusion." ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... projected for the removal of the filth and for the prevention of its accumulation, but they were only partially and imperfectly carried out. As the forces of the prisoners were reduced by confinement, want of exercise, improper diet, and by scurvy, diarrhea, and dysentery, they were unable to evacuate their bowels within the stream or along its banks, and the excrements were deposited at the very doors of their tents. The vast majority ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... of this opinion, to Dr. Campbell, who in his "Philosophy of Rhetoric," says: "I know no style to which darkness of a certain sort is more suited than to the prophetical: many reasons might be assigned which render it improper that prophecy should be perfectly understood before it be accomplished. Besides, we are certain that a prediction may be very dark before the accomplishment, and yet so plain afterwards as scarcely to admit a doubt in regard to the events suggested. It does not belong to critics to give laws to ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... one reservation in the extremely high praise which they bestow on your virtue, integrity, and kindness—it is that of sharpness of temper. That is a fault which, even in our private and everyday life, seems to indicate want of solidity and strength of mind; but nothing, surely, can be more improper than to combine harshness of temper with the exercise of supreme power. Wherefore I will not undertake to lay before you now what the greatest philosophers say about anger, for I should not wish to be tedious, and you can easily ascertain it yourself from the writings of many ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of this legislation that a subsequent unlawful use by a user of a copy or phonorecord of a work lawfully made by a library, shall not make the library liable for such improper use. ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... statement is correct, only that I expressed myself a little more cautiously. It is well known, that the animals which in other respects come nearest to man, possess very imperfect phonetic organs, and that it would be improper, therefore, to refer more particularly to them. But, however that may be, Iexpected at all events some proof that I had made a mistake, that my argument jars, or my pivot gives. But nothing of the kind. No facts, no arguments, but simply an assertion that ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... if the sums were done wrong, and exclaiming, "Good lack, what young noodles," would do the sums again herself, instead of making the delinquents correct them. This plan I pronounced with great dignity as highly improper; she, in dudgeon, said I was a noodle too, and we came to high words, much to the delight ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... preacher in the warmth of his zeal, spoke with still more force and action. The ape mimicked him so exactly that the congregation could no longer restrain itself, but burst out into long and continued laughter. A friend of the preacher at length stepped up to him, and pointed out the cause of this improper conduct; and such was the roguish air of the animal that it was with the utmost difficulty that the preacher himself kept from laughing, while he ordered the servants of the church to take the ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown
... and improper word, an ill-sounding word; upon my honour, a word without dignity or merit and banishable from polite speech. His Highness did most prettily entreat me with a fine gentleness of condescension befitting a Sunday or a New Year's Day to bring and present and communicate ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... into the agricultural circles. The consequences of the usual, or rather invariable neglect, are felt less in agriculture than in industry, because the work is so much more scattered. The harmful effects of poor adjustment and improper training must be noticed more easily where many thousands are crowded together within the walls of the same mill. But it would be an illusion to fancy that the damage and the loss of efficiency are ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... was shut off. When it was found that the "riffles" yielded thirteen ounces of gold that would coin eighteen dollars and a half to the ounce, a firm conviction seemed to settle upon the camp that this was an occasion which it would be improper to pass over without a thorough and practical acknowledgment of its importance in the shape of a regular celebration. The gold was weighed and divided, all sitting in a circle in the middle of the cabin floor, while Old Platte officiated at the scales ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... of what has been said in reference to the little that Women know concerning Religion, it must be granted that the generality of them are shamefully Ignorant herein. As for other Science, it is believ'd so improper for, and is indeed so little allow'd them, that it is not to be expected from them: but the cause of this is only ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... the prerogatives of the Crown. 3. The Executive—how its just authority, influence and popularity may be promoted and established, so as to prevent the occurrence of that embarrassment in which it is now involved, not from improper acts, but from an actual deficiency of the requisite operative means to secure the Royal Prerogative from insult and invasion. I am aware that each of these subjects is surrounded with difficulty, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the best changes was the following: Rule 59 reads now so that players using "vulgar, indecent, or other improper language" shall be fined $25 and $100, instead of $5 and $25. In Rule 59, Section 4 was stricken out and the following substituted: "Upon notification from an umpire that a fine has been imposed upon any manager, captain or player, the secretary shall ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... promise of Christ. For faith shows the distinction between the contrition of Judas and of Peter. But the adversaries take their answer from the Law, that Judas did not love God, but feared the punishments. [Is not this teaching uncertain and improper things concerning repentance?] When, however, will a terrified conscience, especially in those serious, true, and great terrors which are described in the psalms and the prophets, and which those certainly taste ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... more log cabins, but no war record. Lincoln was never in any war but the Black Hawk. He was against the Mexican War; and when in Congress voted for resolutions that the war was unconstitutional and improper. No, he is not old Harrison or old Zach Taylor. Still the log ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... consequently their being planted in churchyards is of much more ancient date than the year 1307. As to the use of these trees, possibly the more respectable parishioners were buried under their shade before the improper custom was introduced of burying within the body of the church where the living are to assemble. Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, was buried under an oak—the most honourable place of interment —probably next to the cave of Machpelah, which ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... for the wickedness connected with them. The spectacle of a sweet little child singing hymns, and repeating prayers, of a pious old Uncle Tom dying for his religion, has filled theatres night after night, and proved that there really is no need of indecent or improper plays to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... current issues: urban population expanding; deforestation results from logging and the clearing of land for agricultural purposes; further land degradation and soil erosion hastened by uncontrolled development and improper land use practices such as farming of marginal lands; mining activities polluting Lago de Yojoa (the country's largest source of freshwater) with heavy metals as well as several ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of Perodonov, I should imagine, from the things that Markovitch told me about him. The father, at any rate, was a mean, malicious, and grossly sensual creature, and he finally lost his post through his improper behaviour towards some of his own small pupils. The family then came to evil days, and at a very early age young Markovitch was sent to Petrograd to earn what he could with his wits. He managed to secure the post of a secretary ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... did not know how else to get hold of the stuff. She was aware that knives in this connection were improper, but one did finally lose patience. Maccaroni was never allowed to appear on her table in London. Apart from its tiresomeness she did not even like it, and she would tell Lady Caroline not to order ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... sense to a greater degree than have already certain minutiae connected with the sanitary arrangements of The Directeur's little home for homeless boys and girls—therefore I will not trouble to beg the reader's pardon; but will proceed with my story proper or improper. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... discontinuance of all mental effort were imperatively necessary, in the opinion of his doctor, if a complete collapse of mental and physical power was to be avoided. He was quite a wreck, and was showing all the effects of protracted labour, the climate, and improper food. Humanly speaking, his departure from Egypt was only made in time to save his life, and therefore there was some compensation in the fact that it was hastened ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... is very improper—to my mind," said Mrs. Cathcart. And she glanced towards the place where Percy had deposited himself, as if she were afraid of ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... she said. "None of those girls, the nice girls, Miss Elton or any one like that, would do such an improper thing, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... most proper man to command—and yet, if things go wrong, he may not unnaturally complain or advise with an emphasis and a freedom that may embarrass the commander to whom it is addressed, and create the most improper feeling among other subordinates and the men. Or if matters do not go so far as this, there may yet arise a regret, in the mind of the officer who has relinquished his right to command, when he sees, or thinks he sees, evidences of incompetency in the conduct of the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... suspicious that somebody is trying to influence them, and see how the press will retire, with what grace it can, before an invincible and virtuous lobby. The fear of the combination of the press for any improper purpose, or long for any proper purpose, is chimerical. Whomever the newspapers agree with, they do not agree with each other. The public itself never takes so many conflicting views of any topic or event as the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... there, too. There is the old lady who thinks the lecture improper; it doesn't matter how moral it is, she's out for impropriety and she can find it anywhere. Then there is another very terrible man against whom all American lecturers in England should be warned—the man who is leaving on the ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... cloth, he met a drunken seaman, one of the ship's crew from the Spanish Main. And, here, since he had so valiantly forborne all other wickedness, poor Mr. Dimmesdale longed, at least, to shake hands with the tarry blackguard, and recreate himself with a few improper jests, such as dissolute sailors so abound with, and a volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and heaven-defying oaths! It was not so much a better principle as partly his natural good taste, and still more his buckramed habit of clerical decorum, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shocked when I found the state he was in, that I let him drop, and recoiled back in horror, exclaiming, "Good God! have I killed him! Send for a surgeon." The idea that I had endeavoured to awake him in an improper time came with strong conviction upon me, and forced the words out of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... first apostles of the Reformation. Few of them had received systematic training of any kind, none had a thorough acquaintance with biblical learning. Many embraced the truth only in part; some professed it from improper motives. The Lenten preachers whose leaning towards "Lutheranism" was sufficiently marked to attract the hatred of the Sorbonne, were generally orators, more solicitous of popularity than jealous for the truth—fickle ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... has all the vivacity and ease of that great painter, and fully equals him in his fancy for the singular and the shining in his draperies; but, as he shares his beauties, he is not without his faults. His composition is sometimes improper, and his design always incorrect; but with these blemishes, however, his colouring is so well calculated to catch the eye, that he never fails to strike at first sight, and makes so happy an impression on the generality of an audience, that they never ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... you mean? There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil. Improper influence! What old ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... of the surgeon prevailed. What then? The father was sent from the station, and, after a while, the daughter was thrown on Sydney, a prostitute. This officer had an accomplished wife: she detected improper company in her room, and her exasperated husband broke her arm to repress her outcries! It is to such hands that the prisoner has been too often entrusted: to men, only known for their vices—broken down by debt and dissipation—who have ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... "I consider that a most improper proceeding," she said, "and I do not know how you can excuse it ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... is an art, and all facts may not be capable of literary treatment. "Even actual occurrences may be improper subjects for fiction. Nature can take liberties with facts that art dare not—a truth that has passed into a proverb.... Art may fill us with anger, fear, terror, awe, but the moment it condescends to excite disgust, it passes out of the realm of art."[21] "There seems no reason why the ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... case, the opposite conclusion may be drawn. Blots are sometimes used by ignorant persons to conceal the improper manipulation of the paper, but they are not adapted to aid this kind of fraud, and least ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... in some particular places, by the waste of war, but in by far the greatest number of cases by the fault of the seasons; and that a famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconveniencies of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... hurriedly, that there may be more time for play, is it to be wondered at that the after-dinner session drags so wearily, and that the pupils feel sleepy, dull, and uninterested? Our brains are nourished by blood made from the food we eat; and if it be formed of improper or unwholesome food, the result will be a disordered ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... commences his work with his own embarkation from Spain in 1514, and gives an account of the two previous expeditions of Hernandez de Cordova, and Juan de Grijalva, to the coast of New Spain, both already given in the preceding chapter, but which it would have been improper to have expunged in this edition of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... Brighton. He had never seen a Cattle Show. He presumed it must be a very interesting spectacle, and felt a very strong desire to attend. This desire, on the morning of the first day of the show, he expressed to his father, and was told that it would be a very improper place for him to go to, unless attended by some suitable person to watch over and take care of him; and that such was the business of the father, that he could not accompany him, and, of course, his desire could not be gratified. He was sorely disappointed, but ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... be supposed that I have suppressed one of his sallies against my country, it may not be improper here to correct a mistaken account that has been circulated, as to his conversation this day. It has been said, that being desired to attend to the noble prospect from the Castle Hill, he replied, 'Sir, the noblest prospect that a Scotchman ever sees, is the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... placed upon us, Mr. Dawson, to see you and to hear your report. Great pressure—to my mind improper pressure. I have here letters from Magistrates, Lords Lieutenant, competent military authorities, naval officers superintending shipyards, officials of the Munitions Department. They all declare that the industrial outlook in the North is most perilous, and that at any moment a situation may ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... mob was as truly in just the fatal condition for the awful contagion we call 'panic' as it would have been from improper food and other causes, for some other epidemic. The Greeks, who always had a reason for everything, ascribed the nameless dread, the sudden and unaccountable fear, which bereaves men of manhood and reason, to the presence of a god. It is simply a latent human weakness, which certain ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... superior,—two catastrophes sure to follow the attempts of even the most cautious of beginners. The language is so thoroughly imbued with the honorific spirit that the exposure of truth in all its naked simplicity is highly improper. Every idea requires to be more or less clothed in courtesy before it is presentable; and the garb demanded by etiquette is complex beyond conception. To begin with, there are certain preliminary particles which are simply ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... recrimination, Mr Allcraft," interposed Mr Bellamy, "I must be allowed to say, that you betray a very improper spirit in this business—very—very. You are far ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... "It would be improper to say this much, even to you, Miles, did not Drewett take good care, himself, to let ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... to be used when either a stimulating or a soothing influence on the surface is likely to be of service, and only then. In cases where the fits are produced by constipation, by improper food, or by the irritation of a tooth pressing against the gum, it is idle to use it, and equally so in instances where many fits have been recurring in the course of the same day. Where that is the case it must be self-evident that, be the cause what it may, ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... be improper for me to trouble your majesty on so light a matter," said Amabel; "but your kindness emboldens me to speak unreservedly. You may be aware that this nobleman once entertained, or feigned to entertain, an ardent ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the said Warren Hastings, for the purpose of covering his own improper and dangerous practices from his employers, has withheld from the Court of Directors, upon sundry occasions, copies of the proceedings had, and the correspondence carried on by him in his official capacity as Governor-General, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... race to whom we have already referred, as a native of a rural part of New England, where the old fashions and feelings of relationship are still partially kept up. In her own circle, it was regarded as by no means improper for kinsfolk to visit one another without invitation, or preliminary and ceremonious warning. Yet, in consideration of Miss Hepzibah's recluse way of life, a letter had actually been written and despatched, conveying information of Phoebe's projected visit. This epistle, for three ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was present at the meeting, and took part in the discussions. Among others, the following subject was considered and reported upon: "'Ought not negroes to be excluded from the new enlistment, especially those such as are slaves?' All were thought improper by the council of officers. 'Agreed, That ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... sickness of this nature, the abbess, finding that the physicians had given her over, told her that Theodosius had just gone before her, and that he had sent her his benediction in his last moments. Constantia received it with pleasure. "And now," says she, "if I do not ask anything improper, let me be buried by Theodosius. My vow reaches no further than the grave; what I ask is, I hope, no violation of it." She died soon after, and was interred ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... Affairs." This committee transferred a copy of the memorial to the trustees, with a request for their answer. About this time Stephens presented a petition to Parliament, in which he charged the trustees with direliction of duty, improper use of the public funds, abuse of their authority, and numerous other sins against the public welfare. It created a genuine sensation. The House resolved to go into a "committee of the whole," to consider the petitions and the answer of the trustees. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... favors to a store on Gravel Pit Hill, where, for a time, she was quite a favorite, and thrived wonderfully; but her husband got wind of her doings, and threatened to shoot the first man that he saw taking improper liberties with his property, and that rather dashed the spirits of the gallants, for Barney was bold as a lion, and carried a pair of very good pistols in his belt, in addition to a bowie knife ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... interjected an imprecation, vulgarly called an oath, "if ever I hear one o' you a usin' of sich improper words, I'll break every bone in ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... so educate the muscles of the arms and body that the gun, during the act of aiming, shall be held without restraint and during the operation of firing shall not be deflected from the target by any convulsion or improper movement of the trigger finger or of the body, arms or hands. These drills must be taken daily, if they are to be of the maximum benefit. If you are enthusiastic about rifle shooting, and these drills are not give[C] to you, ask your company commander to show them to you, as they can be executed ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... during the night; and it seemed probable that the rock might be strewed with dead bodies, a spectacle which could not fail to deter the artificers from returning so freely to their work. In the midst of these reveries the boat took the ground at an improper landing-place; but, without waiting to push her off, he leapt upon the rock, and making his way hastily to the spot which had privately given him alarm, he had the satisfaction to ascertain that he had only been deceived by the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... habitat and endangers the existence of a multitude of plant and animal species indigenous to the area; air and water pollution in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and several other large cities; land degradation and water pollution caused by improper mining activities ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... approached by a side road shut off from the highway by a gate, a small cottage, by way of lodge, or laborer's tenement, should be located at or near the entrance. Such appendage is not only ornamental in itself, but gives character to the place, and security to the enclosure; in guarding it from improper intrusion, as well as to receive and conduct into the premises those who either reside upon, or have business within it. It is thus a sort of sentry-box, as well as ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... thought of there being any thing improper in the run; she looked forward to the goal with laughing glances, as the white house emerged more and more from the verdure by which it was surrounded, and then sideways at her friend, who had not been able to gain a single ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... married also into the corps. The widow has brought him down herself, it is true, but that proves nothing; who else was to bring him down, if it was not his mother? and the very circumstance of her going away so soon proves that she felt it improper that she should remain; and, in my opinion, that she is a modest, interesting young woman, in whom Captain Delmar has taken an interest. I wish father would not come here with his nonsensical ideas, telling us to make much ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... scream, how she could keep from it—how, at such a moment as this, she could remember that it was improper to make a disturbance and create a scene in the street. The peddler of wild game was looking at her suspiciously. It would not do to tell him. He would go ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Antoinette," and she went with the cheerfulness of a child. I must rig up a sitting-room for her, as I cannot have her in here. Also for the present she must take her meals in her own apartments. I cannot shock the admirable Stenson by sitting down at table with her in that improper peignoir. Besides, as Antoinette informs me, the poor lamb eats meat with her fingers, after the fashion of the East. I know what that is, having once been present at an Egyptian dinner-party in Cairo, ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... amount to? Not a great deal. Most of the men cared far more about a drop of whiskey than about any more carnal vice, and most of the girls were good pals with each other, men were only there to act with: even if the act was a private love-farce of an improper description. What's the odds? You couldn't get excited about ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... So it was said that women should not appear on the public platform. But who now would banish the women who have delighted such vast congregations, and who have drawn such applause from all classes and conditions of men? Who, to-day, considers it improper for Lucy Stone, Anna Dickinson, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, to appear upon a public platform? Who is willing to shut the pulpit against Mrs. Mott, when she has filled it with such acceptance, in so many places, and on so many occasions? Step by step, woman has advanced toward ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the FOOLISH, the WICKED, and the IMPROPER, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... of feeling shown in the interview between Albert and Isa had anything improper in it under the circumstances, Mrs. Ferret knew how to destroy it. She projected her iceberg presence into the room and froze ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... by his friends, to which he always made some laughing answer; but no one dreamed of thinking his intimacy with Anna an improper one. He was looked upon as a warm friend of both her husband and herself, and inclined to be something of an "old bachelor." If she were seen at the theatre, or on the street, with Westfield, it was looked upon almost as much a matter of course as if ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... night, and not in the light of day; and by this proceeding have they been victorious hitherto over the chiefs whose heads they have laid low on the earth. Now we have often seen, and proved, how unsuitable and improper it is to go into battle in the nighttime; therefore let us rather have before our eyes the example of chiefs better known to us, and who deserve better to be imitated, and fight by open day in regular battle array, and not steal upon sleeping ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... myself, I am willing to bear the consequences. If anything of that cast has been written by my friends, I allow that a certain degree of blame attaches to me for having chosen them at least indiscreetly. If, however, a bookseller of whom we knew nothing has coupled improper productions with ours in a work over which we had no control, I cannot plead guilty to anything more than misfortune; a misfortune in which some of the most rigidly moral and religious men of my acquaintance have participated in the ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... officers connected with elections will be held to a rigid accountability and will be subject to trial by military commission for fraud, or unlawful or improper conduct in the performance of their duties. Their rate of compensation and manner of payment will be in accordance with the provisions of sections six and seven of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... ''tain't no time for laughin'. You've given Jock an' me more trouble than you're worth. You 'ave been absent without leave an' you'll go into cells for that; an' you 'ave come back disgustin'ly dressed an' most improper in the linin' o' that bloomin' palanquin. Instid of which you laugh. An' WE thought you was dead all ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... perfectly innocent; it is justified by the example of hundreds and thousands every day in the fashionable world; and I should do her and myself great injustice, if I broke off our intimacy suddenly, as if I acknowledged that it was improper." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... to achieve these things. But it is also true that the fluidity of American social life makes it equally impossible for the library to withstand the pressure that is brought to bear on it here. To yield is in its case right and proper and a failure of response would be wrong and improper. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... most important soil element is nitrogen. First, because it costs from 18 to 20 cents a pound, while phosphoric acid can be purchased at five cents, potash at four cents; and, second, because of the readiness with which nitrogen may disappear from the soil under improper management, either through nitrification and leaching or by denitrification and ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... election, and limited grace of God, whilst our later theologians had renounced them, because they are in conflict with the teachings of God's word:—we say, suppose this had been the case, though it was not; their procedure would not be improper, and their doctrinal change would merit our approbation and praise, rather than censure." How much more christian and manly are these views, than the position which, though not avowed, is acted on by many, that the members of a church should never attempt to improve her symbols; ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... put in such an improper manner," said Mrs. Florence, with a wave of the hand which meant that Katy was to go. But Katy ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... and disadvantages of supervising in certain operations; (h) machine versus hand work and quantity production; (i) preparing and routing shipments; (j) making out bills of lading; (k) study of friction, loose belts, improper ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... unnecessarily," said Mrs. Noah, as the prophetess was about to narrate her story, "that I rise to beg her to remember that, as an ancestress of Captain Kidd, I hope she will spare a grandmother's feelings, if anything in the story she is about to tell is improper to be placed before the young. I have been so shocked by the stories of perfidy and baseness generally that have been published of late years, that I would interpose a protest while there is yet time if there is a line in Cassandra's story which ought to be withheld from the public; a protest ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... preserved by the Use of SPECTACLES adapted to suit every variety of Vision by means of SMEE'S OPTOMETER, which effectually prevents Injury to the Eyes from the selection of Improper Glasses, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... pride, proper or improper, that I believe my affection would die. My love subsists on sympathy—take that food from it and it would starve and cease to live. I give, but when giving I always ask. If I were to be refused I couldn't give any more. And without the love there could be no jealousy. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... come the ciphers. Monsieur Verac, the cunning French envoy, is "more amiable in company than formidable in cabinet." The Swede and the Saxon ministers, "most perfectly insignificant and overpowered with debts." The Dutch resident, Swartz, "a man neither of birth nor character, totally improper for the post he fills. The Swiss resident, having no other business than the lawsuits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... an hour, that I find exceedingly unreasonable and improper, and one that would meet with general disapprobation in America. I do not wonder that a people gets to be immoral and depraved in their practices, who keep such improper hours. The mind acquires habits of impurity, and all the sensibilities become blunted, by taking the meals ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... suggested, I am afraid thus much may be fairly inferred, that the earl of Shelburne is a man, dark, insidious and inexplicit in his designs; no decided friend of the privileges of the people; and in both respects a person very improper to conduct the affairs of this country. I would hope however, that the celebrated character given of him by the late lord Holland was somewhat too severe. "I have met with many, who by perseverance and labour have made themselves Jesuits; it is peculiar ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... though nothing in that failure can be fixed on the improper choice of the object or the injudicious choice of means, will detract every day more and more from a man's credit, until he ends without success and without reputation. In fact, a constant pursuit even of the best ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... ordering of me very often did not know the work as I knew it,—could not tell as I could what would be the effect of this or that change. When carrying out instructions which I knew should not have been given, I never scrupled to point out the fatuity of the improper order in the strongest language that I could decently employ. I have revelled in these official correspondences, and look back to some of them as the greatest delights of my life. But I am not sure that they ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... witnessed his fall to a virtuous life without protest. For, in the Kitchen it is considered neither unmanly nor improper for a guy to do as ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... (Though points are things, by Euclid's law, that always must be missed— They have no parts or magnitude, and therefore don't exist)— Obey at once the Chairman's hest (because, as you're aware, It is a most improper thing to argue with the Chair), Accept his ruling patiently, without superfluous fuss, And state the things you might have said—unless he'd ruled ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... restrained it within the limits of perfect good taste, holding at a suspicious distance all that could wound the most fastidious delicacy. He never made use of an inelegant word, even in the moments of the most entire familiarity; an improper merriment, a coarse jest would have been ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... persons appointed by the Virginia Society are not citizens of that State, nor members of that Society, to admit them, or, according to their proposals for us to elect others as their representatives, would be highly improper." ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... thus: 'Senator W—— is evidently afraid of Justice ——, with whom I have had a difficulty, and he possesses neither the manly independence of a freeman, nor moral nor physical courage, and he is, therefore, an improper person (possibly infamous) for such a high and responsible position, and my rights as a citizen are not safe in the keeping of such a poltroon and conniving attorney, and he is probably disqualified to hold ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... upon her. The first knock she did not answer, but when the second came, louder and more imperative than the first, she called out, "The key is under the mat," regretting her temerity in an instant, and trembling as she thought, "What if I am doing something improper to admit him, ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... thus made the experiment of abstaining wholly from the use of liquid and solid stimulants, and from every form of animal food, I am not fully convinced that it should be deemed improper, on any account, to use the more slightly stimulating forms of animal food. Perhaps fish and fowl, with the exception of ducks and geese, turtle and lobster, may be taken without detriment, in moderate quantities. And I ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... time, amounted to a considerable quantity, a bag of dollars was offered to them, and they were urged to take payment for what had been sent on board; this offer, which had been made more than once before, was still declined; upon which they were informed, that we considered it improper, as servants of government, to receive presents to such an extent from individuals. Upon this they gave their assurance, that the stock had been sent on board by order of the Loo-choo government, on their being informed that the ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... the capacity of knowing be the natural impression contended for, all the truths a man ever comes to know will, by this account, be every one of them innate; and this great point will amount to no more, but only to a very improper way of speaking; which, whilst it pretends to assert the contrary, says nothing different from those who deny innate principles. For nobody, I think, ever denied that the mind was capable of knowing several truths. The capacity, they say, is innate; the knowledge ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... such difficulties is not to begin quarrelling. Just as soon as a single word is uttered which is in any way improper in polite society, everything is lost. The word is the rolling snow-ball, and how much momentum it may gather depends upon the nature and the training of the judge. Lonely insults are not frequent, and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... weekly subscription for my pig; a similar sum paid to the Doctor for his; the value of my swill; the fine imposed (by DORA) for improper use of firearms; ditto (by the Magistrate) for shooting game without a licence; alleged damage to the P.P. premises and the remaining wits of their custodian; and finally, the bill from Mr. Perkins for a pound of pork purchased in July, and the account ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... kind among the heathen tribes of the Pacific. Their dresses, too, though for the most part mere wraps, as it were, of coloured stuff, thrown round them, pinned with brooches, and often clinging in a very improper way to the figure, did not remind me of the costume (what there is of it) of Samoans, Fijians, or other natives among whom I have ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... EYE-GLASSES for the Assistance of Vision, adapted by means of Smee's Optometer: that being the only correct method of determining the exact focus of the Lenses required, and of preventing injury to the sight by the use of improper Glasses. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... inconvenient pieces of information, that on several evenings, just at dusk, a girl who wore a boarder's hat had been seen to leave the garden and hurry up the road, returning about five minutes later to dodge with great caution inside the gate. Such a proceeding was manifestly irregular and highly improper. Miss Poppleton, at first indignant at the very idea that one of her pupils could be guilty of so great an indiscretion, nevertheless felt it her solemn duty to investigate the matter thoroughly, and either expose the offender or deny the imputation. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... and looked at the pictures on the wall. It is improper to mention the names of evil powers or agencies in presence of the symbols of Those Above. So he ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... was not merely a decree to punishment, but to sin. He rejects with scorn the distinction between permitting and causing, between foreknowledge and predestination. He says it is improper to have God's decree waiting ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Madame Duchesse d'Angoulme,l who was to have a Drawing-room in London, both for French and English, on the day preceding her departure for France. The letter added, that I must waive all objections relative to my recent loss, as it would be improper, in the present state of things, that the wife of a general officer should not be presented; and, moreover, that I should be personally expected and well received, as I had been named to son altesse royale by the queen herself. In conclusion, I was charged not to mention this ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Toward evening, as he was entering a narrow passage between the buttes, he felt as though he was leaking again and landed on a bar to investigate. He found that though slightly wet, the leak was not occasioned by another rent; but owing to the improper adjustment of the belt. As his matches were too damp to light a fire, he gathered a pile of driftwood and placed one of his signal lights in the barrel of a twelve caliber pistol, made for the purpose; the signal light fitted the barrel like a cartridge and threw out a ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Food notions have, in many instances, been the cause of banishing from the dietary wholesome and nutritious foods, of greatly increasing the cost of living, as well as of promulgating incorrect ideas in regard to foods, so that individuals and in some cases entire families have suffered from improper or insufficient food. ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... as it did strike, the duke of Gloucester and the antient nobility with a jealousy, that the queen intended to exclude them from the administration, and to govern in concert with her own family. It is not improper to observe that no precedent authorized her to assume such power. Joan, princess dowager of Wales, and widow of the Black Prince, had no share in the government during the minority of her son Richard the Second. Catherine ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... adequate, fitting, and due. In your letter of June 9, you admitted that Dr. Royce had 'transgressed the limits of courteous discussion' and that you 'do not defend in all respects the tone of the review.' It is plain enough that you, Dr. Royce's own counsel, perceive at least something improper, something that ought to be retracted and apologized for. You are, then, I submit, bound to do what you can to right the wrong, which is not at all done by Dr. Royce's profuse, but private, disclaimers. He professes to bear no malice. Very well, then: let ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... false or clairvoyance impossible; and I don't wish to know. All I do know is, that I saw the Hill in great danger,—young ladies allowing themselves to be put to sleep by gentlemen, and pretending they had no will of their own against such fascination! Improper and shocking! And Miss Brabazon beginning to prophesy, and Mrs. Leopold Smythe questioning her maid (whom Dr. Lloyd declared to be highly gifted) as to all the secrets of her friends. When I saw this, I said, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one extreme to another; so very easy, that the vulgar of every degree are peculiarly captivated with it. Thus the inclination to laugh becomes uncontrollable, when the solemnity and gravity of time, place, and circumstances, render it peculiarly improper. Some species of general license, like that which inspired the ancient Saturnalia, or the modern Carnival, has been commonly indulged to the people at all times and in almost all countries. But it was, I think, peculiar to the Roman Catholic ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... entirely prevails greatly. Oh! says I, that we had but a post here as we have in England; there we can communicate our thoughts at a distance to each other without any trouble, and for little charge! What a country is this to live in! and what an improper creature am I to live in it! Had I but the graundee, I would have found her out by this time, be she where she would; but, whilst every one about me can pass, repass, and act as they please, I am fixed here like one of my trees, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... seriously, with none of the present matter-of-course haphazardness. In an old Guide to Brighton, dated 1794, I find the following description of the intrepid dippers of that day:—"It may not be improper here to introduce a short account of the manner of bathing in the sea at Brighthelmston. By means of a hook-ladder the bather ascends the machine, which is formed of wood, and raised on high wheels; he is drawn to a proper distance from ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... some improper, or blasphemous reason. Don't be a Soul—you had better be a Skate. I am a Skate. We wear a silver skate, don't you see" (and she showed him a model of an Acme Skate in silver), "with the motto, Celer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... aware. Her mother's gentlemen friends she valued according to their status in the house, and, as they "fell off" or "came on," so was her manner indifferent or pleasant. For Hortense, she had a real respect, but even that improper and brazen spirit quailed at times before her cynical and elfish regard. To say of a child that there is something "unearthly" about it is, as a rule, to pay a compliment to ethereal blue and gold. There was nothing ethereal about Sarah, and yet she was unearthly ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... corroboration of this opinion, to Dr. Campbell, who in his "Philosophy of Rhetoric," says: "I know no style to which darkness of a certain sort is more suited than to the prophetical: many reasons might be assigned which render it improper that prophecy should be perfectly understood before it be accomplished. Besides, we are certain that a prediction may be very dark before the accomplishment, and yet so plain afterwards as scarcely to admit a doubt in regard to the events suggested. It does not belong ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... I want to do anything especially proper or improper," she hastened to assure him. "I have n't either the cravings or the ambitions of the new woman. That, again, is where I 'm selfish. I'd like to be"—she spoke hesitatingly—"I'd like to be just like ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... obliged to wait upon the old woman at table, and at all other times upon the Dauphine's ladies, with whom he was by day and night. They made a mere servant of him, and used to talk to him in a tone of very improper familiarity, saying, "Berri, go and fetch me my work; bring me that table; give me ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... it is extremely improper for the President of the Royal Society to accept a position as a party politician. As a Unionist I should vote for him if I had a vote for Cambridge University, but for all that I think it is most lamentable that the President of the Society should ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... retention of their old habits, which were so obnoxious to their early European visitors.' The priests complained to Captain Erskine of the way the missionaries spoke of them, on which he says, 'It is perhaps sufficient to remark that, even if the Wesleyans were guilty (which I do not believe) of all the improper conduct attributed to them by M Calinon, it has been occasioned entirely by the obtrusion of the Society to which he belongs into ground previously occupied by others, who would undoubtedly, had their efforts remained unopposed or unassisted, ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... The guilt of the Manichaean heresy was esteemed of such magnitude, that it could be expiated only by the death of the offender; and the same capital punishment was inflicted on the Audians, or Quartodecimans, [49] who should dare to perpetrate the atrocious crime of celebrating on an improper day the festival of Easter. Every Roman might exercise the right of public accusation; but the office of Inquisitors of the Faith, a name so deservedly abhorred, was first instituted under the reign of Theodosius. Yet we are assured, that ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... to go with you." To his astonishment her face broke into a very satisfied smile. "Oh—well, I'm sorry Billy's ill, but we'll hope for the best, and I won't really object to you as a substitute, you know. Of course it's improper, and mother wouldn't think of letting me go with you—but I'm going. Mother won't mind when I tell her it's done. I've never been alone with a man to anything, except with my cousin—it's like stealing watermelons, isn't it? Don't you think ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... to me good, and to some extent my impression is supported by the results of the medical inspection now undertaken at the schools by the County Council. Such defects as the doctor finds are generally of no deep-seated kind: bad teeth, faulty vision (often due, probably, to improper use of the eyes in school), scalp troubles, running ears, adenoids, and so on, are the commonest. Insufficient nutrition is occasionally reported. In fact the medical evidence tells, in a varied form, much the same tale that school managers have been able to read for themselves in the children's ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... impertinent, impudent, insolent. Importance, consequence, moment. Impostor, pretender, charlatan, masquerader, mountebank, deceiver, humbug, cheat, quack, shyster, empiric. Imprison, incarcerate, immure. Improper, indecent, indecorous, unseemly, unbecoming, indelicate. Impure, tainted, contaminated, polluted, defiled, vitiated. Inborn, innate, inbred, congenital. Incite, instigate, stimulate, impel, arouse, goad, spur, promote. Inclose, surround, encircle, circumscribe, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... imported of late years into this country from France, the Directory of which country, finding that they were not able to subdue us by their arms, appeared as if they were determined to gain their ends by destroying our morals; they had sent over persons to this country who made the most improper exhibitions in our theatres." Now it was true that the manager of the opera-house at this time relied greatly upon the attractions of his ballet; operas and opera-singers having for a while lost favour with the impresario's subscribers and supporters. A leading dancer at ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... war. As to the price at which, for "restoration" purposes, we shall value those ships and their cargoes, and all the civilian property damaged by aircraft and bombardment, this is a matter which it would be obviously improper to discuss; but we may be sure that the bill will mount up to many hundreds of millions, and it remains to be seen whether, after Belgium and France have presented their account, it will be possible for us to secure payment even for all the civilian ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... to marry this man. It would be altogether improper. I cannot allow you to say that I am cruel because I do what I feel to be my duty. You ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... notoriety; you want to indulge your fancies, and yet keep your place in the world. You like to drag a young man about by a chain, as if he were the dancing monkey that you depended upon for subsistence. You like other women to see that you are not too passee to be every whit as improper as if you were twenty. You like to advertise your successes as it were with drum and trumpet, because if you did not, people might begin to doubt that you had any. You like all that, and you like to feel there is nothing you do not know and no length you have not gone, and so you ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... has caused more disputes both among antient and modern philosophers, than this concerning the efficacy of causes, or that quality which makes them be followed by their effects. But before they entered upon these disputes, methinks it would not have been improper to have examined what idea we have of that efficacy, which is the subject of the controversy. This is what I find principally wanting in their reasonings, and what I shall here ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Borough a very improper place for the king's, or any other, college?—Is it not the very mart of trade, and consequently ever noisy and in confusion?