"Respectability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentleman, we are prone to infer that he is also a man of upright principles and honorable feelings. But we are very often mistaken in this inference; the nice garment proves to be little better than a nice disguise; and the robe of respectability may cover the heart ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... stars, as he came back stealthily from laying the saddle blanket, which was the only covering he and Abe had, upon the sleeping form of Aunt Debby, "and my downy couch still waits for me. My life-long habits of staid respectability have ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the demeanour of a sofa bedstead! Ashamed of its real use, it strives to appear an article of luxury and gentility—an attempt in which it miserably fails. It has neither the respectability of a sofa, nor the virtues of a bed; every man who keeps a sofa bedstead in his house, becomes a party to a wilful and designing fraud—we question whether you could insult him more, than by insinuating that you entertain the least suspicion of its ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... compliments to Mr Jay, and to assure him, that the information he has received relative to the affair of the Cicero privateer, as set forth in his letter of the 6th instant, is not correct, the Count having received from persons of respectability and entirely worthy of credit very accurate statements. It is therefore necessary, that some suitable satisfaction should be given, in order to serve as an example to restrain the captains of the American privateers within proper ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... has the sense to see that the moiety of income paid yearly to the railway, by himself and his family, goes a long way toward the doubling of his rent. In short, suburbanism is his fetish; it is the keynote of his poor respectability, and he is not to be diverted from it by any reasons which a sane man would regard as considerable, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... of sundry breakneck gallops and mahlstrom waltzes danced in gardens and saloons, the very existence whereof was ignored by or unknown to respectability; and then thought, "If I were safely planted on the other side of the world with her for my wife, it would cost me no more to cut all that kind of thing than it would to throw away a handful ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... attached to them both, would have remonstrated, observing that Cecilia was his own cousin, and that he was a confirmed bachelor; but, in this instance, Mr. Templemore was firm, and Mr. Witherington very unwillingly consented. A mercantile house of the highest respectability required a partner who could superintend their consignments to America. Mr. Witherington advanced the sum required; and in a few weeks Mr. and Mrs. Templemore sailed for ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... sex which is best attained by practising at home. Your mother may sometimes require this attention, your sisters still oftener. Do not require calling, or teasing, or even persuading to go abroad with them when their safety, their comfort, or their respectability require it. It is their due; and stupid or unkind is he who does not esteem it so. In performing this service, you are only paying a respect to yourself. Your sister could, indeed, come home alone, but it would ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... offensive conduct for which he had been expelled, permitted him to take his seat on the third day of January following, as a member for the County of York, after being re-elected: That in this hope, so important to the deliberate transaction of public business, so essential to the respectability of the Legislature and peace of the country, a few days' experience convinced this House there was so little reason to rely, that on the seventh day of the same month of January, it was by a large majority again deemed necessary to expel the said William Lyon Mackenzie, for a repetition and ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... and measured the slender figure from accurately dented hat-crown to tiny shoe-tips. "Well, yuh sure don't look it," he said bluntly, at length. "Why that elaborate disguise of respectability?" ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... The respectability of the witnesses, and the solemn terms of this marriage covenant, suffice to show that marriages thus solemnized were regarded as perfectly regular, and it is probable that in the absence of a minister competent to perform the ceremony this was the ordinary mode ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... two studies: you are my study for the success, the credit, and the respectability of a quiet, tranquil character; Mary is my study for the contempt, the remorse, the misconstruction which follow the development of feelings in themselves noble, warm, generous, devoted, and profound, but which, being too freely revealed, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... decision, I cast about to see how I could carry it into effect. I am not a coward, but I have a respectability to maintain, and what errand could Miss Butterworth be supposed to have in the streets at twelve o'clock at night! Fortunately, I remembered that my cook had complained of toothache when I gave her my orders for breakfast, and going down at once into the kitchen, ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... splendid, their manners magnificent." This is a rather pictorial way of saying that there were a number of people in the place—the commercial and professional aristocracy, as it were—who lived in high comfort and respectability, and who, in their small provincial way, doubtless had pretensions to be exclusive. Into this delectable company Mr. Lathrop intimates that his hero was free to penetrate. It is easy to believe it, and it would be difficult to perceive why the privilege should have been ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... themselves positions of importance, both social and political. It was not the custom to consider too curiously the source of the wealth. If it was sufficient to dazzle the eyes of the vulgar, it was pretty certain to prove the respectability ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to themselves, we can now see Renoir amongst his peers. He is perfectly at home there. Renoir takes his place quite simply in the great tradition; and when Cezanne, who is still too cheap to be within the reach of a national collection, has attained a price that guarantees respectability he, too, will be seen to fit neatly into that tradition of which he is as much a part as Ingres or Poussin, ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... the original mediaeval romances, both in their prose and metrical form, there are occasional allusions to natural processes which make these stories unfit to be placed in the hands of American readers, who, as a body, attest their respectability by insisting that their parents were guilty of unmentionable conduct; and such passages of course ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... that Ali Baba should be satisfied with the oblivion-mantle of knighthood and relapse into dingy respectability in the Avilion of Brompton or Bath; but since he has taken to wearing stars the accompanying itch for ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... the slave of routine. He can boast of somewhat more spiritual cousins in the men who reverence their ancestors' independence, who feel, as it were, that a disreputable great-grandfather is necessary to a family's respectability. These are the routineers gifted with historical sense. They take their forefathers with enormous solemnity. But one mistake is rarely avoided: they imitate the old-fashioned thing their grandfather did, and ignore the originality which ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... standing off on end. I observed that they always removed or settled their hats with both hands, and wore watches, with short gold chains of a substantial and ancient pattern. Theirs was the affectation of respectability;—if indeed there ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a razor; strong stockings on their legs; heavy brogues, with broad, nail-paved soles; and breeches open at the knees. Nor is the establishment without a competent number of females. These were, for the most part, the daughters of wealthy farmers, who considered it necessary to their respectability, that they should not be altogether illiterate; such a circumstance being a considerable drawback, in the opinion of an admirer, from the character of a young woman for whom he was about to propose—a drawback, too, which was always weighty in proportion ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... pilot-house. They would have sacrificed the schooner, too, for Amos complained bitterly of the load on the engines; but Elisha would not hear of it. She was the last evidence in their favor now, their last connection with respectability. ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... such chapters; artist life everywhere, probably. But it is only in England, I think, that the full bitterness of such experience is felt; for what knows the foreign artist of the inexorable element of Respectability? In England alone is the pervading atmosphere of respectability that which artists breathe in common with all other men—respectability, that English moral climate, with its neutral tint and temperate ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... was a brute. That he had the outer covering of respectability counted against him. Larry always kept his best manners for public exhibition; his inheritance of refinement could be tapped at any convenient hour. Northrup knew his type. He had not recalled his father in years as he did ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Palace drive. The sight of that old, red, thick-set building with its square comfortable windows, its bell-tower, its dovecots, its graceful, stolid, happy lines, its high old doorway, its tiled roof rosy-red with age, respectability and comfort, its square solemn chimneys behind and between whose self-possession the broad branches of the oaks, older and wiser than the house itself, uplifted their clustered leaves with the protection of their conscious dignity— this house thrilled all ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... the desert without its dignity; the few towns and villages that break its monotony are mean and commonplace, there is nothing venerable about them, they have not even the picturesqueness of poverty; indeed, Don Quixote's own village, Argamasilla, has a sort of oppressive respectability in the prim regularity of its streets and houses; everything is ignoble; the very windmills are the ugliest and shabbiest of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... mean time the Jersey militia, with an alacrity theretofore unexampled in that state, took the field in great numbers. They principally joined General Sullivan, who had retired from Princeton, behind the Sourland hills towards Flemingtown, where an army of some respectability was forming, which could readily co-operate with that under the immediate inspection of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... I can understand, the line of respectability lies between that which is useful and that which is useless. If women do that which is of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, it is dishonorable. That our young women may escape ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Hereford was then, as it is now, to make excursions either alone, or in parties, upon their beautiful river. This amusement had become so much a custom with them, that the most timid females were not afraid to venture alone and at night in a small skiff, with which almost every family of respectability was provided; and on a bright moonlight night, the bosom of the river was beautifully diversified by the white sails glittering in the moonbeams, while sweet female voices would be heard warbling some popular melodies, the, subjects of which were usually the praises of prince Edward, or execrations ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... AMUSEMENTS," fifteen foot long by two foot high, ran over the front door and parlour winders. The passage was a Arbour of green baize and gardenstuff. A barrel-organ performed there unceasing. And as to respectability,—if ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... gray Duffield, or a cotton chintz, would be certain to induce deductions highly prejudicial to the respectability of your character, or, what is of equal importance, to the duration of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... irregularity to our old streets. Though formal and lacking in artistic qualities these Georgian screens have a certain historical value in showing that our little town was prosperous through the century, and able to support a decided air of respectability. But not without reason do we deplore ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... reviewers of the next generation, quitted—as they seldom did quit—the ground of external form and regularity and logical coherence, it was only to ask: Is this work, this poem or this novel, in conformity with the traditional conventions of respectability, is it such as can be put into the hands of boys and girls? To them this was the one ground on which the matter of literature, as apart from the beggarly elements of its form, could come under the cognizance ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... three koku of rice to your name, don't do it," is the advice of the local proverb—a proverb whose warning against marrying for money is the more suggestive for being launched in a land where marrying for love is beyond the pale of respectability. To barter one's name in this mercenary manner is looked upon as derogatory to one's self-respect, although, as we have seen, to part with it for any less direct remuneration is not attended with ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... stuffy little room— Vulgar flat smooth respectability: Not so the burst of landscape surging in, Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair Is, plain enough, the younger personage Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft The sash, spreads wide and fastens ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... old apartments having been chopped up into small modern rooms; it will have to be completely reconstructed. A worthy woman with a military profile and that sharp, positive manner which the goodwives who show you through the chateaux of Touraine are rather apt to have, and in whose high respectability, to say nothing of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... water, Mavis was still enormously above him. The aunt, a smooth-tongued little woman whom for a long time he regarded as implacably hostile to his suit, made him measure the height of the dividing space every time that he called at North Ride Cottage. Plainly trying to crush him with the respectability both of herself and of her surroundings, she showed off all the presents from the Abbey—the china and glass ornaments, the piano; the photographs of Mr. Barradine on horseback, of the late Lady Evelyn Barradine in ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... hope, as honourable as any profits whatever; and Mr. Mylne's relations are most justly entitled to that honest harvest, which fate has denied himself to reap. But let the friends of Mr. Mylne's fame (among whom I crave the honour of ranking myself) always keep in eye his respectability as a man and as a poet, and take no measure that, before the world knows anything about him, would risk his name and character being classed with the fools of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and they will do it far better alone together. At the same time it is not good for a bride to be set down in an utterly strange neighbourhood, where she will not know a soul till the people are thoroughly satisfied as to her respectability. This, as we shall see later, may constitute a ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... and William Stewart. A little later, in 1811, an old writer says: "At that time the church was thronged to an over flow with all who were most elevated in station and in wealth from the Capital; the pews in the gallery were rented at high rates and to persons of great respectability. The street before the church was filled with glittering vehicles and ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... has probably been wasted in those silly trifles of which you have told me the unhappy man was so fond, and for which he has bartered respectability and peace of mind. As for the money paid this ship for the passage, it has been fairly earned, nor do I know that government has any power to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... a reader of the classics, in translations if not in the originals, a man with a fine taste in fiction and poetry, and a really sound and ripe archaeological knowledge, especially where sacred buildings were concerned. All his instincts, also, were towards respectability. His most burning ambition was to secure a high position in the county in which he lived, and to be classed among the resident gentry. He hated his lawyer's work, and longed to accumulate sufficient means to be able to give it the good-bye and to indulge himself in an existence of ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... contracts for the same, will be prepared and transmitted by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Every contractor will be required to give bond in twice the amount to be furnished, with at least three sufficient securities, whose solvency and respectability shall be known to the officer making the contract, or to respectable ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... meaning for men of our times, and the same duty of idolatrous worship, if not of relics and ikons, then of the Sabbath Day and the letter of the Bible. There is always the same activity directed to concealing the real duties of Christianity, and to putting in their place an external respectability and cant, as it is so well described by the English, who are peculiarly oppressed by it. In Protestantism this tendency is specially remarkable because it has not the excuse of antiquity. And does not exactly ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... along many of the more dubious channels of life. They had surrendered to temptation; they had sown and reaped and suffered, and become weary of it. They had struggled slowly yet stoically up towards respectability; they had fought for fair-dealing; they had entered a compact to stand by each other through that long and bitter effort to be tardily honest ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... I hired a man and a donkey. The donkey was my passport to respectability, and I was more comfortable too, being able to take more bedding with me. I was warned against going to Ch'ao Yang, sixty miles, the roads being represented as unsafe; but I went and found no trouble, though there was a severe famine in the district. I spent a ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... life on the way, the want of luggage will concern me the most, my dear. Depend on it, other people have driven up in inside cars, minus luggage, in the memory of man, in this City of Dublin. Are you such a worldling base as to depend for your respectability on ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... distinct castes, besides a number of territorial subcastes. A list of nearly thirty subcastes is given by Mr. Crooke, and this is an instance of the tendency of migratory castes to split up into small groups for the purpose of arranging marriages, owing to the difficulty of ascertaining the status and respectability of each other's families, and the unwillingness to contract alliances with those whose social position may turn out to be not wholly satisfactory. "The internal structure of the caste," Mr. Crooke remarks, "is far from clear; it would appear that they are ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Stewart had rented his apartment. It is hard to say by what psychology he found their respectability so satisfactory. It was as though his own status gained by it. He had much the same feeling about the order and decency with which Marie managed the apartment, as if irregularity ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Let any man look at the degraded condition of the country before the war,—the scorn of the universe, the contempt of ourselves, and tell me if we have gained nothing by the war. What is our present situation? Respectability and character abroad; security and confidence at home. If we have not obtained, in the opinion of some, the full measure of retribution, our character and Constitution are placed on a solid basis, never ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... citizen of high respectability, among whose papers, when they were searched by the officers on some business or other, was found the nativity of some one of the name of Valens. He, when asked on what account he had troubled himself about the star of the emperor, had repelled the accusation by declaring that it was ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... did not know me, but turned out from his remarks, to be Picault, the owner of the mansion. His observations were general and of a kind of a conciliatory tone, and seemed to be each uttered after grave deliberation. There was a prudence and respectability and an air of inoffensiveness about his manner which indicated the quiet merchant of means. He spoke of Madame De Rheims with great respect, and drew my attention to quondam Mlle. Alvarez, the New Orleans beauty, as though ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... be, by men who pledge their characters on the correctness of the information they convey. When a bachelor decides on marriage, by running over a few pages of our work, he will, in half an hour, be able to select a desirable match; by applying at our office, and giving testimonials of his respectability, he will receive the lady's name and address; and he may then pursue his object with a calm tranquillity of mind, a settled determination of purpose, which are in themselves the heralds and pledges of success. Or, should he meet in society a lady who pleases his taste, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... magistrate, Mr. Ennells was bound over to appear at the next mayor's court and answer to the charge against him. The proprietor of the hotel where he lodged became his bail. Meanwhile, numerous letters came from people of the first respectability in Maryland and Virginia, testifying to his good character. His lawyer showed these letters to Friend Hopper, and proposed that the prosecution should be abandoned. He replied that he had no authority to act in the ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... something in the hard years; she saw that more and more. Her very widowhood to Monroe had the stamp of absolute respectability. Even Pa was changed toward her; or was it that she was changed toward him? However caused, in their relationship there was ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... poem, in style almost as simple as a ballad, is at once of the quaintest and truest. Common minds, which must always associate a certain conventional respectability with the forms of religion, will think it irreverent. I judge its reverence profound, and such none the less that it is pervaded by a sweet and delicate tone of holy humour. The very title has a glimmer of ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... came gradually to realize that men and women were formed in a way that argued connection with each other, I still believed it to be a dissolute sort of conduct, not to be indulged in by those who had claims to respectability. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... been so long in prison, his aesthetic zeal "might have eaten out or filed away his affections." This was what befell Harold Skimpole—himself "in prisons often"—at Coavinses! The Judge Pyncheon of the tale is also a masterly study of swaggering black-hearted respectability, and then, in addition to all the poetry of his style, and the charm of his haunted air, Hawthorne favours us with a brave conclusion of the good sort, the old sort. They come into money, they marry, they are happy ever after. This is doing things handsomely, though some of our modern novelists think ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... originally a resident, in the Hartz Mountains; he was the serf of an Hungarian nobleman, of great possessions, in Transylvania; but, although a serf, he was not by any means a poor or illiterate man. In fact, he was rich, and his intelligence and respectability were such, that he had been raised by his lord to the stewardship; but, whoever may happen to be born a serf, a serf must he remain, even though he become a wealthy man; such was the condition of my father. My father had been married for about ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... out of business. The green goods man you was going to rob,' says I, 'studied maybe for years to learn his trade. Every turn he makes he risks his money and liberty and maybe his life. You come up here all sanctified and vanoplied with respectability and a pleasing post office address to swindle him. If he gets the money you can squeal to the police. If you get it he hocks the gray suit to buy supper and says nothing. Mr. Tucker and me sized you up,' says I, 'and came along to see that you got what you deserved. Hand over the money,' says ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... It is surrounded by the remains of a timber stockade, similar in construction to those of Burmah proper. The houses are mostly small, and I speak within bounds when I say, that there is not a single one that bears the stamp of respectability. There is a bazaar, but nothing good is procurable in it. Tea and sugar-candy are rare and high priced. Pork is plentiful. Mogoung is situated in a plain of some extent, this plain is surrounded in almost every direction by hills, all of which, with the exception of Shewe Down Gyee, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... own name, the flighty Frenchman waited not for the completion of the ceremony he had proposed, but, taking on trust the respectability of the strangers, he hastily led the way to his cottage. Burr noticed that he was attired in a tight-fitting suit of brown cloth, clean and well pressed but threadbare and redeemed from shabbiness only by the stitch in time. The ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... what hundreds have known before him. We must excuse perhaps a little conscious family-pride in the one, and a little harmless pedantry in the other.—As there is a class of the first character which sinks into the mere gentleman, that is, which has nothing but this sense of respectability and propriety to support it—so the character of a scholar not unfrequently dwindles down into the shadow of a shade, till nothing is left of it but the mere book-worm. There is often something amiable as well as enviable in this last character. I know one such instance, at least. The person ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... wrist, with her watch safely in its place. He examined her companions' passports, but let her through with an airy "Sure, this young lady's all right," which made Cecilia feel that no further proof could be needed of her respectability. Then Bob ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... confined, smoothshaven lawns. Sagging, slipping, eager-to-keep-up-appearances but fighting-a-losing-game lawns. Ragged, weedy, dissolute lawns. Halfbare, repulsively crippled, hummocky lawns. Bright lawns, insistent on former respectability and trimness; yellow and gray lawns, touched with the craziness of age, quite beyond all interest in looks, content to doze easily in the sun. If Miss Francis' mixture was on the upandup and she hadnt introduced ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... this man with veneration. Yet, offhand, without investigation, this man could jump to a vile conclusion regarding him. Not only that, but could accuse him, not of guilt, but of failing to conceal guilt!... Respectability! He knew he was watching a manifestation of the family tradition. It was wrong to commit an unworthy act, but it was a sin unspeakable to be caught by the ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... balconies came the banal sound of hotel music; before the low mean portals of the Casino two red posters blazed under the electric lamps, with a cheap provincial effect.—and the emptiness of the quays, the desert aspect of the streets, had an air of hypocritical respectability and of ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... spread the slice of bread before him, but made no reply. His mother continued her reproofs, in the same sad but affectionate tone. She appealed to his sense of right, to his gratitude, and to his hopes of future success and respectability in life. She described the sad end to which these beginnings of wrong-doing would inevitably lead him, and earnestly besought him to try to do better, before his bad habits should become confirmed. Her earnest manner, and her pale, haggard cheeks, down which tears were slowly stealing, ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... railway director, if he means to go forward in his high calling and prosper; he must abandon all juvenile eccentricities, and aim at the appearance of a decided enemy to free trade in the article of Wild Oats. Accordingly, as the first step towards respectability, I eschewed coloured waistcoats, and gave out that I was a marrying man. No man under forty, unless he is a positive idiot, will stand forth as a theoretical bachelor. It is all nonsense to say that there is any thing unpleasant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... and was indignant at heart at all these discriminations, all these compromises with conscience, this general fear of everything, the real cowardice of all hearts and the mask of respectability assumed ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... they are not competent to lay out even a decent highway. The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunnelled under the whole breadth of the land. Such a government is losing its power and respectability as surely as water runs out of a leaky vessel, and is held by one that can ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... of children. Mr. Bergh's society found itself besieged, and, after deliberation with his counsel, it was determined to establish another in New York, whose special mission should be the protection of children. An old gentleman of high respectability, belonging to the sect of the Quakers, Mr. John D. Wright, was elected to the presidency, which office he held until his death, which occurred on the 21st of August, 1880. His successor is Mr. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... but on the other hand, to take effectual measures to quiet the internal troubles, to check the attempts of the factious, to put a stop to their calumnies, and to restore not only the harmony of the State, but also the authority and respectability of the Prince Stadtholder, and of all engaged in ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Fair, a day of great business. There was a great show of black cattle—I mean of ministers; the narrowness of their stipends here obliges many of them to enlarge their incomes by taking farms and grazing cattle. This, in my opinion, diminishes their respectability, nor can the farmer be supposed to entertain any great reverence for the ghostly advice of a pastor (they literally deserve the epithet) who perhaps the day before overreached him in a bargain. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... a reason. The black sheep was offered up a sacrifice. Evan Lamotte had flung away his last rag of respectability for his sister's sake. Henceforth he would appear in the eyes of the people doubly blackened, doubly degraded, the destroyer of his sister's happiness, the blight upon her life, and yet, he was innocent of this; he was a martyr; ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... opinion, is rarer now than in the days of chivalry. Falsehood has become a current coin, and circulates with a certain degree of respectability; because it has an actual value. It is indeed the great Vice of the Age—it, and its twin-sister, Dishonesty. Men, for political preferment, profess whatever principles are expedient and profitable. At ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... try," suggested Owen. "Cagliacci, you know, is now up-to-date. He has a telephone. He considers it a sign of respectability." ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Russian censor. Have they forgotten the censor here? a censor far more powerful than him of Russia. Have they forgotten that every line they write is dictated by the political color of the paper they write for; by the advertising firms; by the money power; by the power of respectability; by Comstock? Have they forgotten that the literary taste and critical judgment of the mass of the people have been successfully moulded to suit the will of these dictators, and to serve as a good business basis for shrewd literary speculators? The number of Rip Van Winkles in ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... eyes, and then you are safe. You trust not hear this man or that man or some other man, or our dear doctrines will be overturned, and we have nobody on our side except a large majority; we have nobody on our side except the wealth and respectability of the world; we have nobody on our side except the infinite God, and we are afraid that one man, in one or two hours, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... partner! Well, come to Renville, he will satisfy you as to my plans. I am to be his pupil; he teaches at the South Kensington Museum, and is respectability itself. In fact, he requires my responsible brother to be ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... A king should never take a minister without first having examined him. If a king gathers round him persons of low birth, he can never be happy. A person of high birth, even if persecuted without any fault by his royal master, never sets his heart, in consequence of the respectability of his blood, upon injuring his master. An individual, however, that is mean and of low birth, having obtained even great affluence from his connection with some honest man, becomes an enemy of the latter if only he is reproached in words.[351] A minister should be possessed of high birth and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the "freezing-out" system of disposing of poor stockholders, and who also enjoyed the reputation of having been the impelling cause of Briggs of Tuolumne's ruin and suicide,—even before this formal protest of respectability against lawlessness, the aquiline suggestions of Mr. Oakhurst's mien and countenance, not only prematurely fluttered the pigeons, but absolutely occasioned much uneasiness among the fish-hawks who circled below him with their booty. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... what I would do if I were both poor and genteel—the gentility should go to the place of all good ilities, including utility, respectability, and imbecility, and I would sit, quite frankly poor, with a piece of bread, and a pot of geraniums, and a book. I conclude that if I did without the things erroneously supposed necessary to decency I might be able to afford a geranium, because I see ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... advantage could, by any possibility, accrue to any living creature by the presentation of her ladyship in a horizontal, instead of a perpendicular position, is to assert that Virtue is a question of posture, and that Respectability ceases to assert itself when it ceases to appear in morning or evening dress. Will any body be bold enough to say that? Let nobody cry out, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... is in my opinion to be very vicious indeed; and to do them badly in order to preserve your virtue is to fall into a grossness more shocking than any other. To do them well is virtue enough, and not to make a mess of it the only respectability. That's hard enough to merit Paradise. Everything else is base humbug! Voila, chere madame, the answer ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... resulted in defeat. He was nominated by the Republicans and a group of independents for Mayor of New York. His two opponents were Abram S. Hewitt, a business man of standing who had been inveigled, no one knows how, into lending respectability to the Tammany ticket in a critical moment, and Henry George, the father of the Single Tax doctrine, who had been nominated by a conference of some one hundred and seventy-five labor organizations. Roosevelt fought ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... been for the desertion of John Wolf, who, after declaring that he would work a reformation in the printing trade similar to that which Luther had worked in religion, quietly allowed himself to be bought over, and died in eminent respectability as Printer to the City of London, leaving Ward and others to carry on the war. This they did with such effect, that, forced to find a remedy, the patentees of the Company at length agreed to relax their grasp of some of the books that they had laid their hands upon. ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... assuming in turn the guise of Gurn, and of Etienne Rambert, and of the man of fashion at the Royal Palace Hotel: who has had the genius to devise and to accomplish such terrible crimes in incredible circumstances, and to combine audacity with skill, and a conception of evil with a pretence of respectability; who has been able to play the Proteus eluding all the efforts of the police;—this man, I say, ought not to be called Gurn! He is, and can be, no other ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... is a self-made man. By his unaided energies he surmounted the difficulties that stood in the way of his advancement, and has achieved distinction by a career of great usefulness. His father was a man of high respectability, and most excellent character. He was a farmer in moderate circumstances, and being well advanced in life, and declining in health, when his youngest son, the tenth of twelve children, determined to acquire a liberal education, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... look elsewhere than to the pulpit. Oh! for one day in our National Church of Paul and Athanasius and Luther, men who spoke what they felt, unchecked by thoughts about promotion and popularity and respectability. Enthusiastic independence is as unpopular in religion as it is in politics; and the fight against prejudice and unfairness is often exceeding bitter to the man who dares to run his tilt against the opinion of the many. The struggle sometimes ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... people we had served. They were very respectable in appearance; but I knew enough of the world to see that they belonged to what is called the middle class in England. I thought the man might be a soldier; while the two females had an air of great respectability, though not in the least of fashion. The girl appeared to be nearly as old as myself, and was decidedly pretty. Here, then, was an adventure! I had saved the life of a damsel of seventeen, and had only to fall in love, to become ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... making their grievances known. Amongst the rest was a farmer rather advanced in life, a swaggering sort of fellow, who was desirous to carry his point by impressing the Liberator with the idea of his peculiar honesty and respectability. He was anxious that O'Connell should decide a matter in dispute between him and a neighboring farmer who, he wished to insinuate, was not as good as he ought to be. "For my part, I, at least, can boast that neither I nor mine were ever brought before a judge or sent to jail, however ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... not rather the type of a Christian sanity? No doubt, such a character seems altogether mad to you, my friend, who pass the window as I write these words. You have huckstered away opportunity just upon the edge of indictable knavery; your ambition has been to be well with the wealth and sleek respectability of the day, to make your son begin life the sordid worldling that you end it, to marry your daughter to the richest fool,—and this you call sanity and common sense! Is it not some Devil's subtlety that deludes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... residence of Gen. Potter, with whose family she had become somewhat familiar. The concert was attended by an audience not second in point of numbers to any given here before, except by Jenny Lind; and not second to any in point of respectability and fashion. The performance of Miss Greenfield was received with great applause; and the expression since, among our citizens generally, is a strong desire to ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... series of entertainments planned in their honor. All the notable people of the neighborhood were represented at it. The scandalized divine returned to partake of it, and, seeing Sir Robert in a dress-suit, dignified, polished, of preternatural respectability, not to say distinction, looking the pillar of Church and State that he was, and talking with due gravity of the tariff, free trade, and the like ponderous subjects, concluded to overlook the mad behavior of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... decided the straw hat was not durable enough for the purpose. When excited a cowboy frequently starts his horse with his hat, and when he is wearing a straw, four or five sharp blows knock out of the hat any semblance it may ever have had to respectability and symmetry. The wide brim woolen hat was declared to be the correct thing, and every one was glad of the change. The narrow stirrup gave place to a wider one, and the stirrup leather was shortened so as to compel the rider to keep his knees bent the whole time. The most important ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... that, in our class, we make respectability more a question of the individual than ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... the respectability of that house," said I. I felt that I was again alone in the world, and that it was necessary that I should support myself. Mahmoud al Ackbar had separated himself from me for ever. Of that I had no longer ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope
... to Moslem "respectability" Mohammed said the house was accursed when the voices of women could be heard out of doors. Moreover the neighbours have a right to interfere and abate ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Stafford doggedly. "If the man thinks enough of her to waste so much time and money upon her let him try and reform her by throwing around her a cloak of respectability. Why is the woman what she is? Because pleasure-loving blackguards of Stanton's type have degraded her and made it impossible for her to hold up her head again ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... of my best, my long-tried, and experienced friend. At this time, my dear mamma, I am peculiarly solicitous for your advice. I am again importuned to listen to the voice of love; again called upon to accept the addresses of a gentleman of merit and respectability. You will know the character of the man when I tell you it is Mr. Boyer. But his situation in life! I dare not enter it. My disposition is not calculated for that sphere. There are duties arising from the station which I fear I should not ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... part, I don't think the country cares much about the matter, or interests itself more deeply who drones away life at Hanover than who occupies an apartment at Hampton Court. In each case it is a sort of dowager asylum, where antiquated respectability may ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever |
