"Decency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consideration. I even crave respect. I've kept myself clean. So far as I know how to be, I am honest and scrupulous. It wouldn't hurt me to feel that you took some interest in these things. Rather fierce temptations strike a man, every few days, in this world. I can keep decent, for a woman who cares for decency, but when I do, I'd like to have the fact recognized, by just enough of a show of appreciation that I could see it. I am tired of this one-sided business. After this, I want to get a little in return for what I give. ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... drunken gaiety, and gross sensuality, with intervals of study, perhaps, yet more criminal, with an avowed contempt of all decency and order, a total disregard of every moral, and a resolute denial of every religious obligation, he lived worthless and useless, and blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness, till, at the age of one-and-thirty, he had exhausted the fund of life, and reduced himself ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... belong to the people. If the European scribblers were not past any honest impulse, they would know that the South is the generator and the congenial region for the mob, the filibusters, the revolver and the bowie-knife rule. In the South the proportion of mobs to decency is the reverse of that prevailing in the free States. The slavery gentleman is a scarcely varnished savage, for whom the highest law is his reckless ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... as a matter of courtesy, not to say of common decency, that Mr. STONE may be permitted to state how ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... frowned. "That drink-selling of his is the thorn among my roses of content, and I don't see how to put it down just at present. I can't, from sheer decency, send the man packing, just after he has helped to save my daughter from a dreadful death. Of course I know that he only helped, and that you could and would have done it without him if he had not been there, still, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... fellow strode off into the dusk. Somehow, with his square shoulders and his tanned, resolute country face, he seemed to typify Young America setting cheerfully forth to face— anything—that Honor and Decency may still be more than empty words in this ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... He preferred to sleep out- of-doors more than half of the year, and the rest of the time he did what he could. He saw and learned many strange things, but was not undermined by vice because he unconsciously preferred decency. He sold newspapers and annexed any old job which appeared on the horizon. The education the New York streets gave him was a liberal one. He became accustomed to heat and cold and wet weather, but having sound lungs and a tough little body combined with the normal ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... old friend Badollet, that he could nowhere be more usefully employed than in this negotiation. Certainly he could have no regret in leaving a cabinet which had so little regard to his own feelings and so little political decency as to confer the appointment of adjutant-general in the United States army on his malignant assailant, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... mosaic pavement with his cane, conscious that in a moment they had become more intimate. They were discussing their affairs, which had nothing to do with the heroic symbols that surrounded them; but their affairs had suddenly grown so serious that there was no want of decency in their lingering there for the purpose. The implication that his visit might remain as a secret between them made them both feel it differently. To ask her to keep it so would have been, as it seemed ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... together inside her muff. "Are you dead to all sense of decency?" she asked. "Can you not see that your ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... views expressed in Mes Pensees, published at Copenhagen in 1751. In his Memoires he attributed to the mistress-queen of Louis XIV. sayings which she never uttered, and his style lacks the dignity and decency of true historical writings. Voltaire advised that La Beaumelle should be fettered together with a band of other literary opponents ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... present of a purse of guineas, with a promise of procuring for her an annual provision for life; but he dying soon after, she lost the benefit of his generous design. She appeared to be a woman of good sense, and genteel behaviour, and to bear the inconveniencies of a low fortune with decency and prudence.' ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... was but little distant from their road: he remembered him of it, and was even so importunate with him, as to say, that since he was about to leave Europe, and perhaps never more to see it, he could not in decency dispense with giving a visit to his family, and taking his last leave of his mother, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... hundred between them! We had the decency not to rub it in too hard. It was clear by the disconcerted look in the face of our so- called captain that he was more surprised than any one. He smiled, of course, and leant across to pat Pridgin on the back. But that was just his way—we knew well enough ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... shall be ready to teach that, as far as the prudential and paying virtues are concerned, as boldly and on the very same grounds as the merest Utilitarian. For we shall teach honesty, courtesy, decency, self-restraint, patience, foresight, on the warrant of the Bible; which is, that Christ has made the world so well, that sooner or later every wise and just act rewards itself, every foolish and unjust act punishes itself, by the very constitution of nature ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... mad, and comport myself like a madman in the highways and byways, but for the help of God?—That is a small matter, and a question of common decency; but you must know that without the grace of God and the virtue of His Spirit, there is no impurity, meanness, infamy, drunkenness, blasphemy, or other kind of sin to which man would not ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... don't want to,' replied Kate, indignantly. 'The conversation in this room is perfectly horrid. I shall ask Mr. Lennox to change me. And really, Miss Goddard, I think you might manage to dress yourself with a little more decency.' ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... slave to it—hopeless and helpless. Then she stepped in, saw the possibilities of a fine man in the wreck, took her chance in marrying him though she might have had the pick of a dozen, and, by devoting her life to it, brought him back to manhood and decency. You have observed that no liquor is ever kept in the house. There never has been any since her foot crossed its threshold. A drop of it would be like blood to a tiger ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with slaughter, profaned altars, and ravished maidens, marked the track of the tornado. There was little room for schemes of foreign enterprise. Yet, far aloof from siege and battle, the fishermen of the western ports still plied their craft on the Banks of Newfoundland. Humanity, morality, decency, might be forgotten, but codfish must still be had for the use of the faithful in Lent and on fast days. Still the wandering Esquimaux saw the Norman and Breton sails hovering around some lonely headland, or anchored in fleets in the harbor of St. John; and still, through ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... plaintively, holding out her hand to Beth as she passed. Beth accepted this also as a congratulation, and stooped and kissed her mother. Then the lawyer got up and shook hands with her, and thereupon Uncle James, feeling forced for decency's sake to do something, observed pointedly: "I suppose Miss Victoria Bench was quite sane ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... cottages leads to what may be called an indifference to decency. It is not that in families decency is wantonly and of a set purpose disregarded, but stern necessity leads to a coarseness and indelicacy which hardens the mind and deadens the natural modesty even of the best girls. Then the low scandals of the village talked over from cottage to cottage, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... easily fasten, or put the string through any part of the Cloth; they sometimes wear pieces of this kind of Cloth round their Middles, as well as over their Shoulders. But this is not common, especially with the Men, who hardly ever wear anything round their Middles, observing no sort of Decency in that respect; neither is it at all uncommon for them to go quite Naked without any one thing about them besides a belt round their waists, to which is generally fastened a small string, which they tye round the prepuse; in this manner I have seen hundreds ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... I got him and his correspondence into the motor, and he had the decency to ask whether he had been unpolished over-night. I replied that I waited an apology. This he made excuse for renewed arguments, and used wayside shows as illustrations of the decadence ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... employments, the prelates enjoyed equal dignity with the greatest barons, and gave weight by their personal authority, to the powers intrusted with them; while, at the same time, they did not endanger the crown by accumulating wealth or influence in their families, and were restrained, by the decency of their character, from that open rapine and violence so often practised by the nobles. These motives had induced Edward, as well as many of his predecessors, to intrust the chief departments of government in the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... in pain, rearing with long-suffering solicitude, his young. To touch the heart of his mystery,[5] we find in him one thought, strange to the point of lunacy: the thought of duty;[6] the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his God: an ideal of decency, to which he would rise if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not stoop. The design in most men is one of conformity; here and there, in picked natures, it transcends itself and soars on the other side, arming martyrs ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cooler to him than usual. He soon left us, and after the Opera I saw him with the Duke of Haverfield, one of the most incorrigible roues of the day, leading out a woman of notoriously bad character and of the most ostentatious profligacy. He might have had some propriety, some decency, some concealment at least, but he passed just before me,—before the mother of the woman to whom his vows of honourable attachment were due and who at that very instant was suffering from her infatuation for him. Now, Flora, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Catholic atmosphere; a young soul shut up in darkness and ignorance to accumulate filth. In the name of purity and decency and under threats ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... to say that it's a matter of only common, every-day decency on your part to make yourself our guest while here," added the contractor, stuffing his pipe. "We've got plenty of room, enough to eat, and a comfortable bed for you. You're going to be polite enough to ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... not simple, and certainly not very edifying, and were it not for the odd savoir faire of the Tibetan woman, it would lead to endless jealousies and unpleasantness: owing, however, largely, no doubt, to the absolute lack of honour or decency in Tibetan males and females, the arrangement seems to work as satisfactorily as any other kind ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of Eichhorn's pietistical absolutism, with its ecclesia militans of obscurantism, there survived so much of a sense of decency regarding the ancient traditions as to exempt the liberty of scientific teaching from the indignity of that preventive censure which in those days rendered repressive legislation superfluous. In their search for some tenable and tangible ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... he repeats what for years has been the gossip of the countryside about her supposed killing of her babe, the "traveling man" interrupts and declares he is the son whom it was rumored she had drowned. In the end he is turned out of the house, not altogether unkindly, but as much for decency's sake as for his own. That the son, for any motive at all, should be turned out of the house where his mother lies dead, even though he had not stood by her living, is hard enough in the estimation of any people, but in the estimation of the ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... family quarrels pass with little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. But, once in six or seven years, our virtue becomes outrageous. We cannot suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must teach libertines that the English people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. Accordingly, some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offences ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... known it was not her husband." "Why?" "Why because—," and Laura stopped. "If you were asleep, and suddenly felt a man on you of about my size, and his prick up you, very likely you would not tell if it were mine or not," said Fred. Laura threw an apple at his head. Decency was banished from that moment, a spade was called a ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... sense of decency," I cried, "to contract yourself to a noble gentleman, who, though he is no longer young, is still distinguished in appearance and possessed of many attractions—one whose fortune and rank immeasurably surpass ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... with propriety, we would entreat that you allow your minds to be calmed; be content, rest satisfied with the provisions that have been made for you; and if you should be found to need anything further, make your request with decency and order, and not with tumult; for when your demands are reasonable they will always be complied with, and you will not give occasion to evil designing men to ruin your country and cast the blame upon ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... accompanied the Empresses and their ladies on social visits or pleasure excursions. He is said to have gone in and out at the Imperial palaces without the slightest reserve, and on more than one occasion history accuses him of flagrantly transgressing the limits of decency in his intercourse with Suken-mon-in, mother of the Emperor Go-Enyu. As a subverter of public morals, however, the palm belongs, not to Yoshimitsu, but to his immediate successor, Yoshimochi. He is said ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... general than himself, and that he could best serve the State by retaining the civil administration, and entrusting to his brother the management of war. Verus, however, as soon as he got away from the immediate influence and ennobling society of Marcus, broke loose from all decency, and showed himself to be a weak and worthless personage, as unfit for war as he was for all the nobler duties of peace, and capable of nothing but enormous gluttony and disgraceful self-indulence. Two things only ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... (p. 68.), is contained in his Life, printed by Gosling, 1710; in fact, this is merely a vehicle to introduce the treatise, the Life filling only from p. 5. to 11, and thus concluding:—"He was bury'd with great decency in Westminster Abbey." ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... the proportion of large, square, honourable-looking houses, suggesting an easy, copious material life, the little gardens, the grassy waysides, the open windows, the air of space and salubrity and decency, and above all the intimation of larger antecedents—these things compose a picture which has little of the element that painters call depth of tone, but which is not without something that they would ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... all occasions to bring all the souls that I can to the knowledge of the truth, and to embrace the Catholic doctrine; but as I am here under your permission, and in your family, I am bound in justice to your kindness, as well as in decency and good manners, to be under your government; and therefore I shall not, without your leave, enter into any debates on the points of religion, in which we may not agree, farther than you ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... gentleman, "this new author does not handle you with the decency that displays itself in your person; he makes you out a heavy feeder and a fool, and not in the least droll, and a very different being from the Sancho described in the First Part of your ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... at in strangers: scandal and satire prevail most in country-places; and a propensity to ridicule every the slightest or most palpable deviation from what we happen to approve, ceases with the progress of common sense and decency.(1) True worth does not exult in the faults and deficiencies of others; as true refinement turns away from grossness and deformity, instead of being tempted to indulge in an unmanly triumph over it. Raphael would not faint away at the daubing of a signpost, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... continued slowly, but savagely, "this is how you keep your faith to your father and to me? This is the value you set upon your father's life? And you are so infatuated with this young gentleman that you must brave ruin, and decency, and common ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... the world. But that patriarchal old tub, like some saintly retreat, echoed nothing of it. She was world proof. Her venerable innocence apparently had put a restraint on the roaring lusts of the sea. And yet I have known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency. An elemental force is ruthlessly frank. It may, of course, have been Hermann's skilful seamanship, but to me it looked as if the allied oceans had refrained from smashing these high bulwarks, unshipping the lumpy ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... grace is not traceable in their easy posture. The fact is, that they pose for something; generally their own animal idiosyncrasy, if not respectable vanity. Stevens's figures, on the contrary, always for their own decency, which throws into the core, the heart of the monument such an expression of beauty, giving rise to the word innate, quenching the sense of frivolity, which unrestrained, disordered state of things oozes out somewhere, or is at any rate felt "in the air" in Michael ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... makes my mere passing suggestion into a positive proposal. And then he calculates how much a pair of breeches for a growing lad of twenty feet high or so will cost. Just as though he really believed—Ten pounds, he reckons, for the merest decency. Curious this Caterham! So concrete! The honest, and struggling ratepayer will have to contribute to that, he says. He says we have to consider the Rights of the Parent. It's all here. Two columns. Every Parent has a right to have, his children brought up ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... have no truck with tragi-comedy in any of its forms. He hates puns and bombast, demands refinement in speech and restraint in manners. He regards Hamlet's speeches to Ophelia in the Player scene as a violation of propriety, is shocked by the lack of decency in the representation of Ophelia's madness, finds Hamlet's frequent levity and the buffoonery of Polonius alike regrettable —Shakespeare's favorite foible, he feels, is "that of raising a laugh." The introduction of Fortinbras and his army on the stage is "an Absurdity"; the grave-diggers' scene ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... aunt of mine, my only relation, who quarrelled with poor father as long as he lived about some silly matter that had neither right nor wrong to it. She left her money to me when she died. I used always to go and see her for decency's sake. I had so much to do before night that I didn't know where to begin. I felt inclined to sit down on the kerb and hold my head in my hands. It was as if an engine had been started going under my skull. Finally I sat down in the first ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... enlightened fashion and still come out with a profit, the implications for the future are enormous. Like any pioneering venture, it has run into some troubles, and it lately suffered a shift in management. But it is still being steered toward the same goal of environmental grace and decency and seems ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... off in the Post-Democrat-Republican. Except that it was rather more Stalwart in its Republicanism, and had turned quite round on the question of the tariff, it was very much what it had always been. It kept the old decency of tone which he had given it, and it maintained the literary character which he was proud of. The new management must have divined that its popularity, with the women at least, was largely due to its careful ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... mind the possibility of ever committing Failure again. A man must not lose his nerve in the stress of a loved one's peril. One doesn't act so well to bring the event to a winning. In fact, there is no excuse and no advantage and no decency in losing one's nerve, any time, any ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... great outcry against this submission to social custom, as though any consultation of the tastes and feelings of others were deplorable; but without it the world would have neither law, order, civilization, nor common decency. ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... to shock you, my love; but since Juan has stripped every rag of decency from the discussion I may as well tell ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... consists in drinking champagne till he is not a 'desirable partner' for any young lady with a prejudice in favor of decency. His moving in 'circles' is just what I complain of; and if he is an ornament, I prefer my society undecorated. Aunt Pen, I cannot make the nice distinctions you would have me, and a sot in broadcloth is as ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... this implied compliment to herself; then she colored as with shame and turned away. "What frauds we women are!" she exclaimed. "If I had any sense of decency left, I'd be ashamed to ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... shrunken face an even older look than was natural to it. If she had any pride in any thing, it must have been in this hair,—indeed, she had little else to be proud of,—for it was always fairly tidy. Johnny, it seemed, always exacted a certain amount of cleanliness and decency as the price of her admission into his shop; not, perhaps, that he had any inherent love for this virtue, as such, or that his own comfort and happiness depended upon them, but because he feared that his trade might be injured if his customers ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... be considered as a matter of course. With us, at least, the converse of the proposition prevails: it is the man professing irreligion who would be remarked and reprehended in England; and, if the second-named vice exists, at any rate, it adopts the decency of secrecy and is not made patent and notorious to all the world. A French gentleman thinks no more of proclaiming that he has a mistress than that he has a tailor; and one lives the time of Boccaccio over again, in the thousand and one French novels which depict ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the effect of this contrivance, repaired to her chamber door, and, in a whisper, conveyed through the keyhole, asked if she was awake, begged pardon for such an unseasonable visit, and desired to know her opinion of the strange music which he then heard. In spite of her notions of decency, she was glad of his intrusion, and, being in no condition to observe punctilios, slipped on a wrapper, opened the door, and, with a faltering voice, owned herself frightened almost to distraction. He pretended ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... with damp or calcined into dust, and borne storm and heat helplessly, without even the shelter of a board, till they were burned and wasted to the likeness of haggard ghosts; most had forgotten hope, many decency; some were dying, and crawled over the ground with a woful persistency that it would have broken your heart to see; they were all fasting, for the day's rations, tossed to them the afternoon before, had been devoured, as was the custom, at a single ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... their health. In this respect I desire to care for them; but there is more than that to be attended to. I further heartily desire to keep them from the corrupting and demoralizing effect of the lowest sort of children in the streets, courts and Unions; but I desire more for them than mere decency and morality. I desire that they should be useful members of society, and that the prisons of the United Kingdom should not be filled with poor, destitute, and homeless Orphans. We bring them up therefore in habits of industry, and seek to instruct them in those things which ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... known to students of human nature that just in proportion as a man is neatly and trimly dressed is he apt to conduct himself with like decency. The worst vagabonds in our communities are the tramps, with their dirty bodies and dirty clothes; the most brutal deeds in all history were those of the ragged, motley mobs of Paris in the days of the French Revolution; ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... hours of spare time in the long days down there. I expect you play chess with Major Wyndham all the while, and quite forget about writing to me. I suppose if you were ill some one would have the decency to write and tell me. But if you don't write yourself directly you get this, I shall think something dreadful has happened; and it's such a nuisance not to know if you are all right. I can't enjoy ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... that his tardy playing into the king's hands would obtain him a pardon, were of immense use to Henry in confusing the public mind as to the real reason for his repudiation of Anne, for he was anxious in breaking off from Protestant Germany not to turn the Duke of Cleves into an enemy. The want of decency and the unchivalrous sacrifice of Anne's honour and dignity are perhaps not surprising between such men as Henry and Cromwell, but it is startling to find the lady's brother swallowing the insult calmly. Nevertheless, Henry's diplomatic ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... at the mercy of the coal-producing lands, seems to be more their misfortune than anybody's fault, yet the Italian party of Rieka added this to their grievances against France and Great Britain. Those two countries ought, they said, in very decency, to correct the oversights of Providence; but no very practical suggestions ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... wrong was expressed by her. She had used double sets of standards in behavior all through her life. What she was urged to be and to do seemed impossible in the light of her past and its connections. Even her apparent decency belied the reality underlying her career, she thought. With all this and her vivid imagery it is little wonder that her magnificent powers of imagination had full sway and that she said and half believed all sorts of things ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... decent of him, too, to hold off a little. Most parsons would have rushed in, hot foot, to administer extreme unction and be sure I was in a proper mood concerning Providence. Brenton has had the decency to wait a little. It was almighty decent, too. I knew him in my palmy days, when life was young. It's young for him still—Hold on, Olive; I'm not going to maunder!—and I had a natural dread of having him come piling in here to crow about himself ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... constitutional theory spelled out in Twining v. New Jersey, * * * that this Court is endowed by the Constitution with boundless power under 'natural law' periodically to expand and contract constitutional standards to conform to the Court's conception of what at a particular time constitutes 'civilized decency' and 'fundamental liberty and justice.' * * * [This] 'natural law' formula, [he further contends] * * * should be abandoned as an incongruous excrescence on our Constitution. * * * [The] formula [is] itself a violation of our Constitution, ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... "I don't dispute her decency, Mrs. Mitchell; but I doubt very much whether she is fit to have the charge of children; and as she is a friend of yours, you will be doing her a kindness to give her a hint to that effect. It may save the necessity for my taking further ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... their bodies to wetting their clothes. The elder women hid themselves behind trees, and burst into loud fits of laughter when they saw us pass. The missionaries complain that in general the young girls are not more alive to feelings of decency than the men. Ferdinand Columbus* relates that, in 1498, his father found the women in the island of Trinidad without any clothing (* Life of the Adelantado: Churchill's Collection 1723. This Life, written ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... comprehended under order as particulars under the general kind to which they belong; but order belongeth to the rites of the church as an adjunct to the subject. And, I pray, must not the rights of the church be managed with decency and order? If so, then must our opposites either say that order is managed with order, which is to speak nonsense, or else, that the rights of the church are not comprehended under order. But if not, then it followeth that the rites of the church are to ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Bully you!' cried her father, in bitter, rancorous anger. 'Bully you! Why, it's a pity you can't be bullied into some sense and decency. Bully you! YOU'LL see to that, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... impetuous way in which he expressed himself regarding my safety, served to open my eyes to the real condition of affairs between us. There was no use in my seeking longer to conceal from myself the reason for my remaining in New York. It was Mr. Prime's society that held me there, and decency bade me to put an end to our relations at once, but on his account far more than on my own; for while I flattered myself that my heart was untouched save by the emotion of a warm friendship, I could not dismiss the conviction that ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... home they said not one word to each other; and a very few days afterwards the family left the country, Mr. Bennet not having had even the decency to call and say good-bye to ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... Crochet, Tatting, and Lace-making, are all parts of the same branch of ornamental needlework. They are all "trimmings," in the sense of being decorative edges to more solid materials. They are not available as coverings for warmth or decency; but they serve to give the grace of mystery to the object they drape or veil. They soften the outlines and the colours beneath them, while they permit them to peep through their meshes. They are hardly to be included in what is called high art, having more ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... much deserving minister Alberto dal Sale. Both of these, their tears flowing down their cheeks, and upon their knees, implored him for mercy; adducing whatever reasons they could suggest for sparing the offenders, besides those motives of honour and decency which might persuade him to conceal from the public so scandalous a deed. But his rage made him inflexible, and, on the instant, he commanded that the sentence should be ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... themselves in the famous place where the monarchy had suffered its last torments. But these were only the small fry of the conspiracy, and the First Consul, who liked to pose as the victim exposed to the blows of an entire party, could not with decency take these inoffensive peasants before a high court of justice. While waiting for chance or more treachery to reveal the refuge of Georges Cadoudal, the discovery of the organisers of the plot was most important, and this seemed ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... moorland Helen, and still comely as a blood horse and healthy as the hill wind. High in flesh and voice and colour, she ran the house with her whole intemperate soul, in a bustle, not without buffets. Scarce more pious than decency in those days required, she was the cause of many an anxious thought and many a tearful prayer to Mrs. Weir. Housekeeper and mistress renewed the parts of Martha and Mary; and though with a pricking conscience, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... power; and the men, without any regard to what I suffered in body or mind, twisted my arms behind me, so that I imagined one of them had been dislocated, and forced a handkerchief into my mouth; handling, tossing, and gripping me, without any respect whatever to decency or pain, till they had conveyed me from the fields, in which I was walking with Frank Henley, to ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the wonder and the eternal decency of you, Cameron. You're a good citizen and a good man, and you do more for the world than we painters ever could do! That's the real truth of it; and why you so persistently try to represent yourself as a commonplace something else is beyond me—and probably beyond ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... is an almost sinister self-contradiction: the individual Englishman, in private life, is by no means devoid of a certain outward decency, perhaps because he thinks it pays: but the public morals of England do not shrink from any baseness.—PROF. G. ROETHE, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... from the perusal of Waterbuck, Q.C.'s opinion, and, going upstairs, entered her room, for she did not lock her doors till bed-time—she had the decency, he found, to save the feelings of the servants. She was brushing her hair, and turned to him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... profane language in the presence of a lady. For profanity there is no excuse. It is a low and paltry habit, acquired from association with low and paltry spirits, who possess no sense of honor, no regard for decency and no reverence or respect for beings of a higher moral or religious nature than themselves. The man who habitually uses profane language, lowers his moral tone with every oath he utters. Moreover, the silliness of the practice, if no other reason, should prevent ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... allow it! He must spike the wheel. Was not Alois of France within the degrees? She was sister to the French King: well, but what was Richard's mother? She had been wife to Louis, wife to Alois' father. Was this decency? What would the Pope say—an Italian? Was the Marquess Conrad an Italian for nothing? Was 'our cousin' the Emperor of no account, King of the Romans? The Pope Italian, the Marquess Italian, the Emperor ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... of the world. People at your age are in a state of natural ebriety; and want rails, and 'gardefous', wherever they go, to hinder them from breaking their necks. This drunkenness of youth is not only tolerated, but even pleases, if kept within certain bounds of discretion and decency. These bounds are the point which it is difficult for the drunken man himself to find out; and there it is that the experience of a friend may not only serve, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... courtship among the young people of the watering-place element was to be accounted so. There was not much fashion there, except in a few pretty women who recalled the church parade of Hyde Park in their flowery and feathery costumes. Back in the town there was no fashion at all, but a general decency and comfort of dress. The Welsh costume survives almost solely in the picture- postal cards, though perhaps in the hilly fastnesses the women still wear the steeple-crowned hats which we associate with the notion of witches; when they come to market ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... the papers were filled with her name, and all the dead walls flamed with it. The papers called down imprecations upon her head; they reviled her without stint; they wondered if all sense of decency was dead in this shameless murderess, this brazen lobbyist, this heartless seducer of the affections of weak and misguided men; they implored the people, for the sake of their pure wives, their sinless daughters, for the sake of decency, for the sake of public morals, to ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... that no good was to be got from a world which was willing to be amused by such immoral literature. It would be juster to wonder at the secure foundations of a society which, notwithstanding these tales, still observed the rules of order and decency, and which knew how to vary such pastimes with serious and solid discussion. The need of noble forms of social intercourse was felt to be stronger than all others. To convince ourselves of it, we are not obliged to take as our ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... unseemliness of conduct. Yet in spite of the fact that hotel bars and saloons abound in all the old mining towns, the writer throughout his travels and notwithstanding the intense heat, not only saw no person under the influence of liquor, but also never heard a voice raised in angry dispute. Moderation, decency and a kindly consideration for the rights of others ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... thing more. We went about to put everything in order and lay the poor corpse in decency, and when we started to pull off his veldschoen, as I hope to die in my bed, there was a little drop of blood still wet ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... lives. To obey no actual power is to obey no power, as to wear no actual clothes is to go naked. To keep up the comparison,—as a man may change his clothes upon occasion, and thus go through a brief interval of unclothedness without injury to health or violation of decency, notwithstanding the requirement of nature to wear clothes: so it may be or it may not be consonant with the exigency of our nature at times to subvert by insurrection the existing government in order to the substitution of a new authority; that does not ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... arms, Where you at ease may frolick hours or days, Without my witnessing your loving ways; Indeed, I'm quite surprised at what I spy In publick, 'neath a tree such pranks to try! And, if you don't a servant's presence heed, With decency howe'er you should proceed. What, still go on? for shame, I say, for shame! Pray wait till by and by; you're much to blame; Besides, the nights are long enough you'll find; Heav'n genial joys for privacy design'd; And why this ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... during his engagement? Thus reasoned the comforters of the Gilseys, and those interested in our downfall. The next day the Statesman wrote a burning editorial denouncing us "for an utter lack of all sense of common decency" that permitted us "to violate the sacredest feeling known to the human heart for the sake of getting a ribald laugh from the unthinking." We were two weeks explaining that the error was not the boy's fault. People assumed that the mistake ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... greatly superior to those of any other in the bark beneath the degree of the gentle, not even excepting those of the warm peasant Nicklaus Wagner, the owner of so large a portion of the freight. There was a decency of air that commanded more respect than it was then usual to yield to the nameless, a quietness of demeanor that denoted reflection and the habit of self-study and self-correction, together with a deference to others that was well adapted to gain friends. In the midst of the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... taught through the wives and mothers, but sound science also, and sound economy. If you intend (as I trust some here intend) to teach the labouring classes those laws of health and life, on which depend the comfort, the wholesomeness, often the decency and the morality of the poor man's home, then you must teach those laws first to the house-mother, who brings the children into the world, and brings them up, who puts them to bed at night, and prepares their food by day. If you wish ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... to vice, my constitutional temperament broke forth with redoubled ardor, and I spurned even the common restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my revels. But it were absurd to pause in the detail of my extravagance. Let it suffice, that among spendthrifts I out-Heroded Herod, and that, giving name to a multitude of novel ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with all decency. The Marquis is at the Sanglier Noir at La Rochette. You can have no difficulty in finding him, and having found him, less difficulty still ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... and laughed. Their nervousness was dissipated. Each was reassured of the old basis of 'decency' ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... no, I say. The most pernicious spirits Of hell he must have summoned to his aid, To cast this mist before your waking senses. Your ear no more was open to the voice Of friendly warning, and your eyes were shut To decency; soft female bashfulness Deserted you; those cheeks, which were before The seat of virtuous, blushing modesty, Glowed with the flames of unrestrained desire. You cast away the veil of secrecy, And the flagitious daring of the man O'ercame your natural coyness: ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... have been convicted of one single inaccuracy of statement, their narratives ought to be accounted faultless, like Him whose Life they record;—like Him by whose Spirit they are inspired. I would to Heaven that men would have the decency to suspect themselves, and one another, rather than the Evangelists,—of mistake; or at least, before they venture publicly to impugn the Authors of the Everlasting Gospel, that they would be at the pains to weigh the evidence with the care that evidence deserves, but which ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... kind have the peculiar advantage that even when disproved or shown to be manifestly absurd, they leave a stain behind them. Careless equally of probability and decency, the leaders of the Senate sacrificed without scruple the reputation of their own relatives if only they could make Caesar odious. The name of Servilia has been mentioned already. Servilia was the sister of Marcus Cato and the mother of Marcus Brutus. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... casually, or even jocularly, and those who were driven to it only by anger. But for these first few minutes in the dressing-room, she felt as if she had blundered into some foul pit abysmally below the lowest level of decency. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... it not at home, she will fetch it, for this sometimes in a pleasant discontent she dares chide her sex, though she use it never the worse. She is much within, and frames outward things to her mind, not her mind to them. She wears good clothes, but never better; for she finds no degree beyond decency. She hath a content of her own, and so seeks not an husband, but finds him. She is indeed most, but not much of description, for she is direct and one, and hath not the variety of ill. Now she is given fresh and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... power of deadening us to sensations of discomfort or fatigue. Its boasted power of making men more "sociable" by loosening their tongues is due to precisely the same effect: it takes off the balance-wheels of custom, reserve, and propriety—too often of decency, as well. This is where the greatest and most serious danger of alcohol comes in, that even in the smallest doses, it begins to deaden us both mentally and morally, and thus lessens our power of control. This loss of control ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... the whole is insipid; as when we have once tasted of palled wine, we stay not to examine it glass by glass. But while they affect to shine in trifles, they are often careless in essentials. Thus, their Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency, that he will rather expose himself to death, than accuse his stepmother to his father; and my critics I am sure will commend him for it. But we of grosser apprehensions are apt to think that this excess of generosity is not practicable, but with fools and madmen. This was ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... who beside Would o'er the mountainous tract have led my steps He with the bitter pang of self-remorse Seem'd smitten. O clear conscience and upright How doth a little fling wound thee sore! Soon as his feet desisted (slack'ning pace), From haste, that mars all decency of act, My mind, that in itself before was wrapt, Its thoughts expanded, as with joy restor'd: And full against the steep ascent I set My face, where highest to heav'n its top o'erflows. The sun, that flar'd behind, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... all over, and from then on visited her sister more frequently. But if it did not look as though Daniel did everything in his power to avoid her, this much was certain: he never said a word to her more than human decency required, and was an expert at finding reasons why he had to leave the room when she was there. Eleanore was gainfully conscious ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Peter shall kill game for dinner, and Paul, who has not the least brains of the three, shall go to sell my merchandise at the neighbouring town. This will be a public benefit, by enabling the poor about us to dress with more decency and comfort, and it will also serve to furnish our own cottage, of which we ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... would have vanished in the first six months of her dramatic career. By the time she was twenty-four she had acquired the wisdom of fifty, a near-seal coat, a turquoise ring with a number of smoky-looking crushed diamonds surrounding it, and a reputation for wit and for decency. The ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... can possibly convey to anybody who has not known what it was by actual imprisonment in it any adequate sense of its gloom; of the utter, callous, brutal indifference of the so-called nurses; of the neglect of the poor patients by those who were paid to attend to them; of the absence of even common decency; of the desperate persistent attempts made by everybody concerned to impress upon the wretched mortals who were brought there that they were chargeable to the parish and put there for form's sake, prior to being shovelled into a hole in the adjoining churchyard? ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... town, and he would read notices posted up by the camp-meeting authorities forbidding women so clad to come upon the tabernacle ground. He would also read placards along the beach explaining the reason why decency in bathing suits is desirable, and he would wonder why such notices should be necessary. If, however, he walked along the shore at bathing times he might be enlightened, and he would see besides a certain simplicity of social ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... were troublesome times and a source of concern to all who loved their country. He knew the government to be composed of men who thought only of their own interests. This semblance of authority was the sole bar that prevented the insubordinate masses from overriding law and decency. How long would President Bagshaw be able to withstand the popular clamor for a liberty that was akin to pillage? This foolish conspiracy had biassed thousands of order-loving citizens against conservative measures. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... no heart, no reverence, no decency?" he said. "In the name of everything you respect, I call upon you to stop ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... all seemed to portend an ultimate failure. But this troubled inertness was the soil of his inspiration; his conceptions took slow and stately shape. He never suffered from the haste, which as Dante says "mars all decency of act." After that time he enjoyed a great domestic happiness, and practised considerable sociability. His terrifying demeanour, his amazing personal dignity and majesty, the certainty that he would say whatever came into his head, whether ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... villainous insinuations I ever heard!" he thundered harshly. "My God, woman! Haven't you any soul ... any decency about you?" ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... he felt in "living in the same parish with a man of that humble station of life of the defendant's," who was capable of paying money out of his own pocket to punish what he believed to be an outrage to decency. The second allusion was to a statement of the reviewer of the American Notes in the Edinburgh to the effect, that, if he had been rightly informed, Dickens had gone to America as a kind of missionary in ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... "There's decency even in death, I assume; Preserve it, sir, and keep away; For the mother of my first-born you Show mind undue! —Sir, I've ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... sake of decency, Cerissa escorted her visitor across the hall passage into the loom-room—a loom-room in name only for upwards of three generations. Becky had devoted it to the rough work of the house, and to certain special uses, such as the care of the butchering products, the ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... the dank air of the house and the courts. The water-closets for the whole vast establishment are a range of stalls without doors, and accessible not only from the building, but even from the street. Comfort is here out of the question; common decency has been rendered impossible; and the horrible brutalities of the passenger-ship are day after day repeated,—but on a larger scale. And yet this is a fair specimen. And for such hideous and necessarily demoralizing habitations,—for two rooms, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... comedists of this period, where all were evil, William Wycherley was the worst. In his four plays, Love in a Wood, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, The Country Wife, and The Plain Dealer, he outrages all decency, ridicules honesty and virtue, and makes vice always triumphant. As a young man, profligate with pen and in his life, he was a wicked old man; for, when sixty-four years of age, he published a miscellany of verses of which Macaulay says: "The style and versification are ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... immense time; and never wrote home, but saved it all up to tell when he should get back. Twice, with proper modesty and decency, he proposed to end his visit, but the Commodore said, "No—wait; leave it to me; I'll tell you when ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a respectable young spinster, with a grace of manner beyond her station, and a decency and propriety ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... above,—and they were ten times worse. Among men so much resembling demons I had never before been. However, my wife being with me, I had the entree of the ladies' cabin. This was the abode of quiet and decency, there being but three other ladies besides. Of these, one had her husband with her, a respectable farmer from Pennsylvania, who shipped all his last year's produce in a flat boat, came down in it with his ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... looked ridiculous to fear mischief, yet I was uneasy. If I had not worshipped Her so much—but then, there had ceased to be any "if" in it long ago. I had very little hope that she could ever be got to care, even if I could reconcile it with common decency to ask a girl to think of a stony-broke beggar like me. But in some moods I was mad to try my luck, when I reflected on what she had before her if I—or some other brute of a man—didn't snatch her from it. But whether or no she ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... very undemonstrative people. Uncle Reuben had told her once that she need not do it, that they had not expected it of her; and Aunt Hannah had added, "No more they didn't." But Marion had hushed them both by a decided sentence, to the effect that it was nothing more than ordinary justice and decency. And she did not know even now that the gratitude they might have expressed was hushed back by ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... Immortal Author. Some Censurers of Shakespeare, and particularly Mr. Rymer, have taught me to distinguish betwixt the Railer and Critick. The Outrage of his Quotations is so remarkably violent, so push'd beyond all Bounds of Decency and sober Reasoning, that it quite carries over the Mark at which it was levell'd. Extravagant Abuse throws off the Edge of the intended Disparagement, and turns the Madman's Weapon into his own Bosom. ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... such action. The councilmen representing that district were helpless to prevent the legislation and the citizens themselves had no recourse whatsoever. The grand jury in St. Louis reported that the wards of that city were an actual menace to decency and good government. ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... government to regard Boston as the head-center of revolt, and to concentrate all severities against her. It was thought that in this way she could be isolated from the other colonies, who would say to themselves that her troubles were none of their affair, and that so long as they were treated with decency they would not antagonize all-powerful England. Arguing from the average selfishness of human nature, this policy did not seem unwise; but the fact was that in this case human nature manifested an exceptional generosity and enlightenment. Although the colonies, being on the coast, must depend ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Habits.—The third essential of the inherited obligation of mothers to their children is the early drill in personal habits that are required for health and decency and propriety in any given time and place. For this it is an absolute necessity that either the mother so serve herself or that she secure some substitute-mother of refinement, knowledge, affection and devotion which make her an equal in the family circle. How many nurses fulfil that ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... decency to be ashamed of himself when he finds out we know what he did to us. I shouldn't think he'd want to look us in the face," Wallie ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... felt in the humour for coming to church. It's no use to come and kneel in a holy place with rebellious thoughts in my heart. I come on Sundays for decency's sake; but I think it is better to keep away from the week-day services till I am ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... Henry Adams had neither; but no boy escaped some contact with vice of a very low form. Blackguardism came constantly under boys' eyes, and had the charm of force and freedom and superiority to culture or decency. One might fear it, but no one honestly despised it. Now and then it asserted itself as education more roughly than school ever did. One of the commonest boy-games of winter, inherited directly from the eighteenth-century, was a game of ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... he came into contact. He did not make many new friends, and the people who knew him well, and with whom his holidays or hours of relaxation were passed, were confined to those he had known for many years. He always impressed one with a deep sense of decency in conversation and conduct; one felt in talking to him how impossible it would be to drift into the easy-going discussion of questions and problems of our modern life, and it seemed impossible to imagine his taking a silent acquiescence in the jokes and insinuations which are not ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... important and less pressing, the other three must laugh at them, and more than laugh at them; and ask them—"Why have you education, why have you influence, why have you votes, why are you freemen and not slaves, if not to preserve the comfort, the decency, the health, the lives of men, women, and children—most of those latter your own ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... off his upper garment' is one who clothes himself very scantily only for the sake of decency and not for splendour. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown |
