"Indecent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a look which I did n't understand at first. Presently I saw what it expressed; in my drawing-room he was off duty, he had no longer to sit up and play a part; he would lean back and rest and draw a long breath, and forget that the day of his execution was fixed. There was to be no indecent haste about the marriage; it was not to take place till after the session, at the end of August It puzzled me and rather distressed me. that his heart should n't be a little more in the matter; it seemed strange to be engaged ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... three times, Veronica, on frivolous pretexts had entered his bedroom at night; and each time, he remembered well, she was in somewhat indecent undress, which contrasted strangely with ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... seriousness of life by means of gewgaws of which he was sick. Still; once at her rich breast, he forgave and forgot all. He preferred her simple natural breast to more modern inventions. And he had no shame, no modesty. Nor had his mother. It was an indecent carouse at which his father and Miss Insull had to assist. But his father had shame. His father would have preferred that, as Miss Insull had kindly offered to stop and work on Thursday afternoon, and as the shop was chilly, the due rotation should have brought the bottle round ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... English language and second in the language of the Hebrews, Frederick called his fellow- lodgers together earlier than usual on the evening before Thanksgiving Day. He explained to them, in the patois which they used together, that it would be indecent for them to carry this supply of food farther than next Monday for their own purposes. He told them that the occasion was one of exuberant thanksgiving to the God of heaven. He showed them that they all had great reason for thanksgiving. And, in short, he made three ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... regret to say that these prognostications of Mr. Pott's were but too soon, and too fatally realised, for in almost the next issue of the Independent, we find a scandalous and indecent attack on our late beloved Mr. Pickwick. Shocking as it is, we cannot forbear, in duty to the deceased gentleman, presenting it ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... will," said Mr. Traveller. "Why should you take it ill that I have no curiosity to know why you live this highly absurd and highly indecent life? When I contemplate a man in a state of disease, surely there is no moral obligation on me to be anxious to know how ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... is done is by no means similar. Smollet's continuation of Hume was confessedly a bookseller's job: four octavo volumes in only ten times the number of months, even in our days of locomotive celerity, would be thought rather a suspicious piece of literary handiwork; and besides the indecent haste, so incompatible with thoroughness, the misrepresentations of Smollet are patent. Goldsmith, as unambitious in research as he was genial in expression, made so agreeable a story, that, with all its imperfection, his sketch still finds readers; while the rarely quoted work ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... that many burgesses were not satisfied with the remonstrance against the Stamp Act in December. Although he described the remonstrance as "very warm and indecent", he told the Board of Trade the original version was much more inflammatory and its language was "mollified" so that the Assembly could convey its opposition to the Stamp Tax without giving the "least offense" to crown and parliament. Fauquier also observed ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... take him for all and all, a man—eats out his heart for you; desires only to live for you, only to die for you, only to lie at your feet afterward—that is nothing to you. You do not even care to listen. You would rather hear through a braggart, indecent mouth that ought to be sewed up what Rodin said about Phidias. It seems finer to you to be an artist than a woman, and you so ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... grief, felt such wrath rise within him the like of which he had never experienced before. It was for this that like a vulgar person, he addressed the preceptor's son who was worthy of every respect, in such unworthy, indecent, bitter, and harsh language. Addressed, from wrath, in such harsh and cruel words by Partha, O king, Drona's son, that foremost of all mighty bowmen, became highly angry with Partha and especially with Krishna. The valiant Aswatthaman, then, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... mother assumed the office of guardian and regent of the state. This lady, whose name has also been lost in oblivion, did not long remain single. After her second marriage, which apparently took place with a somewhat indecent hurry, there was born to {116} her and her new consort, a young son. To secure to this son the inheritance, she sold her little daughter, too young to realize the unfortunate transaction, to some traders of Xicalango, who in turn disposed of her to a coast tribe of Aztecs called ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Bheraghat. On our way we met a party of women and girls coming to the fair. Their legs were uncovered half-way up the thigh; but, as we passed, they all carefully covered up their faces. 'Good God!' exclaimed one of the ladies, 'how can these people be so very indecent?' They thought it, no doubt, equally extraordinary that she should have her face uncovered, while she so carefully concealed her legs; for they were really all modest peasantry, going from the village to bathe in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... myself I have musical taste, but Back and Belly Maker (piano) I consider vulgar—almost indecent, in fact. Such anatomical intimacy with the piano would destroy for me the bewitchment of the ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... personal insults to Major de Barner and his character; second, that Despin might pay the expenses of preparing and making out writings; and third, that the said Robin, the notary, may be equally punished for using expressions in his acts hurtful and indecent to persons of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... always did what was wrong, and liked it—nearly always. But I suppose I was fated. I was bound to get into a hole, and I'm in it now, with one lung, and a wife in prospect to support. I suppose if I were to write down all the decent things I've thought in my life, and put them beside the indecent things I've done, nobody would believe the same man was responsible for them. I'm one of the men who ought to be put above temptation; be well bridled, well fed, and the mere cost of comfortable living provided, and then I'd do big things. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to firing occasionally, they called us all sorts of bad names, made indecent gestures, and aggravated us, so that between 3 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon, by an inexplicable concert of action, and with a serious breach of discipline, a large number of the men and many of the officers broke en masse from the camp with loud yells and charged ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... play last night. It was a bespeak—"The Love Chase," a ballet (with a phenomenon!), divers songs, and "A Roland for an Oliver." It is a good theatre, but the actors are very funny. Browne laughed with such indecent heartiness at one point of the entertainment, that an old gentleman in the next box suffered the most violent indignation. The bespeak party occupied two boxes, the ladies were full-dressed, and the gentlemen, to a man, in white gloves with flowers in their button-holes. It amused us mightily, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... historical truth, however, the attempt must be made. We are sometimes told that 'historical truth can afford to wait'. That may be true; but it has waited for nearly four centuries, and, if it be divulged in English now, the revelation lays us open to no reasonable charge of indiscretion or indecent haste. ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... our parliamentary government and our serious middle class. We are incapable of sending Mr. Gladstone to be tried at the Old Bailey because he proclaims his antipathy to Lord Beaconsfield. A majority in our House of Commons is incapable of hailing, with frantic laughter and applause, a string of indecent jests against Christianity and its Founder. But we are not, or were not incapable of producing a Parliament which burns or sells the masterpieces of Italian art. And one may surely say of such a Puritan Parliament, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the appearance of the elder aunts almost shocked her. At the first glance they seemed bedizened and indecent in their mixture of rouge and more than middle age; but at the second and the third they became attractive, oddly distinguished. She felt sure of them, of their sympathy, of her ability to please them. It was Aunt Rose who made her feel ill at ease, and it was Aunt Rose ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... the father of Kallias, a man of great wealth and noble birth, a blow with his fist, not being moved to it by anger, or any dispute, but having agreed previously with his friends to do so for a joke. When every one in the city cried out at his indecent and arrogant conduct, Alkibiades next morning at daybreak came to the house of Hipponikus, knocked, and came to him. Here he threw off his cloak, and offered him his body, bidding him flog him and punish him for what he had done. Hipponikus, however, pardoned him, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Then: "Dal," she said, "I do hate singing before that sort of audience. It is like giving them your soul to look at, and you don't want them to see it. It seems indecent. To my mind, music is the most REVEALING thing in the world. I shiver when I think of that song, and yet I daren't do less than my best. When the moment comes, I shall live in the song, and forget the audience. Let me tell you a lesson I once had from ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... the proof before him. The indignation and stupefaction of the author can be well understood when he was told that the printer, instead of returning the proofs to him, submitted them to the publisher, with the emphatic declaration that the matter thereof was so indecent, irreligious, and improper that his proof- reader—a young lady—had with difficulty been induced to continue its perusal, and that he, as a friend of the publisher and a well-wisher of the magazine, was impelled to present to him personally ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... mistress and his daughters—he had repudiated his wife—in disreputable peace until 1789, when he was condemned to a year's imprisonment for a lampoon on the Prussian religious edict of 1788. His year's enforced leisure he spent in writing indecent stories, coarse polemics, and an autobiography which is described as "a mixture of lies, hypocrisy and self-prostitution." He died on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... on the south side of the Alps. We must take care not to rejoice too soon, when we meet among these men a figure which seems immaculate; on further inquiry there is always a danger of meeting with some foul charge, which, even if it is incredible, still discolors the picture. The mass of indecent Latin poems in circulation, and such things as ribaldry on the subject of one's own family, as in Pontano's dialogue 'Antonius,' did the rest to discredit the class. The sixteenth century was not only familiar with all these ugly symptoms, but had also grown tired of the type ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... their means the allurement which the wholly or especially the half-undraped form has for us, becomes softened and purified. The enjoyment of beauty itself is the enjoyment of something divine; and it is only through a coarse, indecent, and already infected imagination, belonging to a general sensuality, that it degenerates into excitement."[13] "Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of beauty and grace, amid fair sights and sounds; and beauty, the ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... co-religionists. Those people were so absolutely free from superstition that they ascribed anything a little out of the common to Agencies. As it was their business to know all about the Agencies, they were on terms of almost indecent familiarity with Manifestations of every kind. Their letters dropped from the ceiling—unstamped—and Spirits used to squatter up and down their staircases all night; but they had never come into ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... of decorum, the master of the shop turned to his wife, (a very pretty woman, and dressed even to a plumed head)—shew Monsieur the little miniature, said he; she then opened a drawer and took out a book, (I think it was her mass-book) and brought me a picture, so indecent, that I defy the most debauched imagination to conceive any thing more so; yet she gave it me with a seeming decent face, and only observed that it was bien fait. After examining it with more attention than I should, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... compliments with a modest deportment; he lamented the misfortune of the captive King, as a striking example of the sad reverse of fortune to which the most powerful monarchs are subject; he forbade any public rejoicings, as indecent in a war carried on among Christians, reserving them until he should obtain a victory equally illustrious over the infidels; and seemed to take pleasure, in the advantage which he had gained, only as it would prove the occasion of restoring ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... discovered secrets, and plainly knows them, from his wonderful effects of colour on canvas—not merely in words. His portrait of Miss Cushman is a miracle. Gibson's famous painted Venus is very pretty—that's my criticism. Yes, I will say besides that I have seldom, if ever, seen so indecent a statue. The colouring with an approximation to flesh tints produces that effect, to my apprehension. I don't like this statue colouring—no, not at all. Dearest Miss Mitford, will you write to me? I don't ask for a long letter, but a letter—a letter. And I entreat you not ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... spend on yourself; and you ain't overworked, and you'll find out you'll be overworked and have a whole raft of young ones, and not a cent of wages, except enough to keep soul and body together, and just enough to wear so you won't be took up for going round indecent. I've seen enough of such ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... comunale di Fiume, and from it one could see that in the local cemetery the blessed principle of self-determination was in fetters. Chapter iii. lays down that all inscriptions must have the approval of the civic body. You are warned that they will not approve of sentences or words which are indecent, and that they prohibit all expressions and allusions that might give offence to anyone, to moral corporations, to religions, or which are notoriously false. No doubt, in practice, they waive the last stipulation, so that the survivors may give praise to famous ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... positively indecent," Fanny observed afterward; "she is as bold as brass. I hope I am not as ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... suit—fast. But there are a few of the hoity-toity places on Eros and Ceres and a few of the other well-settled places where a man or woman is required to put on shorts and jacket before entering. And in good old New York City, a man and woman were locked up for "indecent exposure" a few months ago. The judge threw the case out of court, but he told them they were lucky they hadn't been picked up in Boston. It seems that the eye of the bluenose turns a jaundiced yellow at the sight of a union ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the prompt communication between some two of the wealthiest and wickedest of His children with whom God has ever had patience. No; these telegraph poles are ugly and detestable, they are inhuman and indecent. But their baseness lies in their privacy, not in their publicity. That black stick with white buttons is not the creation of the soul of a multitude. It is the mad creation of ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... the management of servants, the bourgeois adds a few words respecting their morality. He recommends that they be not permitted to use coarse or indecent language, or to insult one another (Fig. 61). Although he is of opinion that necessary time should be given to servants at their meals, he does not approve of their remaining drinking and talking too long at table: concerning which practice he quotes a proverb in use at that time: "Quand ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... I was struck with the number of indecent photographs by no means to be confounded with works of art, in the windows of shops in the Rue de Rivoli, and indeed almost everywhere; such photographs, as we should never allow to be exhibited in London, yet here nothing ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... morning of the 16th to go to the outposts at Issy. The departure was what all departures of marching battalions must fatally be—copious and multiplied libations between parting friends, paternal handshakings in cabarets, patriotic and bacchic songs, loose and indecent choruses—in a word, the picturesque exhibition of all that arsenal of gaiety and courage which is the appanage of an ancient Gallic race. The old troopers, who pretend to govern us by the sword, do not approve of this joyous mode of regarding death; ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... taken with indecent laughter, and turned away, while ninety summers observed, "Of course them boys would cut the wire if they knew ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... arose may be answered very briefly. The Church ordained that marriage is indissoluble, but, this being found impossible to maintain in practice, the State stepped in with a way of escape—a kind of emergency exit. But what a makeshift it is! how flagrantly indecent! how inconsistent! Adultery must be committed. To escape the degradation of an unworthy partner another partner must first be sought, and love degraded in an act of infidelity. Adultery is, in fact, a State-endowed offence against morality, just as the indissolubility ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... indication that he heard or was interested in what was said. Solomon therefore turned to his old companions, whose noses were brightly illuminated by the deep red glow from the bowls of their pipes; assured, by long experience, of their attention, and resolved to show his sense of such indecent behaviour. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... dance what is known as the "half time," or the "part time" waltz. This is a dance accompanied by a swaying and contorting of the hips, most indecent in its suggestion. It is really a very primitive form of the dance, and probably goes back to the pagan harvest and bacchic festivals. You may see traces of it in certain crude peasant dances in out-of-the-way corners of Europe. Now they teach it to immigrant girls in New York dancing academies and ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... and from the town I looked to the four quarters of heaven. I may have seen across into Old Mexico. No sign labels the boundary; the vacuum of continent goes on, you might think, to Patagonia. Symptoms of neighboring Mexico basked on the sand heaps along Sharon's spacious avenues—little torpid, indecent gnomes in sashes and open rags, with crowning-steeple straw hats, and murder dozing in their small black eyes. They might have crawled from holes in the sand, or hatched out of brown cracked pods on some weeds that trailed through the broken bottles, the old shoes, and the wire fences. Outside ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... child," thought Donald, although his exasperation was directed rather at himself, than at her. "It's positively indecent the way she gets inside one. Judged by the standards of her class, Marion is a splendid girl—head and shoulders above the average—yet these unconsciously searching questions of Smiles' are ... Hang it all, I wish I had had sense enough not to ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... this case to take no fee from the bankrupt, nor to use any indecent or uncivil behaviour to the family (which is a most notorious abuse now permitted to the sheriff's officers), whose fees I have known, on small executions, on pretence of civility, amount to as much as the debt, and yet behave themselves with ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... contest suddenly sprung up among the tribunes. Each represented himself as a fitter person to take the lead in the war, and scorned the management of the city as disagreeable and inglorious. When the senate beheld with surprise the indecent contention between the colleagues, Quintus Servilius says, "Since there is no respect either for this house, or for the commonwealth, parental authority shall set aside this altercation of yours. My son, without ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... refractory districts to the Papal sway. For these services they were rewarded with ducal and princely titles, with the administration of their conquests, and with the investiture of fiefs as vassals of the Church. The system had its obvious disadvantages. It tended to indecent nepotism; and as Pope succeeded Pope at intervals of a few years, each bent on aggrandizing his own family at the expense of those of his predecessors and the Church, the ecclesiastical States were kept in a continual ferment of expropriation and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... obstacle to the salvation of the world? Is he not surprised to find that Ireland, with its thousand and ten thousand tales of horror, its brutal outrages on helpless women, its chronic incendiarism, its myriads of indecent anonymous letters addressed to young girls, such as I have seen filed by the ream in Irish police-stations—Ireland with its moonlighting atrocities, its barbarous boycotting of helpless children, its poisoning of wells and water supply, its mutilation of ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... invade our livings, it is our plain order and opinion, that where such Romish knaves come, they shall be cast into prison and punished in such a manner, as that henceforth we shall be rid of them. Because the priesthood, in some part at least, have been guilty of wicked deeds, altogether improper and indecent, which, if they had been committed by the laity, would have been punished with death; and these evil-doers, when handed over to the bishops and the superiors of their orders, have been lightly dealt with and set free, and because crime and follies increase among them, and give ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... their presence, and it has yet to be proved that they took offence at this unbecoming liberty. The songs which were composed at Carnival time were dedicated to the ladies especially, and yet in all literature it would be difficult to find anything more indecent. Society was simply in a crude state so far as its ideas of decency and delicacy were concerned, and both men and women were often lacking in what are now considered to be the most elementary notions of propriety. As the men were by far the more active and the more important members ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... treatise on the hygiene of the sexual life in either sex, written in the proper spirit by a scientific man. The field had been left to quacks or worse, who, to serve their own base ends, scattered inflammatory and often indecent pamphlets over the land; or else, had one or more of the points been handled by reputable writers, it was in such a vague and imperfect manner that the reader gained little benefit from the perusal. While ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... got to be only seven in less'n half an hour. Magdalene put shorter dresses on her and kept her in white and gave her shoes without any heels, and these little short socks that show a foot or so of bare leg and which is indecent, if fashionable. ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... for which youth and inexperience have ever been proverbial, she is impatient to measure her crude theories against the sure revelation of GOD'S Word. Where the two differ, she assumes that of course the inspired Oracles are wrong, and her own wild guesses right. She is even indecent in her eagerness to invalidate the testimony of that Book which has been the confidence and stay of GOD'S Servants in all ages. On any evidence, or on none, she is prepared to hurl to the winds the august record of Creation. Inconveniently enough for the enemies of GOD'S Word, every advance in ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... tumult, who were afraid, on their own account, lest I should punish them for what they had done, took six hundred armed men, and came to the house where I abode, in order to set it on fire. When this their insult was told me, I thought it indecent for me to run away, and I resolved to expose myself to danger, and to act with some boldness; so I gave order to shut the doors, and went up into an upper room, and desired that they would send in some of their men to receive the money [from the spoils] ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... endeavor, the status of woman was no better than the general conditions of the time. This Age of Faith is characterized by "the violence and knavery that covered the whole country, the plagues and famines that decimated towns and villages every few years, the flood of spurious and indecent relics, the degradation of the clergy and monks, the slavery of the serfs, the daily brutalities of the ordeal and the torture, the course and bloody pastimes, the insecurity of life, the triumphant ravages of disease, the check ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... careering about with that dexterity and grace for which the Arickaras are noted. As soon as a horse was purchased, his tail was cropped, a sure mode of distinguishing him from the horses of the tribe; for the Indians disdain to practice this absurd, barbarous, and indecent mutilation, invented by some mean and vulgar mind, insensible to the merit and perfections of the animal. On the contrary, the Indian horses are suffered to remain in every respect the superb and beautiful animals ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... to find that every basin is left by the housemaid with cold water in it, and there it stands waiting at all seasons; but such a thing as warm water is considered positively indecent, and the servant generally looks as if she would fall down with amazement at the mention of such a strange ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... house in the village which was remarkable from its wretchedness. It had an air of indecent poverty about it, which long prevented my attempting an entrance; but at length, upon being told that I could get chicken and eggs there whenever I wanted them, I determined upon venturing. The door being opened to my knock, I very nearly ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs—they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... niter, saltpeter, brine. Adj. salty, salt, saline, brackish, briny; salty as brine, salty as a herring, salty as Lot's wife. salty, racy (indecent) 961. Phr. take it with a grain ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... very good. Ask the prior to let you taste it, when on leaving this you go to breakfast with him. For the rest, you can assure yourself this instant of the truth of what I say to you." And he presented me the goblet to drink from. I resisted strongly, not only because I considered it indecent to give this invitation in the middle of the mass, but because, besides, I must own I conceived the thought for a moment that the monks wished, by poisoning me, to revenge themselves on me for M. Biot having insulted them. I found that I was mistaken, that my suspicions had no foundation; ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... the governor until his information was confirmed. The court of Versailles could hardly restrain their transports so as to preserve common decorum; the people of Paris openly rejoiced at the event; all decency was laid aside at Rome, where this incident produced such indecent raptures, that cardinal Grimani, the imperial minister, complained of them to the pope, as an insult on his master the emperor, who was William's friend, confederate, and ally. The French king despatched credentials to Barre, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... simply think that I have chosen to remain in my own house, Ellen. I don't see anything strange or indecent about that." ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... had warmed his hands sufficiently to be able to transfer them from the fire, he lifted the right palm, and with an indecent jocularity of spirits, accosted the ci-devant ornament of "The Asinaeum" with a sounding slap on his back, or some ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from the prohibition of these acts of folly, on to the prohibition of what I thought then were the maddest, most impossible, and most indecent things one could well imagine. A kind of rhythmic fervour fell on all of us; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing Law. Superficially the contagion of these brutes was upon me, but deep down within me the laughter and disgust struggled together. We ran through ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... master laughing! And, what was more dreadful still, despite the resentment of her conscience, her master's merriment so far affected herself that she could not repress a responsive smile! It was no less than indecent, and yet, even in that answering smile, her misery of six months' duration passed totally away, melted from her like a mist of the morning, so that she could not even recall the feeling of her lost unhappiness. But, might not her conscience be going to sleep? Was it ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... far as my opportunities and observation go, from the frequent imputation of telling indelicate and ribald stories. I saw much of him during his whole Presidential term, with familiar friends and alone, when he talked without restraint; but I never heard him use a profane or indecent word, or tell a story that might not be repeated in the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... never to desert them, withal they were cursing the country with lurid metaphors quite refreshing after a month of unimaginative, monotonous Cockney swearing. The Cockney has one oath, and one oath only, the most indecent in the language, which he uses on any and every occasion. Far different is the luminous and varied Western swearing, which runs to blasphemy rather than indecency. And after all, since men will swear, I think I prefer blasphemy to indecency; ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... soon dispelled any delusive doubts which, for the purpose of securing his election, he had permitted to be ventilated during the late Presidential campaign, that he would at least see fair play in the struggle between Slavery and Freedom in Kansas. With indecent zeal and unscrupulous partisanship, he concentrated all the energies of his administration, and employed the whole force of the influence and the patronage of the nation, to obtain the indorsement by Congress of the Lecompton Constitution, and thus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... usually be well worth looking through, for the more intelligent editors of the days to come will edit this department just like any other, and classify their advertisements in a descending scale of freshness and interest that will also be an ascending scale of price. The advertiser who wants to be an indecent bore, and vociferate for the ten millionth time some flatulent falsehood about a pill, for instance, will pay at nuisance rates. Probably many papers will refuse to print nasty and distressful advertisements about people's insides ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... a small cardboard box, and a few grumbling comments upon the indecent hours and ways of circus performers, she withdrew, and Arithelli proceeded to cut the string and remove ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... matter with it? I see nothing indecent about it: I think it a very charming umbrella," says Molly, examining the article in question ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... bully, and to bring to light any act of injustice, making the unjust doer right the wronged one. They did their utmost to put a stop to swearing or to the use of bad language. They at once and with the exertion of their utmost energy put down all indecent conversation; and if they found any boy employing it, they held him up to the reprobation and contempt of their companions. Falsehood of every description, either black lying or white lying, they exhibited in its true ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... read the funeral service over the remains of my valued master. Not a single person listened to this peculiarly distressing ceremony, the slaves being at some distance, quarrelling and making a most indecent noise the whole time it lasted. This being done, the union jack was then taken off, and the body was slowly lowered into the earth, and I wept bitterly as I gazed for the last time upon all that remained of my ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... apparently without compunction, notwithstanding that the poor brute had served him well in its way. He cut up and smoke-dried the flesh, and the intolerable pangs of hunger compelled me to share the loathsome food with him. We were not only indecent, it seemed to me, but cannibals to feed on the faithful servant that had been our butcher. "But what does it matter?" I argued with myself. "All flesh, clean and unclean, should be, and is, equally abhorrent to me, and killing animals a kind of murder. But now I find myself constrained to ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... millions of people" (the number of Irishmen at the time he spoke) "but abandon all that they and their ancestors have been taught to believe sacred, and forswear it publicly in terms most degrading, scurrilous, and indecent, for men of integrity and virtue, and abuse the whole of their former lives, and slander the education they have received, and nothing more is required of them. There is no system of folly, or impiety, or blasphemy, or atheism, into ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... time that Eric heard indecent words in dormitory Number 7, he was shocked beyond bound or measure. Dark though it was, he felt himself blushing scarlet to the roots of his hair, and then growing pale again, while a hot dew was left upon his forehead. Ball was the speaker; ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... give him time!—it's positively indecent to rush a man who's gone through what that man's ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... characteristic, after living away all these years; though Madame de Maluet has tried to make Ellaline believe he's coming back to settle down because of a letter she wrote, reminding him respectfully that after nineteen it's almost indecent for a girl to be ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... replied the Sergeant, amid laughter at Terence's discovery, and his attempt at pronunciation; "but Washington was a man of earnestness and ability, and not a guzzler of whiskey, and a mouther of indecent profanity. There are good officers in that Corps. There is Meade, the fighter of the noble Pennsylvania Reserves; Warren, a gentleman as well as a soldier. Others might be named. Meritorious men, but kept in the background while the place-men, ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... Minnie, you know better! A strange young man.... Stop! I'll tell him—Minnie!—Miss Marsh!—I don't know though. There's something queer in her cloak as it blows. Oh, but it's untrue, it's indecent.... Look how he bends as they reach the gateway. She finds her ticket. What's the joke? Off they go, down the road, side by side.... Well, my world's done for! What do I stand on? What do I know? That's not Minnie. There never was Moggridge. ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... who are punctiliously proper for the purpose of covering their moral obliquities. The virtue of a prude is always to be suspected. "So you have been looking after the bad words," was savage old Dr. Johnson's reply to the very proper woman who found fault with him for introducing so many indecent words into his dictionary. There are few men who have not frequently, during their lives, broken their way through a crust of punctilious propriety into hearts full of all the blackness of sensuality and sin. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... landlord, "move out of the way, and allow the corpse to pass out. Let me have no indecent conduct; let everything be as ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... movement to which it gave birth has ever since assumed the same name. It is not my intention to dwell on the grave incidents that followed, the prolonged agony of "the shootings of the Rebel leaders," the assassination of Mr Sheehy-Skeffington, the indecent scenes in the House of Commons when the Nationalist members behaved themselves with sad lack of restraint—cheering Mr Birrell's prediction that "the Irish people would never regard the Dublin Rebellion ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... trivial and much that is indecent, one farce stands out pre-eminent, and may indeed be called a comedy of manners and of character—the merry misfortunes of that learned advocate, Maitre Pierre Pathelin. The date is doubtless about 1470; the author, probably ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... against Sir Geoffrey Peveril as having proceeded with indecent severity and haste upon this occasion; and rumour took care to make the usual additions to the reality. It was currently reported, that the desperate Cavalier, Peveril of the Peak, had fallen on a Presbyterian congregation, while engaged in the peaceable exercise of religion, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... stunned her a little. The one-time writing-teacher of a young ladies' seminary, with her pretty deer-like eyes and delicate fingers, shrank from it. She did not want to look at so much wheat. There was something vaguely indecent in the sight, this food of the people, this elemental force, this basic energy, weltering here under the sun in all the unconscious nakedness of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... proceeded, generally in the middle of the night or about day-break, to the residence of the suspected person. The door, if not immediately opened, was broken in—the whole house ransacked—the men frequently beaten severely, and the ears of females insulted by the coarsest and most indecent language. ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of low intellect, of a fierce countenance, a saucy, swaggering, insolent manner, debauched in his morals beyond the grossness of that indecent age,—ostentatiously living in public concubinage,—a notorious swearer in public and private. But he knew no law above the will of the hand that fed and could advance him, no justice which might check the insolence of power. And in less than a month after Mr. Horne was sent to jail, Thurlow ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... of the passage with which Sterne's work closed shows increased perception and appreciation for the subtleness of Sterne's indecent suggestions, or, perhaps, agrowing lack of timidity or scruple in boldly repeating them. It is probable that the continuation by Eugenius, which had come into his hands during this period, had, with its resumption of the point, reminded ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... remember that exactly this thing would be sure to happen, by some abominable chance. Her movement as she rose was almost violent, she could not hold herself still, and her face was horribly wet with shameless, unconcealable tears. Shameless she felt them—indecent—a sort of nudity of the soul. If it had been a servant who had intruded, or if it had been Palliser it would have been intolerable enough. But it was T. Tembarom who confronted her with his common face, moved mysteriously by some feeling she ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... between him and Octavius in their orations. However, though they expressed themselves with the utmost heat and determination, they yet were never known to descend to any personal reproaches, or in their passion to let slip any indecent expressions, so as to derogate ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to suffer no little abuse in relation to those visits,—not by fellow prisoners, understand. They were taunted in the most vulgar, low, indecent language. One day it went so far with one, that he became aroused beyond endurance, and replied, "You know that is a —— —— lie," filling the blanks with two most profane words as qualifying "lie." On my next round he told me his trouble, what he had said, how he was being ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... people were so absolutely free from superstition that they ascribed anything a little out of the common to agencies. As it was their business to know all about the agencies, they were on terms of almost indecent familiarity with manifestations of every kind. Their letters dropped from the ceiling—unstamped—and spirits used to squatter up and down their staircases all night. But they had never come into contact with kittens. Lone Sahib wrote out the facts, noting the ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... country, have been the natural resort of boys, who would have revelled in the freedom of nakedness and the delight of bathing in forbidden waters; but in Cyprus I have never once seen a person washing himself in public. This is not from any sense of indecent exposure, but from their absolute dislike to the operation. I had subsequently in my service a remarkably fine man who was always carefully dressed, and in fact was quite a dandy in exterior, but during the hot ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... resuming his seat gazed at him with almost indecent expectancy. The skipper dropped some sugar into his coffee, and stirring it in a meditative ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... that question. Who was it made such an indecent fuss this morning because a poor fatherless and motherless babe cried? Who threatened to leave if that same poor babe wasn't sent to the workhouse? Answer me that, Mr Martin, and then tell me if you know nothing of the fate ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... sir, but there can be no indecent haste in these matters. In gaining the important position—in assuming the relations you desire— there should be some show of dignity, otherwise society would be disgusted, and you would lose the respect which ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... procession, you Frenchmen who pride yourselves on your gallantry, would you not have followed it with shouts of laughter? You and I see things with such different eyes, and perhaps we are both right. Such a procession formed of the fairest beauties of France would be an indecent spectacle; but let it consist of Roman ladies, you will all gaze with the eyes of the Volscians and feel ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... would be indecent to drive to Marcia's under the circumstances, and she walked; though with all the time this gave her for reflection she had not wholly banished this smile when she looked into Marcia's woe-begone eyes. But she found herself incapable of the awkwardnesses she had deliberated, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... poured out a blood-curdling story into semi-sympathetic ears. Barbara made short work of her contention that Jaffery ought to have respected her as he would have respected the wife of a living friend, characterising it as morbid and indecent nonsense; and with regard to the physical violence she declared that it would have served her right had ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... Italy, the Carnival songs were turned into pious hymns; the hymn Jesu fammi morire is sung to the music of Vaga bella e gentile—Crucifisso a capo chino to that of Una donna d'amor fino, one of the most indecent pieces in the Canzoni a ballo; and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the name of Allah into an indecent tale is essentially Egyptian and Cairene. But see Boccaccio ii. 6, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the Land Tax Budget, nor, as regards the future, is salvation of the English Tories. Should they ever return to power they will repeat their action respecting the Death Duties. Having in Opposition denounced the land taxes with indecent bitterness they will, when back in office, confirm and extend them. "Ulster" had far better cast in her lot with Ireland. She will find an Irish Assembly not only strikingly but, one might almost add, ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... complained of this strange method of huddling things together, and declared it highly unbecoming to see the grant made "in such a hotch-potch Bill—a Bill which really seems to be the sweepings of the other House." The Earl of Crawford declared it a most indecent thing to provide the marriage-portion of the Princess Royal of England in such a manner; "it is most disrespectful to the royal family." The Duke of Newcastle could only say in defence of the course taken ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... was one of those precarious ladies who make uncertain incomes by writing full-bodied storyettes. In the most dismal circumstances she enjoyed a buoyancy bordering on the indecent; which always amused old Heythorp's cynicism. But of his grandchildren Phyllis and Jock (wild as colts) he had become fond. And this chance of getting six thousand pounds settled on them at a stroke had seemed to him nothing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the gift of prophecy, asks Johnson what he would say if he were told that a hundred years after his death the Oxford University Press would allow his Dictionary to be re-edited by a Scotch Presbyterian. "Sir," replies Johnson, "to be facetious it is not necessary to be indecent." Here and here alone is something which ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... although I had never before had to contend with such powerful antagonists as the gossips, who affected to treat my knowledge upon such matters with ridicule, and my interference in them as preposterous and indecent. I ways, however, twattle proof; I heard all they had to say, but I stuck to my point like a hero; and I took care not to leave the house long at a time, for fear some scheme to thwart my views should be ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... reward, the church being crowded with people, who, in order to get employment, are willing to accept of a much smaller recompence than what such an education would otherwise have entitled them to; and in this manner the competition of the poor takes away the reward of the rich. It would be indecent, no doubt, to compare either a curate or a chaplain with a journeyman in any common trade. The pay of a curate or chaplain, however, may very properly be considered as of the same nature with the wages of a journeyman. They are all three paid for their work according to the ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... degraded by their gilded shops, wide-fuming, flaunting, glittering, with apparatus of eating or of dress. Splendor of palace-flank and goodly quay, insulted by floating cumber of barge and bath, trivial, grotesque, indecent, as cleansing vessels in a royal reception room. Solemn avenues of blossomed trees, shading puppet-show and baby-play; glades of wild-wood, long withdrawn, purple with faded shadows of blood; sweet windings and reaches of river far among the brown vines and white orchards, checked ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... admirable piece of conduct in the said magistrates that the streets were kept constantly dear and free from all manner of frightful objects, dead bodies, or any such things as were indecent or unpleasant—unless where anybody fell down suddenly or died in the streets, as I have said above; and these were generally covered with some cloth or blanket, or removed into the next churchyard till night. All the needful ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... Father's Death, or for the Loss of Hamlet. It is not often that young Women run mad for the Loss of their Fathers. It is more natural to suppose, that like Chimene in the Cid, her great Sorrow proceeded from her Father's being kill'd by the Man she lov'd, and thereby making it indecent for her ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... this poor stuff would inspire him with disgust. Suppose someone, in studying the writings of the ancients, were to pick out only their worst passages, and compile them into a volume, as Homer's imperfect lines, and the solecisms of the tragedians, and Archilochus' indecent and bitter railings against women, by which he so exposed himself, would he not be worthy of the curse of ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... two: But our prying, curious Sparks can't rest here, but must be for peeping into Chambers, Closets, and Withdrawing-Rooms, ay, and into Beds too (sometimes with the Ladies in 'em) and have all things brought openly upon the Stage, tho' never so improper, and indecent. But this Objection may yet be better answer'd by Instances; and first for the Unity of Time, we may mention the Play call'd, The Adventures of Five Hours, the whole Action lasting no longer (much less a day, the extent allow'd for ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... Arreoys societies, which were free-love associations including in their number "over half of the better sort of the inhabitants." The children begotten of these promiscuous unions were smothered at birth. Obscene conversations, indecent dances and frank unchastity on the part of girls and women were the attendant evils of these loose morals.[1013] Cook was sure that "these societies greatly prevent the increase of the superior classes of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the British and the French, the stench of robbery, plunder and theft which hangs around these millions of graves? Must Kultur rear its domes over mountains of corpses, oceans of tears, and the death-rattle of the conquered? YES, IT MUST! [There follows an image too grotesquely indecent to be quoted.] Either one denies altogether the beneficent effect of Kultur upon humanity, and confesses oneself an Arcadian dreamer, or one allows to one's people the right of domination—in which case the might ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... followed—as to his hair; long or short? Had he a pair of scales with him? As before, Joan of Arc answered these futile, and sometimes indecent, questions with her wonderful patience. At one moment she could not help exclaiming how supremely happy the sight of her saints made her; it seemed as if a sudden vision of her beloved saints had been vouchsafed her in the midst of that ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... still free from an indecent Flame, Which, should it raise your Mirth, must raise your Shame: Indecency's the Bane to Ridicule, And only charms the Libertine, or Fool: Nought shall offend the Fair One's Ears to-day, Which they might blush to hear, or blush to say. No private Character these Scenes expose, Our Bard, at ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... are those who believe in God and blacken his character; who credit him with less knowledge than a child, and less intelligence than an idiot; who make him quibble, deceive, and lie; who represent him as indecent, cruel, and revengeful; who give him the heart of a savage and the brain of a ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... rolled; The sooner for their arms; unarmed, they might Have easily, as Spirits, evaded swift By quick contraction or remove; but now Foul dissipation followed, and forced rout; Nor served it to relax their serried files. What should they do? if on they rushed, repulse Repeated, and indecent overthrow Doubled, would render them yet more despised, And to their foes a laughter; for in view Stood ranked of Seraphim another row, In posture to displode their second tire Of thunder: Back defeated to return They worse abhorred. Satan beheld their plight, And to ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... become bankrupt to the extent of three millions; the order having refused to pay, it was condemned by the Parliament to do so. The responsibility was declared to extend to all the members of the Institute, and public opinion triumphed over the condemnation with a " quasi-indecent " joy, says the advocate Barbier. Nor was it content with this legitimate satisfaction. One of the courts which had until lately been most devoted to the Society of Jesus had just set an example of severity. In 1759, the Jesuits had been driven from Portugal by the Marquis ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... door of his room, which slipped open with indecent willingness and closed with almost a sniff upon his "Hello, dear! Got a treat ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... behind with ribbons, but never disguised by powder; and the brightness of their skins round the temples, clearly appears through their dark hair. Though amours are universal at Lima, the men are very careful to bide them, and no indecent word or action is ever permitted in public. They usually meet for these purposes, either in the afternoon at the Siesta, or in the evening in calashes on the other side of the river, or in the great square of the city, where calashes meet in great numbers in the dusk. These ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... 17th April 1828, he thus censured Jabez in the matter of the Society's action at home:—"From a letter of yours to Jonathan, in which you express a very indecent pleasure at the opposition which Brother Marshman has received, not by the Society but by some anonymous writer in a magazine, I perceive you are informed of the separation which has taken place between them and us. What in that anonymous piece you ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... Thick, languid flames blocked the doorway, swaying idly, ready to fasten their fangs in anything that approached. Furniture crashed and bounded to the pavement. Mattresses were flung out to receive the indecent figures of their owners. The crowd swelled feverishly. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... if we receive them already compounded, it is usual to retain the particle prefixed, as indecent, inelegant, improper; but if we borrow the adjective, and add the privative particle, we commonly ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... children, and before the year was half-way through, on the 23rd of the following May, he was married a second time to Margaret Bentley. At the end of seventeen years Thomas Bunyan was again left a widower, and within two months, with grossly indecent haste, he filled the vacant place with a third wife. Bunyan himself cannot have been much more than twenty when he married. We have no particulars of the death of his first wife. But he had been married two years ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... quitted the lady's hand all this time, and had held it so long, that it would have been indecent to have let it go, without first pressing it to my lips: the blood and spirits, which had suffered a revulsion from her, crowded back to her as I ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... scandalous doggerel of Sternhold and Hopkins, but in psalms and hymns which are both sense and poetry, such as would sooner provoke a critic to turn Christian than a Christian to turn critic;' they were to sing 'not lolling at their ease, or in the indecent posture of sitting, but all standing before God, praising Him lustily and with a good courage;' there was to be 'no repetition of words, no dwelling on disjointed syllables.'[717] Wesley was much struck with the remarkable decorum ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... this most objectionable and indecent opposition, that our honourable friend displayed his highest qualifications for the representation of Verbosity. His warmest supporters present, and those who were best acquainted with his generalship, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... have done me and all the beliefs and laudable enthusiasms that you killed in me, but because you represent what are the most execrable and hideous things under the sun to me, hypocrisy and falsehood. Yes, in that worldly masquerade, that mass of false pretences, of grimaces, of cowardly, indecent conventions which have sickened me so thoroughly that I am running away, exiling myself in order to avoid seeing them, that I prefer to them the galleys, the gutter, or to walk the street as a prostitute, your mask, O sublime Jenkins, is the one that inspires the greatest horror ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... this odd kind of Mixture in People of depraved Minds and mean Education; who tho' they are not able to meet a Man's Eyes, or pronounce a Sentence without Confusion, can Voluntarily commit the greatest Villanies, or most indecent Actions. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... been made to adapt Indian tunes to the translations of English hymns, but without signal success. Also, Indian Christian converts do not encourage the attempt. They say that the few popular native tunes are so suggestive of the indecent songs to which they are generally sung, that it is impossible to use them safely. English popular melodies which some people, especially dissenters, have adapted for religious use have no associations of this kind. The only doubtful point in ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... absolute and fundamental. The fundamental is that the child shall be cared for; the conditional and secondary principle is that this is best effected through the parents. To say that if the parents will not do it, the child must be left to starve, is immoral and indecent. Worse words than those, if such exist, would be required to describe our neglect of illegitimate infancy; our cruelty toward widows and orphans; our utterly careless maintenance of the conditions which produce these hapless ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... would be a fair comparison, in any case. For the walls of Troy were peculiar, having become a meadow with almost indecent haste during the boyhood of Ascanius, who was born before Achilles lost his temper; and before the decease of Anchises, who was old enough to be unable to walk at the sacking of the city. But no doubt you will say that that is all Virgil, and Virgil ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... that of Cephalas, but with many alterations and omissions. Each book is divided into chapters which are arranged alphabetically by subject, with the exception of the seventh book, consisting of amatory epigrams, which is not subdivided. In a prefatory note to this book he says he has omitted all indecent or unseemly epigrams, {polla en to antigrapso onta}. This {antograpso} was the Anthology of Cephalas. The contents of the different books are ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... polluted, vitiated, infected; adulterated, alloyed, sophisticated; unchaste, lewd, indelicate, indecent; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... go forth alone than she threw on cloak and hat, and followed. The day was unsuited for classic apparel, as English days are apt to be, and a lady of fashion would have looked more foolish, and even more indecent, than usual. A brisk and rather crisp east wind had arisen, which had no respect for persons, and even Faith and Dolly in their high-necked country dresses had to ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... were dull men, and by this time they very well understood one another. They knew what they meant just as well as though they had been indecent enough to say it. "Help us to turn out Medland, and you shall be Chief Justice," said Kilshaw, in the name of Sir Robert Perry,—"Chief Justice, and once more a persona grata at Government House." Chief Justice! ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... indecent grab for the larger parcel, and, tearing off the wrapper, opened the thick leather case and took ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... off de Luynes, and the valets who played cards on his coffin were hardly more indecent in their callousness than de Luynes' enemies. The Cardinal's Hat arrived with many gracious compliments to the Bishop of Lucon, who then gave up his diocese. Soon he rustled in flame-coloured taffeta at fetes and receptions, ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... of our communities, but only to give us a new demonstration that the great body of our people are stable, patriotic, and law-abiding. No political party can long pursue advantage at the expense of public honor or by rude and indecent methods without protest and fatal disaffection in its own body. The peaceful agencies of commerce are more fully revealing the necessary unity of all our communities, and the increasing intercourse of ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... Coquebert. "But just now he talked of me in a manner quite indecent Should I have deceived Coquebert I certainly would not have done it with the vicar, out of regard for his ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... judges, requiring them to order execution. He insisted on the nature of his late commission, and on that plea being overruled, submitted with his usual calmness and dignity. The execution, with indecent haste, was ordered to take place on the following morning. In this last stage of life, his greatness of mind shone with even more than its usual lustre. Calm, and fearless without bravado, his behavior and speech ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... were very bad; indeed, you have heard nothing but the truth. As for the men, they are the dirtiest set of fellows I ever saw, and most of them, especially the Officers, very unlike Gentlemen. The dress of the women, with few exceptions, is highly indecent; in London, even in Drury Lane, I have seen few near so bad. Before I left England, I had heard, but never believed, that some Ladies paraded the streets in men's Clothes. It is singular that in the first genteel-looking person I spoke to in Paris to ask my way, I was answered by what ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... declarations of her statesmen, the theories of her revolutionists, and the mystic vaticinations of prophets to the point of making freedom look like a form of debauch, and the Christian virtues themselves appear actually indecent.... But I must apologize for the digression. It proceeds from the consideration of the course taken by the story of Mr. Razumov after his conservative convictions, diluted in a vague liberalism natural to the ardour of his age, had become crystallized ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... the ground floor, a second-hand clothes-dealer on the first story, and a seller of indecent prints on the second, Samanon carried on a fourth business—he was a money-lender into the bargain. No character in Hoffmann's romances, no sinister-brooding miser of Scott's, can compare with this freak of human and Parisian nature (always admitting that Samanon ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... to her depression. Mrs. Irwin was a woman who detested facts, so much so that she thought statistics positively indecent (though she would never have used the expression). When she was told there were more women than men in England, she would bite her lips and change the subject. She had had all the Victorian intense desire to see her daughter ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... I met him. I left a director's meeting and vital engagements, with indecent firmness, to meet that ship. At crack of dawn on a raw morning in March I arose and drove miles to a freezing pier to meet it. And presently, as I stood muffled in a fur coat, an elderly, grizzled, small man, grim and unexhilarating—presently the soul of this ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... "It is simply indecent haste," she exclaimed, "and nothing in this world will persuade me to decide upon my bridesmaid's frock and have it ready in less than three weeks, and ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page |
