"Decorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her husband had given her cause of offence and had been forgiven. While he was still strong with that divine superiority which she had attributed to him, she had almost acknowledged to herself that he had a right to demand that she should be dull and decorous. But now that she had found him to be in the receipt of clandestine love-letters, it did seem that she might allow herself a little liberty. She had forgiven him freely. She had really believed that in spite of the letter she herself was the woman he loved. She had said something to herself ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... up into a more decorous position, and turned his eyes towards his boss. "I never knew yuh took any interest in relic-hunting," he ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... in support of him. I may also mention that, for the last two or three days, Mlle. Blanche and De Griers had been making a great deal of the young Prince, under the very nose of the poor General. In short, the company, though decorous and conventional, was in a gay, familiar mood. But no sooner did the Grandmother appear than the General stopped dead in the middle of a word, and, with jaw dropping, stared hard at the old lady—his ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... satisfaction, "that I heard a loud noise of keys and bolts at the very moment I freed you from the midst of the thorns. But is it really true, that Jahel agreed so quickly to your propositions, which have not been quite decorous, and which, for certain, you did not make with an easy heart? I am abashed; and, say, my good master, did she not speak of me, not mention my name, with ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... each of the four corners, lest the seconds be hindered in their work. In the place where the witnesses are to sit, ordinary candlesticks should be placed, according to etiquette; but an excessive illumination is not decorous. Two screens covered with white paper should be set up, behind the shadow of which are concealed the dirk upon a tray, a bucket to hold the head after it has been cut off, an incense-burner, a pail of water, and a basin. The above rules apply equally to the ceremonies observed when the hara-kiri ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... great brown-bearded celebrity in the former light of almost brotherly intimacy, but now it was all coming right. There was no opportunity for renewed confidences that afternoon. Molly went a quiet decorous drive as fourth with two dowagers and one spinster; but it was very pleasant to think that she should see him again at dinner, and again to-morrow. On the Sunday evening, as they all were sitting and loitering on the lawn before dinner, Roger went on with what he had to say about the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... hopes and their happiness in consequence of that act may absolutely perish. Still are we bound to say that Jane's deportment during the period, stipulated upon for Osborne's absence was admirably decorous, and replete with moral beauty. Her moments of enjoyment derived from his letters, were fraught with an innocent simplicity of delight in fine keeping with a heart so fall of youthful fervor and attachment. And when her imagination became occasionally darkened ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... consent in a volume of 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, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... woman it was a decorous and coherent march of dots and dashes, carrying with it thought and meaning and system. And as each word fluttered off on its restless Hertzian wings, like a flock of hurrying carrier-pigeons through the night, the woman listened ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... masters, children their reverence for parents, men their respect for women, and women all notions of modesty, delicacy, and gentleness; they become raging bacchantes." Usually the Hos are quiet and reserved in manner, decorous and gentle to women. But during this festival "their natures appear to undergo a temporary change. Sons and daughters revile their parents in gross language, and parents their children; men and women become almost like animals in the indulgence of their amorous propensities." The Mundaris, kinsmen ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... boxes outside second-hand bookshops, lined the shelves of the outer office, and the chairs were of an early-Victorian horsehair variety. Respectability had run to seed in those chambers. Mr. Jacob Nevin, the senior partner, to whose decorous sanctum Don presently penetrated, also had a second-hand appearance. Don had always ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... and shaking his fists, with short ejaculations such as 'I'll expose the villains, all of them,' and I heard the words 'Cheats!' and I think 'Liars!''' This was a strange introduction to the then decorous British House of Commons, for this was before the active days of Parnell. I saw poor, blind Henry Fawcett[4] and others trying to calm the man. The lobby was immediately cleared of strangers, so I saw no more just then, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... and disturbing draught in Miss Ford's sleek and decorous flat as the witch and the Mayor entered it. The serenity of the night and the morning had been suddenly obliterated, and Kensington suffered a gust or two of gritty wind which blew the babies home from ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... writings and at a safe distance. "Yorick," he says, "although he sometimes brings an event, so to speak, to the brink of an indecorous issue, manages to turn it at once with the greatest delicacy to a decorous termination. Or he leaves it incomplete under such circumstances that the reader is impressed by the rare delicacy of mind of the author, and can never suspect that such a man, who never allows a double entendre to enter his mind without ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... enemy, pursuing her hatred to the infernal regions. While caring little for the means by which she gained her ends, she tried as much as possible to reach them by honest means. Secret, not only for herself, but for her friends, she was yet, of a decorous gaiety, and so governed her humours, that at all times and in everything she was mistress of herself. Such was the Princesse ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... still unharmonized contradictions. The pietism instilled into his mind at Naples; the theories of art imbibed at Padua and Venice; the classical lumber absorbed during his precocious course of academical studies; the hypocritical employment of allegory to render sensuous poetry decorous; the deference to critical opinion and the dictates of literary lawgivers; the reverence for priests and princes interposed between the soul and God: these were principles which Tasso accepted without having properly assimilated and incorporated their substance into his spiritual being. What the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... one had been found, Mr. Wales had started at once for the city. When he saw the child, he was dismayed. He had expected to see a girl of ten; this one was hardly five, and she had anything but the demure and decorous air which his Puritan mind esteemed becoming and appropriate in a little maiden. Her hair was black and curled tightly, instead of being brown and straight parted in the middle, and combed smoothly over her ears as his taste regulated; her eyes were ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... read 'Evangeline' with more pleasure than it would be decorous to express. It cannot fail, I think, to prove the most ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... great principle was at work in England when the Early Victorian virtues asserted their supremacy, when the fashionable world, becoming for a spell domestic and demure, expressed these qualities in smoothly banded hair, and draperies of decorous amplitude. There is, in fact, no phase of national life or national sentiment which has not betrayed itself to the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... or four Russian cities, was now living in Moscow, perfectly protected by the patronage of the universally connected, much-besought, Prince G——: a venerable personage of some seventy winters, whose decorous mansion in the old Equerries' Quarter was considerably better known than his bijou maisonnette in the Fourmenny district, at present occupied by the young lady of whom he ardently desired to possess a discreet portrait: one which, as an ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... in his pocket; and he maintains that the chief cause of our Colonial Empire is the selfish interest of the governing few who valued colonies because they gave them places and enabled them to multiply wars. In more moderate and decorous language, Goldwin Smith wrote a book, the object of which was to show how desirable it was that this Empire should be gradually but steadily reduced to the sweet simplicity of two islands. Similar views prevailed very generally in the Manchester school. Cobden frequently expressed them. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... attractive. But what is an old woman to do for a girl in a garden? We ought to have brought some other young people—some of the Inglehart boys. But we're respectable, we Americans abroad; we're decorous, above all things; and I don't know about meeting you here, Mr. Colville. It has a very bad appearance. Are you sure that you didn't know I was to go by ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... often that the personal appearance of an author agrees with the preconceived ideas of his admirer. Langton, from perusing the writings of Johnson, expected to find him a decent, well dressed, in short a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of which, down from his bed chamber about noon, came, as newly risen, a large uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head, and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... 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
... of those securities: for, in such grave matters, it would ill become us to be over-hasty. I could bring fifty, I could bring a hundred, not from among soldiers, not from among courtiers; but selected from yourselves, were it equitable and fair to show such partialities, or decorous in the parent and guardian of a king to offer any ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... tree agent evidently found a customer who was persuaded that if one Kilmarnock willow was a good thing to have, a dozen of them was twelve times better; wherefore his dooryard is grotesquely adorned with that many flourishing weepers, giving an aspect that is anything but decorous or solemn. Some time the vigilance of the citizen will be relaxed, it may be hoped; he will neglect to cut away the recurring shoots of the parent trees, and they will escape and destroy the weeping form which provides so much sarcastic hilarity ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... important senses, a clear and pure element withal. At lowest, there are no conscious semi-falsities, or volunteer hypocrisies, taught the poor Boy; honor, clearness, truth of word at least; a decorous dignified bearing; various thin good things, are honestly inculcated and exemplified; nor is any bad, ungraceful or suspicious thing permitted there, if recognized for such. It might have been a worse element; and we must ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... day, in the decorous Times (Great—Guns— How the headlines ran!) In spite of the kings and the wars and the crimes, There were five full columns ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... Don't swell up." (Imagine "swell up" from Sandford, the repressed and decorous!) "I just wanted to tell you that the honkers ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... other parties she saw were much more decorous, even to affectation, except that at the old skipper's, and he was viewed by the family as a subject for toleration, because he had been a friend and messmate of Mrs. Morton's father. All the good side of that lady and Ida came out towards him and his belongings. He had an invalid granddaughter, ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... creditable order. Others have contended that it did not go further than the manners of the age sanctioned; and they say, "a much greater license in conversation and in epistolary correspondence was permitted between the sexes than in our decorous age!" We are not careful to try and settle such a delicate question—only we are inclined to suspect, that when common decency quits the words of male and female parties in their mutual communications, it is a very ample charity ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... of his heart. Mr. Fairfax had been two months at Hale when Lady Geraldine left on that dutiful visit to her father, and necessary interviewing of milliners and dressmakers; and he was, it is just possible, a little tired of decorous country-house life, with its weekly dinner-parties and perpetual influx of county families to luncheon, and its unfailing croquet. He felt, too, that at such a time it would, be perhaps safer for him to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... which equals the first scene of the fifth act of the concluding plays. [In this edition, scene iii., act v.] 