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More "Impropriety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Miss Garth, after many years of intimate experience, had never detected, she accepted the explanation as a matter of course; receiving it all the more readily inasmuch as it might, without impropriety, be communicated in substance to appease the irritated curiosity of the two young ladies. For this reason especially she perused the first half of the letter with an agreeable sense of relief. Far different was the impression produced on her when she advanced to the second half, and when ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... State. The mountains which traverse it, and impart to it its severe northern climate, belong properly to the Catskill range. On some maps of the State they are called the Pine Mountains, though with obvious local impropriety, as pine, so far as I have observed, is nowhere found upon them. "Birch Mountains" would be a more characteristic name, as on their summits birch is the prevailing tree. They are the natural home of the black and yellow birch, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... form of taste; the man who collects foreign stamps, say, or book-plates, or arrow-heads, the connoisseur of a tiny section of one of the lesser schools of Italian painting, the coral-insect who has devoted his life to a participle, first-edition men, and all those various bookworms who, without impropriety be it spoken, are the maggots that breed in the dung of the great. A certain friend of mine always appears to me in the similitude of a first edition of one of Mr. Hardy's novels. I have the greatest difficulty at times to prevent myself forcibly setting him upon my ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... Freemasonry of his father, which could only be conferred on free men born of free women." The ancient Greeks were of the same opinion; for they used the word [Greek: douloprepeia] or, "slave manners," to designate any very great impropriety of manners. ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for a violent and unprovoked assault upon a Jewish newspaper proprietor, declared in the legislature, to which he had been elected on emerging from jail, that public opinion was becoming outraged by the impropriety of the conduct of the emperor. The scene which ensued defied description. Schoenerer was suspended, and had not steps been taken to assure his protection, would have been subjected to very violent treatment by the vast majority of the house, which ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... making ourselves particularly agreeable to everybody. And somehow I got into the habit of making people laugh. It isn't very difficult. I am rather an adept at telling stories which just graze impropriety, for instance. You know, they call me the social triumph of my generation. And people are glad to see me because I am 'so awfully funny' and 'simply killing' and so on. And I suppose it tells in the long run—like the dyer's ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... being a very tired and a very irritable doctor he would not have considered it necessary to regard David with the eye of stern discipline. But however that may be, the man pivoted suddenly upon his heel and marched out of the room, leaving the little boy alone to brood at his leisure upon the sad impropriety of being rude. ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... with sudden emotion which she could hardly understand because it was so new to her: passionate resentment towards Joyce Meredith for the impropriety of receiving a visit from Captain Dalton at that late hour. Her position as a married woman did not cover such indiscretion. How would Ray Meredith feel if he heard that his adored wife was entertaining the doctor at midnight, and alone? It sounded abominable, even if innocent ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... disposed we treated with them, and they gave us everything we asked of them. They all go as naked as they were born, without being ashamed. If all were to be related concerning the little shame they have, it would be bordering on impropriety; therefore it is better to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... incorrect and misleading[13]. Freely allowing that the term 'variae lectiones,' for lack of a better, may be allowed to stand on the Critic's page, I yet think it necessary even a second time to call attention to the impropriety which attends its use. Thus Codex B differs from the commonly received Text of Scripture in the Gospels alone in 7578 places; of which no less than 2877 are instances of omission. In fact omissions constitute by far the larger number of what are commonly called 'Various Readings.' ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... the To[u]sho[u]gu[u] (Iyeyasu). It was a bid of Shu[u]zen, the mark of the conferrence of position as koshimoto in his household. Only in the madness of love—or lust—would he have risked such impropriety. The regular time for counting had arrived. O'Kiku carefully replaced the beautiful objects, marked with holly hock crest, into their lacquered box. Again Shu[u]zen importuned her with his suit. Then in vexation—"Ah! Truly a rebellious and wicked ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... child often fails to accomplish its purpose, because the child's reasoning is so different from that of an adult. Unless there is a nearly perfect understanding of the workings of the child's mind, reasoning is frequently futile. A seven-year-old boy who had received a long lecture on the impropriety of keeping dead crabs in his pockets said, after it was all over: "Well, they were alive when I put them in. You are wasting a lot of my precious time." These little brains have a way of working out combinations that seem weird to ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... completely mastered his emotions, spoke with such candor, judgment and authority that the men present whispered together, and seemed almost inclined to think that they had committed a shameful indiscretion in suspecting so gallant an officer and so perfect a gentleman of any impropriety, on the mere word of a strange woman, who ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... marriage is far more liberal in its construction than the English, this place has been the refuge of distressed lovers from time immemorial; and although the practice of escaping here is universally condemned as very naughty and improper, yet, like every other impropriety, it is kept in countenance by very respectable people. Two lord chancellors have had the amiable weakness to fall into this snare, and one lord chancellor's son; so says the guide book, which is our Koran for the time being. It says, moreover, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... going to attempt to copy a house, that Edward had, in the morning, sketched for him, when Mr. Bernard, who generally took an opportunity, when not alone, of speaking to the children upon any little impropriety of conduct, called Ferdinand to him, and, with the most endearing gentleness, told him, that he had remarked in him that day, as well as on several former occasions, an unwillingness to acquiesce in the commands of his mother, unless he were ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... acquaintance is purely professional. A fashionable and popular physician would be swamped with wedding-cards if that were the custom. If, however, one wishes to show gratitude and remembrance, there would be no impropriety in sending cards ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Vera's heart—till it has passed away. [The BARON comes dazedly forward, half with a shocked sense of VERA'S impropriety, half to relieve her of her burden. She motions him back.] This is the work of ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... like that," he grumbled, recovering himself the moment he felt her close to him again, and struck by a sense of impropriety in her short skirt after the grown-up appearance she had presented in the long one. "You look ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... whose presence he was, was ready to sink with confusion; but, in answer to Gluck's questions, he told him that he was a young musical student from the country, whose anxiety to be present at the performance of the opera had led him into the commission of an impropriety. Gluck, as may be supposed, was delighted with a piece of enthusiasm so flattering to himself, and not only gave his young admirer a ticket of admission, but desired his acquaintance." From this artistic contretemps, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the middling or lower order must necessarily lay aside a great deal of his ordinary language; he must avoid errors in grammar and orthography; and steer clear of the cant of particular professions, and of every impropriety that is ludicrous or disgusting: nay, he must speak in good verse, and observe all the graces in prosody and collocation. After all this, it may not be very easy to say how we are to find him out to be a low man, or what marks can remain of the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... ministerial remonstrances. When, in the beginning of the spring of 1869, he observed the fantastical changes the parents made in the girl's daily attire, he told them about the remarks made in the papers about this dressing and dwelt upon the impropriety of it. They replied, 'She had no other pleasure—they did not like denying it to her.' During the following summer, finding that the girl looked more plump in the face and that her general improvement was more conspicuous, he said, 'Sarah is evidently improving and gaining, ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... 2. The impropriety of habitual concealment may be further illustrated. An individual who endeavors to conceal the business in which he is engaged, or the place and mode of carrying it on, exposes himself to the suspicion ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... from their healthy neighbors, clinging for generations to tongues and pens. Of this tenacity there is a notable exemplification in a passage of Boswell, written nearly a hundred years ago. Dr. Johnson found fault with Boswell for using the phrase to make money: "Don't you see the impropriety of it? To make money is to coin it: you should say get money." Johnson, adds Boswell, "was jealous of infractions upon the genuine English language, and prompt to repress colloquial barbarisms; such as pledging myself, for undertaking; ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... and of Queen Mary of Hungary, at the impropriety of his manners, had produced, however, some effect, so that on his wedding journey to England, he manifested much "gentleness and humanity, mingled with royal gravity." Upon this occasion, says another Venetian, accredited to him, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... grew up between them. Maurice was hurt: she had shown too openly the small value she set on his opinion. In addition to this, he was disagreeably affected by her craving for excitement at any cost. To his mind, there was more than a touch of impropriety in the proceeding; it was just as if a mourner of a few months' standing should suddenly discard his mourning, and with it all the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... point of asking one of the turnkeys to send him some trusty person to take this letter to St. James Place, when, recollecting the impropriety of making any inmate of Newgate his messenger to Lady Sara, he was determining to remove immediately to St. Martin's Lane, and thence dispatch his packet to his generous friend, when Mrs. Robson herself was ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... one circumstance, dear Lucy, which affrights you so much? Let me know. What peculiarity of mine—what thoughtless impropriety—what association, which I may remove, thus prevents your acceptance of my offer, and that of Edith? Speak—spare me not in what you shall say—but let your thoughts have their due language, just as if you were—as indeed ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... from the French language, (says Mr. Steevens, in a note to the Tempest,) it appears to have been spelt according to the pronunciation, and therefore wrongly; but ever since it has been spelt right, it has been uttered with equal impropriety. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... Electra into the Cottage. Enter Clytaemnestra in a Chariot and splendid array.] The Chorus welcome her, and she begs their aid to alight.—Electra thrusts herself forward clad in rags as she is, and begs that she too may assist.—Clyt. feels the impropriety of the scene, and falls into an apologetic tone; it was Electra's father who, by his injustice to Iphigenia, was the real cause of Electra's trouble. This leads to the usual judicial disputation: Clyt. pleading that this sacrifice of her daughter was done not for a good cause, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... looked a little awry, not with any thought of remonstrating against the procedure—no native American would do that, you know—but he was just lighting his after-breakfast segar, and he shrunk from the impropriety of smoking in such close quarters, with even such a woman-stranger. 'I hope, madam,' he said, 'a segar does not offend you?' 'La! no, sir,' replied our rustic friend most good-naturedly, 'I like it.' My father's geniality is always called forth by the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... into the memory of a child who, as she sat on her doorstep, was engaged with the novelist in pleasant conversation, until he spied a ring that she was wearing upon the third finger of her left hand. This he made the text of a solemn declaration upon the impropriety of wearing falsely the symbol of a sacred relationship. The lesson intended was probably sensible and wholesome, but the effect produced upon the child was a terror of Fenimore Cooper which lasted as long as life. On the other hand, one who was a slip of a girl at the time used afterward to boast ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... day I met in the street a young lady who, but yesterday, seemed to me a young girl. She had in the interval taken that sudden leap from youth to maturity which is always so wonderful and perplexing. When I had seen her last there would have been no impropriety in giving her a kiss in the street. Now I should as little have thought of offering to kiss her as of whistling to the Archbishop of Canterbury if I had seen that dignitary passing on the other side of the road. She had taken wing and flown from ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... with mossy bark and blighted foliage, like the lilacs under my window. Not that beauty is worthy of less than immortality; no, the beautiful should live forever,—and thence, perhaps, the sense of impropriety when we see it triumphed over by time. Apple-trees, on the other hand, grow old without reproach. Let them live as long as they may, and contort themselves into whatever perversity of shape they please, and deck their withered limbs with a springtime gaudiness of pink blossoms; still they ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to put off the wedding, as much inconvenience would have been caused, and poor Janet was only cousin to John, and had been removed from all family interests so long, even Mrs. Robert Brownlow saw no impropriety, since Barbara went to Belforest for a fortnight, returning to Mrs. Evelyn on the afternoon of the wedding-day itself to assist in her move to the Dower House. Esther, who had never professed to wish for a hero, had ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... true bills found against them. Unfortunately, in consequence of the cholera, the requisite number of jurors to form a court was not forthcoming for the August term. The Government thought that they could not, without impropriety, put off taking any steps against these persons till November. They were, therefore, arrested last week; all except one, who was committed for arson, were at once bailed by the magistrates; and he too was bailed the day after his ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Miss Evelyn," said he, smiling, "the impropriety did not in those cases, I presume, attach itself to the other quality. The graceful manner was strictly proper to its ends, was it not, however the ends might ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... that "vanishing girl" trick. Somehow I couldn't. But I said nothing. None of us said anything. We sat about that big round table as if assembled for a conference and looked at each other in a sort of fatuous consternation. I would have ended by laughing outright if I had not been saved from that impropriety by poor Fyne ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... character, which is of great importance not only in our actions and language, but in our very looks, our gesture, and our walk; and that which is contrary to it will always be unbecoming, and disagreeable. If the Poet, therefore, carefully guards against any impropriety of the kind, and is always condemned as guilty of a fault, when he puts the language of a worthy man into the mouth of a ruffian, or that of a wife man into the mouth of a fool:—if, moreover, the artist who painted the ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... steal more dearly a leaf wrested from the book of Nature and Truth, than all the indifferent volumes from which, however fine they be, it is impossible to extract either a laugh or a tear. The author has licence to say this without any impropriety, since it is not his intention to stand upon tiptoe in order to obtain an unnatural height, but because it is a question of the majesty of his art, and not of himself—a poor clerk of the court, whose business it is to have ink in his pen, to listen to the gentleman on the bench, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... arches of the Roman amphitheater; and the habitations of the lower orders frequently present traces of ornament and stability of material evidently belonging to the remains of a prouder edifice. This is the case sometimes to such a degree as, in another country, would be disagreeable from its impropriety; but, in Italy, it corresponds with the general prominence of the features of a past age, and is always beautiful. Thus, the eye rests with delight on the broken moldings of the windows, and the sculptured capitals of the corner columns, contrasted, as ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... if on horseback, and remain standing until he has passed. He must at the same time take off his slippers. He also must take off his slippers when he enters a house. Should he fail to do this, it would be considered a great impropriety. ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... because that would be contrary to the truth, seeing that on several occasions he borrowed mine and read his hours in it. I also declare that I have never seen him close the doors of the church, and that whenever I have seen him speaking to women I have never noticed any impropriety; I have not ever seen him touch them in any way, they have only spoken together; and if anything is found in my deposition contrary to the above, it is without my knowledge, and was never read to me, for I would not ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Southern California, and then returned to Los Angeles. On their return they were more than satisfied with the progress of the C.M. What helped the movement very much was the character which Penloe and Stella gave it. When some of the more conservative element suggested the impropriety or immodesty of the C.I., they were met with the answer: "Look at Penloe and Stella, who live the idea every day of their lives. Are there any purer-minded persons than they are? Do not the best people of the city open their houses to welcome them? Did they not tell how living the life helped ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... combed and brushed her thick brown hair, and, taken with its exceeding beauty, had ventured on a stroke of originality no one would have expected of her: she had left it hanging loose on her shoulders. Any one would think such an impropriety impossible to a Scotchwoman. But then she had been handling the hair, and contact with anything alters so much one's theories about it. If Mary had found it so, instead of making it so, she would have said it was "no dacent." But the hair gave her its own ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... who for many Years last past have been well known to be truly Splenatick, and that my Spleen arises from having contracted so great a Delicacy, by reading the best Authors, and keeping the most refined Company, that I cannot bear the least Impropriety of Language, or Rusticity of Behaviour. Now, Sir, I have ever looked upon this as a wise Distemper; but by late Observations find that every heavy Wretch, who has nothing to say, excuses his Dulness by complaining of the Spleen. Nay, I saw, the other Day, two Fellows in a Tavern Kitchen set up ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... am of opinion that the time has arrived when a further portion of these Journals may without impropriety be published, yet I am sensible that as the narrative draws nearer to the present time, and touches events occurring during the reign of the Sovereign who still happily occupies the throne, much more reticence is ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... I am much too delicate to make and keep such appointments in the winter season. If you knew what a pain I had in my chest this morning, and how I went without breakfast, and was knocked down besides, you'd feel the impropriety of bringing me here in ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... is this likely to come to an end? Chang Te-hui is, moreover, a man well up in years; and he is an old friend of our family, so if I go with him, how ever will I be able to do anything that's wrong? Should I at any time be guilty of any impropriety, he will be sure to speak to me, and to exhort me. He even knows the prices of things and customs of trade; and as I shall, as a matter of course, consult him in everything, what advantage won't I enjoy? But if you refuse to let me ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... her work, feeling a little as if she had been swept off her feet; and she was not entirely without misgivings. The possible impropriety of going out alone with a man for the whole day did not rouble her, but the nature of the man, she was shrewd enough to perceive, was ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... civic-bred man, with an intense love of law and order; the kind of man who is the first to take that law and order into his own hands when he does not find it existing to please him. He had a Bostonian's respect for respectability, tradition, and propriety, but was willing to face irregularity and impropriety to create order elsewhere. He was fond of Nature with these limitations, never quite trusting her unguided instincts, and finding her as an instructress greatly inferior to Harvard University, though ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... convinced in his own mind that no impropriety of this sort was likely to be committed by the intelligent, respectable jury whom he saw before him; but it was his duty to warn them that, in his opinion, they could not bring in any verdict but 'Guilty' if they respected their oaths. He should leave the case confidently in their ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... difficult, especially for Minnie, upon whom the chief responsibility would rest, to put that question of the crape out of her thoughts; but she read on in a very determined manner, and it is to be hoped that she succeeded. She felt very deeply the impropriety of her mother's proceedings. She had never herself stirred out-of-doors since her father's death, and would not till after the funeral, should the interests of nations hang on it. She, at least, knew what her duty was, and would do it. Chatty ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... but the squire insisted on Leicester bringing us both to dine with his party at five. After a few modest and conscientious scruples on my part, at intruding on the hospitality of comparative strangers, and a strong private remonstrance from Hurst, on the impropriety of sitting down to dinner with ladies in a surtout and white cords, we accepted the invitation, and betook ourselves to kill the intervening hour or so ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... gods, but to us is known as an infinite love, revealed in the mystery of man—I say before I begin, it is fitting that, in the absence of a common friend to do that office for me, I should introduce myself to your acquaintance, and I hope coming friendship. Nor can there be any impropriety in my telling you about myself, seeing I remain concealed behind my own words. You can never look me in the eyes, though you may look me in the soul. You may find me out, find my faults, my vanities, my sins, but you will not SEE me, at least in this world. To you I am but a voice of revealing, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... silence, towering above the triumphant and unrepentant Crosby, stood Mrs. Pemberton, a portentous figure of shocked matronly disapproval. And she promptly placed the blame where mothers of sons have placed it since the first similar impropriety ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... society, but occurrences happened to Lord Byron which engaged both, and some of them cannot well be passed over unnoticed. One of these took place during the spring of this year, and having been a subject of newspaper remark, it may with less impropriety be mentioned than others which were more indecorously made the topics of general discussion. The incident alluded to was an extravagant scene enacted by a lady of high rank, at a rout given by Lady Heathcote; in which, in revenge, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... veil of the most expensive Valenciennes, and the robes of the bridesmaids designed by the perfectest of Parisian artists, and looped up with stuffed robins or other such tender rarities;—think with what sense of hitherto unheard-of impropriety, the British public must have received a picture of a marriage, in which the bride was only crowned with flowers,—at which the bridesmaids danced barefoot,—and in which nothing was known, or even conjecturable, respecting the bridegroom, but ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... number of young people get off together, they are apt, without the least intention of impropriety, to let their spirits carry them away and lead them into absurdities they would never commit in a graver moment. If a chaperon is bright and cheery, sympathizing in the enjoyment of the young people, and avoiding making her presence a bar upon innocent gayety, she need be no ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... gave him a lecture on the impropriety of deserting his post, when placed on guard, explaining the consequences that might result from such unfaithfulness in time of war. Richard listened patiently to the reproof, and was sentenced to be confined in the guard tent for ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... to make free with the Characters of particular Persons; for there are some Men in the World, who, tho' they are not asham'd of the Impropriety of ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... him the impropriety of sending for you at the festivities," resumed the man, sniffing at the vial, "but he became excited, swore he would leave the bed and brain me with mine own pestle if I ventured to hinder him. So I consented to ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... temper of no mean proportions could dwell together in the body of a wood nymph. When he had first seen Cynthia among the willows by Coniston Water, he had thought her a wood nymph. But she scolded him for his impropriety with so unerring a choice of words that he fell in love with her intellect, too. He spent much of his time to the neglect of his canvases under the butternut tree in front of Jethro's house trying to persuade Cynthia to sit for her portrait; and if Jethro ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... conclusion at which an ordinary reader would arrive, if he were not dazzled by fairy-land glamor, would probably be that far better than either tact and industry on a master's part is the loyalty of an unscrupulous retainer of an imaginative turn of mind. The impropriety of this teaching is not balanced by any other form of instruction. What the story openly inculcates is not edifying, and it does not secretly convey any improving doctrine." But on the other hand it may be argued that the "moral" passes over the child's ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to announce himself or consider the impropriety of his abrupt intrusion and its possible influence upon Lal Lu, the impetuous heir-apparent swept aside the curtains and ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... with a variation, being led by a natural peculiarity in their mode of speech. They therefore are surely to be blamed, who would deduce the orthography of all antient words from the Hebrew; and bring every extraneous term to that test. It requires no great insight into that language to see the impropriety of such procedure. Yet no prejudice has been more [598]common. The learned Michaelis has taken notice of this [599]fatal attachment, and speaks of it as a strange illusion. He says, that it is the ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... It was nice to be loved ardently and by a hero, even though that hero was not a gentleman of distinction, scarcely a gentleman at all. The next moment she blushed at her own vanity. Next she was seized with a sense of the great indelicacy and unpardonable impropriety of letting her mind run at all upon a person of the other sex; and shaking her lovely shoulders, as much as to say, "Away idle thoughts," she nestled and fitted with marvelous suppleness into a corner of the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... said he, beholding for the first time the impropriety of this eavesdropping on the part of so genteel and sensitive ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the next morning, with secret distaste and displeasure, of Evelyn's intended visit to the Mertons. He could scarcely make any open objection to it; but he did not refrain from many insinuations as to its impropriety. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... she could give Crozier almost undivided attention. She had been at first disposed to keep Kitty out of the sick-chamber, as no place for a girl, but she soon abandoned that position, for Kitty was not the girl ever to think of impropriety. She was primitive and she had rather a before-the- flood nature, but she had not the faintest vulgar strain in her. Her mind was essentially pure; nothing material in her had been awakened. Her greatest joy was to do the many things for the patient ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... himself, a living, breathing figure, on whom our interest must needs fasten whatever may be the subject of his discourse. There is of course a propriety in connecting a debate on evil in the world as a means to good with the name of the author of "The Fable of the Bees," there is no impropriety in connecting a study of the philosophy of music with the name of Charles Avison the Newcastle organist; but we do not make acquaintance through the parleyings with either Avison or Mandeville. This objection does not apply to all the poems. The parleying With Daniel Bartoli is ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... that I've heard something of the impropriety of visiting your friends just about mealtime," said the Doctor quizzically, "but a cup of coffee just now has more charms for me than rigid etiquette, so I'll thankfully accept your kind invitation. Some day I'll reciprocate with ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... his words without comprehending their meaning. I sat and stared at him, quite conscious, all the time, of the extreme impropriety, not to say indecency, of my conduct; but there was a spell on me; I tried to speak, but could not; and, believing that I was either possessed by some dumb evil, or struck with palsy, I rose up, bowed to Captain Transom, and straightway hied me ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... father assumed an air of such fearlessness and calm authority, that the young lawyer, surprised and overawed, forbore, as he had intended, to snatch the letter from his hand, and confined himself to bitter complaints of the impropriety of his conduct, and of the light in which he himself must be placed to Redgauntlet should he present him a letter with a ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... disappointment, should be left wide open to her? Is the prize worth her having, if she win it? Fame does not increase the peculiar respect which men pay to female excellence, and there is a delicacy (even in rude bosoms, where few would think to find it) that perceives, or fancies, a sort of impropriety in the display of woman's natal mind to the gaze of the world, with indications by which its inmost secrets may be searched out. In fine, criticism should examine with a stricter, instead of a more indulgent eye, the merits ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... into her plan. I was now permitted to sit up half an hour later on a Sunday evening, that I might hear a portion of Scripture read, which had always been their custom, though by reason of my tender age, and my father's opinion on the impropriety of children being taught too young, I had never till now been an auditor. I was taught my prayers, and those things which you, ladies, I doubt not, had the benefit of being instructed in at a much ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sophistry of desire, I have been persuaded to hope that this book may, without impropriety, be inscribed to your lordship; but am not certain, that my reasons will have the same ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... that next morning this visit would be returned on shore. As had been foreseen, this did not receive their approbation; the interpreter went into the boat, where every persuasion was used to convince him of the impropriety of our intention: they could not succeed, however, in making him yield this point, and at length went away. This interpreter is called "John" by all parties, and though merely an under servant of the factory at Canton, he is a ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... shall not profane it by description; it was beautiful exceedingly. All that I had ever seen or dreamed of loveliness was in that matchless living picture by the hand of the Divine Artist. So deeply did it move me that, without a thought of the impropriety of the act, I unconsciously bared my head, as a devout Catholic or well-bred Protestant uncovers before an image of the Blessed Virgin. The maiden showed no displeasure; she merely turned her glorious dark eyes upon me with a look that made me catch my breath, and without other recognition of my ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... horrid visitation was simply that Mr Vanslyperken had heard the corporal's tremendous snoring, as he slept in the chair, and which his imagination had turned into the words, "Mortal man." The first exclamation of Mr Vanslyperken had awoke the corporal, who, aware of the impropriety of his situation, had attempted to retreat; in so doing he had overturned the table and chairs, with the ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... he always spent a longer or shorter time with the Walthams, frequently having dinner at their house. He hesitated at first to invite the ladies to the Manor; in his uncertainty on social usages he feared lest there might be impropriety in a bachelor giving such an invitation. He appealed to Alfred, who naturally laughed the scruple to scorn, and accordingly Mrs. and Miss Waltham were begged to honour Mr. Mutimer with their company. Mrs. Waltham reflected a little, but accepted. Adela ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... bone, and that they are folded on themselves, and finally lost above the middle and inferior eminence of the brain. He appears to have been aware that at this point they communicate with the exterior or convoluted surface. He recognized the impropriety of the term corpus callosum, seems to have known the communication called afterwards foramen Monroianum, and describes the hippocampus more minutely than ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... such a liberal scale that he could well afford to consent to a large deduction, if it were required of him. Now he reasoned that, as his child had merely told him to take out what was proper, there could be no impropriety in paying himself at the highest possible price. She would never mind, and there were many comforts which he needed, and which an extra gold piece or two would enable him to procure ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the refusals they meet with, perpetually irritate their temper. With respect to requests in general, we should either grant immediately what a child desires, or we should give a decided refusal. The state of suspense is not easily borne; the propriety or impropriety of the request should decide us either to grant, or to refuse it; and we should not set the example of caprice, or teach our pupils the arts of courtiers, who watch the humour of tyrants. If we happen to be busy, and a child comes with an eager ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... term of equal brevity, is the name given by the inventor, Mr. Girard, to a frictionless support, or socket, designed to sustain the axes of heavy wheels in machinery. Since it is a contrivance deriving its efficacy from hydraulic pressure, it may, without impropriety, be considered here. The friction of axles in their supports is the occasion of a considerable loss of ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... do not imagine that there was any impropriety in the Prince and Princess walking together in the palace garden, and because Giglio kissed Angelica's hand in a polite manner. In the first place they are cousins; next, the Queen is walking in the garden too (you cannot see her, for she happens to ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... either in single words or in many together, we shall consider what they require separately and what in conjunction. Tho there is good reason for saying that perspicuity is best suited by proper words, and ornament by metaphorical, yet we should always know that an impropriety is never ornamental. But as many words very often signify the same thing, and therefore are called synonymous, some of these must be more sublime, more bright, more agreeable, and sweeter and fuller in pronunciation than others. As the more clear-sounding letters communicate the same quality ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... Dalton had been so accustomed to find his bravery overwhelmingly successful, and consequently to trust to it almost implicitly, that his fine intellect was suffered to lie dormant, where it would have often saved him from much that he endured. If he had thought deeply, he would have seen the impropriety of trusting the Fire-fly at any time to Jeromio's command, because, as he had found him guilty of so many acts of treachery towards others, he should have known, that it only needed sufficient bribery, or inducement of any other kind, to turn that ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Rymer done him Service as his Rival and Censurer. Were it every where the true Text, which That Editor in his late pompous Edition gave us, the Poet deserv'd not the large Encomiums bestow'd by him: nor, in that Case, is Rymer's Censure of the Barbarity of his Thoughts, and the Impropriety of his Expressions, groundless. They have Both shewn themselves in an equal Impuissance of suspecting or amending the corrupted Passages: and tho' it be neither Prudence to censure, or commend, what one does not understand; ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... window, to look at something which has attracted their attention, or to exchange greetings with a passing friend. All this is done with a freedom that speaks for itself of their utter unconsciousness of any impropriety ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... laughing at the comical figure John must have made when flying over Bob's head; and even Mr. Martin, though he tried to look grave, found it difficult to keep his countenance while he represented to him the impropriety and hazard of his late conduct. Little Marion, who had come out to the door to see the pony, was the only person that seemed to enter into John's feelings. She sidled up to him, and said, "never mind, John, Mr. Martin is not very angry, and you are not hurt; but," ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... vehement discussion, in which dogmatic assertion does duty for argument and loudness for force. In either case it rests and stimulates the tired men, while the drink refreshes their throats, and it has no more necessary impropriety than the drawing-room talk of the well-to-do. In this intercourse men who do not read the papers get an inkling of the news of the day, those who have no books come into contact with other minds, opinions are aired, the human craving for fun gets ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... looked up in some alarm. The term suggested anything from a court-martial to some vague impropriety. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... advisedly; for, like all the other Feejee chiefs, Tararo was a despot, and might have commanded obedience to his wishes; but he entered so readily into the spirit of the new faith, that he perceived at once the impropriety of using constraint in the propagation of it. He set the example, therefore; and that example was followed by almost every man of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... change was still so recent that he mentions an encounter in Rome with an 'Oxford don' who 'spoke Latin with a Wiltshire accent and manifest discomfort, wrote Greek letters with his tongue out, and seemed to think a Greek sentence a charm when it was a quotation and an impropriety ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Jean Marteau, at the Emperor's service," answered the young soldier nervously, realizing what impropriety he had committed. ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... principles by which he tried them, and consequently, in the end, to retain the benefits of this procedure without its evils. There is doubtless a purism in taste, a rigid fantastical demand of perfection, a horror at approaching the limits of impropriety, which obstructs the free impulse of the faculties, and if excessive, would altogether deaden them. But the excess on the other side is much more frequent, and, for high endowments, infinitely more pernicious. After the strongest efforts, there ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... nothing, she suggested nothing that had the least impropriety in it, or faintest hint of impropriety. It was nothing positive, nothing aggressive, but a certain vague negative something that gave him the impression of innocence still innocent but looking ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... spend an evening with a dozen others indulging themselves "moderately:" they will be sure to say things which to him will appear foolish, if not wicked; and which will appear so to themselves on reflection; though at the time they may not be conscious of any impropriety. And if this "moderate indulgence" be habitual, there must, of course, be an increased mental perversion; till conscience is "seared as with a hot iron," and the mind is lost to the power of being affected by truth, as well as to the capacity for usefulness. ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... possible that he had, not seen the impropriety of those sittings to Marien? Oh, yes! No doubt he was an old friend of the family, but that did not prevent all these deceptions, all these disguises, and all the other follies which he had sanctioned—he—Jacqueline's father!—from being very improper. Did he wish ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... despair. He could not imagine how he had been so foolish as to trust this man. He only wanted one thing, and that was to get to Nastasia Philipovna's, even at the cost of a certain amount of impropriety. But now the scandal threatened to be more than he had bargained for. By this time Ardalion Alexandrovitch was quite intoxicated, and he kept his companion listening while he discoursed eloquently and pathetically on subjects of ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... any impropriety be carried into animal life; for discerning bee-masters now find that their hives should not in the winter be exposed to the hot sun, because such unseasonable warmth awakens the inhabitants too early from their slumbers; and, by putting their juices into ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... expect from the assembly at the pond. The women mingled freely with the crowd and appeared to take a peculiar interest in the punishment about to be inflicted. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety kept the wearers of petticoats and farthingales from elbowing their way through the densest throngs to witness the executions. Those wives and maidens of English birth and breeding were morally and materially of coarser ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... Accordingly Duncan, though sincerely fond of Eric, had latterly disapproved vehemently of his proceedings, and had therefore taken to snubbing his old friend Wildney, in whose favor Eric seemed to have an infatuation, and who was the means of involving him in every kind of impropriety and mischief. So that night Duncan, hearing of what was intended, sat in the next study, and Eric, with Bull, Wildney, Graham, and Pietrie, had the room to themselves. Several of them were lower boys ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... her bashful silence for empty babbling, her sweet maidenly demeanor for the impatient restlessness that spurns at straws, and say and sing precisely what she never would or could have uttered had she been in possession of her reason, is so far from being an impropriety, that it is an additional stroke of nature. It is one of the symptoms of this species of insanity, as we are assured by physicians. I have myself known one instance in the case of a young Quaker girl, whose character resembled that of Ophelia, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... intend to hang Suhm; oh, no;" with much other correspondence; [In Mauvillon (ii. 189-195) more of it than any one will read.]—and is very angry at himself, and at the Natzmer affair, which has brought him into this bad pass. Into open impropriety; into danger of an utter rupture, had King August been of quarrelsome turn. But King August was not quarrelsome; and then Seckendorf and the Tobacco-Parliament,—on the Kaiser's score, who wants Pragmatic Sanction and much else out of these two Kings, and can at no rate have them quarrel ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... it cannot be entirely discarded. It marks the boundary where our ability to reduce one class of psychical phenomena to another ceases. Herbart's polemic has no force against the moderate and necessary use of this idea, no matter how much it was in place in view of the impropriety of a superfluous multiplication of the faculties of the soul. The realization of the ideal of psychology, the reduction of the complex phenomena of mental life to the smallest possible number of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... reached the gate now, and as Joost held it open for her to pass through, she saw that he had blushed to the ears at the lightly spoken words—if he had been in her room last night; the impropriety of them to him was evident. For a moment she blushed, too, then she recovered herself and grew impatient with one so artificial—and yet so simple, so self-conscious—and yet so unconscious, so desperately stupid—and yet so ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... no reason for you to fear that I shall impute any impropriety to you, if you attempt this refutation and proof; take ...
— Sophist • Plato
... talks of marriage now. A woman of fashion blushes to hear it mentioned before a third person." "Why, to say the truth, madam, I have been honoured with so great an intimacy by Damon, that I thought that might excuse the impropriety. And now, pray your ladyship, must I wait till we are alone, before I ask my friend whether his happy day be fixed?" "Since you will talk," said Miss Frampton, "of the odious subject, I believe I may tell you that it is not. We are in no such hurry." "My dear sweet play-fellow," said the baronet, ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... criticism just, not whether Sir Joshua had been guilty of the same error—but we like critics, the only true critics, who give their reason: and so did Sir Joshua. "To manage a subject of this kind a peculiar style of art is required; and it can only be done without impropriety, or even without ridicule, when we adopt the character of the landscape, and that too in all its parts, to the historical or poetical representation. This is a very difficult adventure, and requires a mind thrown back two thousand years, like that of Nicolo Poussin, to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... know I prefer a roast potatoe and salt to the most splendid public dinner, the very sight of which always offends my infant appetite, I need not say that I am actuated solely by my pre-engagement, and by the impropriety of disappointing the friend whom I am to accompany, and to whom probably I owe the unexpected compliment of the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the streets in that garb." Every one laughed at the little girl's remark, and at Lady Tansi's hyperbole; and there lacked not back-biters, who thought his appearing in arms at the palace was an act of great impropriety; but others excused him, saying that it was a very natural and pardonable act of vanity on the part ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... if he were mad, saw no impropriety in doing what Malicorne requested her; she took a pencil and wrote "Wood," and then walked slowly from her window to her bed, and wrote, "Six paces," and having done this, she looked out again at Malicorne, who bowed to her, signifying that he was about ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the old objection of the claims of propriety. If that were the only obstacle in my way, I should have set it aside by following them to France. Where is the impropriety of my seeing Stella, as her friend and brother—especially when I don't live in the same house with her, and when she has her mother, on one side, and Madame Villeray, on the other, ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... that the United States Consul, at this place, has, by means of his emissaries, tampered with, and seduced from their allegiance, several of the crew of my ship who have visited the shore on liberty. The impropriety and illegality of such conduct is so manifest that I take it for granted his Excellency will interpose his authority for my protection. Great Britain, having proclaimed a strict neutrality in the war now pending ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... the house immediately, being too excited to talk calmly to Annie; but I returned after supper, and reasoned with her as gently as possible on the impropriety and wickedness of her conduct. She seemed to feel very sorry, and was so penitent that my hopes of saving her, rose considerably. She promised, with tears in her eyes, to overcome her unholy love for Pattmore, and never to see him again. I noticed, however, that when I spoke of my efforts ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... cannot be doubted that this turn of imagination first found literary expression among the Breton peoples. One of the most surprising features in the Mabinogion is the delicacy of the feminine feeling breathed in them; an impropriety or a gross word is never to be met with. It would be necessary to quote at length the two romances of Peredur and Geraint to demonstrate an innocence such as this; but the naive simplicity of these charming ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... exquisite in the home of his forefathers—what visible reference was there to these fine things in poor Lionel's stable-stamped composition? When she came in this evening and saw his small sons making competitive noises in their mugs (Miss Steet checked this impropriety on her entrance) she asked herself what they would have to show twenty years later for the frame that made them just then a picture. Would they be wonderfully ripe and noble, the perfection of human ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... first and foremost a solar plexus, dear reader; and the solar plexus is a great nerve center which lies behind your stomach. I can't be accused of impropriety or untruth, because any book of science or medicine which deals with the nerve-system of the human body will show it to you quite plainly. So don't wriggle or try to look spiritual. Because, willy-nilly, you've got a solar plexus, dear reader, among other things. I'm ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... character. As the connection between Maria Antoinette and Louis, the heir apparent to the throne of France, was already contemplated, some solicitude was felt by members of the court of Versailles in reference to the impropriety of this selection, and the French embassador at Vienna was requested to urge the empress to dismiss the obnoxious teachers, and make a different choice. She immediately complied with the request, and sent to the Duke de Choiseul, the minister of state of Louis ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... always 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 9 P.M. train. English railways running into suburbs and near-by towns have a schedule which is expressly arranged to have the principal ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... consider Mr. Meredith—whose total yield of verse has been so scanty and the most of it so 'harsh and crabbed,' as not only 'dull fools' suppose—beside the great poets who have been his contemporaries, and to feel no impropriety in the comparison? That was the question X and I found ourselves discussing, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... may, without impropriety, mention one circumstance, as an instance of my father's address. Dr Johnson challenged him, as he did us all at Talisker, to point out any theological works of merit written by Presbyterian ministers in Scotland. My father, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... perhaps contributed to this impropriety of style. He that wishes to become a philosopher at a cheap rate easily gratifies his ambition by submitting to poverty when he does not feel it, and by boasting his contempt of riches when he has already more than he enjoys. ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... know. But I remember quite distinctly that this same girl was a favourite with the other boys also, that they preferred to play with her, to have her as their companion. But it was to me that the girl, and perhaps her parents also, gave the preference. There was never any impropriety in our mutual relations; indeed, it is probable that I loved her too much for anything of the kind to be possible. Every night, before I went to sleep, I prayed to God to watch over this girl. As I have said before, my fondness was reciprocated; ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... not imagine that there was any impropriety in the Prince and Princess walking together in the palace garden, and because Giglio kissed Angelica's hand in a polite manner. In the first place they are cousins; next, the Queen is walking in the garden too (you cannot see her, for she happens ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that nothing short of absolute impropriety ought to make her gratify her shrinking reluctance. Mrs. Aylward seemed to think her doubts uncalled for, and attributed her hesitation to fear of the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a decision as to his title, and had told every one concerned that he meant to be as he always had been,—George Roden, a clerk in the Post Office. When spoken to, on this side and the other, as to the propriety,—or rather impropriety,—of his decision, he had smiled for the most part, and had said but little, but had been very confident in himself. To none of the arguments used against him would he yield in the least. As to his mother's name, he said, no one had doubted, and no one would doubt it for a moment. His ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... holy women!—spying lest any impropriety occur! That's the proposal, I understand. Of all ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lion; so the ass came the lion over them, with the aid of a borrowed skin and his most awe-inspiring bray; however, a stranger who had often seen both brought the truth to light with a stick. But what most distrest me, Philosophy, was this: when one of these people was detected in rascality, impropriety, or immorality, every one put it down to philosophy, and to the particular philosopher whose name the delinquent took in vain without ever acting on his principles; the living rascal disgraced you, the long dead; for you were not there in the flesh to point the contrast; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... never felt himself a lost sinner, and never knew his need of the Saviour, may reason gravely of the impropriety of 'excitement,' and the man who has never experienced the liberty of deliverance from the 'horrible pit, and the mire and clay,' may seem to be wise on the subject of Christian joy; but he knows it not. The outburst of joy in the newly born child of God, is as undiscriminating as the joyous mirth ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... fate at once. There had been no possibility of a word with Ruth on the church steps. Before he had known where he was, he and Charles had been walking up to the Hall together, Charles discoursing lengthily on the impropriety of wire fencing in a hunting country. But now he must and would see her. He rushed down-stairs into the hall, where young Thursby was wrapping Ruth in her white furs, while Mr. Thursby senior was encasing Mrs. Alwynn in a species of glorified ulster of red plush which she had lately acquired. Dare ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... the duty of the minister or instructor admitted to visit any prison, to communicate to the jailor any abuse or impropriety in the prison which may come to his knowledge, on pain of being prohibited ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... Tode stepped boldly forward, deterred by no feeling of impropriety, and looked over the little lady's shoulder at the ...
— Three People • Pansy
... his ears when he heard himself named by the governor, and considering this mention to be a sufficient introduction, he thought there would be no impropriety in his listening to the conversation. Accordingly, he approached the others, and noted with some satisfaction the troubled glances which Lecoq ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Palfrey opened the discussion on Marriage. He declared that Marriage was the coward's refuge from Love. He said that Marriage had been invented by lawyers and parsons for the purpose of obtaining fees and authority. These unpleasant people, the lawyers and the parsons, had contrived to make Love an impropriety and had reduced Holy Passion to the status of a schedule to an act of parliament. Cupid had been furnished with a truncheon and a helmet and had been robbed of his wings in order that he might more suitably serve as a policeman. He demanded ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... it possesses. Tenth, second, or first century before Christ—first, eighth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, or even eighteenth century A.D.—it is still the same: no book whose subject-matter admits as possible of an impropriety according to current notions can be depended upon to fail of containing such impropriety,—can, if those notions are accepted as the canon, be placed with a sense of security in the hands of girls and youths, or read aloud to women; and this holds good ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... very startling effect on the recluse inhabitants of the place. Robert Stephenson used to tell a story of the clergyman of the parish waiting upon the foreman of one of the gangs to expostulate with him as to the shocking impropriety of his men working during Sunday. But the head navvy merely hitched up his trousers, and said, "Why, Soondays hain't cropt out here yet!" In short, the navvies were little better than heathens, and the village of Kilsby was not restored to its wonted quiet until the tunnel-works ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... child who, as she sat on her doorstep, was engaged with the novelist in pleasant conversation, until he spied a ring that she was wearing upon the third finger of her left hand. This he made the text of a solemn declaration upon the impropriety of wearing falsely the symbol of a sacred relationship. The lesson intended was probably sensible and wholesome, but the effect produced upon the child was a terror of Fenimore Cooper which lasted as long as life. On the other hand, one who was a slip of a ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... of it, Stukely. You had better see about your preparations. John will help you in any way you wish. Make use of him. There must be many little things to do. There can be no impropriety, Stukely, in your accepting the whole of your year's salary. You are entitled to that. I am sorry to lose you—very—but there's no help for it. I will come to your room this evening, and have some further conversation. Leave me now." The incumbent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... as would keep the workers merry or interested. Once the stereotyped verses were got rid of and the improvization began, things became so intimate and personal as to be unprintable. It was a curious fact that such shanty words as lent themselves most to impropriety were wedded to tunes either of fine ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... visible in the room. She tapped nervously, and then thought it doubtful if it were right for a single woman to call upon a bachelor who lived alone, although he was her manager, and she might be supposed to call on business without any real impropriety. Gabriel opened the door, and the moon shone upon ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... merry laugh of girlhood; she was too young to be conscious of any impropriety in the situation, and indeed there was none. But her sense of humour told her that it was funny, and she became possessed with a not unnatural curiosity to see the ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... began to foot up hard things against herself. How she had talked to him that night! what things she had told him! Then afterwards, what other things she had proposed to do,propositions that were stamped at once with the seal of impropriety. Hazel pressed her hands to her cheeks, trying to cool off those painful flushes. Wellhe should see now!She could wait, if he could. Which praiseworthy climax was reachedlike the top of Mount Washingtonin a shower of rain. But the whole effect of the musings ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... discreditable and a breach of faith by many modern writers. Oviedo says the native of Lepe was so indignant at not getting the reward that "he went over into Africa and denied the faith," i.e., became a Mohammedan. Las Casas seems to have seen no impropriety in Columbus' accepting the award. He tells us, I. 289, that this annuity was paid to Columbus throughout his life and was levied from the butcher shops of Seville. A maravedi was equal to two-thirds of ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... rested on her going home without me. The alternative was too dreadful for her to withstand my pertinacity. She wished me to remain, and rather than have her matrimonial project blocked she preferred to yield, though it was not until she had made a last appeal on the score of the extreme impropriety of my continuing to stay in New ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... in haste to act; yet his looks were embarrassed, and his gestures irresolute, because he knew not what to do: he uttered some incoherent sentences, which discovered at once the joy that he felt, and his sense of its impropriety; and his whole deportment expressed the utmost ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... in her heart, and, as usual, when any violent emotion agitated her mind, she involuntarily sprang to her feet prompted by the force of her passion, and had almost reached the door, when the senator's voice brought her to a pause, and recalled her to the consciousness of the impropriety of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... between the understandings and the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of their ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not a fool, but he makes himself so. His folly, whether in his actions or speeches, comes under the head of impropriety of intention. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... voice arose with still more marked and lofty distinctness, "John Wesley and Mary Em-me-line." It seemed to Mr. Hamlin that human accents could not convey a more significant and elevated ignoring of some implied impropriety in his invitation. He was ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and authority that the men present whispered together, and seemed almost inclined to think that they had committed a shameful indiscretion in suspecting so gallant an officer and so perfect a gentleman of any impropriety, on the mere word of a strange woman, who was ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... and children are always separate from the others, and are frequently in a building by itself. Here with no look-out from windows on the passing world, the news of which it would be an impropriety in a Circassian to question his wives about, they ply their tasks, spinning, weaving, embroidering, and knitting silver lace in an obscurity illumined by scanty rays of sunlight. The walls of these apartments are hung with dresses, not with ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... pastime of the drawing-room, become the bugbears of the silent bedchamber. Margaret, when she would have slept, was haunted by reproaches, which waited until then to agitate and frighten her. A sense of impropriety and sinfulness started in her bosom, and convicted her of an offence—unpardonable in her sight—against the blessed memory of Mildred. She could not deny it, Michael Allcraft had created on her heart a favourable impression—one that must be obliterated at once and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... it would not be deserting: you would be doing that which she herself approves of. She feels the impropriety of going on; but she cannot draw back because of her promise to you. She thinks that she cannot do it, even ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... tea. The race list was a tempting one, Riddlesworth, Craven Stakes, Column Stakes, Oatlands, Port, Claret, Sherry, Madeira, and all other sorts. A good week's racing in fact, for the saintly sinners who frequent the Heath had not then discovered any greater impropriety in travelling on a Sunday, then in cheating each other on the Monday. The tea was good, as were the prawns and eggs, and George brought a second muffin, at the very moment that the Yorkshireman had finished the last piece of the first, so that by the time he had done his breakfast and ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... I, rising with a joyous spring from my chair. "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your anxious care of my good name. But I am sure Mrs. Linwood would not have sanctioned an impropriety. I have always felt towards Richard as I imagine I would towards a brother, were I so blest as to have one. He has made my lonely walks very pleasant by his lively and intelligent conversation. Still, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... how is this? What sympathy can you feel with the experience of a young fellow like me on the Continent? When you know the world better, my dear girl, you will feel the impropriety of asking such a question. ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... work having been sent to JOHN FOX, then residing at Basle, he wrote "a loving and friendly letter" to the author, in which he expostulates with him on the impropriety of the publication. In KNOX'S reply, dated the 18th of May 1558, he says, he will not excuse "his rude vehemencie and inconsidered affirmations, which may appear rather to proceed from choler than of zeal or reason." "To me," he adds, "it is enough to say, that black is not ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... can not be thought, and therefore it is argued the Infinite God can not be known. Such a doctrine shocks our moral sense, and we shrink from the thought of an Infinite which includes evil. There is certainly a moral impropriety, if not a logical impossibility, in such a ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... have passed since the occurrence of the scene just related that we may give its sequel without impropriety, though, at the same time, we expose the venal character of Spanish officials. The man we buried on the Bahama Banks had died of small-pox, though no other person on board showed any symptoms of the disease. On entering the harbor of Havana, three days later, we had been hailed from Moro Castle ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... more said about the shoes, and I was soon again at my ease, although Miss O'Conor did say something about the impropriety of Larry walking about in his stocking feet. The ladies however soon withdrew,—to my sorrow, for I was getting on swimmingly with Fanny; and then we gentlemen gathered round the fire and ...
— The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... potatoes, whose jackets hung by a thread. Around this feast the whole party soon collected, and none of them sighed for Russian soups or French ragouts; for the fact is that under the title of boiled beef there exist two things, one of which, without any great impropriety, might be called junk; but this was the powdered beef of our ancestors, a huge piece just slightly salted in the house itself, so that the generous juice remained in it, but the piquant slices, with the mealy potatoes, made a delightful combination. The glasses were ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... examination, alleged that the election had been protracted by affected delays, he was asked by whom, and by what means; but, before he could answer, the earl of Egmont, interposing, objected to the question as improper, and moved for the order of the day. A debate immediately ensued, in which the impropriety of the question was demonstrated by Mr. Henley, now lord-keeper, Dr. Lee, and some others, the most sensible and moderate members of the house; but they were opposed with great violence by lord viscount Corke, Henry Fox, esquire, sir William Young, colonel ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... I'm sorry to say; but I condone it to some extent in her. She has the advantage of good looks, and naturally expects to better her condition by marriage; but surely, Mary, one glance at yourself in the glass ought to show you the impropriety of counting upon any ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... extremity. This man proved a very sound sleeper. Instead of succeeding in rousing him by his knocking, Israel but succeeded in rousing his wife, a person not of the greatest amiability. Raising the sash, and seeing so shocking a pauper before her, the woman upbraided him with shameless impropriety in asking charity at dead of night, in a dress so improper too. Looking down at his deplorable velveteens, Israel discovered that his extensive travels had produced a great rent in one loin of the rotten old breeches, through which ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... some degree of humiliation. A rainy day may bring disappointment; needless failure in some enterprise brings chagrin. Shame involves the consciousness of fault, guilt, or impropriety; chagrin of failure of judgment, or harm to reputation. A consciousness that one has displayed his own ignorance will cause him mortification, however worthy his intent; if there was a design to deceive, the exposure will cover him ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... part of Mr. Roundjacket, an eloquent and animated remonstrance with Verty on the impropriety of that proceeding which he had just been guilty of. It was unfeeling, and barbarous, and unheard of, the poet observed, and but one thing induced him to pardon it—the wild bringing up of the young man, which naturally rendered him incapable of appreciating ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... they originally sprang from a dog; and about five years ago, a superstitious fanatic so strongly pressed upon their minds the impropriety of employing these animals, to which they were related, for purposes of labour, that they universally resolved against using them any more, and, strange as it may seem, destroyed them. They now have to drag every thing ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... does, upon music, it has a strong claim to be ranked with the lyrical. The characteristic and impassioned Epistle, of which Ovid and Pope have given examples, considered as a species of monodrama, may, without impropriety, be placed ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... towards the gate, with fruit and grain; and, keeping near one of these parties, while sufficiently distant to prevent the chance of their being addressed, Charlie and Tim made their way to the gate; the latter suffering acutely, in his mind, from the impropriety of ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... The Toleration Act.—Impropriety of making Catholic Emancipation (or any other Important Matter) an Open Question.—Joint Responsibility of all the Ministers.—Detention of Napoleon at St. Helena.—Question whether the Regent could Give Evidence in a Court of Law in a Civil ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... to this plant by LINNAEUS, originated in the description given of it by CORNUTUS; (vid. Syn.) the impropriety of calling an annual plant (for such it undoubtedly is with us, and must be in Canada, its native place of growth) an evergreen, has appeared to us too glaring to be continued; we have thought the promotion of the science required a change in the name, and have ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. V - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... man he was; adding his opinion that he must be of small discretion to think of setting a boy up in business who wanted yet three years of being at man's estate. Holmes said what he could in favor of the project, but my father was clear in the impropriety of it, and at last gave a flat denial to it. Then he wrote a civil letter to Sir William, thanking him for the patronage he had so kindly offered me, but declining to assist me as yet in setting up, I being, in his opinion, too young to be trusted with the management of a business ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... apparitors, or other attendants, to bring him pipes and tobacco, and some liquor into the vestry for his refreshment after the fatigue of confirmation. And this coming to Mr. Disney's ears, he forbad them being brought thither, and with a becoming spirit remonstrated with the Archbishop upon the impropriety of his conduct, at the same time telling his Grace that his vestry should not be converted into ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... discongruity[obs3], mesalliance; jarring &c. v.; dissension &c. 713; conflict &c. (opposition) 708; bickering, clashing, misunderstanding, wrangle. disparity, mismatch, disproportion; dissimilitude, inequality; disproportionateness &c. adj[obs3].; variance, divergence, repugnance. unfitness &c. adj.; inaptitude, impropriety; inapplicability &c. adj.; inconsistency, inconcinnity[obs3]; irrelevancy &c. (irrelation) 10[obs3]. misjoining[obs3], misjoinder[obs3]; syncretism[obs3], intrusion, interference; concordia discors[Lat]. fish out of water. V. disagree; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... appropriations for what may be called, without impropriety, internal improvements, which have always been regarded as standing upon different grounds from those to which I have referred. I allude to such as have for their object the improvement of our harbors, the removal of partial and temporary obstructions in our ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... looking at the child, said something or other to her companion; and, as we turned away at the corner, we heard the discourager of vagrants apologizing to himself, and also reading a severe lecture on the impropriety of alms-giving. "Remember, I disapprove of it entirely. You are indebted for it to this lady, who interposed for you." So the poor man got his shilling after all; and we considered it a favourable omen of success ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... happened to Lord Byron which engaged both, and some of them cannot well be passed over unnoticed. One of these took place during the spring of this year, and having been a subject of newspaper remark, it may with less impropriety be mentioned than others which were more indecorously made the topics of general discussion. The incident alluded to was an extravagant scene enacted by a lady of high rank, at a rout given by Lady Heathcote; in which, in revenge, as it was reported, for having been ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... this moral, Ralston says, "the conclusion at which an ordinary reader would arrive, if he were not dazzled by fairy-land glamor, would probably be that far better than either tact and industry on a master's part is the loyalty of an unscrupulous retainer of an imaginative turn of mind. The impropriety of this teaching is not balanced by any other form of instruction. What the story openly inculcates is not edifying, and it does not secretly convey any improving doctrine." But on the other hand it may be argued that the "moral" passes over the child's head. Miss Kready, in her ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... man who collects foreign stamps, say, or book-plates, or arrow-heads, the connoisseur of a tiny section of one of the lesser schools of Italian painting, the coral-insect who has devoted his life to a participle, first-edition men, and all those various bookworms who, without impropriety be it spoken, are the maggots that breed in the dung of the great. A certain friend of mine always appears to me in the similitude of a first edition of one of Mr. Hardy's novels. I have the greatest difficulty at times to prevent myself forcibly setting him upon my shelf to complete ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... lady, quickly, "if custom and propriety forbid you to meet me through the ordinary channels of society, do you not see the impropriety of such an attempt to see me as that which you have but just ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... garment, clean and somber, in an environment of careful behavior. Greenwich Village, not having fully awakened to the commercial advantages of being a locale, had not yet stretched between itself and the rest of New York that gauzy and iridescent curtain of sprightly impropriety and sparkling intellectual naughtiness, since faded to a lather tawdry pattern. An early pioneer of the Villager type, emancipated of thought and speech, chancing upon No. 11 Grove, would have despised it for its lack of atmosphere and its patent conservatism. It did not go out into ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Cawn, the assignment would in fact be surrendered. HE WILL (IF ANY) BE THE SOUCAR SECURITY; and security in this country is counter-secured by possession. You would not choose to take the assignment from the Company, to give it to individuals. Of the impropriety of its returning to the Nabob, Mr. Benfield would now again argue from his former observations, that, under his Highness's management, his country declined, his people emigrated, his revenues decreased, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... roused both to a realization of the utter impropriety of her overhearing all this, and the danger of detection, slipped from the dressing-room by the hall door, and so ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... settlement of difficulties with a foreign power, even when it is clear that a settlement is highly desirable. Great exigencies may require delays. We must exercise the patience which patriotism calls for. But we may be permitted without impropriety to express our desire and our opinion that our government should find some way to make it absolutely clear to oriental countries that it intends to secure the protection for all our citizens, including missionaries, to which they are entitled by ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... an iron slab is contemporary with its actual discovery by Herut[a]t[a]f. It is not necessary to inquire here whether the word "find" (in Egyptian qem) means a genuine discovery or not, but it is clear that those who had the papyrus copied saw no absurdity or impropriety in ascribing the text to the period of Men-kau-R[a]. Another text, which afterwards also became a chapter of the Book of the Dead, under the title "Chapter of not letting the heart of the deceased be driven away from him in the underworld," was inscribed on ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... I have taken a solemn vow—it is registered in heaven. You have by fraud and imposition entered into a holy place, and assumed a holy character. Add not to your crime by even harbouring the idea of impropriety, and add not to my humiliation by supposing for a moment that I am capable of being a participator. Holy Virgin," cried she, falling on her knees, "I demand thy powerful aid in this conflict of worldly passions and holy wishes. Oh! make me ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the blacksmith's apprentice. This vast donkey had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart; at one time he would knock a horse down for some impropriety, and at another he would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his account which some of us hadn't: he stuck to the war, and was killed in battle ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of your house in Lady Mary's absence, not only as kinswoman to yourself, but as the nearest surviving relative of Sir Miles,—the most immediate descendant of the St. Johns; her mature years and decorum of life, her joint kindred to Helen and yourself, surely remove every appearance of impropriety." ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... if my ungovernable feelings have led me into impropriety; the powerful motive—the cruel reason"—she hesitated. Frances now raised her face, and their eyes once more met; they fell in each other's arms, and laid their burning cheeks together. The embrace was long—was ardent ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... this enchanting scene, and charmed with the beauty of the night walked for a little while to and fro upon the terrace before retiring to their rooms. As they were in full sight of the windows, and it was not yet very late, the modest young girl felt that there could be no impropriety in this little indulgence; and besides, the baron's extreme timidity was very reassuring to her, and she knew that he would not presume upon the favour accorded to him. He had not made a formal avowal of his love to her, but she was as well ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... proceeded to expose the impropriety of a foreign minister demanding from the Administration an explanation of words uttered in debate in Congress, and also said that he supposed that the British had no claim to the territory in question. Mr. Canning rejoined, and referred to the sending ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... in books about "freak schools," where so much loss has obviously to be set against whatever is gained. In this case, not only the idea, but all the practical details came from the boy himself and the little band of enthusiasts that gathered round him. Indeed, one feels a sense of impropriety in describing what was essentially not our work, but his. However, it was the fine flower of political education, and as such may fitly close this chapter. "Houses," after all, and not "forms," are the natural ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... ill, kept his temper, until Mr. Chard called him a "missionary crawler." This expression made Mr. Carr lose control of himself, and he used very strong language to Captain Hendry and the supercargo upon the gross impropriety of their conduct. He certainly used expressions that he should not have employed, but under the circumstances, and bearing in mind the fact that the native crew were ready for mutiny, and that mutiny was only averted by Mr. Carr's influence over the native crew, I and my fellow officers, ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... I, "how you will put aside the authority of Moses. If Moses strove against image-worship, should not his doing so be conclusive as to the impropriety of the practice; what higher authority can you have than that ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... Sovereigns had not acknowledged Bonaparte's right to his assumed title of King of Italy, indirectly approving it by figuring at the solemnity which inaugurated him as such. Of this inconsistency and impropriety Talleyrand was well aware; but audacity on one side, and endurance and submission on the other, had so often disregarded these considerations before, that he saw no indelicacy or impertinence in the proposal. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... not to think it safe to relax her hold upon the door, and Bartley went filially to her rescue—if it was rescue to salute her blushing defencelessness as he did. A confused sense of the extraordinary nature and possible impropriety of the proceeding may have suggested her husband to her mind; or it may have been a feeling that some remark was expected of her, even in the mental destitution ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... may cause you; but in the crowded state of the hotel I hope you see the impropriety of my walking about the passages ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... time I should make you explain what horrible impropriety I have committed under your counsel; but fate has interposed and settled everything. Monsieur de Sallenauve will, at any cost, disappear from our path, and therefore why discuss the degree of kindness one might ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... institution of the Board, been a constant struggle; for here and there, all over Scotland, in the large towns as well as in rural and remote parishes, the practice prevailed, and was occasionally discovered— generally by accident. The Board long ago expressed decided opinions on the impropriety of the practice. Now in Shetland, it so happens that almost the only persons who are practically the administrators of the Poor Law are more or less directly or indirectly interested in the local trade — in the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Ingham first, as it happened; upon which Dennis had risen, and had said, "There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not occupy the time." The girls were delighted, because Dr. Dabney, the year before, had given them at this occasion a scolding on impropriety of behavior at lyceum lectures. They all declared Mr. Ingham was a love,—and so handsome! (Dennis is good-looking.) Three of them, with arms behind the others' waists, followed him up to the wagon he rode home in; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... people, who could not feed and clothe themselves with "book learning;" and experience had taught her that those who lounged about with books in their hands generally came to want, and invariably to harm. It was in vain that she endeavored to convince her husband of the impropriety of permitting the girl to spend so much time over her books; he finally put the matter at rest by declaring that, in his opinion, Edna was a remarkable child; and if well educated, might even rise to the position of teacher for the neighborhood, which would ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... strongly noticed the impropriety of long continued suckling, it will, perhaps, be proper to state my opinion as to the period when this process should terminate. As a general rule, at nine months after birth the child ought to be entirely weaned; and in no instance should he be permitted to ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton
... producing no impression on the transformed chief, one of the men, the most sedate of the party, who seldom spoke, took up the matter, and tried the lion in another strain. In his slow quiet way he expostulated with him on the impropriety of such conduct to strangers, who had never injured him. "We were travelling peaceably through the country back to our own chief. We never killed people, nor stole anything. The buffalo meat was ours, not his, and it did not become a great chief like ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... but one Instance of this Impropriety of [Thought [12]] in Homer, and at the same time compare it with an Instance of the same Nature, both in Virgil and Milton. Sentiments which raise Laughter, can very seldom be admitted with any Decency into an Heroic Poem, whose Business it is to excite Passions ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... shy timidity at Genji, for whom she already had some liking, and thinking that perhaps there was impropriety in what she had spoken, went over to her nurse, and said, "Oh! I am very sleepy, and wish ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... "my being here; your letting me come. Impropriety—all of that!" A sharp whistle issued from her lips. "Oh! the EXCORIATING things she's ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... expected this. He was a little shocked and felt also the impropriety of the thing. The idea of being lugged off like a baby was embarrassing, even in the presence of the one who had deliberately put him in his present condition. Bateese did the thing with such beastly ease. It was as if he was no more than a small boy, a runt with no ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... and the ocean. But, now she was once more on the land, diminutive and naked as was the islet that composed her present world, and she found leisure and solitude for reflection and decision. She was not ignorant of the nature of a vessel of war, or of the impropriety of unprotected females placing themselves on board of one; but gentlemen of character, like the officers of the ship in sight, could hardly be wanting in the feelings of their caste; and anything was better than to return ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... by my Official Gentleman, that stupid Katsch; never did intend to hang Suhm; oh, no;" with much other correspondence; [In Mauvillon (ii. 189-195) more of it than any one will read.]—and is very angry at himself, and at the Natzmer affair, which has brought him into this bad pass. Into open impropriety; into danger of an utter rupture, had King August been of quarrelsome turn. But King August was not quarrelsome; and then Seckendorf and the Tobacco-Parliament,—on the Kaiser's score, who wants Pragmatic Sanction and much else out of these two Kings, and can at no rate have ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the voluntary consent, whether tacit, or openly expressed, of those by whom he is employed. This of course confines him to what is, generally, common ground, among his particular employers. In a republican country, where all his patrons are republican, he may without impropriety, explain and commend to his pupils, as occasion may occur, the principles of free governments, and the blessings which may be expected to flow from them. But it would not be justifiable for him to do this, under a monarchy, or in a community divided in regard to this subject, because ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... little hamlets lying at irregular distances along the shores. There are very few English or French residents, and no Americans but the different branches of the Consul's family,—a race whose reputation for all generous virtues has spread too widely to leave any impropriety in mentioning them here. Their energy and character have made themselves felt in every part of the island; and in the villages farthest from their charming home, one has simply to speak of a familia, "the family," and the introduction is sufficient. Almost every good institution ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the girls spoke. That would have seemed to them the height of impropriety. But Elena extended her arm over the wall so that her little hand hung just above young Castro's head. He leaped three times in the air, and finally succeeded in brushing his mustache against those coveted finger-tips: rewarded with ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... suggested nothing that had the least impropriety in it, or faintest hint of impropriety. It was nothing positive, nothing aggressive, but a certain vague negative something that gave him the impression of innocence still innocent but looking or trying to look tolerantly where it should not. And he felt dizzy and sick, stricken with ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... began a rather noisy debate on the impropriety of their master's behavior; and little Alfred, finding his brother was not speaking, ventured to remind him of his promise. Contrary to his usual habit, Hamilton ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... spiritual truths which, nevertheless, he fully exemplified in a life of singular spirituality and sincerity.[146] And it was not until 1519 that, by the arguments of his own pupil, Farel, he was convinced of the impropriety of saint-worship and of prayers for the dead.[147] But now there could be no doubt respecting Lefevre's attitude. Placed by Bishop Briconnet in charge of the "Leproserie," and subsequently entrusted ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... involuntarily, a great many times. And then he would sigh as he thought of the difficulties that were in his way. At dinner time he came to the table with his feelings a good deal subdued. But it so happened, that, during the morning, Mr. Howland had heard of some impropriety of which he had been guilty a month previous, and felt called upon to reprimand him, therefore, with considerable harshness. The consequence was, that the boy left the table without finishing his dinner, at which his father became very much incensed. The angry feelings of the latter had ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... that, besides the impropriety of giving it another name than that of the discoverer, it is inconvenient to use a double name, or a name composed of two words. Let it be either ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... carefulness than laymen do the relations that exist between pastors and the women of their flock. I do not understand this as a statement that there is any general looseness of conduct among the clergy at all; but as one which covers a kind of impropriety for which there is no name and no punishment. There are women whose affection for their husbands is uprooted through their intercourse with their pastors. There shall never be an improper word spoken; there shall never be a deed committed ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... exhortation and send their carriages away. The carriages were lined up in the street just as they would be outside a theatre. Some of their owners got in and drove away, making very pointed remarks on the impropriety of bringing such subjects as carriages and horses into sermons and the length that young curates would go now-a-days to obtain notoriety. Others dismissed theirs and went away trying to look unconcerned; ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... the delineation of the characters of the three patriarchs in Genesis! To be sure if ever man could, without impropriety, be called, or supposed to be, "the friend of God," Abraham was that man. We are not surprised that Abimelech and Ephron seem to reverence him so profoundly. He was peaceful, because of his ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
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