—And what a magnificent improvement would its erection near Westminster Abbey be to that ancient ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... from you less frequently than I am accustomed to do. I am miserable because I know you will be so; I am wretched at the idea of flying so far from you, without a single hour's interview, to tell you all my pains and all my love. But I cannot ask permission to visit you. It might be thought improper to leave my corps at such a time and upon such an occasion. I must go without seeing you—I must go without embracing you:—alas! I ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... for the steamer, which docked far uptown. In his haste, and governed perhaps by some subconscious recollection of the humourist's attractive shaggy tweeds, he allowed himself to be fitted with an ochre-coloured suit of some fleecy checked material grotesquely improper for his unassuming figure. It was the kind of cloth and cut that one sees only in the windows of Nassau Street. Happily he was unaware of the enormity of his offence against society, and rapidly transferring his belongings ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the blush had no reference to the arm round the waist, but to the relative position of their noses, mouths, and chins, a position which would have been highly improper and altogether unjustifiable but for the fact that Ruby was ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... the system of Protection is declining, but not yet wholly given up, such as the United States, a doctrine has come into notice which is a sort of compromise between free trade and restriction, namely, that protection for protection's sake is improper, but that there is nothing objectionable in having as much protection as may incidentally result from a tariff framed solely for revenue. Even in England regret is sometimes expressed that a "moderate fixed ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... Some communes pay a small subvention to the church and assist in the repair of church buildings. On the whole, municipal services are only scantily looked after, but the fault is due more to lack of revenue than to improper distribution. Occasionally the national government renders assistance in the construction of some ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... them in other cases for the protection of others; but of all the criminal institutions which have been settled in any nation, never was any more just, more reasonable, or fuller of clemency, than that which is called the Crown Law in England. In speaking of this it may not be improper to explain the meaning of that term, which seems to take its rise from the conclusion of indictments, which run always contra pacem dicti domini regis, coronam et dignitatem suam (against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... application. But since the days of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer the conditions of American literature have changed, and for the worse. As in England, so in America, a wide diffusion of books, an eager and general interest in printed matter, have had a disastrous effect. The newspapers, by giving an improper advertisement to the makers of books, have rendered the literary craft more difficult of pursuit. The ambition of money has obscured the simple end of literature, and has encouraged a spirit of professionalism eminently characteristic of a practical ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... prudence, whilst the other suffers from the bad effects of gluttony and intemperance: the one, like bees, collect their stores into a heap, and unanimously agree in the disposal of one well-regulated purse; the others pillage and divert to improper uses the largesses which have been collected by divine assistance, and by the bounties of the faithful; and whilst each individual consults solely his own interest, the welfare of the community suffers; since, as Sallust observes, "Small things increase by concord, and the greatest ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... in raising the flag on the tower of the chapel, and in defending that flag, and in tearing down a dummy raised in their colors by the Crows in the public square of the village—of this and many other delightfully improper pranks there is no room to tell here; and you must rest content with hearing of the important athletic affair—the affair which more truly and fittingly celebrated the anniversary of the birth of this great man, who was himself one of the finest specimens of manhood and one of the best athletes ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... to marry Bartolome. Her devotion led her to teach the girls of the village without pay. Of a gentle disposition she was yet unyielding on occasions of necessity and although tempted by an alcalde-mayor who was enamored of her beauty and made improper proposals to her, she ever maintained her virtue. At her death by cancer of the breast, she was buried in the Recollect church. The last two sections of this chapter have nothing on ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... clavers," quoth the laird's wife, nettled to find herself in the wrong, and forgetful of her own and her lord's dignity at once. "But," she pursued, "all I can say is, that I consider it verra improper o' you, wi' a young lass-bairn, to encourage the nichtly veesits o' a young gentleman, wha's sae far aboon her in station, an' dootless will some ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... the English middle class was shocked at the idea of young women nursing in military hospitals. They considered it 'highly improper.' Others were sure women would be more trouble than help. Many expect their health to fail, and think they will be sent back to English hospitals ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... is of first importance. This will be found in most cases to be gastric disturbance from the ingestion of improper or indigestible food, and in such cases a saline purgative is to be given, probably the best for this purpose being the laxative antacid, magnesia; or if the case is severe and food is still in ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... added the Governor, now addressing me, "it would be improper for me to indicate what course I shall pursue in regard to it if it should come to me for my signature. Yet I may go so far as to say that the defect it seeks to remedy seems to me a real one. Come in and see me, Mr. Paret, when ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... which has of late become the especial study of the group of authors headed by Charles Dickens; all this power was formerly thrown into noble art, and became permanently expressed in the sculptures of the cathedral. It was never thought that there was anything discordant or improper in such a position: for the builders evidently felt very deeply a truth of which, in modern times, we are less cognizant; that folly and sin are, to a certain extent, synonymous, and that it would be well for mankind in general, if all could be made to feel ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... be denied, which is right in itself, because it may lead to the demand of others which it is improper to grant? Abstractedly speaking, there can be no doubt that this question ought to be decided in the negative. But as no moral questions are ever abstract questions, this, before I judge upon any abstract proposition, must be embodied in circumstances; for, since things are right or wrong, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... uncultivated savage, with little more of human than his form, and diverted himself with his ignorance of all common objects and affairs; when he could persuade him to go into the field, he always exposed him to the sportsmen, by sending him to look for game in improper places; and once prevailed upon him to be present at the races, only that he might shew the gentlemen how a sailor ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... mothers toward their other children. They often set up a different standard of conduct and of obligation for the afflicted child. His brothers and sisters are taught to always defer to his wishes; even to the extent of yielding to improper and selfish demands on his part, and conceding that they have no rights where he is concerned. He is not required to perform the little duties demanded of the other children. He is given privileges which the others do ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... clearness, And thou wilt guard us from error in narration, And keep us from folly even in pleasantry, So that we may be safe from the censure of sarcastic tongues, And secure from the fatal effects of false ornament, And may not resort to any improper source, And occupy no position that would entail regret, Nor be assailed by any ill consequences or blame, Nor be constrained to apology for inconsideration. O God, fulfill for us this our desire, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and more confused every moment. It all sounded puzzling and improper to her. "Kettles" coming in for tea-leaves, and living in "Anchoranopally." How could Pennie have become familiar with such ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... at the meeting, and took part in the discussions. Among others, the following subject was considered and reported upon: "'Ought not negroes to be excluded from the new enlistment, especially those such as are slaves?' All were thought improper by the council of officers. 'Agreed, That ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... view. From that error I propose to abstain most rigorously. It is the right of Americans to criticise their own Government and the public acts of their statesmen, and on that right I shall not infringe. It cannot, however, be improper for an Englishman to set out before his fellow-countrymen the utterances of a great American on matters which vitally affect not only America but the whole civilised world. Mr. Roosevelt—for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... of the seizure of public forts, arsenals, etc., and the ignominious capture of a United States garrison, stationed in your midst, as a guard to the arsenal and for the protection of your own people, it would be highly improper for me longer to remain. No great inconvenience can result to the seminary. I will be the chief loser. I came down two months before my pay commenced. I made sacrifices in Kansas to enable me thus ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... subcommittee, which, in 1952, investigated this affair, unanimously condemned the Holmes-Casey-Klein tanker deals as "morally wrong and clearly in violation of the intent of the law," and as a "highly improper, if not actually illegal, get-rich-quick" operation which was detrimental to the interests of the ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... dignity, plenty, and peace at Malie, of bankruptcy and distraction at Mulinuu. And I wish I might here bring to an end ungrateful labours. But I am sensible that there remain two points on which it would be improper to be silent. I should be blamed if I did not indicate a practical conclusion; and I should blame myself if I did not do a little justice to that tried ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disease still troubled her; and kind Mrs. Bruce proposed that she should come to New York for a while, to be under the care of Dr. Elliott, a well known oculist. It did not occur to me that there was any thing improper in a mother's making such a request; but Mrs. Hobbs was very angry, and refused to let her go. Situated as I was, it was not politic to insist upon it. I made no complaint, but I longed to be entirely free to act a mother's part towards my ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... appeared to him an improper place for his preparation, in order to his first mass. He sought out a solitary place, where, being separated from the communication of man, he might enjoy the privacies of God. He found this convenience of a retirement ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... this way. So far as I am concerned my sentiments are the same now as then: I am not changing front. And what are they? To honor and reward the good and faithful, but to dishonor and punish the evil and unfaithful. It is he that is changing front, in that he makes an unfair and improper use of the privileges ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... advantage. Gibbon extols the "ease and purity of Hamilton's inimitable style;" and in this he is supported by Voltaire, although he adds the censure, that the Grammont Memoirs are, in point of materials, the most trifling; he might also in truth have said, the most improper. The manners of the court of Charles II. were, to the utmost, profligate and abandoned: yet in what colours have they been drawn by Hamilton? The elegance of his pencil has rendered them more seductive and dangerous, than ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... preacher, when treating on the subject of repentance, said, "My dear hearers, you must repent; if you do not, you will go to a place which it would be improper to mention in this ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... careful of your fame, And freely will your heedless errors blame; He cannot pardon a neglected line, But verse to rule and order will confine, Reprove of words the too-affected sound,— "Here the sense flags, and your expression's bound, Your fancy tires, and your discourse grows vain; Your term's improper;—make it just and plain." Thus 'tis a faithful friend will freedom use. But authors partial to their darling muse Think to protect it they have just pretense, And at your friendly counsel take offense. "Said you of this, that the expression's flat? ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... issues: air pollution from heavy industry, emissions of coal-fired electric plants, and transportation in major cities; industrial, municipal, and agricultural pollution of inland waterways and seacoasts; deforestation; soil erosion; soil contamination from improper application of agricultural chemicals; scattered areas of sometimes intense radioactive contamination; groundwater contamination from toxic waste; urban solid waste management; abandoned ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... poker had no place in the decorous and responsible utterance of San Francisco. The press was sober, materialistic, practical—when it was not severely admonitory of existing evil; the few smaller papers that indulged in levity were considered libelous and improper. Fancy was displaced by heavy articles on the revenues of the State and inducements to the investment of capital. Local news was under an implied censorship which suppressed anything that might tend to discourage timid ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... angrily. "I consider that a most improper proceeding," she said, "and I do not know how you can ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... full Rhyme in the fourth Line makes the whole Paragraph very harmonious. It is not improper to produce here the Conclusion of the Description of AEolus's Cave, which is one of the ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... mind is not liable to any of these exceptions; it is of a serious and composed nature; it does not throw the mind into a condition improper for the present state of humanity, and is very conspicuous in the characters of those who are looked upon as the greatest philosophers among the heathen, as well as among those who have been deservedly esteemed as saints and ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... possibility of cure. For children, she has done much, or rather might do, would parents read and perpend such books as Andrew Combe's and those of other writers on physical education. We should not then see the children, even of the rich, done to death piecemeal by improper food, improper clothes, neglect of ventilation and the commonest measures for preserving health. We should not see their intellects stunted by Procrustean attempts to teach them all the same accomplishments, to the neglect, most often, of any sound practical training ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... Bucknor, and it is reported (we do not know with how much truth) that at one time there was an improper intimacy between him and the lady who despatched him. If so, we ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... general, each giving his or her opinion. But the conversation was not in the least coarse. The ladies, in particular, were adepts at delicate phrases and charming subtleties of expression to describe the most improper things. A stranger would have understood none of their allusions, so guarded was the language they employed. But, seeing that the thin veneer of modesty with which every woman of the world is furnished goes but a very little way below the surface, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... mesdames, ask your pardon for the rather improper manner in which I behaved a short time ago in the house where we are now assembled. My excuse must be my late infirmity, the annoyances of a family lawsuit, and of an old housekeeper who robbed me and tormented ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... got him.' The grass was wet with dew. I strode rapidly with clenched fists. I fancy I had some vague notion of falling upon him and giving him a drubbing. I don't know. I had some imbecile thoughts. The knitting old woman with the cat obtruded herself upon my memory as a most improper person to be sitting at the other end of such an affair. I saw a row of pilgrims squirting lead in the air out of Winchesters held to the hip. I thought I would never get back to the steamer, and imagined myself ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... The folks from Maine made it quite clear that if the boots needed blacking at all, which was doubtful, they thought some one else ought to do the blacking—not at all because it seemed to them improper that Roosevelt should black anybody's boots, but because he did it so badly. The paste came off on everything it touched. The women "mothered" him, setting his belongings to rights at stated intervals, for he was not conspicuous for orderliness. ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... things, had burned your letter delivered to the chiefs at this place last fall. I accordingly took Wapakonetta in my route home, assembled the chiefs, and demanded the reason why they had suffered such an improper act to be committed at their door. They disavowed all agency in the transaction, and their entire disapprobation of the Prophet's conduct; and concurring circumstances satisfied me that they were sincere. The white persons at the town informed me that not one of the chiefs would go into council ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... southern hemisphere, these conditions are exactly reversed. 2. U.S. Senators are elected by the legislatures of the States they represent, while members of the National House or Representatives are elected by the people. 3. It is not considered improper to write a short message or letter on a half-sheet of paper; in fact, some styles of writing paper consist of but a single sheet. 4. The use of a moderately stiff tooth-brush, clean water and castile soap will keep the teeth white and in good condition. Tooth-powders are injurious. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... Senate, except in the case of wool and lumber, abandoned the proposal of free raw materials, stiffened the rates named by the House, and preferred specific to ad valorem duties. Many believed, without proof, that improper influences had helped the Senate to shape its sugar schedule favorably to the great refiners. The President pronounced sugar a legitimate subject for taxation in spite of the "fear, quite likely exaggerated," that carrying out this principle might "indirectly and inordinately encourage a ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Hippocrates. To him we are indebted for the classification of diseases into sporadic, epidemic, and endemic, and he also separated acute from chronic diseases. He divided the causes of disease into two classes: general, such as climate, water and sanitation; and personal, such as improper food ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... foolish admiration of the episcopal dignity, and did not perceive the dreadful mischiefs concealed under that disguise. For this is his language:[39] "One thing I advise you—beware of Antichrist, for you have an improper attachment to walls; your veneration for the Church of God is misplaced on houses and buildings; you wrongly introduce under them the name of peace. Is there any doubt that they will be seats of Antichrist? I think mountains, woods, and lakes, prisons and whirlpools, less dangerous; for these ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... designed and manufactured here, the Emperor is having built for his private use a large side-wheel yacht, which promises to be magnificent. However poor a nation may be, or however depreciated its currency, if it set up an emperor, king, or queen, improper personal expenditure inevitably follows. Even as good a woman as Queen Victoria, probably the most respectable woman who ever occupied a throne—such a character as one would not hesitate to introduce ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... which even our little ones basked with great delight. He was an every-day Christian. Although I was often in his company, and was thrown in contact with him on some occasions calculated to severely test him, yet I never heard from him an improper word, or heard of his having in any way gone contrary to his Christian profession during the thirty years that he had professed to be a follower ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... never forgot that embrace. It was to her a reflected realisation of what it must be to be loved by Jim Airth. And, thereafter, whenever Miss Murgatroyd saw fit to use such adjectives as "indecent," "questionable," or "highly improper," Miss Susie bravely gathered up her wool-work, and left ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... dance, trot, tumble over heads and heels, and kick about freely, when they are out of the presence of my majesty. Do not then, my dear young friends, be surprised at your mother and aunt when they cry out, "Oh, it was highly immoral and improper of Mr. Warrington to be writing home humdrum demure letters to his dear mamma, when he was playing all sorts of merry pranks!"—but drop a curtsey, and say, "Yes, dear grandmamma (or aunt, as may be), it was very wrong of him: ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... best changes was the following: Rule 59 reads now so that players using "vulgar, indecent, or other improper language" shall be fined $25 and $100, instead of $5 and $25. In Rule 59, Section 4 was stricken out and the following substituted: "Upon notification from an umpire that a fine has been imposed upon any manager, captain or player, the secretary ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... near its stopper, There watched for me, one June, A girl—I know, sir, it's improper: My poor mind's ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... masked, disguised, and crowned "with leaves or flowers"; all this about 1250. The statutes of University Hall, 1292, prohibit the fellows from fighting, from holding immodest conversations together, from telling each other love tales, "fubulas de amasiis," and from singing improper songs.[251] ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... world, now or in past ages, would be rather that of master and servant. The erotic sentiment has generally been thought of as independent of marriage, possible in it, generally outside of it; and it has often been thought of as improper and disgusting between husband and wife. There is a poetical suggestion in Homer that marriages are made in heaven. Zeus is said to select a man's wife with a view to the fate allotted to him.[1197] Achilles says that every wise and noble ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... not sufficiently reticent. In his last book, "The Adventures of Nicoletta Zevenster," while admirably describing Dutch society at the beginning of this century, he had the unheard-of audacity to describe an improper house at the Hague. All Holland was in an uproar. His book was discussed, criticised, condemned, praised to the skies, and the battle still continues. Other historical novels were written by a certain ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... wings of the angel of Peace cannot be heard, peace kite-flying has already begun in Vienna, but Germany is anxious to represent it as unauthorised and improper. Mr. Henry Ford's voyage to Europe on the Oscar II with a strangely assorted group of Pacificists does more credit to his heart than his head, and the conflicting elements in his party have earned for his ship the name of ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... passed, and when the abortionist had served about a year of his sentence, another charge of abortion was found against him, and he was brought down the river, again put on trial and sentenced. Mr. Howe, for his defense, in appeal, raised the natural objection that it was unfair and improper to try Rosenzweig in two cases at once. Consequently, he got a new trial, in which he was acquitted, because the old law under which he had been previously convicted had been repealed. Here was a manifest miscarriage of justice effected by ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... household words." You would make me very happy, if you think W. has no objection, by transcribing for me that inscription of his. I have some scattered sentences ever floating on my memory, teasing me that I cannot remember more of it. You may believe I will make no improper use of it. Believe me I can think now of many subjects on which I had planned gaining information from you; but I forgot my "treasure's worth" while I possessed it. Your leg is now become to me a matter of much more importance—and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... explained at the outset.(459) All the known evidence has since been produced,(460) every Witness examined.(461) Counsel has been heard on both sides. A just Sentence will assuredly follow. But it may not be improper that I should in conclusion ask leave to direct attention to the single issue which has to be decided, and which has been strangely thrust into the background and practically kept out of sight, by those who have preceded me in this Investigation. ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... last an end came to the ceremony. "Kneel," cried Zaemon, "and make obeisance to your mother the Earth, and swear by the High Gods that you will never make improper use of the powers over Her which this ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... our departure from the town. Possibly the Germans also listen for the rare infrequent automobile. At any rate, as we were just starting our way back—it is improper to mention the exact point from which we started—came "Pheeee—-woooo." Quite close. But there was no Bang! One's mind hung expectant and disappointed. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... quality of extravagant virginity noticed as a characteristic of Tasso's play there is on the whole less in the Pastor fido. It is also freer from the tone of cynical corruption and from improper suggestion. These merits are, however, more than counterbalanced in the ethical scale by the elaboration of the spirit of sentimental sensualism, which becomes as it were an enveloping atmosphere, and lends an enervating seduction ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... falsehoods, rapine, cruelty; And think what once they were, they still would he: 30 But hope not either language, plot, or art; 'Twas writ in haste, but with an English heart: And least hope wit; in Dutchmen that would be As much improper, as would honesty. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... anything so ridiculous, Mamma? Just as though I had said something improper! I was furious with Charlie, he had not even the pluck to say he had asked me to go; but I paid him out. I just said, "I concluded you had consulted Lady Carriston before asking me to go with you, or naturally I should not have suggested going ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... little offshoot of the Pyncheon race to whom we have already referred, as a native of a rural part of New England, where the old fashions and feelings of relationship are still partially kept up. In her own circle, it was regarded as by no means improper for kinsfolk to visit one another without invitation, or preliminary and ceremonious warning. Yet, in consideration of Miss Hepzibah's recluse way of life, a letter had actually been written and despatched, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... good manners when in public to show little more of our shirts than the collar and cuffs, but the Persian or the Hindoo, for instance, prefers to let the garment dangle to its full extent outside so as to show its design in full. Again, we may consider it highly unbecoming and improper for ladies to show their lower limbs above the ankle; the Persian lady thinks nothing of that, but deems it ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... it is a little dull, Donald," Minnie said, "but not being a man, I suppose desires like yours would seem improper When you go," and her voice trembled a little, "I will feel the ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... see Mr. B.'s verses until they appeared in print, and there is certainly one thing in them which I consider highly improper. I allude to the personal references to myself by name. To confer notoriety on an humble individual who is labouring quietly in his vocation, and who keeps his cloth as free as he can from the dust of the political arena (though vae mihi si non ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... fourth group of women with which we are concerned, because of its mercantile nature. Every union in which a human being gives love for money is unnatural. Venal love is not true love, but an improper contract between man and woman, with the object of satisfying the sexual appetite, without any regard to the higher object intended by nature. It sometimes happens that similar contracts are made in the inverse direction, when a nymphomaniacal ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... letter arrived. He had been good enough to come to preach me a sermon on his own account. He to find fault with my actions!" cried Miss Ethel, quivering with wrath and clenching the luckless paper in her hand. "He to accuse me of levity, and to warn me against making improper acquaintances! He began his lectures too soon. I am not a lawful slave yet, and prefer to remain unmolested, at least as long as ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gentlemen can not be in earnest; they have only reasoned wrong about the means of obtaining a good end, and, on consideration, I hope and flatter myself they will renounce what must appear to be improper. At the opening of a campaign, when under marching orders for an important service, their own honour, duty to the public and to themselves, and a regard to military propriety, will not suffer them to persist ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... a pain or disease it's due to congestion of some organ, to infection, or to improper nourishment or ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... The "Mystery of Marie Roget" was composed at a distance from the scene of the atrocity, and with no other means of investigation than the newspapers afforded. Thus much escaped the writer of which he could have availed himself had he been upon the spot, and visited the localities. It may not be improper to record, nevertheless, that the confessions of two persons, (one of them the Madame Deluc of the narrative) made, at different periods, long subsequent to the publication, confirmed, in full, not only the general conclusion, but absolutely all the chief ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... I am in Hopes, if this Subject be well pursued, Women will hereafter from their Infancy be treated with an Eye to their future State in the World; and not have their Tempers made too untractable from an improper Sourness or Pride, or too complying from Familiarity or Forwardness contracted at their own Houses. After these Hints on this Subject, I shall end this Paper with the following genuine Letter; and desire all who think they may be concerned in future Speculations ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... William Tayleur and his family from the apartments which they occupied in Windsor Castle, where Tayleur held some appointment, and imprisoning him because he had presumed to offer himself as a candidate for the borough of Windsor. Lord M. was also accused of improper conduct towards Tayleur's daughter. He, however, denied all these charges in his place in the House of Lords, and put in an answer to the articles of impeachment, for hearing which a day was absolutely fixed; but the Parliament being ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... in the manner of the speaker, but still it repressed the conversation, and they continued to stroll still farther from the party, retaining each others arm, but observing a pro found silence. Elizabeth, perhaps conscious of the improper phraseology of her last speech, or perhaps excited by the new object that met her gaze, was the first to break the awkward cessation in the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... drawing-rooms; for what had Loveday been, at the most charitable count, but a young female—less humanly speaking, even a young person? And what was the spring of her mad crimes but folly, mere weak, feminine folly? Even an improper motive—one of those over-powering passions one reads about rather surreptitiously in the delightful works of that dear, naughty, departed Lord Byron—would have been somehow more ... more ... satisfactory. One could only whisper such a sentiment, but it stirred in many a feminine ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... is quite unusual, almost improper, for people in our position to take any interest in literature. Ask Evgenie Pavlovitch if I am not right. It is much more fashionable to drive ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Philip's power, and by such discourse to incite you to your duty, I think improper: and why? Because all that may be said on that score involves matter of glory for him, and misconduct on our part. The more he has transcended his repute, [Footnote: Jacobs otherwise: uber sein Verdienst gelungen.] the more is he universally admired; you, as you have used ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... all this escaped Mrs. Livingstone, and once, in passing near her niece, she managed to whisper, "For heaven's sake don't show your ignorance of etiquette by taxing Mr. Bellmont's good nature any longer. It's very improper to claim any one's attention so long, and you are ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... Lucina is a Lady of the greatest Discretion, you must know, in the World; and withal very much a Physician: Upon the Strength of these two Qualities there is nothing she will not speak of before us Virgins; and she every Day talks with a very grave Air in such a Manner, as is very improper so much as to be hinted at but to obviate the greatest Extremity. Those whom they call good Bodies, notable People, hearty Neighbours, and the purest goodest Company in the World, are the great Offenders in this Kind. Here I think ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... people's 'forgetting themselves in a boat;' and I perceive it to be accepted as nearly an axiom in the code of modern civic chivalry that the strength of amiable sentiment is proved by our incapacity on proper occasions to express, and on improper ones to control it. The pride of a gentleman of the old school used to be in his power of saying what he meant, and being silent when he ought, (not to speak of the higher nobleness which bestowed love where ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... sad-looking and desolate to see so many empty chairs. It made us think of the empty chair at home. So we got up and walked down Piccadilly. Jonathan was holding me by the arm, the way he used to in the old days before I went to school. I felt it very improper, for you can't go on for some years teaching etiquette and decorum to other girls without the pedantry of it biting into yourself a bit. But it was Jonathan, and he was my husband, and we didn't know anybody who saw ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... father!' But no obstacle is so difficult that depravity cannot twist around it and even while he threatened 'I'll call father,' I slipped into his bed and took my pleasure in spite of his half-hearted resistance. Nor was he displeased with my improper conduct for, although he complained for a while, that he had been cheated and made a laughing-stock, and that his companions, to whom he had bragged of his wealthy friend, had made sport of him. 'But you'll see that I'll not be ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... patient, he is never alone; the husband, or the father, the mother, the sister, or some friends of the patient are there, whose scrutinizing eyes and attentive ears make it impossible for the physician to say or do any improper thing. ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... was always known. He was right on reconstruction, on civil rights, on the currency, and, so far as I know, on all important questions. He will be remembered as an honest, fearless man. He was admired for his known integrity. He was never even suspected of being swayed by an improper consideration. He was immeasurably ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... be held in the back of the throat is believed to indicate the need of bringing the voice forward in the mouth. Other forms of throaty production are taken to show a lack of support, a wrong management of the breath, a need of breath-control, a misuse of nasal resonance, or an improper action of the vocal cords. In all these attempts to interpret sympathetic sensations by means of mechanical doctrines the teacher naturally relies on those doctrines in which he believes most firmly. Sympathetic sensations ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... that such a position tends, in a greater or less degree, to develop the lower nature of sexes. It cannot be otherwise. It is in perfect accordance with nature. I have heard girls express utter innocence of having any improper emotion aroused by the waltz, but I do not believe this to be strictly true of any girl. If it is, I am sorry for that girl, for she has a ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... official productions, and some modest doubts whether his genius is not too heroic and pathetic for the composition of an Epithalamium,— which doubts, however, are speedily and pleasingly resolved by the recollection, that as Spenser made a hymn on his own marriage, so, there can be nothing improper in Mr. Southey doing as much on that of the Princess Charlotte. This is the general argument of the Proem. But the reader must know a little more of the details. In his early youth, the ingenious author says he aspired to the fame of a poet; and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... was immediately behind, had detected the note of merriment in Mavis's voice. "Scarcely a pure-minded girl," she said to herself, unconscious of the fact that there is nothing so improper as the ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... invited to one of the Verdun forts. It now lies in the very path of the drive, and to describe it would be improper. But the approaches to it are now what every German knows. They were more impressive even than the fort. The "glacis" of the fort stretched for a mile, and as we walked in the direction of the German trenches there was not a moment when from every side French guns could not ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... disavowal of obligation to Allen. Having been long under her dominion, now tottering in the decline of life, and unable to resist the violence of her temper, or, perhaps, with a prejudice of a lover, persuaded that she had suffered improper treatment, he complied with her demand, and polluted his will with female resentment. Allen accepted the legacy, which he gave to the hospital at Bath, observing that Pope was always a bad accomptant, and that, if to 150l. he had put a cipher more, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... we may be making an altogether improper claim upon you," he said quietly; "but this morning, about an hour ago, Ancoats's mother came to us with the news that he had left her two days ago, and was now discovered to be at Trouville, where he has a chalet, waiting for this girl, of whom we all know, to join him. You will ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He had never seen a Cattle Show. He presumed it must be a very interesting spectacle, and felt a very strong desire to attend. This desire, on the morning of the first day of the show, he expressed to his father, and was told that it would be a very improper place for him to go to, unless attended by some suitable person to watch over and take care of him; and that such was the business of the father, that he could not accompany him, and, of course, his desire could not be gratified. He was sorely disappointed, but resolved not to give up, without ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... was like the sunshine, in which even our little ones basked with great delight. He was an every-day Christian. Although I was often in his company, and was thrown in contact with him on some occasions calculated to severely test him, yet I never heard from him an improper word, or heard of his having in any way gone contrary to his Christian profession during the thirty years that he had professed to be a follower of ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... I be afraid of? They can't bite or sting. I can't give any reason. All I know is that when I come across one of these creatures in my path I jump to one side, and cry out,—sometimes using very improper words. The fact is, they make ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in doubt concerning my duty, but just now there is clearly but one course for me to pursue. Unless you wish to make an improper use of it, this paper which I very willingly hand to you will serve your purpose. It is an exact copy of the license, and to it I have appended my certificate, as the officiating clergyman who performed the marriage ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... that he did not support himself by the Gospel and promise of Christ. For faith shows the distinction between the contrition of Judas and of Peter. But the adversaries take their answer from the Law, that Judas did not love God, but feared the punishments. [Is not this teaching uncertain and improper things concerning repentance?] When, however, will a terrified conscience, especially in those serious, true, and great terrors which are described in the psalms and the prophets, and which those certainly taste who are truly converted, be able to ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... That I therefore hoped they would each of them in their turn report to me faithfully and candidly the Treatment they severally had received,—that my design was to obtain them the proper redress, but if they kept back anything from an improper fear of their keepers, they would have themselves only to blame for their want of immediate redress. That for the purpose of their deliverance the British officer attended. That the British General should ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... The improper feeding of the animals caused gastric disturbances, alternately diarrhoea and constipation, enormous tympanitis, peritonitis. It is touching to read of the devotion of German cavalrymen to their poor horses. They would introduce ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... Conclusive was the reasoning of Nicodemus—"Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." God, who is perfect in wisdom, would choose no improper or unsuitable means. Their wisdom might not at first appear to men. It did not at first appear. The world cried folly and weakness. But "The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... earnestly and fervently prayed that he might make a prudent, just and proper Use of it. He then conveyed the Chest away; but how he got it to England, the Reader will be informed in the History of his Life. It may not be improper, however, in this Place, to give the Reader some Account of the Philosopher who hid this Treasure, and took so much Pains to find a true and real Friend to enjoy it. As Tom had Reason to venerate his Memory, he was very particular in his Enquiry, and had this Character ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... immediately below the ribs on the right side, and around backward and upward as far as to the spine. The positive pole repels the excess of electro-vitality away from the positive spleen, and so reduces the improper excitement there, while at the same time it rushes, by attraction, to the negative liver, under the negative pole, and makes that more positive, and so more active. In this way, I change the polarization of the parts, and, in so doing, ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... indeed, no special reason why the fabliau should be "improper" (except for the greater ease of getting a laugh) according to its definition, which is capable of being drawn rather more sharply than is always the case with literary kinds. It is a short tale in verse—almost ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... insanity, though far less often than in the case of man."[53] Nevertheless, in the face of these facts, many authors have insisted that man is divided by an inseparable barrier from all the lower animals in his mental faculties. It only shows the improper or imperfect consideration of the subject they ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... go— A course of action most improper; She neither knew by sight, and so For neither of them ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... folly, ye are certain to give offence. Endued with ascetic merit she will certainly consume you, or perhaps, those heroes, armed with swords and weapons! Nor, if from force of numbers, ye seek to injure them in any respect, that will be a highly improper act, although, as I think, ye will never be able to succeed. The mighty-armed Dhananjaya hath returned thence to the forest. While unaccomplished in arms, Vivatsu had subjugated the whole earth before. A mighty warrior as he is and accomplished in arms now, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... for you to tell you that in consequence of your disgraceful conduct to my senior clerk, you can no longer remain under my roof. It appears that what I have been a witness to this day has been but a sequel to behaviour equally improper and impertinent; that so far from having, as I thought, done your duty, you have constantly neglected it; and that the association you have formed with that drunken old man and his insolent son has led you into this folly. You may say that it was not your wish to remain on shore, and that you ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... drinking makes one very improper for the acts of Venus, and gives his reasons. Athenaeus reports the same thing in that passage, where he makes mention of the drunkenness of Alexander the Great, a vice," says he, "which, perhaps, was the cause of his little inclination ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... Dupont. "I heard a great part of it. I believe nearly all. I should not have done so. Understand, I make you all my apologies. It was improper to listen. But the storm, the surroundings, the scene ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... shepheards and shephearddesses, with their actions and passions, which must be such as may agree with their natures at least not exceeding former fictions, & vulgar traditions: they are not to be adorn'd with any art, but such improper ones as nature is said to bestow, as singing and Poetry, or such as experience may teach them, as the vertues of hearbs, & fountaines: the ordinary course of the Sun, moone, and starres, and such like. But you are ever to remember Shepherds to be such, as all the ancient Poets and ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... companions among whom Frederick chose to spend his leisure hours. Whenever he had nothing better to do, he would exchange rhymed epigrams with Algarotti, or discuss the Jewish religion with d'Argens, or write long improper poems about Darget, in the style of La Pucelle. Or else he would summon La Mettrie, who would forthwith prove the irrefutability of materialism in a series of wild paradoxes, shout with laughter, suddenly shudder and cross himself on upsetting the salt, and eventually pursue his ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... our surprise just as we were about to enter Detroit River we saw a boat that hailed us and ordered the Captain to lower his sails[4]. Our arms were all in the hole (hold) and the men sick. I thought it improper to make any resistance as I had not been informed that war was declared[5] and had not had orders from the Genl. to make any resistence. Lt. Goodwin and 2nd Master Beatt and Mr. Dent paymaster to the 3rd Regt. Ohio Vlts. and three ladies ...
— Journal of an American Prisoner at Fort Malden and Quebec in the War of 1812 • James Reynolds
... of the Nile and its inundations, which, it is hoped, will not be deemed an improper or tedious digression, especially as the whole is an extract from Johnson's translation. He is, all the time, the actor in the scene, and, in his own words, relates the story. Having finished this work, he returned ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... precious for our sick men to purge them of the scurvy. While riding here, a great storm arose, which drove three of our ships from their anchors; but within sixteen hours the storm ceased, and our ships returned and recovered their anchors. The general thought it improper to remain here any longer, on account of the uncertainty of the weather, the danger of riding here, and because we were able to procure so little refreshment at this island; having got, besides a few lemons and oranges, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... and, when he had censured them long enough, in showing exactly and circumstantially how they ought to have dressed themselves, ought to have walked, and ought to have behaved, to look like orderly people. Such attempts, for the most part, ended in something improper and absurd; so that we did not so much laugh at how the man looked, but at how, perchance, he might have looked had he been mad enough to caricature himself. In all such matters. Behrisch went quite unmercifully to work, without being in the slightest degree malicious On the other ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... with wilful perversity, those evil impulses which thus far had remained relatively latent. Almost as soon as he entered the town he disclosed to its citizens the most offensive traits of arrogance and tyranny. But this was not all. Not merely was he accused on every side of such faults as the improper issuing of passes, the closing of Philadelphia shops on his arrival, the imposition of menial offices upon the sons of freemen performing military duty, the use of wagons furnished by the State for transporting private property; but misdeeds of a far graver nature were ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... very high, and, as far as I can judge, a very just reputation; not merely Maxwell Point canvas-back ducks, but the famous Terrapin also, lend their aid to the enjoyment of the inner man. In fact, so famous is the Terrapin, that a wicked wag detailed to me an account of a highly improper scene which he said took place once in the Episcopal Church here, viz., a gentleman who had a powerful voice and generally led the responses, had his heart and mind so full of the luscious little animal, that by a sad fatality he ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... is the incomplete utterance of a syllable or a word, the sound omitted or added being usually consonantal. To say needcessity instead of necessity is a wrong articulation; to say doin for doing is improper enunciation. The one articulates—that is, joints—two sounds that should not be joined, and thus gives the word a positively wrong sound; the other fails to touch all the sounds in the word, and in that particular way also sounds the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... that men have used to infect their meditations, opinions, and doctrines with some conceits which they have most admired, or some sciences which they have most applied, and given all things else a tincture according to them, utterly untrue and improper. So hath Plato intermingled his philosophy with theology, and Aristotle with logic; and the second school of Plato, Proclus and the rest, with the mathematics; for these were the arts which had a kind of primogeniture with ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... race of people inhabiting a country where horses are not indigenous, and who therefore have no taste for them...; 5th, treatment of mares. To the impure air in confined, non-ventilated hovels, etc.; 6th, improper food; 7th, to a chronic system of tall rearing ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in his honor, I thought he was under no obligation to look patiently in a formal dress at the naked dance. So I went to him and persuaded him with "Say, Koga-san, let's go home." Hubbard Squash said the dinner was in his honor, and it would be improper for him to leave the room before the guests. He seemed to ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... knows I don't want to be improper. But I'd just like to ask you this: Does that Fenholtz hired help have to wear black clothes like ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and persistent superstition had regard to the direction of movement either of persons or things. This direction should always be with the course of the sun. To move against the sun was improper and productive of evil consequences, and the name given to this direction of movement was withershins. Witches in their dances and other pranks, always, it was said, went withershins. Mr. Simpson in his work, Meeting the Sun, says, "The Llama monk whirls ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... told of "the dim moral perceptions" of the people of India, and as many of those who will read this volume may be disposed to think that the cause of poverty lies in some deficiencies in the character of the Hindoo, it may not be improper, with a view to the correction of that opinion, to offer a few passages from the very interesting work of Colonel Sleeman, who furnishes more information on that head than any other recent traveller or resident; and his ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... story writing is an art, and all facts may not be capable of literary treatment. "Even actual occurrences may be improper subjects for fiction. Nature can take liberties with facts that art dare not—a truth that has passed into a proverb.... Art may fill us with anger, fear, terror, awe, but the moment it condescends to excite disgust, it passes out of the realm of art."[21] "There seems ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... one amusement always open to working-girls if they are at all attractive—the street flirtation. To their honor it can be said that comparatively few of the entire number indulge in this dangerous pastime from an improper motive, the majority meaning no more harm or evil than their more fortunate sisters who can enjoy the society of young men in well-appointed parlors. In most instances this street acquaintance, although unhedged by safe restrictions, is by no means indiscriminate. The young men are brothers ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... trade of their offices, and promote discord to augment fees, and fleece their electors; and that this would not be mended were the choice in the Executive Council, who, with interested or party aims, are continually making as improper appointments, witness a 'petty fiddler, sycophant, and scoundrel' appointed judge of the admiralty, an 'old woman and fomentor of sedition' to be another of the judges, and 'a Jeffreys' chief justice, etc., etc., with 'harpies,' the comptroller and naval officers, to prey ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... Isagoras, thus defeated by his rival, had the mean ambition to appeal to the Spartan sword. Ancient scandal attributes to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, an improper connexion with the wife of Isagoras, and every one knows that the fondest friend of the cuckold is invariably the adulterer;—the national policy of founding aristocracies was doubtless, however, a graver motive with the Spartan king than his desire to assist Isagoras. Cleomenes by a public herald ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... question so improper. What can such a question have to do with your present business?" inquired the bride, with more of gentle dignity than we have ever known ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... increased difficulties by saying, a little stiffly, "I hope, Miss Marsden, that you do not suppose that one of my calling would frequent places of improper resort." ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... more easily proved than this that religious sacrifices were prevalent throughout every part of the Gentile world. Animals, which were deemed suitable for sacrifice by one nation, might be considered improper for such a purpose by another. But in the most remote countries victims of one kind or another, and not unfrequently human victims were seen bleeding on the altars of superstition, and with the death of these, the idea of substitution, or of presenting life for life, was almost invariably ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... you shall not, Julia. I consider it my duty to prevent you from making an improper match: and, as his Majesty's representative here, I cannot allow you ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... is extremely improper for the President of the Royal Society to accept a position as a party politician. As a Unionist I should vote for him if I had a vote for Cambridge University, but for all that I think it is most lamentable that the President ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... make no secret of having known that your niece Lilian is engaged to Mr Crosbie, of London. I think it proper to warn you that if this be true Mr Crosbie is behaving himself in a very improper manner here. I am not a person who concerns myself much in the affairs of other people; and under ordinary circumstances, the conduct of Mr Crosbie would be nothing to me,—or, indeed, less than nothing; but I do to you as I would wish that others should do unto me. I believe it ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... authorities to prove that among many ancient nations marriage was a religious duty incumbent upon all. Among Mohammedan people generally it is still considered a duty. Hebrew celibacy was unheard of, and they have a proverb, 'He who has no wife is no man.' In Egypt it is improper and even disreputable for a man to abstain from marriage when there is no just impediment. For an adult to die unmarried is regarded as a deplorable misfortune by the Chinese, and among the Hindus of the present day a man who remains single is considered to be almost a useless ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... prince accompanied his fervent murmur with the imploring looks of a supplicant; but Christian turned away his head, shrugged his shoulders, and furious though still polite, he muttered a few words between his teeth: "Exaggeration! most improper; turn the child's head." Then he tried to withdraw and gain the door. With one bound the Queen was on her feet, caught sight of the table from which the parchment had disappeared, and comprehending at once that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... her governess the story she had read; and said, 'I hope, madam, you will not think it an improper one; for it was given me by my mamma; and she told me, that she thought it contained a very ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... blinds are tightly closed lest some ray of sunshine fade the carpets; and over and over again it has been proved that the first conditions of health are, abundant supply of pure air, and free admission of sunlight to every nook and cranny. Even with imperfect or improper food, these two allies are strong enough to carry the day for health; and, when the three work in harmony, the best life is ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... bees." All of these phenomena are illustrated in Lanier's 'Song of the Chattahoochee', which has often been compared to Tennyson's 'The Brook', and which alone proves the author a master in versification. To be sure, Lanier occasionally gives us an improper rhyme, as 'thwart: heart',*2* etc., but so does every poet. No doubt, too, his love of music sometimes led him, not "to strain for form effects", but to indulge too much therein, or, in the words of Mr. Stedman, "to essay ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... case of children there is not always absolute deprivation of food, but what is supplied is insufficient in quantity or of improper quality. The defence commonly set up is that the child died either ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... walls of their hovels. In Greece, even the very poorest retired to their houses and ate with closed doors; the Egyptians felt no repugnance at eating and drinking in the open air, declaring that unbecoming and improper acts should be performed in secret, but seemly acts in public. The first blind alley they came to, a recess between two hovels, the doorstep of a house or temple, any of these seemed to them a perfectly natural place to dine in. Their bill of fare was not a sumptuous ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the establishment of such a bank was brought forward by a neutral party, called the Squadrone, whom Law had interested in his favour. The Parliament ultimately passed a resolution to the effect, that, to establish any kind of paper credit, so as to force it to pass, was an improper ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... but I had no idea what she meant. She may have been impertinent, or even rude, or perhaps improper, but she looked as though she might be a domestic, and I led her gently, reverently, to Letitia in the drawing-room. I smiled back at her, in a wild endeavor to be sympathetic. I would have anointed her, or bathed her feet, or plied ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... that case the phrase of the Apostle would be improper, for two reasons. First, for a general reason: for we do not speak of a person's nature, but of his person, as being predestinated: because to be predestinated is to be directed towards salvation, which belongs to a suppositum acting for the end of beatitude. Secondly, for a special reason. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... impropriety in your alliance with either of them but I told them, at the same time, that I could by no means think of pressing their suit, as that was an office which, however well it might do for Mr Harrel, would be totally improper and unbecoming for me." ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... sake guarded and watched more carefully than usual. Only the tapestried corridor running the length of the great colonnade to the royal apartments was left unguarded, since in that place there is no possibility of improper intrusion." ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... never read Rousseau," the little teacher stated definitely. "Isn't he—atheistical, Mrs. Bell, and improper every way?" ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the FOOLISH, the WICKED, and the IMPROPER, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... brutality, ignoring beastly talk or unpleasant dinner companions; occupying herself with her fresh dresses, or household matters; now decorating a room in the old Four Corners, or watering the ivies that were replacing the gnarled woodbines. Mrs. Ellwell had never kept improper books from her daughters—it seemed so hopeless—and she read what her father read, accepting the lurid picture of life presented in the novels plentifully scattered about the house as probably correct, yet ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... hanged!" said Hilbrough, half in vexation, but still laughing, while his wife tried by frowning to remind him that the use of such words in the presence of a servant was very improper. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... of throwing them overboard at a hazard. To be the bearer of any despatches in time of peace cannot be incorrect for a ship on discovery more than for any other; BUT WITH A PASSPORT, AND IN TIME OF WAR, IT CERTAINLY IS IMPROPER." With characteristic straightforwardness, Flinders did not hesitate to tell King himself that the despatches had cast suspicion on him:* (* Historical Records 6 105.) "I have learned privately that in your despatches to the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... after her public entry, a day not at this period regarded as improper for the performance of such a ceremonial, Henry caused his queen to be crowned at Westminster with great solemnity; an honor which he never thought proper to confer on any ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... officers had annulled an election on the ground of illegality, and had held a second. The Lower House found that this was improper, on the ground that the right of deciding in matters concerning the election of representatives belonged from ancient times to the House of Commons alone. They declined to confer on this subject with the Privy Council, or with the Upper House. Ill-will and jealousy were excited against those ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... had commenced a prosecution against Mr. William Barton, a member of that board, for various acts of peculation committed by him, they say, "We must be of opinion, that, as prosecutions are actually carrying on against him by our Board of Trade, he is, during such prosecution at least, an improper person to hold a seat at that board; and therefore we direct that he be suspended from the Company's service until our further pleasure concerning him be known." The principle laid down in this instruction, even before their own opinion concerning Mr. Barton's case was declared, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... you think I've come here to do improper things, or sing seditious songs, that you are afraid the stranger should hear or see what ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... if your demand means a challenge, its acceptance, when we have a country to defend and enemies to fight, would be highly improper and contrary to the dictates of plain duty, without reference to higher grounds of action. I will not make myself a party to a course of conduct forbidden alike by the plainest principles of duty, and the laws which we have ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... it may not be improper to say a word about Archie Winters. He was, as we have already said, Frank's cousin, and lived in the city of Portland. He was just Frank's age, and, like him, was kind and generous; but he was not the boy for books. When in school, he was an obedient and industrious pupil, and learned very readily; ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... courtesy only, but Patty had failed to inform the Dowager that the title was not his by natural right. She knew well what the result would be. It is quite proper to have luncheon with an uncle; and quite improper with even the oldest ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... place and do the needful.' And Utanka, thus addressed, said unto those women, 'It is not proper for me to do this at the bidding of women. I have not been enjoined by my preceptor to do aught that is improper.' ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was John Bucknor, and it is reported (we do not know with how much truth) that at one time there was an improper intimacy between him and the lady who despatched him. If so, we ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... them would approve, of course. But really, Winthrop, I'm way past the short petticoat stage—though the way they're making them now nobody would guess it. I know it's improper and unconventional and that it isn't done east of the Mississippi nor west of the Rocky Mountains. But when in Rome do as the roamers do, as someone has said. And as for Mr. Purdy," she paused and looked Endicott squarely ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... everything naked, not to be present at all things, not to desire to "know" all. "Tout comprendre c'est tout mepriser."{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} "Is it true," a little girl once asked her mother, "that the beloved Father is everywhere?—I think it quite improper,"—a hint to philosophers.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} The shame with which Nature has concealed herself behind riddles and enigmas should be held in higher esteem. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not revealing her reasons?{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Perhaps her name, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... downwards, forwards, and medially. After the break has taken place and the force has ceased to act, displacement may be produced by rough handling on the part of those who render first aid, the careless or improper application of splints or bandages, or by the weight of ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... that it is a little dull, Donald," Minnie said, "but not being a man, I suppose desires like yours would seem improper When you go," and her voice trembled a little, "I will feel the dullness all ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... have been something very captivating about her this evening, for all the women in the servants' hall began to scold and abuse her. The housekeeper said she was a pert, stuck-up thing: the upper-housemaid asked, how dare she wear such ringlets and ribbons, it was quite improper! The cook (for there was a woman-cook as well as a man-cook) said to the kitchen-maid that SHE never could see anything in that creetur: but as for the men, every one of them, Coachman, John, Buttons, the page, and Monsieur, the Prince of Crim ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Antigone had been guilty of a social blunder; as if her behavior had been in some way painful and improper. That's to say he took no notice of it at all beyond shifting his seat a little so as to screen her. And then he ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... these soldiers who did not know what a theatre was, knew what a church was. And they had been taught to respect churches. Nobody had ever warned them against a church as a place where frivolous women paraded in their best clothes; where stories of improper females like Potiphar's wife, and erotic poetry like the Song of Songs, were read aloud; where the sensuous and sentimental music of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Gounod, and Brahms was more popular than severe music by greater composers; ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... politics and to criticise American public men from the British point of view. From that error I propose to abstain most rigorously. It is the right of Americans to criticise their own Government and the public acts of their statesmen, and on that right I shall not infringe. It cannot, however, be improper for an Englishman to set out before his fellow-countrymen the utterances of a great American on matters which vitally affect not only America but the whole civilised world. Mr. Roosevelt—for Mr. Roosevelt is the great American of whom I speak—has done more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... can have induced the Rajah of Kittoor to imagine that I was capable of receiving that or any other sum of money, as an inducement to do that which he must think improper, or he would not have offered it. But I shall advert to that point ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... who have urged it: "Montesinos treats the ancient history of Peru in a mode so original and distinct from all others that we can perceive it to be a production alike novel and unknown." If this means any thing, it means that it was highly improper for Montesinos to find in Peru what was "unknown" to poorly-informed and superficial Spanish writers, who had already been accepted as "authorities." It would have been singular if his careful investigation, continued through fifteen years, had not given ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... young uns;—that's the way to pair them," said Mr. Neefit,—understanding nature better than he did precedence; and so they walked into the next room. Mrs. Neefit was not quite sure whether her husband had or had not done something improper. She had her doubts, and they ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... his. If such passages were of more frequent occurrence, this argument might be called a circular one. But the proportion of such passages as I at least should exclude is so small, and the difference between them and the rest is so marked, that no improper begging of the question can be justly charged. The plays in the Globe edition contain just a thousand closely-printed pages. I do not think that there are fifty in all, perhaps not twenty—putting scraps ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... things-in-themselves. A junction might thus be effected with the system of M. Bergson, which would lead to this curious result: that pragmatic logic would be the method of intelligence, because intelligence is merely a method, useful in practice, for the symbolic and improper representation of reality; while another non-pragmatic method—sympathy and dream—would alone be able to put us in possession of direct knowledge and genuine truth. So that, after all, the pragmatic "truth" of working ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... name of a book. They had better get it. Other people would have got it. It couldn't be a medicine nor anything to eat, and was probably a religious novel. Novels about feet or arms were usually religious. A few considered it sounded a little improper, and as though the book, far from being religious, would not be altogether nice; but only very proper people who distrusted everything, even arms ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... opponents of Catholic emancipation have at length conceded to the expediency of relieving the petitioners. In conceding thus much, however, a new objection is started; it is not the time, say they, or it is an improper time, or there is time enough yet. In some degree I concur with those who say, it is not the time exactly; that time is passed; better had it been for the country, that the Catholics possessed at this moment their proportion of our privileges, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... understanding more easily invents new things than new words, and we are thence constrained to employ a multitude of improper and inadequate expressions. When several nations form a permanent league and establish a supreme authority, which, although it has not the same influence over the members of the community as a national government, acts upon each of the Confederate ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... most decided traces of their influence. We have seen to what a large extent that worship is everywhere marked by a centralising tendency. This tendency is not connected in the Priestly Code with opposition to improper or foreign worship; yet it must be interpreted as a polemical measure; and if it be regarded as an axiom necessary in the Priestly Code from the nature of the case, that is only saving that the demands of the prophets had prevailed most completely ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... one of a numerous breed in Bath in those days,—that is, a fashionable scoundrel and a married man,—made himself obnoxious to Miss Linley by improper addresses. He annoyed and harassed her, threatening to destroy himself unless she gratified him, and later attempted to sully her reputation by calumnies. This brought about the culmination of her attachment to Sheridan. She fled ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... executors, or administrators, and the real estates of minors, by their guardians. All such private business is properly cognizable by the established judicatories.... A legislative body ... is extremely improper for such decisions. The polity of the English government seldom admits of the exercise of this executive and judiciary power by the legislature, and I know of nothing special in the government of this province, to give countenance to it." [Footnote: ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... considered by the Athenians as a matter of public as well as of private concern. Solon gave permission to every man dying without children to bequeath his property by will as he should think fit; and the testament was maintained unless it could be shown to have been procured by some compulsion or improper seduction. Speaking generally, this continued to be the law throughout the historical times of Athens. Sons, wherever there were sons, succeeded to the property of their father in equal shares, with the obligation of giving out their sisters in marriage along ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... made the experiment of abstaining wholly from the use of liquid and solid stimulants, and from every form of animal food, I am not fully convinced that it should be deemed improper, on any account, to use the more slightly stimulating forms of animal food. Perhaps fish and fowl, with the exception of ducks and geese, turtle and lobster, may be taken without detriment, in moderate quantities. And I regard good mutton as being the lightest, and, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... his students how to study and how to think logically, by constant reiteration of principles in the class room and by making any failure {vi} on the part of a student the occasion for pointing out how such failure arose from improper methods of study ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... permission—forcing open trunks and wardrobes and stealing money, jewellery and all valuables they came across; breaking chairs, tables and mirrors which they could not carry away with them, because, anyhow, they are consequences of the war, though improper in the case of civilized forces. But what I would not leave unmentioned is the inhuman conduct of that General in his dealings with the Filipino Army, when, to arrange a treaty of peace with the Civil Commission, of which Mr. ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy
... between the doctor's high-sounding list of remote symptoms, which he is treating as primary diseases, and the hue and outcry about the decadence of the home spirit, the prevalence of excessive and improper amusements, club-houses, billiard-rooms, theatres, and so forth, which are "the banes ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... between advance and retreat, assent and negation—a disturbed state of attention, and an organic hesitancy, resulting in the emotional overflow of blushing when the act is realized or thought as improper. ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... him immune from that. He might bring the peat in, fill the lamps, arrange and dust the scanty furniture, but washing-up was not a possibility even. As an author it was considered beneath his dignity altogether, almost improper—it would have shocked the children. Mother could do anything; it was right and natural that she should—-poor soul I But Daddy's profession set him in an enclosure apart, and there were certain things in this servantless menage he could not have done without disgracing ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... sufficient for my station in life, which no one expected me to rise above. I had not studied either French or music or dancing, nor sported fine dresses or showy bonnets; for our whole bringing up was in keeping with our position. Was I not to be a sewing-girl?—and how improper it would have been to educate me with tastes which all the earnings of a sewing-girl would be unable to gratify! I presume, that, if we had had the means, notwithstanding our peculiarly strict training, we should have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... then of names which are rightly given. And in names which are incorrectly given, the greater part may be supposed to be made up of proper and similar letters, or there would be no likeness; but there will be likewise a part which is improper and spoils the beauty and formation of the word: you would ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... Spanish Main. And, here, since he had so valiantly forborne all other wickedness, poor Mr. Dimmesdale longed, at least, to shake hands with the tarry blackguard, and recreate himself with a few improper jests, such as dissolute sailors so abound with, and a volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and heaven-defying oaths! It was not so much a better principle as partly his natural good taste, and still more his buckramed habit ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... accustomed to; but I found them extremely easy to become acquainted with, and in nowise prudish. They did, however, keep up a suspicious intimacy with a brilliantly lighted, though not very fragrantly scented, saloon on the left. In this I was assured there was nothing improper, inasmuch as it was sanctioned by the customs of the best society in New York, and much frequented by the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... so. It is contrary to nature, and whenever a result is contrary to nature, the cause which produces it is a violation of nature's laws; and the violation of nature's laws, which results in the premature decay of American women, is found mainly in improper marriages, wrong sexual conditions, unhygienic habits, and the woful ignorance of both husband and wife in all that pertains to a proper marriage relation. And, ladies, if you will see that your husbands attend my lectures on Sexual Science, I will promise ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... in so far as it results from perfect adaptation to a perfect environment, since it induces the individual to continue beneficial acts. It must be remembered, however, that so far as heredity or education has adapted our organism to improper stimuli, pleasure is no proof that the good of the organism is being advanced. In such cases, redemption can come to the ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... that she had no appeal from this will, forbore to dispute his right, and made a feeble effort to persuade him to be just. 'While my aunt lived, sir,' said she, in a tremulous voice, 'my residence here was not improper; but now, that she is no more, I may surely be permitted to depart. My stay cannot benefit you, sir, and will ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... depravity cannot twist around it and even while he threatened 'I'll call father,' I slipped into his bed and took my pleasure in spite of his half-hearted resistance. Nor was he displeased with my improper conduct for, although he complained for a while, that he had been cheated and made a laughing-stock, and that his companions, to whom he had bragged of his wealthy friend, had made sport of him. 'But you'll see that I'll not be like ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Choice of their Children? This Right Proven from their Relation to their Children, from the Inexperience of Children, from Sacred History. The Patriarchal Age. Judaism. The Christian Church. The Extent of this Right. The Duties it Involves. Moral Control. Coercive Measures. Improper Parental Interposition. Its Sad Effects. Persuasive Measures. Should Parents Banish and Disinherit Children for their Marrying ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... any will be pleased to impose the rule of measuring things to be the best by being nearest to nature, it is proved, by consequence, that which is most remote from the thing supposed, must needs be most improper; and therefore I may justly say, that both I and the question were equally mistaken, for I do own, I had rather read good than either blank verse or prose, and therefore the author did himself injury, if he like verse so well in plays, to lay down rules and raise arguments ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... more often than I could wish, seen a case like this. A young man of good family sent away to college. He gets in with the wrong crowd, for they are not all angels in colleges yet, quite. Gets to smoking and drinking and gambling, improper hours, bad companions, and all that. His real friends try to advise him, but without effect. By and by the college authorities remonstrate with him, and he tries to improve, but without much success after the first pull. And after a while, very reluctantly, he is suspended, and sent home ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... the meeting, and took part in the discussions. Among others, the following subject was considered and reported upon: "'Ought not negroes to be excluded from the new enlistment, especially those such as are slaves?' All were thought improper by the council of officers. 'Agreed, That ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... very improper to adduce any example of a particular, where the force of the argument lies in the generality alone. It is enough to have mentioned the facts which are to be examined: Every person of inquiry and observation will judge for himself how far those ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... woman respects herself she'll hold off it,' the earl insisted because of his desire that way. He signified in mutterings that the thing was improper and absurd, a piece of sentiment, sickly senility, unlike Lord Dannisburgh. Also that Percy had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... appear at sunrise waving her handkerchief from the sandbank he could not understand. For, even if she had managed to row herself off secretly in the dark, she could not have sent the empty boat back to the yacht. It was to Shaw a sort of improper miracle. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... glee Ming-lin arose and backed himself away from the golden throne, for it would have been very improper for him to turn his coat-tails ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... the same MALE company as one meets at the parties of the Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared to enjoy the animated and dazzlingly improper scene. On the second floor the supper tables were loaded with every delicacy of the season. That your readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian demi-monde, I copy the menu of the supper, which was served to ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... if Hamilton accepted an improper challenge, he should receive the same condemnation as the one who gave it. But, even on general grounds, some qualification should be made in favor of the challenged party. His is a different position from that of the challenger. A sensitive man, though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the interior. The present would have been a good opportunity for me to have visited that chief, and I felt strongly inclined to do so, as he had expressed dissatisfaction respecting my treatment by the Chiboque, and even threatened to punish them. As it would be improper to force my men to go thither, I resolved to wait and see whether the proposition might not emanate from themselves. When I can get the natives to agree in the propriety of any step, they go to the end of the affair ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... did she wish to revive the subject before Lionel, whose indignation would be still more unpleasant in Marian's own presence. She therefore said nothing, and on the other hand Marian felt awkward and constrained; Lionel was secretly ashamed of his own improper behaviour to Miss Morley, and well knowing that he should never dare to perform his threat of telling his father, put on a surly kind of demeanour, quite as uncivil to Marian as to anyone else; and ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... stated exercises and systematic instructions in the art of reading. But quite as much improvement in this important and too much neglected accomplishment may be gained by not allowing children at any time to read in an improper manner. Every demonstration at the blackboard, every text or hymn repeated from memory, every recitation in arithmetic, grammar, or geography, every exercise of every kind in which the voice is used and words are uttered, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... or improper, or sinful in it," replied the judge; "on the contrary, it is your duty, both as a Christian and a man. Remember, you have this moment sworn to tell the truth, and the whole truth; you ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... life slight injuries are constantly being received and more or less perfectly repaired. An infection which may but slightly affect the ordinary well-being of the individual may produce a considerable damage. Excess or deficiency or improper food, occasional or continued use of alcohol and other poisons may lead to very definite lesions. Repair after injury is rarely perfect, the repaired tissue is more susceptible to injury, and with advancing age there is constant diminution in the ease and perfection of repair. The effect ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... that opinions are subject to revolutions as well as empires. Arianism, after having triumphed during three centuries, and been forgot twelve, rises at last out of its own ashes; but it has chosen a very improper season to make its appearance in, the present age being quite cloyed with disputes and sects. The members of this sect are, besides, too few to be indulged the liberty of holding public assemblies, which, however, they will, doubtless, be permitted to do in case they spread considerably. ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... helplessly, "why—general morals." He put his glasses on carefully, with both hands. "Elizabeth asked me a very improper question; she ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... perceived that her strange companion was powerfully excited; she waited for him to continue, but observing that he walked on in silence, she said, though with a trembling voice, "Indeed, Mr. Clifford, I fear that it is very, very improper in me to meet you thus; nothing but the strong expressions in your letter—and—and—in short, my fear that you meditated some desperate design, at which I could not guess, caused me to yield to ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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