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 excellences than defects; indeed, he is not likely to be a fair judge of either. The pleasure or disgust from his own labor will mingle with the feelings that arise from an afterview of the original. Even ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... people of my day were more decorous," soliloquized the lady, complacently. "But then the De Forrests have French blood in them, and what else could you expect? It's he that sets ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... example was last to have been looked for, in the very bosom of our New England society, let him not give it the grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with settled hate, and the bloodshot eye emitting livid fires of malice. Let him draw, rather, a decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon; a picture in repose, rather than in action; not so much an example of human nature in its depravity, and in its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal nature, a fiend in the ordinary display and development ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... that at that time in all Frankfort, there was not in a single shop a manager as civil, as decorous, as dignified, and as affable as Herr Klueber. The irreproachable perfection of his get-up was on a level with the dignity of his deportment, with the elegance—a little affected and stiff, it is true, in the English style (he had spent two years in England)—but still fascinating, elegance ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... dinner, the little Princess Amelia was with her; and, though shy of me at first, we afterwards made a very pleasant acquaintance. She is a most lovely little thing, just three years old, and full of sense, spirit, and playful prettiness: yet decorous and dignified when called upon to appear en princesse to any strangers, as if conscious of her high rank, and of the importance of condescendingly sustaining it. 'Tis amazing what education can do, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Miss Limpenny. The keys of the decorous "Collard" clashed as they had never clashed before. The guests, at first shocked and startled, began to be carried away with the reckless swing of the music. The Vicar stared for a moment, and then began gradually to nod his head to ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... more of Sir George's complaints. "Just be so kind, Miss Effingham, ma'am, to look into this here pantry, once! Them niggers, I do believe, have had their fingers in every thing, and it will take Toast and me a week to get things decorous and orderly again. Some of the shrieks" (for so the steward styled the chiefs) "have been yelling well in this place, I'll engage, as you may see, by the manner in which they have spilt the mustard and mangled that cold duck. I've a most mortal awersion to a man that cuts ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... on etiquette, compiled in 1830 a very curious complete manual of society games recommending them as recreation for business men.... 'Their varying movement,' she says, 'their diversity, the gracious and gay ideas which these games inspire, the decorous caresses which they permit, all this combines to give real amusement. These caresses can alarm neither modesty nor prudence, since a kiss in honor given and taken before numerous witnesses is ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... original will have little doubt that it is a concoction from Shelton and the French of Filleau de Saint Martin, eked out by borrowings from Phillips, whose mode of treatment it adopts. It is, to be sure, more decent and decorous, but it treats "Don Quixote" in the same fashion as a comic book that cannot ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Ordinance" and the new model of the army. Under decorous pretexts, and with every mark of respect, Essex and most of those who had held high posts under him were removed; and the conduct of the war was intrusted to very different hands. Fairfax, a brave soldier, but of mean understanding and irresolute temper, was the nominal lord-general ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... the consideration of her popular beliefs, and brought me upon a ground on which I felt I could not make a mistake; for what is a higher guide for us in speculation and in practice, than that conscience of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, those sentiments of what is decorous, consistent, and noble, which our Creator has made a part of our original nature? Therefore I felt I could not be wrong in attacking what I fancied was a fact,—the unscrupulousness, the deceit, and the intriguing spirit of the agents ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... cannot 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 Mount Washington, I thought the Duke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... taken more than necessary food, so that there would have been nothing superfluous; which, however, is unreasonable to suppose, as implying that there would have been no faecal matter. Wherefore there was need for voiding the surplus, yet so disposed by God as to be decorous and suitable ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... The old original clan- names were little used by any one in a current sense, just as the English family name of Guelph is kept in the dim background so far as current use goes. Nor were the personal names, even of Chinese emperors and kings, so grave and decorous in style as they have always been in later times. For instance, "Black Buttocks," "Black Arm," "Double Ears";—such names (decidedly Turkish in style) are not only used of Tsin princes with an admixture ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... restrained to your heart's content. Do not imagine I have any intention of putting servility and canting hypocrisy permanently out of place, or of filling up with courage and sense those offices which naturally devolve upon decorous imbecility and flexible cunning: give us only a little time to keep off the hussars of France, and then the jobbers and jesters shall return to their birthright, and public virtue be called by its own name of fanaticism." Such is the advice I would have offered to my infatuated countrymen: ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... feeling a sort of vested interest in their possessor, the heart of the pastor was merry within him; and he, so to speak, caroused over the profusely-sugared tea and well-buttered galette with a decorous and regulated joviality; ever as he drank casting down the wreaths of his florid eloquence at the feet of his entertainers. In any atmosphere whatsoever, no matter how uncongenial, those garlands were sure to bloom. His zeal was such a hardy perennial that the most ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... right, my dear. I must eschew profanity, and cultivate a decorous style of speech. Well, ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... to linger walked right on, not meeting each other's eye, and Shelley again become the angel child, turning in at his gate and walking up the path in a decorous manner with his schoolbooks under his arm. I first wondered if I shouldn't go warn Arline that her child had picked up some words that would get him nowhere at all with his doting pastor. Little could the fond woman dream, when she tucked him in after his prayers at night, that talk ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... at five. The sky is grey. There is a cold, unpleasant wind that reminds one of Moscow. It is dull. I wait for the church bells and go to late Mass. In the cathedral it is all very charming, decorous, and not boring. The choir sings well, not at all in a plebeian style, and the congregation entirely consists of young ladies in olive-green ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... speaking of the Carnival, "For my part, though I pretended to take no interest in the matter, I could have bandied confetti and nosegays as readily and riotously as any urchin there." These few words explain his magnetism. The decorous pretense of his observant calm could not make us forget the bursts of mirth and vigorous abandon which now and then revealed the flame of unstinted life in his heart. And I, watching constantly as I did, saw a riotous throw of ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Britisher, yet it is not rudeness, and the Canadian is an extraordinarily orderly person, with a discipline that springs from self rather than from obedience to by-laws. It may be this that makes a Canadian crowd so decorous, even at the moment when it seems ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... heard, and was then actually conferring with the Duke. Up to that moment the hatred with which the Presbyterian members of the assembly regarded the merciless persecutor of their brethren in the faith had been restrained by the decorous forms of parliamentary deliberation. But now the explosion was terrible. Hamilton himself, who, by the acknowledgment of his opponents, had hitherto performed the duties of President with gravity and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... confess that I find chance traveling acquaintances boring and avoid them when I can. Unlike most of my countrymen, I suppose I am not gregarious, though I dine and week-end punctiliously, send flowers and leave cards at decorous intervals, and know people all the way from ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... a tangible proof of his remembrance, and because these were usually mere curiosities, without intrinsic value, they often evaded the pawn-shop in those years of dire distress, when more negotiable articles passed irretrievably away from the family possession. And with them too, in stiff, decorous frames, are those certificates and testimonials which a master mariner always collects, together with photographs ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... news of Diana, and it was a relief to find everything decorous and apparently serene at the house. We were informed by a band of footmen, hired with powder and pomatum inclusive, for the occasion, that the bride had arrived safely. There was no stare of consternation or half-hidden horror on any face. But in the ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the evening of Shrovetide, have persuaded the proud, the timid, the shy, the rigidly decorous Catharine Glover that before mass on Ash Wednesday she should rush through the streets of Perth, making her way amidst tumult and confusion, with her hair unbound and her dress disarranged, to seek the house of that same lover who, she had reason to believe, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... is, dear Jos——friend!" He smiles with modest sweetness. "G. W. Tarbox doesn't run after money, and consequently he never runs past much without picking it up." They both laugh in decorous moderation. The horsemen are drawing near; they are Acadians. "I admit I love to make money. But that's not my chief pleasure. My chief pleasure is the ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... other accounts, not less significant and not less affecting. They are all in one tone and one spirit. Wherever in England, yesterday, two or three were gathered together, President Garfield's name was heard. Privately and publicly, simply as between man and man, or formally with the decorous solemnity and stately observance befitting bodies which bear a relation to the Government, a tribute of honest grief was offered to the President and his family, and of honest sympathy to his country. Steeple spoke to ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... maid conducted the long-belated applicant to her where she sat upon a sofa beside a nursery governess. The decorous maid announced him composedly as he ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... the single person in the room with whom she had the 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, ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Drummond regained his senses he found himself unable to believe them. Conscious at first only of being terribly bruised and shaken, he realized that he was being borne along in some wheeled vehicle, moving with slow and decorous pace over a soft yet unbeaten and irregular trail. Conscious of fierce white light and heat about him on every side, he was aware of a moist, cool, dark bandage over his eyes that prevented him from seeing. Striving to raise ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... the banks of the river, removing their 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... man who I think does not deserve much" (this little toss of pique or pride need not mislead us); "but my feminine vanity could not have had a more complete and honest triumph. He stayed two weeks in Paris, and I had him every day at my house; he has become soft, yielding, humble, decorous to a fault. He was a constant witness of my husband's kindness, wit, and gaiety, and made me remark for the first time, by his admiration for wealth, the opulence with which I am surrounded, and which up to this moment had only produced a disagreeable impression ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But, as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... whips. But, besides these sterling qualities, he was gifted with irrepressible spirits, a good voice and ear, and a special delight in the exercise of them. To county magnate or parson or stranger seated by him on the box he could be as decorous as a churchwarden, and talk of politics or cattle or county business with all due solemnity. But he was only at his best when "the front" was occupied by boys, or at any rate with a strong sprinkling of boys, amongst whom he was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... pretty much in the same way you know Jim Bloxam. By the way, do you call him 'Jim'?" (The two girls nodded assent.) "Ah, I like to ask about these things: proprieties differ in different counties; it strikes me Fernshire is of the rigidly decorous order." ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... life turned are invariably noble motives, and not mere obedience to custom. More than one modern writer has expressed a fraternal affection for Addison, and it is justified by the kindly humour which breathes through his 'Essays.' But what anecdote of that most decorous and successful person touches our hearts or has the heroic ring of Johnson's wrestlings with adverse fortune? Addison showed how a Christian could die—when his life has run smoothly through pleasant ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... 