"Decorum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but soon said with grave decorum, "Quite right. The excellent Dorothea was a treasure above all treasures for the convent. Ah, such chastity and virtue were rarely to be met with ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... worshippers to-night, though for myself I have no faith in worship, . . the gods I ween are deaf, and care not a jot whether we mortals weep or sing. Nevertheless I shall look on with fitting gravity, and deport myself with due decorum throughout the ceremonious Ritual, though verily I tell thee, reverend Zel, 'tis tedious and monotonous at best, . . and concerning the poor maiden-sacrifice, it is a shuddering horror we could ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... country life encourage illicit living, and to men already reared among them are a snare. Some of these environments are found in the log-cabin in which families are crowded together like cattle, and sexual privacy and decorum are impossible. The plantation log-cabin finds its counterpart in the slums of cities with their crowded alleys. The landlord in both cases is at the bottom of these evils. It is but fair to state that these environments when found in the cities or among ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma
... stiff maiden would bend toward him now and then, conscious of a warmer heart-beat. George, who boasted of being ten—quite an advanced age, in his estimation—might almost be called a thorn in the flesh to Aunt Grace, whose nice sense of propriety and decorum he daily outraged by rudeness and want of order. George was boy all over, and a strongly-marked specimen of his class—"as like his father, when at his age, as one pea to another," Aunt Grace would say, as certain memories of childhood presented themselves ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... a rich and refined taste crystallize into chastest jewellery of verse[47]. This blending of luxuriance and delicacy is the characteristic quality of Poliziano's and Lorenzo's poetry. It is admirably expressed in the phrase of a recent critic, 'the decorum of things exquisite.' After the lapse of another half-century, during which the renaissance advanced from its graceful youth to the full bloom of its maturity, appeared the Ninfa tiberina of Francesco Maria Molza. 'The volutta idillica[48],' writes Symonds, 'which ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... any apology necessary. Your fine hare and fine birds (which just now are dangling by our kitchen blaze) discourse most eloquent music in your justification. You just nicked my palate. For, with all due decorum and leave may it be spoken, my worship hath taken physic for his body to-day, and being low and puling, requireth to be pampered. Foh! how beautiful and strong those buttered onions come to my nose! For you must know we extract a divine spirit of gravy from those materials which, duly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... to frequent potations, were quickly maddened by the spirit, which mounted to their brains and rushed through their veins like wildfire, causing every nerve in their strong frames to tingle. Their characteristic gravity and decorum vanished. They laughed, they danced, they sang, they yelled like a troop of incarnate fiends! Then they rushed in a body towards their prisoners, and began a species of war-dance round them, flourishing their tomahawks and knives close to their faces as if they were about to slay ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... growing presbyteries and the one synod of the American Presbyterian Church the revival had brought, not peace, but a sword. The collision was inevitable between the fervor and unrestrained zeal of the evangelists and the sense of order and decorum, and of the importance of organization and method, into which men are trained in the ministry of an established church. No man, even at this day, can read the "standards" of the Presbyterian Church without seeing that they have had to be strained to admit those "revival ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... the clergyman, "the most elementary principles of decorum—A day will come when you will better understand how entirely subservient your ideas are to the very fundamentals of our present civilisation, when you will better understand the harrowing anxiety you have given Mrs. Milton by this inexplicable ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... love of praise is the way in which sometimes, to make his orations more striking, he neglected decorum and dignity. When Munatius, who had escaped conviction by his advocacy, immediately prosecuted his friend Sabinus, he said in the warmth of his resentment, "Do you suppose you were acquitted for your own meets, Munatius, and was it not that I so darkened the case, that the court could ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... modesty, in sexual matters, amongst all the tribes with which he came in contact. In the same way Mr. Bonwick, in his work on the Tasmanians, testifies to the modesty exhibited by the naked females of that race, who by the decorum of their postures gave evidence of the possession in germ of what under circumstances would become ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... The daughter of a noble and wealthy family has fallen in love with a man of uncommon learning, science, and genius, but a musician. In consequence of his great skill and reputation, he was employed to teach her music; and she it appears was too sensible, at least for the decorum of our present ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... their origin, there was some terrible stain on Harold, and that society could not admit them; so that if I persisted in casting in my lot with them, I should share the ban. Indeed, he would have thought my own good sense and love of decorum would have taught me that the abode of two such youths would be no fit place for the daughter of such respected parents, and there was a good deal more that I could not understand about interceding with his sister, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ball into the air, as [58] high as he might, along the vaulted roof of the central aisle to be caught by any boy who could, and tossed again with hand or foot till it passed on to the portly chanters, the chaplains, the canons themselves, who finally played out the game with all the decorum of an ecclesiastical ceremony. It was just then, just as the canons took the ball to themselves so gravely, that Denys—Denys l'Auxerrois, as he was afterwards called—appeared for the first time. Leaping in among the timid children, he made the thing really a game. The boys played ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... observation. He sat at dinner-time at a retired table, and found himself watching the people with a stir of pleasure. Afterwards he went round to a famous club, of which he had once been made a life member, but towards midnight he was wearied of the dull decorum of his surroundings, and returning to the hotel, sought the restaurant once more. The stream of people coming in to supper was greater even than at dinner-time. He found a small table, and ordered some oysters. ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... presumptuous, familiar, interfering; but Bridget is Bridget, and I might as soon command her not to use her tongue, as to stop taking an interest in anything that concerns "Herself". As a matter of fact, I don't try. Servility, and decorum, and a machine-like respect are to be hired for cash at any registry office; but Bridget's red-hot devotion, her child-like, unshakable conviction that everything that Miss Evelyn does and says, or doesn't say and doesn't do, is absolutely right—ah, that is beyond ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a menacing flicker of them almost across her eyeballs, so close they lay to her experience, and yet how she could laugh when Getaway made a feint toward the one on her beat, straightening up into exaggerated decorum as the eye of the ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... world; fashionable world, gay world; Vanity Fair; show &c. (ostentation) 822. manners, breeding &c. (politeness) 894; air, demeanor &c. (appearance) 448; savoir faire[Fr]; gentlemanliness[obs3], gentility, decorum, propriety, biensance[Fr]; conventions of society; Mrs. Grundy; punctilio; form, formality; etiquette, point of etiquette; dress &c. 225. custom &c. 613; mode, vogue, go; rage &c. (desire) 865; prevailing taste; fad, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... light. At such times the simpler and more practised functions, such as recall of images, can go on, though criticism, good judgment, reasoning, and all that sort of delicate and complex activity, do not occur. Daytime standards of probability, decorum, beauty, wit, and excellence of any sort are in abeyance; consistency is thrown to the winds, the scenes being shifted in the middle of a {500} speech, and a character who starts in as one person merging presently into somebody else. Dreams follow the definition ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... venturesomeness is the characteristic of men, such conduct as that which Genji had indulged in was against all propriety. "People said," continued Udaijin, "that he was always carrying on a correspondence with the present Saiin. Were this true, it would not only be against public decorum, but his own interest; although I did not ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... has been towards differentiation. [Footnote: See Havelock Ellis's Man and Woman.] An adult white woman differs far more from a white man than a negress or pigmy woman from her equivalent male. The education, the mental disposition, of a white or Asiatic woman, reeks of sex; her modesty, her decorum is not to ignore sex but to refine and put a point to it; her costume is clamorous with the distinctive elements of her form. The white woman in the materially prosperous nations is more of a sexual specialist than her ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... a young Hanoverian, between whom and me a very learned conversation had passed on the preceding evening, and a certain degree of acquaintance was cemented in consequence. The table was that day graced with the appearance of some of the Court ladies of Stuttgard, and all passed off with the decorum usually observed abroad, when suddenly, towards the conclusion of the feast a violent hubbub was heard between M. Foscolo and his Hanoverian neighbour, who, in angry terms and with violent gestures, respectively asserted the superior harmonies of Greek and Latin. This ended with the former's ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... which a reader must have courage to face, and must in some measure condone before he can discover the great beauties. For these blemishes in the poet's style are of such quality and magnitude as to deny him even a hearing from those who love a continuous literary decorum and are grown to be intolerant of its absence. And it is well to be clear that there is no pretence to reverse the condemnation of those faults, for which the poet has duly suffered. The extravagances ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... with his hands at his side in a state of rest; enters a room with his shoes down at heel, or without socks; omits to rise at the approach of his master, mistress, or their friends, and commits numerous other petty breaches of decorum which would ensure his instant dismissal from the house of a Chinese gentleman. We ourselves take a pride in making our servants treat us with the same degree of outward respect they would show towards native masters, and we believe that by strictly adhering to this system we succeed in gaining, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... ear of Melbury's intelligence while she stood on the landing at his house, and been eased of much of her mental distress, her sense of personal decorum returned upon her with a rush. She descended the stairs and left the door like a ghost, keeping close to the walls of the building till she got round to the gate of the quadrangle, through which she noiselessly passed almost before Grace and her father had finished their ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... friends and adherents in the Assembly, and though all his resolutions were passed, on each vote there was a resolute minority. Yet the debate, though hot, was on a high level, and does credit to the political capacity and the sense of decorum ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... administrative abilities. In observance of the precepts of the church he was exemplary. Yearly did he retire from court to spend the season of Lent on some one of his numerous possessions. In life, "so far as the outside is concerned," he observed the decorum appropriate to his rank, thus presenting a striking contrast to the other cardinals and prelates of the kingdom, who were "of a most licentious character." But he was vindictive, slow in rewarding services, and so violent that it was probable that no other event was so much desired ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... for morals or for decency. To burlesque poetry may be referred also the Macaronic style, a ludicrous mixture of Latin and Italian, introduced by Merlino Coccajo (1491-1544). His poems are as full of lively descriptions and piquant satire as they are wanting in decorum ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... that hypocrite, he went on to relate, could not help laughing at the parti-coloured costume, sacerdotal above, soldier-like below; but the cardinal was greatly offended—not with the absence of decorum, but with the dangerous wit, that could laugh in public at the cowl and shaven crown, points which constituted the greatest portion of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Mr. Netlips, solemnly—"The tardiness of her entrance was marked by the strongest decorum. The strongest, the most open ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... attended the Old Church (now the Cathedral) in great numbers. The authorities, having been previously advised of their intention, had the military in readiness to act, should the Chartists behave in a disorderly manner: but they conducted themselves with great decorum. It is said that, previous to Divine Service, they handed the clergyman a Chartist text to preach from, but he selected as his text, "My house is the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves"; on announcing which, the Chartists ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... free-State party was not only fully constituted and organized, but was demonstrated to possess a decided majority in the Territory. Still following out the policy agreed upon, the delegates chosen met at Topeka on the 23d of October, and with proper deliberation and decorum framed a State constitution, which was in turn submitted to a vote of the people. Although this election was held near midwinter (Dec. 15, 1855), and in the midst of serious disturbances of the peace arising from other causes, it received an affirmative vote of 1731, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the European Synagogue, which was beautifully illuminated, while the floor was thickly strewn with flowers. The building was crowded, and the utmost decorum prevailed during the service. Subsequently the representatives of the community were invited to join our dinner party, on which occasion many excellent speeches, in various Oriental and European languages, were made, referring principally to the ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... attended by a mounted groom. The parting, which shook Ishmael's whole nature like a storm, nearly rending soul and body asunder, seemed to have but little effect upon Miss Merlin. She went through it with great decorum, shaking hands with Ishmael, wishing him success, and hoping to see him, some fine day, on ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... as His act, but decorum and truth required that the exaltation should be God's act. 'He humbled Himself,' but 'God exalted Him.' True, He sometimes represented Himself as the Agent of His own Resurrection and Ascension, and established a complete parallel between His ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... breakfast and classes proceeded as usual, a more than ordinary atmosphere of decorum pervading the establishment, for Miss Gibbs had announced that the afternoon's excursion depended upon the mark-book, and the girls knew that she would keep her word. The veriest slackers paid attention to lessons that morning, and even Raymonde ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... paranymph—who, caught In love's stout meshes, flutters round the door, And fondly beckons her away from home,— The whilst, her lady mother fain would cage The foolish bird within its narrow cell!— And then, the grandame idly wastes her breath, In venting saws 'bout maiden modesty— And strict decorum,—from some musty volume: But the clipp'd wings will quickly sprout again; And whilst the doating father thinks his child A paragon of worth and bashfulness,— Her thoughts are hovering round the precious form ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... himself out of the room with that perfect decorum which proclaims the well-trained domestic of an aristocratic house. As soon as the tall mahogany doors were closed behind him, Mme. la Duchesse took her spectacles off from her high-bred nose and gave a little sniff, which caused Mademoiselle Crystal to look up from her book and mutely ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... complaining of the Napoleonic dictatorship in Continental affairs, while the "Moniteur" bristled with articles whose short, sharp sentences could come only from the First Consul. The official Press hitherto had been characterized by dull decorum, and great was the surprise of the older Courts when the French official journals compared the policy of the Court of St. James with the methods of the Barbary rovers and the designs of the Miltonic ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... wandered down to the Thames towing-path, they found fresh food for observation and comment among the boating fraternity. With some gay parties were damsels whose disregard for decorum was strongly reminiscent of Asnieres and Joinville-le-Pont; and it was slightly embarrassing to stroll near the river in the evening, when at every few yards one found young couples exchanging kisses in the shadows of the trees. After all it was surprise rather than embarrassment ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... queen. About two thousand three hundred of the vanquished perished in the battle and pursuit; and the person of the king fell again into the hands of his own party. This weak prince was sure to be almost equally a prisoner whichever faction had the keeping of him; and scarce any more decorum was observed by one than by the other, in their method of treating him. Lord Bonville, to whose care he had been intrusted by the Yorkists, remained with him after the defeat, on assurances of pardon given him by Henry: but Margaret, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... than those of the severest critics, or the most fervent of personal flatterers. Like all good men, Johnson loved good women, and liked to have on hand a flirtation or two, as warm as might be within the bounds of due decorum. But nothing affected his fidelity to his Letty or displaced her image in his mind. He remembered her in many solemn prayers, and such words as "this was dear Letty's book:" or, "this was a prayer which dear Letty was accustomed to say," were found written ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Decorum being again secured, Mr. S., with unimpaired dignity, proposed to the congregation a hymn, which was long enough to occupy them during the preparations for the actual baptism. He then retired to the vestry, and ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... stole forth from the door as we sat, in the calm summer air, upon the stone fence. William Deer, Jr., was wandering about in front of the castle, endeavoring to get control of his under lip and keep his exuberant mirth within the limits of decorum; but every instant, to use a military figure, it would flash in the pan. Up on the bare rocks were the wretched, woe-begone, patched, and ragged log huts of poor Cuffee. The hour and the season were suggestive of philosophizing, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... is a difference which all may recognize if they will. Allow a boy to stretch out his legs, climb spouts, jump gutters,—he is still perfectly manly; but a girl cannot do these things in a community without censure, unless necessity requires. I know that the custom which demands different decorum for a girl is arbitrary, and not of divine origin. To go unveiled is not allowed in some countries. But conformity is surely enjoined upon us; and that, so far as it is reasonably observed, is a really womanly trait. I cannot help thinking that girls are made of finer material than ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... mighty consequences which would result from his journey. Everyone at Port Jackson was struck with the handsome presence and dignified manners of the New Zealander. He was received by the governor into his house at Parramatta; he went regularly to church, where he behaved "with great decorum;" and loved nothing so much as to talk to the chaplain about the white man's God. His enquiries met with ready sympathy, for the chaplain was no other than the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... their own buffaloes, and taken the skins from all their own beavers," continued the savage, allowing the usual moment of decorum to elapse, after the words of greeting, before he again spoke, "that they come to count how many are left ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... allusion to his sister, that could be construed into a desire she should awaken any unusual or extraordinary sentiment of preference. Much and fervently as he desired such an event, there was an innate sense of decorum, and it may be secret pride, that caused him to abstain from any observation having the remotest tendency to compromise the spotless delicacy of his adored sister; and such he would have considered any expression of his own hopes and wishes, where no ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... mimicking Clapperton, "that as this is for the highest good of the School, and as everybody is to be all the better in the long run, and as we're all going to be noble and sacrifice ourselves together, you may put me down as not playing on Saturday. Dulce et decorum est pro patria—I beg pardon, I'm not on ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... and taste, and desert elaborately gotten up and served with the utmost precision, and wines, with fruit and colored cloth, and handsome finger bowl; and Mrs. Cameron presiding over all, with the ladylike decorum so much a part of herself, her soft, glossy silk of brown, with her rich lace and diamond pin seeming in keeping with herself and her surroundings. And opposite to her Wilford sat, a tall, dark, handsome man of thirty or thereabouts—a man whose polished manners ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Decorum and modesty, next to maternal tenderness, the strongest feelings in woman, fall before the dire prostratiou of this malady. A young lady will recline unwittingly in the arms of a perfect stranger, and the bride of three months, deserted by her ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... jealousies concerning some imaginary preference given to the one more than the other, occasioned many bitter taunts and fleers, which sometimes rose to blows and bloody noses; so that the good people with whom they were, had enough to do, to keep them in any tolerable decorum. ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... I think the widows ought to raise a statue to my honor, for having done my possible to prove that, for the sake of decorum, morals, and order, they ought to have ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... clergyman now left the guests at liberty to attack what was placed before them; and the meal went forward with great decorum, until Aunt Judith, in farther recommendation of the capon, assured her company that it was of a celebrated breed of poultry, which she had herself brought ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... class him with the first named of the trio as a writer of "occasional verse" or "vers de societe." These titles, like other parts of the nomenclature of the poetic art, are not satisfying. Why "smoothly written verse, where a boudoir decorum is or ought always to be preserved: where sentiment never surges into passion, and where humour never overflows into boisterous merriment" should be conventionally called "society verse," or "occasional verse," is not very clear. To write "society verse" is to be ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He and he only knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest appearance. Some great decorum, some fetich[62] of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up[63] by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... seated, of not interrupting till she appeared to give leave, of not forgetting, too, familiarly, that in addition to being important she was also sensitive, had the effect of throwing over their intercourse a kind of silver tissue of decorum. It hung there above them like a canopy of state, a reminder that though the lady-in-waiting was an established favourite, safe in her position, a little queen, however, good-natured, was always a little queen and might, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... confront what proved to be the foe. There on the porch without, crouching low, shading their eyes with their broad brown paws, their painted faces almost flattened against the window, three Indians, a brave and two squaws,—all innocent of any violation of etiquette or decorum, but just as their kith and kin and instincts taught them,—were staring hungrily into the room. To Eastern readers it would have seemed bare, homely, plain in the last degree; to the untutored minds of these children of the prairie ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... believer in "the eternal fitness of things," and while too much love was in her eyes deeply reprehensible, a proper quantity of matrimony, at a suitable age, was a highly respectable thing, and a state into which every man and woman ought to enter, with due prudence and decorum. And as a wife married in childhood was usually resigned to her husband at an age some years earlier than Constance had now attained, the Dowager was scandalised by her persistent absence. The Duke, who ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... the realisation of these delights was again a sight to see, nor was it less worthy to behold at dinner, when he drank to Miss Melluka, tied stiff in a chair opposite to Polly (the fair Circassian possessing an unbendable spine), and even induced the waiter to assist in carrying out with due decorum the prevailing glorious idea. To wind up, there came the agreeable fever of getting Miss Melluka and all her wardrobe and rich possessions into a fly with Polly, to be taken home. But, by that time, Polly had become unable to look upon such accumulated joys with waking eyes, and had withdrawn ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... devout and fervent in his prayers, and joining in the hymns in such a manner that his ringing baritone voice is easily discernible above the rest, his eyes wander in a stern fashion around the church, quick to note any member of the congregation who is not behaving with proper decorum and reverence. He conveys the impression that he considers it to be his duty to keep the congregation in proper order, and if he finds that either he, or the imperial party is being stared at with any degree of persistency or curiosity, he at once sends ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... does indeed, Sir Giles. I do not like to see a table ill spread, Poor, meager, just sprinkled o'er with salads, Slic'd beef, giblets, and pigs' pettitoes. But the substantials—Oh! Sir Giles the substantials! The state of a fat Turkey now, The decorum, the grandeur he marches in with. Then his sauce, with oranges and onions, O, I declare, I do much honour a chine of beef! O lord! I do reverence a loin ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... were all humorous, frisky fellows, who loved to cut capers in private life; but as soon as they were arranged for the dance, they conducted themselves like so many mutes at a funeral. I have never seen decorum pushed so far; and as this was not expected, the quadrille was soon whistled down, and the dancers departed under a cloud. Eight Frenchmen, even eight Englishmen from another rank of society, would have dared ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discussion of the foregoing from a "A Scholar's Funeral" in the "Bonnie Brier Bush" may serve to make some of these things clearer. The fact that the "wricht" is silent here in the first sentence makes us know that this is the usual custom and that these people have an underlying sense of decorum. Sentence two has the same effect in their abstraction, and this is emphasized again in the "two graven images." The third sentence is a mood "effect" of kind, since we recognize the conventionally sobered feeling without the "settled melancholy." This is true again ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... by women jurors." Women exercised the right of jurors and contributed to the speedy release of the Territory from the regime of the pistol and bowie-knife. They not only performed their new duties without losing any of the womanly virtues, and with dignity and decorum, but good results were immediately seen. Chief Justice J. H. Howe, of the Supreme Court, under whose direction women were first drawn on juries, wrote in 1872: "After the grand jury had been in session two days the dance-house keepers, gamblers and demi-monde ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the subject of an Eclogue, where the Shepherds scatter flowers on the Tomb, and sing Rustick Songs in honor of the Dead: Examples of this kind are left us by Virgil in his Daphnis, and Bion in his Adonis, and this hath nothing disagreeable to a Shepherd: In {26} short whatever, the decorum being still preserv'd, can be done by a Sheapard, may be the ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... usual was preceded by cards, and the company so numerous that they filled two tables; after a few games, a magnificent supper appeared in grand order and decorum—the frolic was closed up by ten sunburnt virgins lately come from Columbus's Newfoundland, and sundry other female exercises; besides a play of my own invention, which I have not room enough to describe at present; however, kissing constitutes a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... asked Bertram eagerly, forgetting in his eagerness the generally observed maxim that the sons spoke not at table till they were directly addressed. But the knight did not himself heed this breach of decorum. ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Congress, by sheer dexterity of management when numbers were against him, added intense bitterness to the natural chagrin felt by the defeated faction. Men like Jefferson and Madison were subject to traditions of behavior that required them to maintain a certain style of public decorum no matter how they might rage in private. But new men with new manners were coming on the scene, and among them the opposition to Hamilton had found a new leader— William Branch Giles of Virginia. He was a Princeton graduate of the class of 1781, had studied ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 'Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, 'art sure no craven, Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore, Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore: Quoth the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... delicacy, but it will, I hope, be admitted by the merry dames themselves, that my friend Bernard has in this, as in every other instance, endeavoured to preserve the strongest traits of truth and character, without indulging in offensive satire, or departing from propriety and decorum.—Horatio ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the dance, but evidently enjoyed the scene as much as any one present. The most interesting figure was that of the Padre Ramirez, who, in his clerical cassock, looked until a late hour. "If the strongest advocate of priestly decorum had been present," says our author, "he could not have found it in his heart to grudge the good old padre the pleasure which beamed ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... Verrier—that merely to put the question involved a certain tribute to young Barnes. He had at any rate done his fortune-hunting, if fortune-hunting it were, with decorum. ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mostly women, with but a sprinkling of men. Many of the women were young or youngish, and of rare beauty, so Merton Gill thought. Others were elderly or old, and a few would be accompanied by children, often so young that they must be held on laps. They, too, waited with round eyes and in perfect decorum for a chance to act. Sometimes the little window would be pushed open and a woman beckoned from the bench. Some of them greeted the casting director as an old friend and were still gay when told that there was nothing to-day. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... schooner purchased, and coppered, and launched, and preparations made to fit her for sea, but "Young Gar'ner" was appointed to command her! As respects Roswell Gardiner, or "Gar'ner," as it would be almost thought a breach of decorum, in Suffolk, not to call him, there was no mystery. Six-and-twenty years before the opening of our legend, he had been born on Oyster Pond itself, and of one of its best families. Indeed, he was known to be a descendant of Lyon Gardiner, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... with not having said enough about our little stranger. When I wrote last I was not sufficiently acquainted with him to give you his character. I may now assure you that your daughter, when she sees him, will not consult you about her choice, or will only do it in respect to the rules of decorum. He is truly a very fine young gentleman, the most agreeable in conversation and manners of any I ever knew, nor less remarkable for his intelligence and sweetness of temper. You are not to imagine by my beginning with his mental qualifications that he is defective in personal. It ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... him it was school time, and he must set off, as she did not like him to run in out of breath and flurried, just when the schoolmaster was going to begin; but she wished him to come in decently and in order, with quiet decorum, and thoughtfulness as to what he was going to do. So Tom got his cap and his bag, and went off with a light heart, which I suppose made his footsteps light, for he found himself above half way to school while it wanted yet a quarter ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... dignity and propriety which our social customs frequently offend. If Englishmen and Englishwomen in high places in India would exert their influence to invest the social life of Europeans in the chief resorts of Anglo-Indian society with a little more decorum and seriousness, they would probably be doing better service to a good understanding between the two races in social matters than by trying to break down by sheer insistence, however well meant, the barriers which diametrically opposite forms ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... fancied he understood you, and no storm of despairing indignation came, think how easy it would be to persuade yourself you had done your duty by the facts, and might let the matter lapse! Why should not one woman once take advantage of the obscurities of decorum so many a man has found comforting to his soul during confession of sin, when pouring his revelations into an ear whose owner's experience of life has not qualified her to understand them. Think of the difficulty you ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... decorum all things carry'd; Miss frowned, and blushed, and then was—married. The Double ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... he, "a part of you have come here legitimately, to hear a lecture; a part to satisfy the curiosity aroused by rumors to the effect that I am likely to make indecorous and indecent remarks, which your decorum and decency make you wish to hear, and of which you will carry away evil and twisted reports, to gain the reputation of being fearless defenders of the truth. It is a temptation to gratify your desire and shock you—a ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... myself. And this I shall relate with the same simplicity that has pervaded every other part of my narrative. If there ever were any motives of prudence or delicacy, that could impose a qualification upon the story, they are now over. They could have no relation but to factitious rules of decorum. There are no circumstances of her life, that, in the judgment of honour and reason, could brand her with disgrace. Never did there exist a human being, that needed, with less fear, expose all their actions, ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... The mother brings the dinner and her tawny brood of nestlings. A shady spot is selected for the feast. The father dips his wooden spoon first into the vapory bowl, and mother and babes follow with grave decorum. Idle loungers passing these patriarchal groups, on their way to a vapid French breakfast at a restaurant, catch the fragrance of the olla and the chatter of the family, and envy the dinner of herbs ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... accounting for tastes, seeing that these tumultuous walks were the delight of May's days, and that even Dora, with her inveterate sympathy, enjoyed them, though they deranged somewhat her sense of maidenly dignity and decorum. It was to be hoped that as Tray grew in years he would grow in discretion, and would show a little forbearance to the friends who were so forbearing ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... God. If I were not carried away thereby either in temper or pen, even a heart of stone would be moved by the indignity of the thing to take up arms; and how much more I, who am both passionate and possessed of a pen not altogether blunt! By these monstrosities I am driven beyond modesty and decorum. At the same time, I wonder where this new religion came from, that whatever you say against an adversary is slander. What do you think of Christ? Was He a slanderer when He called the Jews an adulterous and ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... the noble Countess. She was daughter of the Duc de la Tremouille, or, more correctly, des Thouars. But certainly to serve the ladies, and condescend to their humours, even when somewhat too free, or too fantastic, is the true decorum of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... are enabled to report that many natives have turned unto the Lord their God. Every Sabbath morning, public worship is celebrated in the chapel at Cape Coast Town, when the beautiful liturgy of our Church is read; and the decorum which is observed by the natives, who read the responses, appears in striking opposition to the wild irrational service which they formerly offered at the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... neighbourhood, acquaintances were easily made, and strangers soon became familiar. The pleasures of the table were followed by jovial pledges in swift succession, till fife and drum summoned to the dance. Now fell the last barriers of reserve and decorum; and it is time to drop a veil over ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... she returns the compliment. Hence at a time like this, when people live for society and in society, there is no place for conjugal intimacy.—Moreover, when a married couple occupy an exalted position they are separated by custom and decorum. Each party has his or her own household, or at least their own apartments, servants, equipage, receptions and distinct society, and, as entertainment entails ceremony, they stand towards each other in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... them welcome, but in fact terrified many of them to such a degree that they scarcely dared to come ashore. Nor were they reassured by the bearing of the disorderly crowd, who, in jealous competition for their beaver-skins, left them not a moment's peace, and outraged all their notions of decorum. More soon appeared, till hundreds of warriors were encamped along the shore, all restless, suspicious, and alarmed. Late one night they awakened Champlain. On going with them to their camp, he found chiefs and warriors in solemn ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... sitting up with her head in a perfect beehive of curl-papers and night-cap, who has dispatched Guster to the police-station with official intelligence of her husband's being made away with, and who within the last two hours has passed through every stage of swooning with the greatest decorum. But as the little woman feelingly says, many thanks she gets ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... terrible to children than the angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but when they took place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining, whence we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the decorum and solemnity." He then describes the ferule—"that almost obsolete weapon now." "To make him look more formidable—if a pedagogue had need of these heightenings—Bird wore one of those flowered Indian gowns formerly in use with schoolmasters, the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of which, in accordance with immemorial custom, each guest was allowed two platefuls, in spite of the otherwise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed, judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised that there was no practical limit, except the appetite of the guests and the capacity of the soup-tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I partook ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... difficult to answer this question with due regard to the laws of God and man, and at the same time give Galatea a lesson in social decorum. "I suppose," he said slowly, "you'll just have ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... their dying, except only in the case of birds in cages, who, again, are compelled to die with observation. The woodland is guarded and kept by a rule. There is no display of the battlefield in the fields. There is no tale of the game- bag, no boast. The hunting goes on, but with strange decorum. You may pass a fine season under the trees, and see nothing dead except here and there where a boy has been by, or a man with a trap, or a man with a gun. There is nothing like a butcher's shop ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... herself could not say, then or afterward, that there was any other way open to him. I will not contend that his motives were wholly unselfish. No doubt a sense of personal annoyance, of offended decorum, of wounded respectability, qualified the zeal for Miss Mayhew's good which prompted him. He was still a young and inexperienced man, confronted with a strange perplexity: he did the best he could, and I suppose it was the best that could be done. At any rate, he had no ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... of character which bursts forth on every trivial occasion; but when any powerful cause awakened the slumbering inmates, of his breast, they blazed with an uncontrolled fury that defied all opposition, and overleaped all bounds of reason and decorum. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... appearing to do so; was familiar without laying aside his dignity, and possessed that prudent coldness which inspires respect, though we scarcely know why. All this was blended with so much elegance, urbanity, and decorum, that it would have been difficult for the most acute eye to have distinguished the acquired, the artificial, and the assumed, from the plain and natural. Faustus, who had as yet seen few of those men of the world whose natural characters are swallowed up by political prudence, formed an ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... of duty. He walked slowly up and down the range of Dormitories until every boy seemed ready to get into bed, and then he put out all the candles. So long as he was present, the boys observed the utmost quiet and decorum. All continued quite orderly until he had passed away through the lavatory, and one of the boys following him as a scout, had seen the last glimmer of his candle disappear round the corner at the foot of the great staircase, and heard the ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... little attention which is paid to the vain and ridiculous prejudice of marrying below rank; the ancient policy of giving distinction to men and not to families, by attaching nobility only to employments and talents, without suffering it to be hereditary; and the decorum observed in public, are admirable ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... dancers are off the stage, and it is the more proper time for gravity and decorum, I feel that irresistible desire to be as wicked as possible—a desire which I have heard you say tormented you in your childhood; for, whenever you were admonished to be remarkably good, you were invariably remarkably bad. So I yield to the temptation, and voluntarily, and with "malice ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... all the other mourners for the deceased lady's loss, attend her remains to their place of rest. Cousin Feenix, sitting in the mourning-coach, recognises innumerable acquaintances on the road, but takes no other notice of them, in decorum, than checking them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr Dombey's information, as 'Tom Johnson. Man with cork leg, from White's. What, are you here, Tommy? Foley on a blood mare. The Smalder girls'—and so forth. At the ceremony Cousin Feenix is depressed, observing, that these are the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Mogg? O Muse! the man declare, How excellent his worth, his parts how rare. A younger son, he learnt in Oxford's halls The spheral harmonies of billiard-balls, Drank, hunted, drove, and hid from Virtue's frown His venial follies in Decorum's gown. Too wise to doubt on insufficient cause, He signed old Cranmer's lore without a pause; And knew that logic's cunning rules are taught To guard our creed, and not invigorate thought,— As those bronze steeds at Venice, kept for pride, Adorn a Town where ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... cold. Vainly he felt about for his fire bag, in which he carried his flint and steel, that he might strike a light; but in the inky darkness nothing could be found. Only a visitor in the village, he felt, with Indian reserve, that it would be a great breach of decorum and a sign of great weakness if he were to call out for help, and so, in spite of his aches and shiverings, he resolved that he would at least be a "brave," and patiently endure until the morning ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... in the main lounge. Priam discovered a bell-push, and commanded China tea and muffins. He felt that he now, as it were, had an opportunity of making a fresh start in life. He grew almost gay. He could be gay without sinning against decorum, for Mrs. Challice's singular tact had avoided all reference ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... provided. Sometimes she accepted them, but most generally pointed to her duenna or chaperon behind, who held up her apron and caught the refreshments as they were slid into it from the plate. The greatest decorum was maintained at these dances, primitively as they were conducted; and in a region so completely cut off from the world, their influence was undoubtedly beneficial to a considerable degree in softening the rough edges in ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... no one persuades into living. Something of the same sort is necessary in that second birth at adolescence. The young people need affection and understanding each one for himself, if they are to be induced to live in an inheritance of decorum and safety and to understand the foundations upon which this orderly world rests. No one comprehends their needs so sympathetically as those mothers who iron the flimsy starched finery of their grown-up daughters late into the night, and who pay for a red velvet parlor set ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... are bound to suppose her, consents to the murder of the old dethroned monarch. We question if the operation of any motive, however powerful, could have been pleaded with propriety, in apology for a breach of theatrical decorum, so gross, and so unnatural. But, in fact, the queen is only actuated by a sort of reflected ambition, a desire to secure to her lover a crown, which she thought in danger; but which, according to her own statement, she only valued on his account. This is surely too remote and indirect a motive, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Trager quarreling over his daily tobacco with the nurse in charge, or brawling over his soup with another patient, was likely to be hailed in a thin soprano, and to stand, grinning sheepishly, while Jimmy, in mixed English and German, restored the decorum of the ward. They were a quarrelsome lot, the convalescents. Jimmy was so busy some days settling disputes and awarding decisions that he slept almost all night. This was as ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... if they liked to come. Accordingly, most of those who live at the Point, i.e. in the immediate neighbourhood of the house, came, and it was encouraging to see the very decided efforts at cleanliness and decorum of attire which they had all made. I was very much affected and impressed myself by what I was doing, and I suppose must have communicated some of my own feeling to those who heard me. It is an extremely ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... offered to draw Effie back to a posture of more decorum, but Colville put his arm round the little girl. "Oh, let her stay! It doesn't incommode me, and she must be getting such a novel effect ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... respectively in crimson, white and blue, these small scions stand up in their ruffs and fardingales in dimpled serenity, squaring their infantine stomachers at the spectator with an innocence, a dignity, a delightful grotesqueness, which make the picture a thing of close truth as well as of fine decorum. You might kiss their hands, but you certainly would think twice before pinching their cheeks—provocative as they are of this tribute of admiration—and would altogether lack presumption to lift them off the ground or the higher level or dais ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... England that has gradually diffused itself over the whole country, looking down ridicule, the drilling of boarding-schools, the comments of elderly ladies of the old school, the sneers of nurses, and, in a word, all that venerable ideas of decorum could suggest, until this appliance of domestic ease has not only fairly planted itself in nearly every American dwelling, but in a good many ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... sufficient circulation to cast a shade of ambiguity on the persons concerned. Bessy alone seemed deaf to the rumours about her friend. There was something captivating to her in Mrs. Carbury's slang and noise, in her defiance of decorum and contempt of criticism. "I like Blanche because she doesn't pretend," was Bessy's vague justification of the lady; but in reality she was under the mysterious spell which such natures cast over the less venturesome imaginations of their ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... the new-comer breathed softly as one does on going into church after service has begun. This might be a suggestion from the voiceless behavior of the man-servant who let you in, but it was also because Mrs. Horn's At Home was a ceremony, a decorum, and not festival. At far greater houses there was more gayety, at richer houses there was more freedom; the suppression at Mrs. Horn's was a personal, not a social, effect; it was an efflux of her character, demure, silentious, vague, but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... dabitur hostis, quando acies? Veniunt, e latebris suis extrusi: et vota virtusque in aperto, omniaque prona victoribus, atque eadem victis adversa. Nam, ut superasse tantum itineris, silvas evasisse, transisse aestuaria pulchrum ac decorum in frontem; ita fugientibus periculosissima, quae hodie prosperrima sunt. Neque enim nobis aut locorum eadem notitia aut commeatuum eadem abundantia: sed manus et arma et in his omnia. Quod ad me attinet, jam pridem mihi decretum est, neque exercitus neque ducis terga tuta esse. Proinde et honesta ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus |
