"Immodest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... affectedly particular people who place heaven in the foreground in order to conceal themselves behind it. But if she refuses to tell a falsehood,—as she will expose herself to the jests of the whole court, as she will have annoyed the king by a confession as ridiculous as it was immodest,—Mademoiselle la Baume le Blanc de la Valliere will think it but proper I should send her back again to her pigeons in the country, in order that, in Touraine yonder, or in Le Blaisois,—I know not where it may be,—she may at her ease study ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... walks, feasts, and mourning of the women, and took away everything that was either unbecoming or immodest; when they walked abroad, no more than three articles of dress were allowed them; an obol's worth of meat and drink; and no basket above a cubit high; and at night they were not to go about unless in a chariot with a torch before them. Mourners ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... confinement; And the pallid seamstress sitteth For a long and tedious twelve hours Stitching, while her life is ebbing In a rapid current from her. Now awhile we see the playhouse, And the giddy hall of music, And the scenes exposed therein, Oft immodest and immoral. Next the nest of thieves and robbers, With their heaps of spoil and plunder, And their hidden laws and customs. Then we seek the house of prayer, Which is only weekly opened, Or which day to ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... was on the deck, and I must say that we were followed by envious glances. As we had inflated the suits they were not immodest, effectually concealing the lines of the figure, but making it difficult to ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... street—it being now noon and the day Monday—Mrs. Y's washing will be out to dry. Observe her gaunt replica, cap-a-pie, as immodest as an advertisement! In her proper person she is prodigal if she unmask her beauty to the moon. And in company with this, is the woolen semblance of her plump husband. Neither of them is shap'd for sportive tricks: But look upon them when the music ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... easel to paint the rounded limbs and marble huelessness of fair Dian, chastest of all Olympia's deities, wondering if, after all, what is called modesty does not come as much of habit as of nature—if the veiled face of the Oriental is not as immodest as the unclothedness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... that from such a Conjunction, Giants were Born, so we may infer that if Angels can mix Amorously with Women, and engender Children, the Devils who only differ from Angels by their Fall, may also draw Women into immodest Pleasures, and Defile them with their Embraces: But it is highly inconsistent to suppose that our Creator who is all Purity, would permit the worst of Spirits to propogate his ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... the law, too, which your husband can invoke. And think of your five sisters. Will anybody marry them after such a business with you? Their prospects will be simply ruined by your heartless selfishness. No girl in my young days would have acted so outrageously. It is not decent. It is positively immodest. I repeat that your father is the proper person to judge for you. You know nothing of the world, and even if you did, you are not old enough to think for yourself. You do not imagine yourself to be a sort ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... blushed rosy-red, and their eyes shunned the glance of any other person, and they kept them fixed on the paternal face alone, as if there were safety. This modesty—how many errors does it bridle in, or repress? On how many immodest questions and impure things does it impose silence! How much dishonest greed does it repress! In the chaste woman, against how many evil temptations does it rouse mistrust, not only in her, but also in him who watches over her! How many unseemly words does it restrain! ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... This second stream rises in a flat plain, having its first birth in a lakelet in approximate longitude 82 deg. 47' E. and latitude 30 deg. 33' N. I gave the Northern source my own name, a proceeding which I trust will not be regarded as immodest in view of the fact that I was the first European to visit both sources and of all the ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... at the auspicious moment when Dink Stover led the apparently scantily-clothed Finnegan and the procession of immodest banners around to the Esplanade of the Upper, the Doctor suddenly appeared through the shrubbery that screens Foundation House from the rest of the campus, with a party of ladies, relatives, as it unfortunately happened, of one of the trustees of ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... crying to us in the dark recesses of the body; pointing out the path of duty; teaching respect for the opinion of the world, for tradition, decency and order. It is thanks to conscience that a man is true and a woman modest. Not that Thumbeline could be called immodest, unless a baby can be so described, or an animal. But could I be called 'true'? I greatly fear that I could not—in fact, I know it too well. I meant no harm; I was greatly interested; and there was always before me the real ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... that accursed badge of servitude. It was hot, the sun boiled down as it does every day in that land where the rocks are burned black; and, once she was dressed, she could not mount her mule without seeming to be immodest. So she followed along behind them, leading Tellurium by his rope, and entered her city of dreams unnoticed. Calhoun strode on before her, while Campbell rounded up the burros, and the men from Blackwater stared at him. He was a stranger to them ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... liked to smoke. It took no more than a glance to reveal the fact that she was further along in her pregnancy than Marna—Marna who started back from the door when a stranger appeared at it lest she should seem immodest. But the suffragette, having acquired an applauding and excellent husband, saw no reason why she should apologize to the world for the processes of nature. Quite as unconscious of her condition as of her unconventionality in smoking, she discoursed with these diverted men, her ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... lascivious writings of Ovid, it does not appear that he was in his conduct a libertine. He was three times married: his first wife, who was of mean extraction, and (185) whom he had married when he was very young, he divorced; the second he dismissed on account of her immodest behaviour; and the third appears to have survived him. He had a number of respectable friends, and seems to have been much beloved ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the immodest waste of night; The mother of moist dew with pallide light Spreads gloomie shades about the mummed earth. Sleepe, sleepe, whilst we contrive ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... as such, perhaps, some ladies of indisputable correctness and gentility will condemn the action as immodest; but, you see, poor dear Rebecca had all this work to do for herself. If a person is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he must sweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear Mamma to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... read the naughty rhymes Which are on ev'ry alcove writ, Immodest, lewd attempt at wit, Disgraceful to the times. Here Scotland's dandy Irish Earl,{50} With Noblet on his arm would whirl, And frolic in this sphere; With mulberry coat, and pink cossacks, The red-hair'd ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... offended, and indeed more indignant than would appear to be consistent with the singular mildness of his nature, at a coarse and awkward jest, especially if it were immodest, or uncleanly; in the latter case his anger was unbounded, and his uneasiness pre-eminent; he was, however, sometimes vehemently delighted by exquisite and delicate sallies, particularly with a fanciful, and perhaps somewhat fantastical ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... cheeks when she realized what she had said. It was the first time she had ever used a term of endearment toward David. She wondered if he noticed it and if he would think her very—bold,—queer,—immodest, to use it. She looked shyly up at him, enquiring with her eyes, as she came out to him on the front stoop, and he looked down with such a smile she felt as if it were a caress. And yet neither was quite conscious of this little real by-play they were enacting for the benefit of the ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... they will be corrupted by their company, the kept women, the milliners, the shop girls, saleswomen, actresses, singers, the girls of the opera, the ballet-dancers, upper servants, chambermaids, etc. Most of these creatures excite the passions of many people, but they would consider it immodest to inform a lawyer, a mayor, an ecclesiastic or a laughing world of the day and hour when they surrendered to a lover. Their system, justly blamed by an inquisitive world, has the advantage of laying upon them no obligations towards men in general, towards ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... making a look speak and speak profoundly, without childish exaggeration or effeminate effusiveness, to those who can grasp the half-spoken thought, to men. Modern music, which is so loquaciously introspective, dragging in indiscreet confidences at every turn, is immodest and lacking in taste. It is like those invalids who can think of nothing but their illnesses, and never weary of discussing them with other people and going into repulsive petty details. This travesty of art has been growing more and more prevalent for the last century. Francoise, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... unwholesome water stagnates. Further, the women must repair to the house of one of their gossips who has given birth to twins, and must drench her with water, which they carry in little pitchers. Having done so they go on their way, shrieking out their loose songs and dancing immodest dances. No man may see these leaf-clad women going their rounds. If they meet a man, they maul him and thrust him aside. When they have cleansed the wells, they must go and pour water on the graves ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... unjust or uncharitable. The opera, which chanced to be "Lucia di Lammermoor," was very good, both vocally and instrumentally, and the dancing was clever and graceful, but to our English eye bordering on the immodest; the spectators, however, greatly applauded it, and probably ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... perfectly lovely and romantic it all was, they are ready for the wiles of the first gay deceiver. Waiting in vain for their god-like ideal, they are finally content to look a little lower, and favorably receive the immodest addresses of some clerk in their own store, or succeed ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... another but helpeth and furthereth him, as much as conueniently he can. [Sidenote: Their chastity.] Their women are chaste, neither is there so much as a word vttered concerning their dishonestie. Some of them will notwithstanding speake filthy and immodest words. [Sidenote: Their insolencie against strangers.] But towards other people, the said Tartars be most insolent, and they scorne and set nought by all other noble and ignoble persons whatsoeuer. For we saw in ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... towards which its rays pointed. They could, moreover, explain the effects produced by the fixed stars whose rays were conjoined with the comet's. If a comet resembles a flute, then musicians are aimed at; when comets are in the less dignified parts of the constellations, they presage evil to immodest persons; if the head of a comet forms an equilateral triangle or a square with fixed stars, then it is time for mathematicians and men of science to tremble. When they are in the sign of the Ram, they portend ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... together with other Indians whom they have with them, who are taught to play on the guitar and other instruments, are made to dance, execute lively songs and dances, and to sing profane and immodest tunes. Thus they entertain their guests, setting a bad example to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... weavers, as in the case of the Koshtis and Tantis, the latter of whom made the famous fine cotton cloth, known as abrawan, or 'running water,' which was supplied to the imperial Zenana at Delhi. On one occasion a daughter of Aurangzeb was reproached on entering the room for her immodest attire and excused herself by the plea that she had on seven folds of cloth over her body. [80] In Bengal Brahmans will take water from Tantis, and it seems clear that their higher status is a consequence of the lucrative and important nature of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... dresses his wanton Thoughts in a beautiful Habit, and by slanting and side Approaches, possesses the Imagination of the Hearers, before his Design is well discover'd; by which means he more effectually gains Admission to the Mind, and fills the Fancy with immodest Ideas. ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... know, and you know that I know. Am I so innocent that Jack Hanover, and Charlie Rodgers, and Black Whitman, and as many more of their kind, can make love to you under my very nose without my knowing it? You take damned good care—posing as a prude with your fad about immodest dress—that the world sees nothing; but you have never troubled to hide it ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... Romanticism began to show symptoms of exhaustion. The subjective and personal character of its lyric verse provoked protest. It seemed to have no other theme but self, to be a universal confession or self-glorification, immodest and egotistical. And it began to be increasingly out of harmony with the intellectual temper, which was determined more and more by positive philosophy and the scientific spirit. LECONTE DE LISLE voiced this protest most clearly (cf. les Montreurs, ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... has fit terms for everything, and these terms are always right because they are rightly used. One could not imagine more modest language than that of the Bible, just because of its plainness of speech. The same things translated into French would become immodest. What I ought to say to Emile will sound pure and honourable to him; but to make the same impression in print would demand a like purity ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... incantations to assist their prayers. He endeavours to stop their emulation in fasting, and orders those whose strength of body enabled them to fast longest not to boast of it. But he orders them not even to speak to a woman, and wishes them not to bathe, as being an immodest act. The early Christians, as being a sect of Jews, had followed many Jewish customs, such as observing the Sabbath as well as the Lord's day; but latterly the line between the two religions had been growing ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... high on the matter than his lady had been; and the king jested, and said it was only the court fashion; to which Sir Walter returned for answer, that, however it might be the court fashion, it was scarce courtly to present an immodest to a modest woman. With that the king chafed, and said he supposed Lady Constantia's friendship for Dame Frances Russell was stronger than her loyalty, for she regarded Cromwell's daughter, both as RICH ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... medicine—each of whom had his own particular temple either in the town itself or in some neighbouring village in the mountain. Baal delighted in travel, and was accustomed to be drawn in a chariot through the valleys of Phoenicia in order to receive the prayers and offerings of his devotees. The immodest Astarte, excluded, it would seem, from the official religion, had her claims acknowledged in the cult offered to her by the people, but she became the subject of no poetic or dolorous legend like her namesake at Byblos, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... for here again she was forced to pause while another pair of immodest legs appeared over the eaves, much fatter and shorter than the preceding pair. These belonged to Nickey's boon-companion, the gentle Oliver Wendell Jones. The rest of O. W. J. followed in due time; and, quite ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... than jota Arragonese, or the most lascivious of Spanish dances of Andalusia. You may remember that in the early days of Charles X. the police of Paris attempted and succeeded in putting down gross and immodest dances; but under the reign of Louis Philippe the spirit of libertinage and degingandage, to use a French term, again broke out among the class of debardeurs, and towards the close of 1845 became terrific to behold. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... recent trip East. A big, barnlike structure had been erected which was called "the tabernacle." Its floor was of sawdust sprinkled on the ground. Here for about a month a professional evangelist had harangued the curious crowds in immoderate, and oftentimes immodest language. Wit and sarcasm and slang and emotion had been freely used in his efforts to make sinners "hit the sawdust trail," to use his own spectacular language, as well as to extort money from the pockets of the attendants. He left the town $5,000 richer than when he entered and also carried ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... promising for the coming season that suitable shoes would be built for street wear and mountain climbing, for the sands of the sea and the sands of the desert, and the sheer face of canyons. The extremely long, dirt-sweeping skirts were coming up; the extremely short, immodest skirts were coming down. A sane and sensible wave seemed to be sweeping the whole country. Under the impetus of Donald Whiting's struggles to lead his classes and those of other pupils to lead theirs a higher grade of scholarship was beginning to be developed throughout the high school. ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... does seem too odd to see evening dress consist of black trousers and a bright-red coat which stops off short at the waist. But if you think that looks odd, what will you say to the officers of the Highland regiments? Their full dress is almost as immodest in a different way as that of some women, and one of the most exquisite paradoxes of British custom is that a Highland undress uniform consists of the addition of long-trousers—more clothes than they wear in ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... sept, and clan systems were devised solely to prevent international decadence and fraternal strife; their secret societies were not sinister; their festivals and dances not immodest; their priesthood not ignoble. They were sedentary and metropolitan people—dwellers in towns—not nomads; they had cattle and fowls, orchards and grain-fields, gardens for vegetables, corrals for breeding stock. They had many towns—some even of two hundred houses, of which dwellings ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... flooded with obscene pictures and immodest representations which corrupt our youths? If the agents of Satan employ means so vile for a bad end; if they are cunning enough to pour through the senses into the hearts of the unwary the insidious poison of sin, by placing before them lascivious portraits, in God's name, why should not we sanctify ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... careful labour. In the letter prefixed to the posterior Academica, 45 B.C., Cicero evinces much impatience at having been kept two years waiting for his promised boon, and inscribes his own treatise with Varro's name as a polite reminder which he hopes his friend will not think immodest. In the opening chapters Cicero extols Varro's learning with that warmth of heart and total absence of jealousy which form so pleasing a trait in his character. Their diffuseness amusingly contrasts with Varro's brevity in his dedication. When it appeared, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Immodest words admit of no defence; For want of decency is want of sense. What moderate fop would rake the park or stews, Who among troops of faultless nymphs may choose? Variety of such is to be found: Take then a ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... will they think of me—in this immodest gown, with this paint on my face, and at this hour of night?" pleaded Helene, as he started toward the door of ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... ladies seem convinced, though puzzled; but that is because they don't detect your fallacy. You confound the woman and the fashion. An immodest woman may be modestly dressed; and if it is the fashion to be so, she most certainly will, unless she is able herself to set a fashion more suited to her taste. For usually a woman's care of her costume is in inverse proportion to that she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... caused by false modesty in the presence of others. It can never be immodest to attend to the calls of Nature, and such hypersensitiveness is dangerous, for rupture, piles, fissure, prolapse, fistula, are often ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... reprimands their inattention to literature and learning. "The monks," he says, "in the present day seem to be occupied in emptying cups, not in correcting codices, Calicibus epotandis, non codicibus emendandis, which they mingle with the lascivious music of Timotheus, and emulate his immodest manners, so that the sportive song cantus ludentis, and not the plaintive hymn, proceeds from the cells of the monks. Flocks and fleeces, grain and granaries, gardens and olives, potions and goblets, are in this day lessons and studies of the monks, except some chosen ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... with the shepherd, Thenot, but Thenot rejects her suit out of admiration of the constancy of Clorinda for her dead lover. She is wanton, coarse, and immodest, the very reverse of Clorinda, who is a virtuous, chaste, and faithful shepherdess. ("Thenot," the final t is sounded.)—John Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess (1610). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... an idea obnoxious to a woman's feelings,' was her answer. 'You have announced it in a fashion revolting to a woman's soul. You insinuate that all the frank kindness I have shown you has been a complicated, a bold, and an immodest manoeuvre to ensnare a husband. You imply that at last you come here out of pity to offer me your hand, because I have courted you. Let me say this: Your sight is jaundiced; you have seen wrong. Your mind is warped; you have judged wrong. Your tongue betrays you; you now speak wrong. I never ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... in a stooping position, with a short staff on his shoulder; there is also the outline of a mammoth on a sheet of ivory; a statuette of a thin woman without arms, found by M. Vibraye at Laugerie-Basse, and known by the name of the immodest Venus; a drawing representing a man, or so-called hunter, armed with a bow, and pursuing a male auroch, going with its head down and of a fierce aspect; the man is perfectly naked, and wears a pointed beard. Other designs of the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... chaste woman should not allow her navel, thighs, or breasts to be seen by males; nor should she remain without an upper garment (anuttariya), nor should she look at (the antics of) buffoons, nor associate with an immodest woman. ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... not of high, pure thoughts to young men, but a spring of low temptations and impure suggestions, I do not blame the young girls here; but surely the severest blame is due to the criminal folly, or worse, of their mothers, who must know what the consequences of immodest dressing necessarily are to the inflammable ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... though it is true that we did that until several hundred years ago. Their music, too, is so funny, it is more like noise; and as for their singing, it is only very loud talking. Then their women are so immodest; striding about in ball-rooms with very little on, and embracing strange men in a whirligig which they call dancing, but very unlike the dignified movements which our male dancers exhibit in the Confucian temple. Their men ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... lightly daunted by a maiden's first "No," a sudden shrill, wild burst of laughter, accompanied with a gusty fit of unmelodious music from the street below, made both maiden and youth start, and turn their eyes; there, weaving their immodest dance, tawdry in their tinsel attire, their naked arms glancing above their heads, as they waved on high ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... first act, to be felony, without benefit of clergy.[****] They made small progress in that important work which they professed to have so much at heart, the settling of a new model of representation, and a bill was introduced into the house against painting, patches, and other immodest dress of women; but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... with Arkwright, he examined her toilette. He thought it startling—audacious in its display of shoulders and back—until he got over his dazed, dazzled feeling, and noted the other women about. Wild horses could not have dragged it from him, but he felt that this physical display was extremely immodest; and at the same time that he eagerly looked his face burned. "If I do pick one of these," said he to himself, "I'm jiggered if I let her appear in public dressed this way. Why, out home women ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... our present fashionable evening costume is immodest, of necessity impugn the modesty of the women who wear it. That they are wanting in fineness of perception must be admitted. But women of fashion accept without question the dictum of their modistes. La Belle Hamilton, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... everybody against herself by the way in which she published her husband's faults. I find it difficult to believe either sort. To praise one's husband is so like praising one's self, that to me it seems immodest, and subject to the same suspicion as self-laudation; while to blame one's husband, even justly and openly, seems to me to border upon treachery itself. How, then, am I to discharge a sort of half duty my father has laid ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... so coarsely built, that you can never appreciate a shade of meaning. You are yourselves rapacious, violent, immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least thought for the future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience with such stuff. You would despise in a common banker the imbecility that you expect ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... honourable, signifying "learned," "enlightened," "pure," became a term of horror and scorn, a reproach of heresy. Saint Epiphanius, in the third century, claimed that they used first to tickle each other, the men and the women; that then they gave each other very immodest kisses, and that they judged the degree of their faith by the voluptuousness of these kisses; that the husband said to his wife, in presenting a young initiate to her: "Have an agape with my brother," and ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... good authors. However, if it were only those persons of different sexes united in a bewitching apartment, decorated rouge, those lights, those effeminate voices, all this must, in the long-run, engender a certain mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts and impure temptations. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the Fathers. Finally," he added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice while he rolled a pinch of snuff between his fingers, "if the Church has condemned the theatre, she must be right; ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... major excommunication and imprisonment against those who amuse themselves by celebrating bacchanals in churches, masked, disguised, and crowned "with leaves or flowers"; all this about 1250. The statutes of University Hall, 1292, prohibit the fellows from fighting, from holding immodest conversations together, from telling each other love tales, "fubulas de amasiis," ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... from the pink-globed lamp on the table, and in the soft, shadowy radiance she was as beautiful as a dream. She wore a dress of crepe, cut low in the neck. Estella had never seen anyone dressed so before. To her it seemed immodest. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Can't you keep your hands off? Why surely, sir, if you were sane or had a particle of sense about you, when you think your wife is immodest and tell her so yourself, you wouldn't hold any conversation with her at all in jest or earnest, unless you were the silliest of ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... by virtue of prevailing fashions, and have been therefore regarded immoral. And herein lies an important point to be considered. Anything which is radically unlike prevailing standards or styles to which we have become accustomed will impress most persons as being immodest or indecent. The unusual in dress is usually denounced as immoral because we are all prone to allow our prejudice to obscure our reason and o'ersway our judgment. This point must be recognized before any real reform can be accomplished. When humanity has grown sufficiently ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... folk a decollete gown was considered immodest. In order to be correct the collar must cover the throat, as nearly to the chin and ears as possible. Sukey's dresses were built upon this plan, much to her regret; for her throat and bosom were as white and plump—but never mind the description. They suited Sukey, and so far as I have ever ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... who has reached years of discretion, should from time to time correspond with her fiance. The letters all being sent to the girl's father, he forwards them to me, and the fear lest any fellow-student should know of so immodest a proceeding always leads the girl to read them in my room, and place them in my hand for safe keeping. It was enlightening to receive a request on one occasion that I would, at the close of term, return "those letters ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... my Perolla," he said softly. "That is because you have not felt her hand tremble, and because you are too young and too much of a philosopher to judge of the honesty of a woman's face. The same instinct that tells me, doubtless warned Hannibal also that this was not a courtesan, much less an immodest woman well born, and, least of all, a coward who would flee her city, or a traitress who would betray it. You will know more of such things, my Perolla, when you learn to study them less." Then, turning ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... upon them—to the neglect of all discipline, and to the disregard of the penalties. Those that have been transported to this country live in a manner which does not in any thing show that they have made a vow to God of even trifling privations. Their lives are so free and immodest that it might be suspected, with reason, that they had renounced only that which they could not, or ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... he had been almost immodest to show his sacred sorrow to the public; and though he did not foresee the anger his article would provoke, he knew the lack of comprehension, the coarse comments, which ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... as a saint, and as a sage among his fellows. God grant that such a misstep may not have already determined your future! Because the Dominicans and Augustinians look with disdain on the guingon habit, the rope girdle, and the immodest foot-wear, because a learned doctor in Santo Tomas [75] may have once recalled that Pope Innocent III described the statutes of that order as more fit for hogs than men, don't believe but that all of them work hand in hand to affirm what a preacher ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... compounded of bewilderment and defiance, on her face when my eyes fell on her, and it changed to one that pleased me still better (which I won't describe) when our eyes met. You, you unbelieving dog, think that because she is "strong-minded" she must be repulsive and immodest. But there is a charming ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... out—"No, my dear Peter, not that, nor all the force on earth, shall ever part me from you. But I conceive you are afraid you shall discover something in me you may not like. I fear not that; but an immodest appearance before you I cannot suffer myself to be guilty of, but under your own command."—"My lovely Youwarkee," says I, "delay then my desires no longer; and since you require a warrant from me, I do command you to do it" Immediately ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... themselves, they treat of adventures, in great part amorous and often immodest. In this particular they are scarcely less objectionable than those of Boccaccio. They differ from the latter in the circumstance that the author's avowed purpose is to insert none but actual occurrences. They are distinguished ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... in the first place, running, and all active pastimes; in short, I was that which we graver people call a hoyting girl; but to be just to myself, I never did mischief to myself or people, nor one immodest word or action in my life, though skipping and activity was my delight, but upon my mother's death, I then began to reflect, and, as an offering to her memory, I flung away those childnesses that had formerly possessed me, and, by my father's command, took upon me charge of his house and family, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... she had yielded to it she despised herself. Even in the excitement of pleasure she could not entirely forget and lose herself. The image of mademoiselle always arose before her, with her stern, motherly face. Germinie did not become immodest in the same degree that she abandoned herself to her passions and sank lower and lower in vice. The degrading depths to which she descended did not fortify her against her disgust and horror of herself. Habit did not harden her. Her defiled conscience ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... exclamation the fugitives found their way opposed by a woman, who looked at them with immodest eyes and said, "Dirck Van Dara, your sire, in wig and bob, turned us Cyprians out of New York, after ducking us in the Collect. But we forgive him, and to prove it we ask you ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... obliged to Mrs. Alderman Head,' said Purcell sarcastically. 'Lucy knows very well what I think of an unchristian and immodest amusement. Other people must decide according to their conscience, I ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I could not forget that," replied the maiden. As she spoke, she hastily withdrew her eyes from an immodest picture, on which they had accidentally rested; and, blushing deeply, she added, "But there is something so life-like in that slumbering marble, that for a moment I almost feared ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... be performed for them by men. The visits of male acquaintances were continually received in their bed-rooms, and that, also, before they had risen in the morning. This, perhaps, was too much, though certainly far less indecent than the other most revolting of all immodest practices which I have just mentioned. Others, again, admitted no visitors further than their dressing-room, and thought themselves very scrupulous; but there were others, as there must be at all times, who, with feelings ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... is looked upon to be unlucky to talk of Dreams at Table, and it is immodest to bring forth before so many Men; but this Dream, or this Conception of thy Mind, be it what it ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... where the highly honorable authorities had assigned them quarters during the fair. "Shut your eyes, Sara," said the Rabbi. For indeed these fantastic, and altogether too scantily clad women, among whom were a few really beautiful girls, behaved in a most immodest manner, baring their bold, white breasts, chaffing those who went by with shameless words, and swinging their long walking sticks; and using the latter as hobby-horses, they rode down toward the gate of St. Katherine, singing in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to inquire for employment. A few days after the sham duel, Harrison determined to play a trick on another emigrant, a shrewd, tolerably well-informed young man, who had evinced a great deal of self-complacency and immodest pertinacity. He told the pertinacious emigrant, who inquired for a place, that he had not, himself, anything that could engage his attention, but that he had a friend (alluding to me) who was now in town, who was extensively ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... puts a nervous tax upon the children; the proximity of so many bright and moving objects taxes the eyes; the splash of gaudy and gross advertisements creates a fevered imagination; slang, profanity, and vulgarity lend a smart effect; the merchant's tempting display often leads to theft, and the immodest dress of women produces an evil effect upon the mind of the overstimulated adolescent boy; opportunities to elude observation and to deceive one's parents abound; social control weakens; ideals become ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... immodest in it," said Mrs Bosenna looking up. She was on her knees and had just finished pressing the earth about the roots of a small rose-bush. "The house is mine, and naturally I am curious to know ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... ape-like; but the Jewesses were glorious specimens of feminine creation. They were somewhat too bold, perhaps; there was too much daring in their eyes, as, with their naked shoulders and bosoms nearly bare, they met the eyes of the men that were looking at them. But there was nothing immodest in their audacity; it was defiant rather, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... "villainy is no bad weapon against villainy"[667] taught people the bad practice of standing on one's defence against vice by imitating it; but to get rid of those who shamelessly and unblushingly importune us by their own effrontery, and not to gratify the immodest in their disgraceful desires through false modesty, is the right and proper conduct ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... heed of affecting immodest apparel, or a wanton gait; this will be evil both abroad and at home; abroad, it will not only give ill example, but also tend to tempt to lust and lasciviousness; and at home it will give an offence to a godly husband, and be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fairies, were only agents for undertakers, were ruled out. The Night Dogs of the Wicked Hunter Annum, the monster Afang, Cadwallader's Goats, and various, cruel goblins and ogres, living in the ponds, and that pulled cattle down to eat them up, and the immodest mermaids, whose bad behavior was so well known, were crossed off the list ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... and that they are unworthy of appearing in his presence. This was practised before Sir Joseph Banks, when he received the visits of two female Otaheitans. Their innocent simplicity, no doubt, did not appear immodest in the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... adorned with gold, jewels, costly or gaudy array, or immodest clothing, we must needs look for the root in the heart. There is where the trouble lies. There is the seat of the desire. It is useless to take off the externals while the internal corruption is permitted ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... want of, want of sense —, emblems right meet of Deed, so shines a good —without a name Deeds, ill done —, we live in Deep, vasty, spirits from the —yet clear —, in the lowest, a lower Deer, let the strucken, go weep Defence, immodest words admit of no Defer, 'tis madness to Degrees, fine by Deliberation sat and public care Delight to pass away the time —in this fool's paradise Delightful task Democraty, wielded at will that fierce Den, beard the lion in his Denied, lie comes too near who comes to be Denmark, something rotten ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... wondered perhaps how it was that I, who was so young, should be entrusted with such matters as these. Here then, I am bound to say, however immodest it may appear, that I have had always the art of making friends easily and of commending myself quickly. I had lived too in the societies of both Paris and Rome; and I had the accomplishments of a gentleman as well as his blood. I was thought a pleasant ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... we find more real"vice" in many a short French roman, say La Dame aux Camelias, and in not a few English novels of our day than in the thousands of pages of the Arab. Here we have nothing of that most immodest modern modesty which sees covert implication where nothing is implied, and "improper" allusion when propriety is not outraged; nor do we meet with the Nineteenth Century refinement; innocence of the word not of the thought; morality of the tongue not of the heart, and the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... certain dreadful innocence about them too, as though each would protest, "In spite of our tasks, our often immodest tasks, our minds are ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... and I, particularly, are pretty much upon a par. The difference between us is only, what they think, I act. But the immodest ones out-do the worst of us by a bar's length, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the end of the honeymoon that I think it can hardly be immodest if I emerge from private life and write you a letter, more particularly as I want to know something. I went yesterday on an expedition to see the remains of a forest which exists between tidemarks at a place called Amroth, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... respect, are curiously contradictory. Thus, while both sexes freely mingle in the bath, in a state of nature, while the women unhesitatingly scrub, rub and dry their husbands, brothers or male friends, while the salutation for both sexes is an embrace with the right arm, a kiss is considered grossly immodest and improper. A Finnish woman expressed the greatest astonishment and horror, at hearing from Mr. Wolley that it was a very common thing in England for a husband and wife to kiss each other. "If my husband were to attempt such a thing," said ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... lady fell hopelessly in love with my father at Bath. She gave out that he was not to be for one moment accused of having encouraged her by secret addresses. It was her unsolicited avowal—thought by my aunt Dorothy immodest, not by me—that she preferred him to all living men. Her name was Anna Penrhys. The squire one morning received a letter from her family, requesting him to furnish them with information as to the antecedents ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the open country where the roads were filled with grass and dust. He noticed with a pang that the ivy had been torn from the church and that the glazed brick walls flaunted a nudity that was almost immodest. He had remembered it as a bower of shade—a gigantic bird's nest. He saw that ancient elms were rapidly decaying, and when he reached the judge's garden he found that the syringa and the lilacs had vanished. The garden had faced the ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... ornament to his calling. She was a young widow when he married her, and had been a merchant's wife by whom he had a good estate, and was a godly woman; and because she wore such apparel as she had been formerly used to, which were neither excessive nor immodest, for their chiefest exception were against her wearing of some whalebone in the bodice and sleeves of her gown, corked shoes and other such like things as the citizens of her rank then used to wear. And although, for offence sake, she and he were willing to reform the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... hot. She hid her Reader hastily. Somehow she felt that she had been immodest. The next day Emmy Lou's Reader came to school discreetly swathed ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... Schiller's William Tell, Act IV, Scene 3.] to drink, that it will lie down quiet and forgotten, in its old corner.—One ought to learn anew about cruelty, and open one's eyes; one ought at last to learn impatience, in order that such immodest gross errors—as, for instance, have been fostered by ancient and modern philosophers with regard to tragedy—may no longer wander about virtuously and boldly. Almost everything that we call "higher culture" is based upon the spiritualising and intensifying of CRUELTY—this ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... voices. Some women were there, fat and garish for the most part, liberally powdered and painted, and crowned with hats at which Paris would have stared almost in fear. There were also children, dark, even swarthy, with bold eyes, shrill voices, immodest bearing, who looked as if they had long since received the ugly freedom of the streets, and learned lessons ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... red Than brick to coral, or live things to dead. {245b} Why did he then thus counterfeit her looks? If she did blush, 'twas tender modest shame, Being in the sacred presence of a king; If he did blush, 'twas red immodest shame To vail his eyes amiss, being a king; If she looked pale, 'twas silly woman's fear To bear herself in presence of a king; If he looked pale, it was with guilty fear To dote amiss, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the bride's festival. The bridegroom hardly counts. Nay, love, you need fear no immodest fooling when you bid good night to the company; nor shall there be any scuffling for garters at the door of your chamber. There was none of that antique nonsense when Lady Sandwich married her daughter. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... made the best possible use of the various quarries to which they had access is unlikely. Even if they credited themselves with having done so, it would be immodest of them to say it. Better material than any that their researches brought to light may still be lying near the surface, somewhere close at hand, waiting to be unearthed. Certainly this paper will not have been written in vain if it ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... which was brown and cut short over the ears. It was possibly the first time that some of those young monks seated behind their elders had ever seen a woman's hair. She wore hose like a youth. To them her dress appeared immodest and abominable.[2212] She exasperated and irritated them. Had the Bishop of Beauvais insisted on her appearing in hood and gown their anger against her would have been less violent. This man's attire brought before their minds the works performed by the Maid in the camp ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... who did not reveal his character in his works? Instead of instances from ancient history, I shall content myself with examples from our own time. No one can fail to see that many painters have sought a vulgar celebrity by immodest pictures. It is not credible that those artists can be virtuous, whose minds and fingers composed such works. We have also seen pictures minutely finished and fairly well coloured, wherein, it is true, the master showed a certain talent and industry; but art ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humour, of honour, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men. How few persons discuss superfluous bachelors, or whether the male arm or leg is an immodest sight, or whether men should vote. For ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... question which has not been discussed in these pages. Webster states the facts without exaggeration:[41] "For the most of them are not credible, by reason of their obscenity and filthiness; for chast ears would tingle to hear such bawdy and immodest lyes; and what pure and sober minds would not nauseate and startle to understand such unclean stories ...? Surely even the impurity of it may be sufficient to overthrow the credibility of it, especially among Christians." Professor ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... but one-half of the misery they suffer, and the bitter privations they endure, in their honourable attempts to earn a scanty subsistence, they would, perhaps, resign even opportunities for the gratification of vanity, and an immodest love of self-display, rather than drive them to a last dreadful resource, which it would shock the delicate feelings of these charitable ladies to ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... was cold, not hot. She said to herself, quietly, that she would write to David Richie, and tell him she had 'thought it over'; and that neither she nor her money was his, or any further concern of his. "He needn't trouble himself; there would be no more 'imprudence.' Oh, fool! fool! immodest fool! to have told him he 'could have her for the taking,' and he said it was 'long' for her to wait!" It was an unbearable recollection. "His," she had said; "soul and body." She saw again the written words that she had kissed, and she had an impulse to tear the flesh ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland |