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 ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... well because it was his choice to do it. His journey to India might, it was true, be a matter of a few months, and involved diplomatic business for which a certain unimpeachable respectability was required. A more brilliant man, who had been less respectable in the most decorous British sense, would not have served ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... waiting until the passionate appeal of her sweetheart (in the garden without) should be finished. She did not know of the presence of the new-comer. Lionel might have pulled her skirts, it is true, to apprise her of his being there; but that would not have been decorous; besides, he dared not distract her attention from the business of the stage. As soon as the last verse of the serenade had been sung, with ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... murderer's hidden thought and purpose more strikingly than the over-hasty announcement that the Union was broken into warring fragments, never again to be joined together, unveiled the cherished hope of its Old-World enemies. The whispers of expectant heirs at the opening of a miser's will are decorous and respectful, compared to the chuckle of the leading English social and political organ and its echoes, when the bursting of the Republican "bubble" was proclaimed as an accomplished fact, and the hour was thought to have come when the "Disunited States" could be held up as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... promenade the Bois de Boulogne or the Champs-Elysees in carriages. Here the wife and the daughter of the poorest shopkeeper disdain chintz and calico; nothing short of silk or velvet is considered decorous except within doors. But, having made this confession, I must add that the general effect is charming, and as for beauty, both of face and figure, especially the latter, surely no city in the world can show such an amount ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... which set them all off laughing; but in a minute they checked themselves, and passed the back of their hands across their mouths to compose that unlucky feature, and then some would try to fix their eyes on the rafters of the ceiling, in a manner which was decorous if rather abstracted from the business in hand. Most of these were young farmers, with whom Philip had nothing in common, and from whom, in shy reserve, he had withdrawn himself when he first came in. But now he wished himself among them sooner than set to talk to Nancy ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... very well, and had access to his presence when officials were kept cooling their heels in the Waiting-room. The President liked to hear the Colonel talk, his voluble ease was a refreshment after the decorous dullness of men who only talked business and government, and everlastingly expounded their notions of justice and the distribution of patronage. The Colonel was as much a lover of farming and of horses as ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... being reduced to emptiness by the progress of knowledge. The thing that struck the first observer is proved to be less important than he thought it. Scientific names, for all their air of learned universality, are merely fossilized impressions, stereotyped portraits of a single aspect. The decorous obscurity of the ancient languages is used to conceal an immense diversity of principle. Mammal, amphibian, coleoptera, dicotyledon, cryptogam,—all these terms, which, if they were translated into the language of a peasant, would be seen to record very simple observations, yet ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... The black glaring figure in the portico did not stir. I almost thought it was really a statue. In another moment the grey area was golden with gaslight as the basement door was opened suddenly and a small and decorous housemaid ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... out of the way than another person walked into it. This was a youth of some eighteen years, dressed in a very curious costume. Men did not affect black clothes then, except in mourning; and the taste of few led them to the sombre browns and decorous greys worn by most now. This young gentleman had on a tunic of dark red, in shape not unlike a butcher's blue frock, which was fastened round the hips by a girdle of black leather, studded with brass spangles. His head was covered by a loose hood of bright blue, and his hose ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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
... slowly 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 with vases, peach bloom, imperial yellow, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... refreshment had come in since the great revolution. Sir John went, therefore, to the cafe, and with characteristic scorn of elemental disturbance chose to resort thither on the evening of the great gale. The few other occupants of the gorgeous room eyed his half-bottle of claret with a grave and decorous wonder, but made no attempt to converse with this chill-looking Englishman. At length, about ten o'clock or a few minutes later, entered one who bowed to Sir John with an air full of affable promise. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... Cannebiere. It flattered my vanity a little to be able to say that I had a corner table always reserved in the Salon des Palmiers, otherwise Salon Blanc, where the atmosphere was legitimist and extremely decorous besides—even in Carnival time. "Nine tenths of the people there," I said, "would be of your political opinions, if that's an inducement. Come along. Let's be festive," ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... the Lord, go forth modestly, two and two, observing strict silence from the morning till after the hour of Tierce, praying to God from your hearts. Let no idle or useless words be heard among you; although you are travelling, your deportment should be as humble and as decorous as if you were in a hermitage, or in your cells. For wherever we are, and, whithersoever we may be going, we have always our vocation with us; our brother, the body, is our cell, and the soul is the hermit, who dwells in it to think of God and to ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... morality of the Greeks allowed of the greatest license, especially to young unmarried men. The ancient writers, therefore, of the New Comedy paint this mode of life with much less disguise than we think decorous. Their comedies, like all comedies in the world, frequently end with marriages (it seems this catastrophe brings seriousness along with it); but the marriage is often entered upon merely as a means of propitiating a father incensed at the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... even than that with which he had bent his ear to Valentin de Bellegarde's last words. Every now and then, as his companion looked up at him, she reminded him of an ancient tabby cat, protracting the enjoyment of a dish of milk. Even her triumph was measured and decorous; the faculty of exultation had been chilled by disuse. She presently continued. "Late one night I was sitting by the marquis in his room, the great red room in the west tower. He had been complaining a little, and I gave him a spoonful of the doctor's dose. My lady had been there in ...
— The American • Henry James
... summons to the festive board; but 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 ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... in a mining region. In South Africa, except at and near Johannesburg, one scarcely sees them. Drinking rarely obtrudes itself. What gambling there may be I know not, but at any rate there are no gambling-saloons. Nothing can be more decorous than the aspect of these new African towns, and the conduct of the inhabitants seldom belies the aspect. There is, of course, a free use of alcohol. But there is no shooting, such as goes on in American mining towns: ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... And a decorous and seemly scene they stepped in upon. Uncle Tucker sat back of a small table, which was placed at one side of the wide open fireplace, in which crackled a bit of fragrant, spring fire. His Bible and a couple of hymn-books ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... princes was very decorous and lively. I regretted that we could communicate only through an interpreter. He inquired whether I had ever seen a Natsch (festival dance). On my answering that I had not, he immediately ordered one to ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... streets, in the newspapers and at meetings, in the mouths of many, and in the eyes of most, the new popular question, "Why aren't you in khaki?" The subject of age, always shrouded in a seemly and decorous modesty in England, and especially since, a few years previously, an eminent professor of medicine had unloosed the alarming theory of "Too old at forty", was suddenly ripped out of its prudish coverings. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... which shocks us in the behaviour, however otherwise innocent and decorous, of a woman who runs away from her husband with the assistance of her lover; but this quality of offensiveness is not, in such a case as the present one, a fault of the woman: it is one of her undeserved misfortunes, as much as is the bad treatment, the solitude, the temptation, to which she ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... become a dependent pensionary of the liberal paymaster in France. At his death all this was changed, and Catharine Sedley disappeared from Whitehall. It is true that her absence was not prolonged, and that she had obscurer rivals. But a decorous economy was observed in a branch of expenditure which had been profuse. Nevertheless Lewis XIV hastened to make offers of pecuniary aid to the frugal James as to the extravagant Charles. He sent over a sum of L60,000 or L70,000, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the Punch table that the weekly dinner lost an uproarious gaiety that is recognised as the true Bohemian note. Mr. Punch and his staff all improved their tone, Bohemia is now only a memory. It is the very genius of Mr. Punch that makes him respond to the moment and become the most decorous figure in ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... have used attentions towards him which he is certainly not deserving; it being worthy of remark, in order to prove the bad faith of his procedure, that in his own expose, although he disfigures facts at pleasure, using a language little decorous, he confesses part of his faults, such as the offering of money TO PAY, as he says, 'THE LEGAL OR EXTRA-LEGAL DUES THAT MIGHT BE EXACTED, and his having twice ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... decorous youths of Boston had retired to Beacon Street for their midday family feast of roast beef and baked beans, the members of the Cock and Spur might be observed in their white beaver hats driving countryward in chaises from ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... when the pages were running all over the house after you, because the princess wanted you, and nobody could find you? Well, people have strange tastes! I should have thought she would have found the company of a grave, decorous cat, like myself, who knows the ways of the court, and has seen something of society, a great deal more agreeable than that of such a ridiculous, light-headed thing as you are: I declare you make me quite nervous very often, you jump about so! But she never sent for me; so of ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... fall. It made but a slight clatter, but a woman's shadow moved immediately across the yard outside, and Barnabas heard the inner door open. He threw open the outer one himself, and Charlotte stood there smiling, and softly decorous. Neither of them spoke. Barnabas glanced at the inner door to see if it were closed, then he caught ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... because there is no unity from another unity, nor is there 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
... and unreserved conversation by stating to our fellow citizens, that we have always lived in the most perfect harmony with Mr. Young, have had with him on all legislative business the most cordial co-operation and concert: that his uniform deportment towards us has been friendly and decorous, and that we never gave an intimation of any wish or opinion against his renomination to the Assembly.—HOWEL GARDNER, RICHARD KETCHUM, BENJAMIN COWLES. Albany, April ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... morning, Mr. Walkingshaw, accompanied as usual by his eldest son, set forth from his decorous residence. It was one of a circle of stately houses, broken in two or three places to permit the sedatest kind of street to enter. The grave dignity of these mansions was accentuated by the straight, deep-hewn furrows at the junctions of the vast rectangular stones, and ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... had been much that was reprehensible. But whoever compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with those contained in the volume before us will see how much the profligacy which follows a period of overstrained austerity goes beyond the profligacy which precedes such a period. The nation resembled the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... began the captain, when all had assumed a decorous silence, "what do you think that war ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... hundred, presently three hundred, all told; visitors, waiters, chambermaids, hotel officials, huddled together in the most incongruous and comic costumes, and thirty per cent. of them with no costumes at all, unless night-shirts and curl-papers count. I was decorous by comparison. I had on a pair of trousers (buttoned up the wrong way, certainly), a billycock hat, a surtout coat, a walking-stick, and no shoes or socks. The hall, being paved with marble, struck exceedingly ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 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 ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... as a pauper. He had early fallen into intemperate habits; and at the age of threescore and ten, when I remember him, he was only sober when he lacked the means of being otherwise. Drunk or sober, however, he never altogether forgot the proprieties of his profession; he was always grave, decorous, and gentlemanly; he held fast the form of sound words, and the weakness of the flesh abated nothing of the rigor of his stringent theology. He had been a favorite pupil of the learned and astute Emmons, and was to the last a sturdy defender of the peculiar dogmas ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... twelve hours. I don't think there was any hypocrisy in this. It was merely the old Puritan austerity cropping out once a week. Many of these people were pure Christians every day in the seven—excepting the seventh. Then they were decorous and solemn to the verge of moroseness. I should not like to be misunderstood on this point. Sunday is a blessed day, and therefore it should not be made a gloomy one. It is the Lord's day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... justice! And if too poor to do it, he will, under the operation of the new rule, be suffering punishment unjustly; for the only count selected may be bad, or some one only of several may be bad, and the judgment ought to be reversed. What was the operation of the old rule? Most salutary and decorous. No public account was taken of the innocuous aims, so to speak, taken by justice, in order to hit her victim. If he fell, the public saw that it was in consequence of a blow struck by her, and concerned themselves not with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... the giant of the day, and from the wax figures at Madame Tussaud's to pictures such as the "Rake's Progress" the plastic arts had a moral tendency. Even the animals of Sir Edwin Landseer were the most decorous of all four-footed creatures; Killigrew blasphemed by calling the admired paintings still-life studies of animals. But then Killigrew was from Paris and chanted the newer creed; he was always comparing London unfavourably with ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... his planning, the prospect of such signal success was so gratifying to Rexhill that only in halting speech could he maintain a show of decorous restraint. His countenance expressed exultant relief, as well it might, since he seemed to see himself snatched out of ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... as the Reformation succeeded in England by becoming national in opposition to Spain, and remaining national in opposition to French culture, so the Anglican church naturally became a perfect expression of the English character. Moderate, decorous, detesting extremes of speculation and enthusiasm, she cares less for logic than for ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... married her himself again. Scandals and love intrigues were common in the highest circles; noble ladies, and not ballet-dancers[86] merely, thought it of little account to have their names besmirched. Everything in society was splendid, polished, decorous, cultivated without; but ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... opposition. Sir Roderick really could not make out what was going on. Now Sir Roderick disliked being puzzled; it conveyed a reflection on his acuteness, and he therefore was a sharer in the perturbation of mind that evidently afflicted some of his companions, in spite of their decorous behavior. But contentment was not wanting in some hearts. Morewood was happy in the pursuit of his art and in arguments with Stafford; and Bob Territon had found refuge in an energetic attempt to organize and train a Manor ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... another event of his boyhood. As a result of the Seven Years' War, 7,000 French troops took possession of Frankfort in the beginning of 1759, and occupied it for more than three years. In the ways of a foreign soldiery at free quarters the Frankforters saw a strange contrast to their own decorous habits of life, but the French occupation was brought more directly home to the Goethe household. To the disgust and indignation of the father, to whom as a worshipper of Frederick the French were objects of detestation, their chief officer, Count ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... his life; and that he thought that he could pay his debt more effectually to the justice of the country by suffering his offences to be proved by evidence, and submitting to the forms of a regular trial. This, though it was penitence too late, was at least decorous language. His whole conduct on the trial showed that, intemperate as his passions were, he possessed abilities and feelings worthy of a wiser career, and a less unhappy termination. Part of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... do? In that decorous mansion I could not follow her; and my impulse to dash after her and knock at her door till she answered me, I was forced to put aside ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... agreeably. He made as many inquiries as he dared, without too much displaying his own ignorance, as to the extent of my acquirements; and, when he found them so far beyond his expectations, he seemed to be struck with a sudden respect for me. The tone of his conversation was more decorous than that of the preceding evening; he gave me a great deal of nautical advice, recommended me to the protection particularly of the first and second lieutenants, who were also his guests, approved of my plan of sleeping at the tailor's, and dismissed me very early, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... and "BR-R-RA-vo" of greeting; after which we were to 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," ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... those who love the racy naturalism of Parson Adams and Edie Ochiltree. But let us have no pessimism also. The age is against the romance of colour, movement, passion, and jollity. But it is full of the romance of subtle and decorous psychology. It is not the highest art: it is indeed a very limited art. But it is true art: wholesome, sound, and cheerful. The world does not exist in order to supply brilliant literature; and the march of democratic equality and of decorous social uniformity is ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... 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 a ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... beautifully, and her mother only hoped to heaven it would last the day out; perhaps Sir Redmond would be able to extract some sort of a promise from her in that mood, Mrs. Lansell reflected, as she watched Beatrice chatting to her two cavaliers, with the most decorous impartiality. Sir Redmond seemed in high spirits, which argued well; Mrs. Lansell gave herself up to the pleasure of the drive with a heart free from anxiety. Not only was Beatrice at her best; Dorman's mood was nothing short ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... preface to the second edition of the "Life of Johnson" he shows his delight in his fame. "There are some 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 state 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 ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... in a wrong direction to the discouragement, perhaps to the ruin of the pupil; but I acted on a contrary principle, knowing, as I did, that in giving varied talents Providence intended that they should be exercised, and that, therefore, it would not be decorous "to care for one part of the garden, and leave the others overgrown with weeds." The girl was treated in accordance with this view, and taking the highest honours and position, ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... instructions which he was at first inclined to reverse,—and put him in the way to be an honest, fearless man, when he was in danger of becoming a white-faced and white-livered spooney. And that Noisy Boy himself, perversely declining to verify Mr. Abbott's decorous prophecies, has not turned out badly, after all, but has Reverend before his name and reverence in his heart, and has his theology sound because his lungs are so. No doubt, Tom Jones often turns out badly, but Master Blifil always does,—a fact which Mr. Abbott ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... nation skilled like the English in all the ornamental arts of life, especially in landscape gardening. That the villas and castles seem to have been burnt, the enclosures taken down, but the velvet lawns, the flower gardens, the stately parks, scattered at graceful intervals by the decorous hand of art, the frequent deer, and the peaceful herd of cattle that make picture of the plain, all suggest more of the masterly mind of man, than the prodigal, but careless, motherly love of nature. Especially is this true of the Rock river country. The river flows sometimes ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... in the corridor had just struck twelve, in a leisurely, rhythmic, decorous manner. It was the habit of that tall old narrow-cased clock to accelerate or retard, after its own sweet taste and whim, the uniform and monotonous series of hours that encircle our life until it wraps it and leaves ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... d—d us larboard, Right down from rail to the streak o' the garboard. Nor less, wife, we liked him.—Tom was a man In contrast queer with Chaplain Le Fan, Who blessed us at morn, and at night yet again, D—ning us only in decorous strain; Preaching 'tween the guns—each cutlass in its place— From text that averred old Adam a hard case. I see him—Tom—on horse-block standing, Trumpet at mouth, thrown up all amain, An elephant's bugle, vociferous demanding Of topmen aloft in the hurricane of rain, "Letting ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... 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
... by their unequaled courtesy, cordiality, and good-nature, and are not far below the grave and decorous Castilian in dignified politeness.[23] ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... he: "On the contrary, Sir," replied I, "where every body has hopes, at least possibility, of bettering his station, and advancing nearer to the limits of upper life, none except the most abandoned of their species will wholly lose sight of such decorous conduct as alone can grace them when they have reached their wish: whereas your people know their destiny, future as well as present, and think no more of deserving a higher post, than they think of obtaining it." Let me add, however, that if these ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... air? We reach in desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the universe are ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a human face. London is religion's opportunity—not the decorous religion of theologians, but anthropomorphic, crude. Yes, the continuous flow would be tolerable if a man of our own sort—not anyone pompous or tearful—were caring for us up in ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... secondary age of wits; one of those stale interludes of prematurely old young men, which separate the serious epochs of history. Oscar Wilde was its god; but he was somewhat more mystical, not to say monstrous, than the average of its dried and decorous impudence. The two survivals of that time, as far as I know, are Mr. Max Beerbohm and Mr. Graham Robertson; two most charming people; but the air they had to live in was the devil. One of its notes was an artificial reticence of speech, which waited ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the state. On the same side were the great body of the clergy, both the Universities, and all those laymen who were strongly attached to episcopal government and to the Anglican ritual. These respectable classes found themselves in the company of some allies much less decorous than themselves. The Puritan austerity drove to the king's faction all who made pleasure their business, who affected gallantry, splendour of dress, or taste in the higher arts. With these went all who live by amusing the leisure of others, from the painter and the comic poet, down to the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bolt into the Salles de Jeu and his difficult extrication from them by the brawny, but liveried officials was fast becoming one of the events of the day. Sometimes Tinker would make his bolt from the outermost portal; sometimes, with the decorous air of one going to church, he would join the throng filing into the concert room, and bolt from the midst of it. The process of expulsion was always conducted with the greatest courtesy on either side; for his bolt had become an agreeable variety in ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... summer, banished hither by the advice of his physician for the value to the lungs of the soft, healing air. He wore a brown derby hat, a fawn-colored suit, and a brown overcoat, with the collar upturned. He was blond and young, and so impassive was his sober, decorous aspect that the aptest detective could have discerned naught of significance as he stood, quite silent and composed, in the centre of the place where it was dry, exempt from the gusts of rain that the wind ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... vehicle than a balloon. The poem is Yankee, even to the questionable extent of substituting "locality" for "scene" in the stage-directions; and we feel sure that none of the characters ever went to bed in their lives, but always sidled through the more decorous subterfuge of "retiring." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... XVI period was rigid in its aristocratic sobriety, for although torch and arrows figured, as did love-birds, in decoration—(souvenirs of the painter Boucher), everything was set and decorous, even the arrow was often the warrior's not cupid's; in the same way the torch was that of the ancients, and when a medallion showed a pastoral subject, its frame of straight lines linked it to the period. Even if Cupid appeared, he was decorously framed ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... father's evident unhappiness, the son promised never to write again for the obnoxious periodical. The second number was so dull and decorous that Zachary Macaulay, who felt that, if the magazine went on through successive quarters reforming its tone in the same proportion, it would soon be on a level of virtue with the Christian Observer, withdrew his objection; and the young man ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan |
