"Decorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... began to smile upon Amelia when Joseph Sedley, once more came back to England, a rich man, and with him Major Dobbin. But the round of decorous pleasure in which the Sedley family now indulged was soon broken by Mrs. Sedley's death, and old Sedley was not long in following his wife whither ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... description of him as a retiring youth was really short of the mark. They walked along together down the quiet, bright streets; there were many people about, but nobody in a hurry, and all in Sunday clothes, bent on visiting or decorous pleasure-making. Everywhere was sunny and everything looked as if it had had its face washed; week days in the town always looked to Julia like Sundays, and Sundays, this Sunday in particular, looked ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... chambre quelques instants, Bessie," said the voice of madame. And then with a gentle, decorous dignity she ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Groschlag, was a well-formed man of the world, easy in his exterior, but conducting himself with great decorum. He everywhere produced a very agreeable impression. Prince Esterhazy, the Bohemian envoy, was not tall, though well formed, lively, and at the same time eminently decorous, without pride or coldness. I had a special liking for him, because he reminded me of Marshal de Broglio. Yet the form and dignity of these excellent persons vanished, in a certain degree, before the prejudice that was entertained in favor of Baron von Plotho, the Brandenburg ambassador. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... steep bank by the Dawson barracks with fluttering heart and shaking knees. The dogs were so weak that he was forced to rest them, and, waiting, he leaned limply against the gee-pole. A man, an eminently decorous-looking man, came sauntering by in a great bearskin coat. He glanced at Rasmunsen curiously, then stopped and ran a speculative eye over the dogs and the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... prudery and show us how to make love, there is practically nothing here that is calculated to bring a blush to the cheek of modesty. It is true that from time to time Captain le Briquet kisses various outlying portions of his "ange adore," but it is all very decorous and his ultimate intentions are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... difficult to account for the popular prejudice against lone women. There is a majority, I trust, of such honest, decorous mourners as my kinswoman: yet are Widows, like the Hebrew, a proverb and a byeword amongst nations. From the first putting on of the sooty garments, they become a stock joke—chimney-sweep or blackamoor is not surer—by mere virtue ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... nothing but being in some sort of school or institution (a home for foundlings, most likely) governed by nuns, or at least by women who went about in black stuff dresses and white caps, and whom one called ma soeur—for this was in southern France, she thought. The life was clean, decorous, and peaceful, and she might have grown up to wear a white cap herself, and herd little waifs into chapel; but when she was probably ten or eleven years old, the fat man came and took her away, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... time to turn round, before there was a summons at the door, and without waiting to be answered, Splaighton entered, looking at once decorous and injured. ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... annoyed her by his noisy whine. He was an underbred maverick, with sharp eyes of watery blue, a thin mustache, large teeth, and no chin worth noticing. He would bounce in of an evening, when the others were being decorous and dull in the musty dining-room, and yelp: "How do we all find our seskpadalian selves this bright and balmy evenin'? How does your perspegacity discipulate, Herby? What's the good word, Miss Golden? Well, well, well, if here ain't our good old friend, the Rev. J. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... of the service. When, however, at the Credo, he turned and saw that several poor indians had quietly crept in, a change came over him; his tone became fuller, his manner more dignified, and the service itself more impressive and decorous. Still, we were through long before six, and throwing off his vestments, which he left the boy to put away, the padre seized me by the arm, and we hastened down the hill to our morning's coffee. On the way we met a number of ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... were placid, but their eyes were sad. Their schoolrooms are hospital wards, the tiny chapel is piled high with supplies; in the refectory, where decorous rows of small girls were wont to file in to the convent meals, unthinkable horrors of operations go on all day and far into the night. The Hall of the Holy Rosary is a convalescent room, where soldiers smoke and play at cards. The Room of the Holy Angels ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... her decorous leave of the Principal, Miss Bailey and she walked to the great front door. As they reached it Mrs. Diamantstein reiterated her gratitude and added: "You'll be there at three o'clock, won't you, Miss? ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... recognized by a man of apparently equal importance and distinction, who had quietly and unconsciously taken a seat by his side, and the recognition appeared equally unexpected and awkward. The new-comer was the older and more decorous-looking, with an added formality of manner and self-assertion that did not, however, conceal a certain habitual shrewdness of eye and lip. He wore a full beard, but the absence of a moustache left the upper half of his handsome and rather satirical mouth uncovered. His dress was less pronounced ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... in a tone so reasonable, decorous and temperate as to wring unwilling admiration even from his opponents. He pointed out briefly the weak points that rendered the governor's position utterly untenable, ignored the implied warning of resistance to the law; and succinctly stated that he relied upon the patriotism ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... are many territories, the natives of which you may recognise by their characteristics as surely as Ophelia recognises her true-love by his cockle-hat and sandal shoon. There is the land of grave gestures and courteous inclinations, of dignified leave-takings and decorous greetings; where the ladies (like Richardson's Pamela) don the most charming round-eared caps and frilled negliges; where the gentlemen sport ruffles and bag-wigs and spotless silk stockings, and invariably exhibit ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... lately arrived in this world he couldn't be expected to know much about its affairs, and especially about those of Samuel. It was graceful and decorous elocution. The Deacon expressed his opinion of it in snores, and I longed to ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... that night. Next morning, the remembrance of the pleasant smiting roused him to an outwardly sedate and inwardly vainglorious courage. Going with steady steps to the Friends' meeting-house at the appointed time, the Spirit moved him, after a decorous pause, to announce his intended marriage to the prettiest Quaker in Framley, even the maid who had shocked the community's sense of decorum and had been written down a rebel—though these things he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... talked to her alone. I went to her dinners, of course. All widowers and bachelors of our district went to her dinners. But her dinners were the pattern of propriety in every way. Your own grandmother's famous dinners were not more decorous. Except for being a guest, with others, at her dinners, I never was at her villa. I lent my carriage not to her but to her bridegroom, Marcus Martius, a prosperous gentleman of my neighborhood, of whom you ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... lie dangerously close to 'Denzil Place'? Be easy, Leo; the cold remains of my ossified affection will lie in as decorous repose as the harmless ash heaps of some long buried damosel of the era of Lars Porsenna, dug out of Vulci or Chiusi. To make a safe and brilliant marriage is the acme of social success. What else does the world to which I ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... anything likely to interest an intelligent adolescent. At the approach of all such things he must have acquired the habit of the modest cough, the infectious trick of the nice evasion. How can "Kappa" expect inspiration from the decorous resultants who satisfy these conditions? What brand can ever be lit at altars that have borne no fire? And you find the secondary schoolmaster who complies with these restrictions becoming the zealous and grateful agent of the tendencies that have made him what he is, converting ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Doctor. "Faith, I forgot that. I was going to High Mass meself, but I ran over to see ye. Yes, it's his turn. Sure, the poor man puts me to sleep, and sleepin' in the House of God is neither respectful nor decorous. But what is ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... and rusty at first, then rose confidently over the more decorous hum of the regular church-goers ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... jester, whose jingling cap and motley coat concealed more genius than ever mustered in the saloon of Ninon or of Madame Geoffrin, was succeeded by writers as decorous and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... on her past life as a mere state of concubinage, useful to the family, and to be respected while her husband could retain his kingdom, but which should end the moment there was nothing more to be gained from Napoleon or his brother. It was all proper and decorous to retain the title of King of Wurtemberg, which the former Duke and then Elector had owed to the exile of St. Helena, but King Frederick, and still less his son William, who succeeded him in 1816, could not comprehend Catherine's clinging to her husband when he had lost his ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... proceedings which she had long had in contemplation were instituted; whereupon the stricken widow had him carefully incinerated and his ashes tenderly deposited in a chaste urn in a mausoleum which her architect had taken oath cost more than the showy Ames vault by many thousands. The period of decorous mourning past, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles blithely doffed her weeds and threw herself again into the terrific competition for social standing, determined this time that it should be ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... overreached her astuteness. In her own single person, she could have comprised the duties of a first minister and a superintendent of police. Wise, firm, faithless, secret, crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and insensate—withal perfectly decorous—what more could be desired? ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... not what Miss Ponsonby had intended to say, but there was something about the young man that touched her exceedingly; even when fresh from a very civil and decorous combat with his father, and a ripping-up of all the ancient grievances of the married life of their two relations, rendering wider than ever the breach between the houses ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... waste no time telling you how amazed I was. It was a long time before I could believe what was happening to me; I thought I was clean off my head. I lifted my eyes, and there, in the aisle of the most decorous church of St. Bartholomew, standing with his hand on my head, was the figure out of the stained glass window! I looked at him twice, and then I looked at the window. Where the figure had been was a great big hole with ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... disposition, and but moderately set on gain, he found it pleasant to spend a few hours daily over the books and the correspondence, and for the rest of his time to enjoy a gossipy leisure, straying among the acquaintances of a lifetime, or making new in the decorous bar-parlours, billiard-rooms, and other such retreats which allured his bachelor liberty. His dress and bearing were unpretentious, but impressively respectable; he never allowed his garments (made by an Islington ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... a moment, please?" a voice said, and the dictation broke off abruptly, while when the girl rose Alice Deringham found herself suddenly confronted with Miss Townshead. Deringham, who stood up, made her a little decorous inclination. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... juxtaposition. But I can not help writing plainly that I am still in favor of a distinguished family-tree. ESTO PERPETUA! To have had somebody for a great-grandfather that was somebody is exciting. To be able to look back on long lines of ancestry that were rich, but respectable, seems decorous and all right. The present Earl of Warwick, I think, must have an idea that strict justice has been done him in the way of being launched properly into the world. I saw the Duke of Newcastle once, and as the farmer in Conway described ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... from the economic point of view, leisure, considered as an employment, is closely allied in kind with the life of exploit; and the achievements which characterise a life of leisure, and which remain as its decorous criteria, have much in common with the trophies of exploit. But leisure in the narrower sense, as distinct from exploit and from any ostensibly productive employment of effort on objects which are of no intrinsic use, does not commonly leave a material product. The criteria of a past performance ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... well for the Casa Cornaro: better perchance than this dazzling foreign marriage, and more fortune in it for the Cornari. For the estates of the Bernardini are princely; and it is well known in the Senate, though it be uttered in decorous whispers, that the dower of the charming bride hath left small remainder to her noble uncle. And Messer Andrea also, is large lender to a king—for war-debts and the like—Janus having nothing until he had regained his ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... by three candles, a kerosene lamp, and a blazing fire of pitch pine. Two violins were in lively operation, one being played by Lyman Hamblin, a son of Old Jacob, and there was a refreshing air of decorous gaiety about the whole assemblage. Dancing is a regular amusement among the Mormons and is encouraged by the authorities as a harmless and beneficial recreation. At that time the dances were always opened with prayer. Two sets could occupy the floor at ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Act. Nine out of thirteen of the colonies sent their delegates to this congress, and fourteen strong resolutions were passed condemnatory of the bill; and three petitions were concocted—one to the king, another to the lords, and a third to the commons. From the decorous manner adopted in its proceedings little alarm was excited, but by it an important point was gained to the Americans—a closer connexion was established by the meeting among the leading men of the various colonies; and thus a way was prepared for a more general and extensive combination ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... under blue-ribboned hats in a distant pew, and finding it impossible to restrain a momentary twinkle in return for the solemn wink Billy Barton bestowed upon him across the aisle. Ten minutes of this decorous demeanor made it absolutely necessary for him to stir; so he unfolded his arms and crossed his legs as cautiously as a mouse moves in the presence of a cat, for Mrs. Allen's eye was on him, and he knew by experience that it was a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... host to one another not only strikes no one as strange, but, on the contrary, is regarded as perfectly correct and indispensable, particularly on a first visit. Praskovia Ivanovna was agreeably impressed by Pyetushkov. He was formal and decorous in his manners, and moreover, wasn't he a man ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... clothing with the greatest indifference to spectators, and bathing together, most of them nearly naked. The soldiers of the guard took pleasure in mingling with these bathers of both sexes; but as the soldiers were not so decorous as the inhabitants, and as the imprudencies committed by our men soon went too far, these worthy people relinquished the pleasures of their bath, very much displeased because sport was made of an exercise they had enjoyed with so much gravity ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... your wife such ceremonies as have been observed hitherto, and as are the custom. When there is any doubt about the matter, I shall be consulted, so that, having examined it thoroughly, I may provide what is advisable for the public peace and for decorous relations between the president and Audiencia. (Note for a ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... Queen of Sheba travelled so far to examine. The idea that she took all that trouble to get acquainted with Solomon, is just ridiculous. Why, it would have taken the hymeneal monarch a whole lifetime to have introduced her to his family in a decorous way. Besides, if he provided for his own household out of the government, only think how busy he must have been in finding places for the relations of all his wives! No doubt he let the Queen of Sheba see his Temple, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... fulfil the requirements of evening dress, and also satisfy that sense of delicacy peculiar to some women who have not inherited from their great-great-grandmothers the certain knowledge that a low-necked gown is absolutely decorous. ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... his achievements as a hunter, and his exploits as a warrior—i.e., of hearing himself talk. As the young Indian understood not a word of what was said to him, he had but to sit and listen, which he would do with grave and decorous attention, composedly smoking his pipe the while, with his bright eyes fixed on the distant green or blue before him. Once fairly going on this strain, the Fighting Nigger would never stop until he had made ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... living creature within miles; a man might go down to primal depths, might drop even the restraint of the human in outcries and struggles as free as a tortured beast's. It may be that solitude sees more such scenes than a decently decorous world would like ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... been transported to their shores, and that they are compelled to acknowledge its excellence from its own point of view—its colouring true to nature, though not to their own type—its unveiled forms decorous, though not conforming to their own standard of decorum. Might they not still, and justly, tax it on its own ground with some flaw or incongruity, which proved the artist to have been human? And may ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of sweetness and light may at first seem grotesque, but Mrs. Hilliard proved it to be not without warrant in sound philosophy; by her simple formula billiards stood to culture as the Salvation Army to the decorous body of the Church Militant, both alliances resting on the basic truth that some souls will prick ears only to the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... from the room with the quickness of light and in an instant had returned. Replacing the smoking vessel and maintaining a face of decorous interest, she asked, hypocritically, "And was my poor ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... the vulgar feeling towards teachers, too often to be observed in schools, exists towards me. The pupils seem to reverence my tastes and opinions in all things; they are docile, decorous, and try hard to please; they are in awe of my displeasure, but delighted whenever permitted to associate with me on familiar terms. As I treat them like ladies, they are anxious to prove that they deserve to ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... decorous in the extreme, and if you don't see me again, suppose all goes right; I'll get shut up in Miss Garden's tower, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... and caps, and whips, and cravats, and oars, and canes disposed about it tastefully, souvenirs of various persons, times, and places, and talked of the original owners in a way that made Ethel's blue eyes open their widest when she came to be admitted there, that decorous young person not being used, as she frankly said, to hearing "a person of the opposite sex" called "a perfectly lovely fellow," and his nose pronounced "a dream," though not in the sense of its being broken ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... and guest dined on the balcony, the farming folk and such of the household as could be spared were enjoying a starlit supper elsewhere. Later, my hostess took me downstairs and introduced her English visitor to a merry but strictly decorous party having a special bit of sward to themselves, bailiff, vintagers, stockmen, dairywoman, washerwoman and odd hands making up a round dozen of men, women and boys. All seemed quite at home, and chatted easily with their employer and the visitor, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... fell under an influence which was to be transforming. He had been burning the illuminating oil of youth at very high pressure. Perhaps it was exhausted. He grew serious. De Montespan was sent away—the orgies at Versailles ceased, the court became decorous, almost austere, and with the awakening of conscience, of course, the king became more sensitive to ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... longer a priest, and had long been a small squire. Already that one great blank in our land had made snobbishness the only religion of South England; and turned rich men into a mythology. The effect can be well summed up in that decorous abbreviation by which our rustics speak of "Lady's Bedstraw," where they once spoke of "Our Lady's Bedstraw." We have dropped the comparatively democratic adjective, and kept the aristocratic noun. South England is still, as it was called in the Middle Ages, a garden; but it is the ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... directions through the speaking tube to the attentive footman, and so explicit were these directions that the greatest excitement prevailed upon the decorous front seat of the car—first the footman looked back along the road, then the chauffeur, after which a thrill of excitement seemed to fairly race up and down their liveried backs. The car itself took a notion to quiver with the promise of joy unrestrained. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... place in the most solemn and decorous way. Father Paphuntius delivered a very impressive sermon on domestic virtues and the fear of God leading to earthly happiness and eternal bliss. Bride and groom kneeled down before the altar and exchanged their ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Shakespeare should not have undertaken to represent any but persons of refined taste and decorous speech? That were to cut the Drama off from its proper freehold in the truth of human character, and also from some of its fruitfullest sources of instruction and wisdom: so, its office were quite another thing than "holding the mirror up to Nature." ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... little virtuous moralizing not to be thrown away; and accordingly Mr. Moore pours out several pages of octosyllabic disgust at the sensuality of the dead man of genius. There was no horror for Byron. Toward him all was suavity and decorous bienseance. That lively sense of benefits to be received made the Irish Anacreon wink with both his little eyes. In the judgment of a liberal like Mr. Moore, were not the errors of a lord excusable? But with poor Rousseau the case was very different. The son of a watchmaker, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... and were seated, the old man at the table gave out a hymn, reading out one line at a time; and after two verses were sung in this way, he read the remaining ones. Then, after a moment of decorous and not unimpressive silent meditation, all at a signal rose and kneeled down at their places. Hereupon the presiding officer uttered a short prayer in verse, and after him each man in his turn, beginning with the elders, uttered a similar verse of prayer, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... inquire, "Who's with us to-day?" Whereupon he would make known the character in which he elected to be received for the occasion. If he announced himself as "Mister Swift," everything was to be very grown-up and decorous indeed. Formalities and distances were observed; and Mr. Corley Linbridge (an elderly personage of great dignity and distinction as a mountain-climber) was much oftener included in the conversation than Bill Hammersley. If, however, he declared himself to be "Hamilton Swift, Junior," which was ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... leaving her tea also, untasted; hurrying away to Emily, who would help her to pull off the forget-me-nots from her frock, and to substitute the black ribbon which would be more decorous. Bessie's pale, full cheeks were pink with excitement, ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... description: worthy, because honest and clean and free from vice; offensive, because totally destitute of republican principle. If stripped of his wealth, he might become a rich man's invaluable flunky, and carry the decorous prayer-book to church, bringing up the rear of the family with formalism. Toryism has a profound respect for external godliness, and remembers that the Southerner sympathizes with bishops, who, like Meade of Virginia, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... desert men were magnificently primitive. Gone was all the veneer of civilization, the humanity which bids a man respect a fellow-creature's life. He was no longer the educated, travelled man of the world, who earned his living in honourable and decorous ways. He was the cave-dweller, the man of another and more barbaric age, who defended his stronghold because it held his woman, the woman for whom he would fight to the very end, and count his life well spent if it were yielded up in ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... through the hall she met Holliday. His appearance was decorous and subdued, as befitted the occasion, yet as he came up the stairs in his dark, inconspicuously correct attire, she felt in his manner something assured, almost proprietary, as if he considered himself already master here. She inclined her head slightly and was ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Wealth and great houses existed even then in New York and upon occasion their owners made full use of both, but there was a restraint about the Americans, the English and the Dutch. Their display was often heavy and always decorous, and in Quebec he felt for the first time the heedless gayety of the French, when the Bourbon monarchy had passed its full bloom, and already was in its brilliant decay. Truly, they could have carved over the doorway, "Leave all fear and sorrow ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... the same level of emotion and incident; they consist mainly of satirical yet good-humoured descriptions of middle-class life in the country, the suburbs, and occasionally in the higher walks of society—they are always decorous and never dull, but they never rise to the note of romance or adventure. It may even be added, in further proof of Trollope's literary ancestry, that the predominant quality of these very clever but eminently commonplace stories, with their interminable ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... both at the outset of a new political era, sharply divided from that preceding. The amiable and decorous Louis XVI., with his lovely consort, had just ousted from Versailles the Du Barrys and the Maupeons. George III., a sovereign similar in youth and respectability of character, had a few years before in like manner improved the tone of the English court, and, after ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... you the people who have made me the most weary? It is not the bad people, nor the foolish people; we can get along with all such because of a streak of common humanity in us all, but I cannot survive without extreme lassitude the decorous people; those who slip through life without sound or sparkle, those who behave themselves upon every occasion, and would pass through a dynamite explosion without rumpling a hair; those who never have done ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... home it was not merely Sunday morning; it was Sabbath morning. Throughout the house a subdued bustling, decorous and solemn; a hushed, religious hurry of preparation for church. In the bathroom Judge Penniman shaved his marbled countenance with tender solicitude, fitting himself to adorn a sanctuary. In other ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... a half-hour he was left to my mercies, anything but tender. Sallie took Nell and Caroline over home to help her decide how wide a band of white it would be decorous for her to sew in the neck of her new black meteor crepe. I see it coming that we will all have to unite in getting Sallie out of mourning and into the trappings of frivolity soon and I dread it. It takes so many opinions on any given subject to satisfy Sallie ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... noticed on this occasion that he introduced me very guardedly by name (from a little card) and said nothing about the Belgians, and nothing about my being (supposed to be) a humourist. This last was a great error. The audience, for want of guidance, remained very silent and decorous, and well behaved during my talk. Then, somehow, at the end, while some one was moving a vote of thanks, the chairman discovered his error. So he tried to make it good. Just as the audience were getting up to put on their wraps, he rose, knocked on his ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... Elizabeth knelt, with her eyes fixed on the wall: it was a green paper, patterned with bunches of nuts. How far she listened, or how much she understood, it was impossible to say; but her manner was decent and decorous. ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... men, I believe, who have, or think they have, a very small share of vanity. Such may speak of their literary fame in a decorous style of diffidence. But I confess, that I am so formed by nature and by habit, that to restrain the effusion of delight, on having obtained such fame, to me would be truly painful. Why then should I suppress it? Why 'out of the abundance of the heart' should I not speak[75]? Let me then mention ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... ears fall, in spite of her need she did not pick them up, for the gleaning assigned to the poor by law does not refer to quantities of more than two ears inadvertently dropped at one time. (50) Boaz also admired her grace, her decorous conduct, her modest demeanor. (51) When he learned who she was, he commended her for her attachment to Judaism. To his praise she returned: "Thy ancestors found no delight even in Timna, (52) the daughter of a royal house. As for me, I am a ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... I am free as a wood-bird, and can take up the pen without fretting or fear. Your letter should, and nearly did, make me jump for joy,—fine things about our poor speech at Cambridge,— fine things from CARLYLE. Scarcely could we maintain a decorous gravity on the occasion. And then news of a friend, who is also Carlyle's friend. What has life better to offer than such tidings? You may suppose I went directly and got me Blackwood, and read the prose and the verse of John Sterling, and saw that my man had ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Maximes of La Rochefoucauld and the Caracteres of La Bruyere. It was through its influence that Moliere found it difficult to get some of his plays staged. It explains the fact that the court of Louis XIV., however corrupt, was decorous compared with the courts of Henry IV. and Louis XV.; a severe standard was set up, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... by the side of his adopted mother, and retaining fast hold of her hand, assumed a grave and decorous demeanor, such as might befit a person of matured taste and understanding, who should find himself in a temple dedicated to some worship which he did not recognize, but felt himself bound to respect. The ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... Is it abuse to say that she is moral and proper? But, sir, I shall abuse her. I know her for what she is, while your eyes are sealed. She is wise and moral, and decorous and prim; but she is a hypocrite, and has no touch of real heart in her composition. Not abuse her when she has robbed me of all—all—all that I have in the world! Go to her. You had better go at once. I did not mean to say all this, but it ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the warmth and comfort of the homestead, we found a vast array of eatables and drinkables; every one was welcomed, but notwithstanding the unusual number of guests, all was well-ordered and decorous. The Thurlows and their numerous clan are a fine-looking folk; the men, sturdy, well set-up—a fighting people, yet generous, kindly and hospitable. The women—gracious, lovely, and altogether charming. Beyond the universally cherished ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... through the ancestral hall. The sunlight edged it like a bright border. The doors were wide open, and Dong-Yung saw the decorous rows of square chairs and square tables set rhythmically along the walls, and the covered dais at the head for the guest of honor. Long crimson scrolls, sprawled with gold ideographs, hung from ceiling to floor. A rosewood cabinet, filled ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... distance? And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence, The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement, Stood for a while in a sultry smother, 310 And then, with a smile that partook of the awful, Turned her over to his yellow mother To learn what was held decorous and lawful; And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct, As her cheek quick whitened thro' all its quince-tinct. Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once! What meant she?—Who was she?—Her ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... advantage of acquaintance, whose face her own could seek with a kind of right to response. But the sensation Duff Lindsay tried to sit still under was not simple. It had the novelty, the shock, of a plunge into the sea; behind his decorous countenance he gasped and blinked, with unfamiliar sounds in his ears. His soul seemed shudderingly repelling Laura's, yet the buffets themselves were enthralling. In the strangeness of it he made a mechanical movement to depart, picked up his stick, but Arnold was sitting ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... men and women honored the flag. In a theater, at any public gathering, a display of the national colors caused the men to bare reverently their heads, the women to clap their hands with decorous enthusiasm. Without doubt they were all agreed that it was a sacred duty to fight for one's country. How peculiar and illogical then, he reflected, to be horrified at the visible results of fighting for one's country, of saving ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... reputation of being the best-dressed man in town. Suddenly Sir Charles paused, his coup d'archet half-executed, the final beauty of his neck-cloth half-achieved, while he listened with surprise and indignation upon his large, comely, fresh-complexioned face. Below, the decorous hum of Jermyn Street had been broken by the sharp, staccato, metallic beating ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... unconscious patrician sort of way, there was, also, about her something wayward and different from the conventional, aristocratic set. The disordered golden hair proclaimed it, while in the depths of the fine, blue eyes manifold changing lights told of a capriciousness out of the pale of a stiffly decorous and well-contained caste. ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... another talk, and she told me that in the morning Miss Mavis had paid her a long visit. She knew nothing, poor creature, about anything, but her intentions were good and she was evidently in her own eyes conscientious and decorous. And Mrs. Nettlepoint concluded these remarks with ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... And twinkled with a luster shrewd and sly, When Giam Batttista bade her vision hail!— Yet fear not, ladies, the naive detail Given by the natives of that land canorous; Italian license loves to leap the pale, We Britons have the fear of shame before us, And, if not wise in mirth, at least must be decorous. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the mistress walked into the spacious, low-ceilinged, bright place, presences long past seemed to fill it intolerably. Brock and Hugh, little chaps, roared in untidy and tumultuous from football, or came, decorous and groomed, handsome, smart little lads, to be presented to guests. Her own Hugh, her husband, proud of the beautiful new house, smiled from the hearth to her as he had smiled twenty-six years back, the night they came in, a young Hugh, younger ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... was an entertainment—half concert, half theatricals, wholly dilettante—at the Malkasten, the Artists' Club. We, as is the duty of a decorous English family, buried all our private griefs, and appeared at the entertainment, to which, indeed, Adelaide had received a special invitation. I was going to remain with Adelaide until Sir Peter's return, which, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... bandied about, in which the Whigs, being the winners, have shown the best temper. In society the excitement has ceased, but the bitterness remains. The Tories are, however, so utterly defeated, and the victory of their opponents is so complete, that the latter can afford to be moderate and decorous in their tone and manner; and the former are exceedingly sulky, cockering up each other with much self-gratulation and praise, but aware that in the opinion of the mass of mankind they are covered ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... scene of the fifth act of the concluding play. It would be unbecoming in me to be more diffuse on this subject. A translator stands connected with the original author by a certain law of subordination, which makes it more decorous to point out excellencies than defects; indeed, he is not likely to be a fair judge of either. The pleasure or disgust from his own labour, will mingle with the feelings that arise from an after view of the original poem; and ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... parchment is stamped with a seal of no mean importance, and it bears the royal name of the princely Louis also! And view this cross! decorated as it is with jewels, the gift of the same illustrious hand; it is not apt to be given to the children of infamy, neither is it wise or decorous to stigmatize a man who has not been thought unworthy to consort with princes and nobles by the opprobrious name ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... against heaven, or still less against the Lord, is evident. For everyone while he lives in the world is in externals; and these externals are taught and trained from infancy to counterfeit such things as are honest and decorous, right and equitable, and good and true. Nevertheless, hatred lies concealed in their spirit, and this in equal degree with the evil of their life. And as hatred is in the spirit it breaks forth when the externals are laid aside, as is the case ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... is Till Eulenspiegel himself, the scurvy, comic rascal, the eternal dirty little boy with his witty and obscene gestures, who leers out of every measure of the tone-poem named for him, and twirls his fingers at his nose's end at all the decorous and respectable world. Here, for once, orchestral music is really wonderfully rascally and impudent, horns gleeful and windy and insolent, wood-wind puckish and obscene. Here a musical form reels hilariously and cuts capers ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... pictures of Guido and Murillo, and the carved figures of Alonzo Cano, Montanez, and Hernandez, may be regarded as authorized effigies of "Our Lady of the most pure Conception;" in other words, as embodying, in the most attractive, decorous, and intelligible form, an abstract theological dogma, which is in itself one of the most curious, and, in its results, one of the most important of the religions phenomena connected with the artistic representations of ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... could I? The very idea, a woman in divorce proceedings! . . . I have not been to a single chic party since you went away. I wanted to preserve a certain decorous mourning fiesta. How horrible it was! . . . It needed you, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of your dead father and mother, to put this ruinous vagary from you, to abandon this preposterous journey, and to stay quietly here in Sampaolo. Then, if you must open up the past, if you must get into communication with your distant cousin, I 'll help you to find some other, some sane and decorous method of doing so." ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... judicious, he had made a happy escape, for the cruelty involved in the lady's methods and the careless flout of the opinion of the sober, decorous world were not indicia of worthy traits; but he was of sensitive fibre, and tingled and winced with the consciousness of the cheap gibe and the finger of scorn. He often said to himself then, however, as now to the friend of his inmost ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... they were ready to obey it, and that he would go and give account to the Lord Governor of what had been done. And the Abbot went accordingly to Court, and informed the Cardinal Governor of the translation which had been made; and that the tomb of the Cid had been removed to a place more decorous, and nearer the High Altar, and answering the site where King Don Alfonso VI. had commanded him to be placed in his ivory chair before he was first interred; and where the vault had been made wherein he had lain many years. And that the reason why the tomb had been moved was, ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... all that in circumstances of mourning you can possibly want; they scorn to do you the disgrace of imagining that you would drive a bargain on the very brink of the grave; and you are of course obliged to them for the delicacy of their reserve on so commonplace a subject, and you pay their bill in decorous disregard of the amount. It is true, that certain envious rivals have compared them to birds of prey, scenting mortality from afar, and hovering like vultures on the trail of death, in order to profit by his dart; but such 'caparisons,' as Mrs Malaprop says, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... saved him from driving the indignant Titania desperate at that critical moment by any ill-advised rejoicings; and the sight of Nettie's agitation so far calmed Dr Rider that he made the most sober and decorous congratulations to the sister-in-law, whom for the first time he felt grateful to. Perhaps, had he been less absorbed in his own affairs, he could scarcely have failed to remember how, not yet a year ago, the shabby form of Fred lay on that same sofa from which Susan ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... such was the perfect breeding of these dolls, that not a single eye out of the whole twenty-seven (Dutch Hans had lost one of the black beads from his worsted countenance) turned for a moment toward the table, or so much as winked, as they lay in decorous rows, gazing with mute admiration at Belinda. She, unable to repress the joy and pride which swelled her sawdust bosom till the seams gaped, gave an occasional bounce as the wind waved her yellow skirts, or made the blue boots dance a sort of jig upon the door. Hanging was evidently not ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... basket, and into the beds went the conspirators, and nothing could have been more decorous than the appearance of the room when Betsey popped ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... famous war which we are about to touch upon are as dim as those of Troy or Tuscany. Decorous chronicles and biographies and monographs and eulogies exist, bound in leather and stamped in gold, each lauding its own hero: chronicles written in really beautiful language, and high-minded and noble, out of which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The seats below were not more than one-third full. Dr. Beecher ministered in this place for about ten years. It was now without a pastor, but was temporarily supplied by Professor Allen. The congregation was far more decorous and attentive than those in New Orleans. After the introductory service, and while the hymn before sermon was being sung, a man came trudging down the aisle, bearing an immense scuttle full of coals to supply the stoves. How easy it would have been before service to place ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... that day for Dr. Dimsdale or any other stranger in the town to ask his way to the University, for the whooping and yelling which proceeded from that usually decorous building might have been heard from Prince's Street to Newington. In front of the gates was a dense crowd of townspeople peering through into the quadrangle, and deriving much entertainment from the movements of ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... quiet, unostentatious work that is there being done for the British baby, "all for love and nothing for reward"—I shall be very much surprised if he does not confess that it is one of the best antidotes imaginable to baby-farming, and a sight more decorous and dignified than any Baby Show that could ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... chink of his cans, fell upon Lady Thomson's unheeding ears. So did voices in colloquy, but she did not particularly note a female one of a thin, chirpy quality, addressing the parlor-maid with a familiarity probably little appreciated by that elegantly decorous damsel. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... should walk off smiling. It is easier said than done. It is not a pleasant moment when a man first recognizes that he is out of place in the football field, that he cannot stoop with the old agility to pick up a skimming stroke to cover-point, that dancing is rather too heating to be decorous, that he cannot walk all day without undue somnolence after dinner, or rush off after a heavy meal without indigestion. These are sad moments which we all of us reach, but which are better laughed over than fretted over. And a man who, out of sheer inability to part from boyhood, clings ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... curiosities. Great lady, of enormous fortune, she could have satisfied them, had she so chosen, with the large cynicism of a Catherine of Russia. She could also, had she so chosen, have married one of a hundred sighing and decorous gentlemen; but with none of them had she fallen ever so little in love, and without love she determined to try no more experiments; her determination, however, did not involve surrender of interest in ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... miscellanies. It is interesting to note that in this form the full name "Addison" appeared in the last line. Some time later Pope acknowledged the verses and printed them with a few changes in his 'Miscellany' of 1727, substituting the more decorous "A—-n" for the "Addison" of the first text. Finally he worked over the passage again and inserted it, for a purpose that will be shown later, in ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... became fuller in the centre and turned over like a scarlet leaf, or, as it struck him suddenly, like the tell-tale drop of blood on the mouth of a vampire. Yet she was very composed, practical, and decorous, and as the talk grew more animated—and in the vicinity of Mrs. MacSpadden, more audacious—she kept a smiling reserve of expression,—which did not, however, prevent her from following that lively lady, whom she evidently knew, with a kind of ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Evangelists.' Its object was to prove they were wholly free from the errors of enthusiasts; that in their private conduct, and in the government of the Church, they were 'rational and sober, prudent and cautious, mild and decorous, zealous without violence, and steady without obstinacy; that their writings are plain, calm, and unexaggerated, ... natural and rational, ... without any trace of spiritual pride, any arrogant claims to full perfection of virtue; ... teaching heartfelt piety to God without ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... to the nation on July 6th, 1918, and the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury at St. Paul's, and of the leaders in Parliament, without feeling what a mighty influence for good there is in the British monarchy? Those words were not decorous platitudes demanded by convention, but the expression of ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... condition of a Sunday morning. Was anything amiss going on? Nay, that was out of the question. It was not to be thought of for a moment that Bartleby was an immoral person. But what could he be doing there?—copying? Nay again, whatever might be his eccentricities, Bartleby was an eminently decorous person. He would be the last man to sit down to his desk in any state approaching to nudity. Besides, it was Sunday; and there was something about Bartleby that forbade the supposition that he would by any secular occupation violate the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... child, you mistake my meaning. It is not for the selfish purpose of keeping you here near me that I advise you to defer your marriage for a time. It is because I think it is decorous that some months should elapse between the betrothal of a young pair and their wedding. Though, of course, there are some cases in which a short engagement and a speedy marriage become expedient or even necessary. As, for instance, my child, if I ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... by reason of turnings and tossings; his clear profile continued to keep itself disengaged from any depression in the pillows; his slender hands were laid in quiet symmetry over the wide edge of the down-turned coverlet. A decorous, unperturbed young old-master ... Van ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... log church that is still, as a local artist put it, "the only thing in Fairbanks worth making a picture of," no longer stands open all day and all night as the town's library and reading-room, but has withdrawn into decorous Sabbath use in favour of the commodious public library built by a Philadelphia churchman; the hospital adjoining it, that for two or three years cared for all the sick of the camp, is supplemented by another and a larger across the slough; young ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... number from another number and unity, because they are not the same absolute and infinite. Therefore was it well said by a theologian that as the fountain of light far exceeds not only our intellects, but also the divine, it is decorous that one should not discourse with words, but that with silence alone it ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... somewhat Louis Seize room several wondrous wax girls and the same number of young men, with extremely broad shoulders and slender hips, were dancing a decorous tango. But, if they tired of that, they had only to move on a section, to find a party of four young people playing tennis in appropriate costumes against a trellis of crimson ramblers. Strange to say, a mere wall divided this summer scene from ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... said John, in a tone rather above the pitch of decorous respect, on which he occasionally trespassed, confiding in his merit as an ancient servant of the family and a faithful follower of their humble fortunes,—"It's Calf-Gibbie, an your leddyship will hae't, that keeps Edie Henshaw's kye down yonder at the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... bright eyes of Wiggins moved expectantly backward and forward from one to the other. He preserved a decorous sympathetic silence. ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... literature as her sole resource. "No wonder," she adds, "if I loved my books and children." It is, perhaps, more to be wondered at that her children seem to have had a rather subordinate place in her affections. The marriage, however, though not of the happiest, was perfectly decorous. Mrs. Thrale discharged her domestic duties irreproachably, even when she seems to have had some real cause of complaint. To the world she eclipsed her husband, a solid respectable man, whose mind, according to Johnson, struck the hours very regularly, though it did not ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen |
