"Indecently" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our wits understand talk, but not what Dr. Johnson called a good talk. In order to have, like Dr. Johnson, a good talk, it is emphatically necessary to be, like Dr. Johnson, a good man—to have friendship and honour and an abysmal tenderness. Above all, it is necessary to be openly and indecently humane, to confess with fulness all the primary pities and fears of Adam. Johnson was a clear-headed humorous man, and therefore he did not mind talking seriously about religion. Johnson was a brave man, one of the bravest that ever walked, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... as at the odd superfluity of this reassurance, almost crude on exquisite lips and contradicting an imputation no one would have indecently made. "Gracious goodness, I hope not! The man surely doesn't ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... had looked at Westmore with the nurse's eyes, so he now found himself seeing his house as it must appear to Mrs. Westmore. He noticed the shabby yellow paint of the palings, the neglected garden of their neighbour, the week's wash flaunting itself indecently through the denuded shrubs about the kitchen porch; and as he admitted his companions to the narrow passage he was assailed by the expected whiff of "boiled dinner," with which the steam of ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... should have stayed in Noumea, but who preferred making themselves vastly unpleasant to authority in quite another quarter of the world; and as the Shah-in-Shah she had been overtaken on the high seas, indecently full of munitions of war, by the cruiser of an agitated Power at issue with its neighbour. That time she was very nearly sunk, and her riddled hull gave eminent lawyers of two countries great profit. After a season she reappeared as the Martin Hunt painted ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... reconciliation scene with Mr. Mortimer, at the conclusion of which he had decided to take the first train to London in the hope of intercepting Billie before she reached Sir Mallaby's office on her mission of war. The local train-service kept such indecently early hours that he had been compelled to bolt his breakfast, and, in the absence of Billie, the only member of the household who knew how to drive the car, to walk to the station, a distance of nearly two miles, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... for the type of puritanic manhood which in the past held aloft the standard of a chaste and holy life; such men in this day are spoken of as "too slow" as "weak-kneed," and {426} "goody-goody" men. Let me recall that word, the fast and indecently-dressed "things," the animals of easy virtue, the "respectable" courtesans that flirt, chaff, gamble, and waltz with well-known high-class licentious lepers—such is the ideal of womanhood which a large proportion of our large city society ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Adderley, the man who was so indecently rich?" someone interjected. "Had a place at Katong, and was always talking about his ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... had, when he cared to practise it, such an art of winning admiration. For the first time for many, many months Francesca saw her son's prospects in a rose-coloured setting, and she began, unconsciously, to wonder exactly how much wealth was summed up in the expressive label "almost indecently rich." A wife with a really large fortune and a correspondingly big dower of character and ambition, might, perhaps, succeed in turning Comus's latent energies into a groove which would provide him, if not with a career, at least with an occupation, and the young serious ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... he labored to restrain the effects of their zeal, the pathetic vehemence of his sermons continually inflamed the angry and seditious temper of the people of Milan. The characters of Eve, of the wife of Job, of Jezebel, of Herodias, were indecently applied to the mother of the emperor; and her desire to obtain a church for the Arians was compared to the most cruel persecutions which Christianity had endured under the reign of Paganism. The measures of the court served only to expose the magnitude of the evil. A fine of two hundred pounds of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... painful and depressing impression. It was noticed that at the time of the sentence Dreyfus behaved like a decent well-disciplined officer, while those present at the sentence, the journalists for instance, shouted at him, "Hold your tongue, Judas,"—that is, behaved badly and indecently. Everyone came back from the sentence dissatisfied and with a troubled conscience. Dreyfus' counsel Demange, an honest man, who even during the preliminary stages of the trial felt that something shifty was being done behind the scenes, was particularly dissatisfied—and then the experts who, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... of his theatrical mishaps and disappointments, which were such as occur to every writer for the stage. He wailed over them in "Roderick Random," in the story of Mr. Melopoyn; he prolonged his cry, in the preface to "The Regicide," and probably the noble whom he "lashed" (very indecently) in his two satires ("Advice," 1746, "Reproof," 1747, and in "Roderick Random") was the patron who could not get the tragedy acted. First, in 1739, he had a patron whom he "discarded." Then he went to the West Indies, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... being a pair of lovers. A few sympathetic smiles, however, had been bestowed upon another couple seated in the deep window of one of the smaller rooms; a pretty young woman and an attractive man. The young man had disposed his hat and a newspaper in such a way as not to make it indecently obvious that he was holding her hand. It was she who called attention to the fact by hasty attempts to snatch it away when people ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... created by Dogget, was on a revival played (to his own immense satisfaction) by Colley Cibber. In Araminta Mrs. Bracegirdle began (in a faint outline as it were) the series of lively, sympathetic, intelligent heroines which Congreve wrote for her. Lord Falkland's Prologue is as funny as it is indecently suggestive, which is saying a great deal. The one actually spoken gave an opportunity of the merriest archness to Mrs. Bracegirdle, and was calculated to put the audience in the best ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... pupils away from them, as I was repeatedly desired to do: Tom must talk to them, and Mary Ann must be noticed by them. Neither the one nor the other knew what it was to feel any degree of shamefacedness, or even common modesty. They would indecently and clamorously interrupt the conversation of their elders, tease them with the most impertinent questions, roughly collar the gentlemen, climb their knees uninvited, hang about their shoulders or rifle their pockets, pull the ladies' gowns, disorder ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... Young Arthur is to come into something very good at his majority, I believe, from his father's estate, and the old grandfather is said to be indecently rich—rolling in it! There's another reason why the young idiot wouldn't be likely to stop away of his own accord. He wouldn't risk anything like a serious break with the old gentleman. It would mean a loss of millions to him, I dare say, for the old beggar is quite capable ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... gold and green mouldings and silk and crimson velvet and intricate designs in which naked pink-fleshed cupids writhed indecently. Some day, he was saying to himself, he'd make a hell of a lot of money and live in a house like that with Mabe; no, with Yvonne, or with ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... was terribly unnerved. He appealed to me, to me of all people, to adjudicate on what was and what was not permissible in England. William was arguing about it in an indisputably American accent, with an indecently naked reasonableness. I had come to Rye with a car to fetch William James and his daughter to my home at Sandgate. William had none of Henry's passionate regard for the polish upon the surface of life and he was immensely ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... centre. Why they should have changed, we could not understand; the verger said they had not; but he was a dim, discouraged intelligence, bent chiefly in a limp sort on keeping the door locked so that people could not get away without his help, and must either fee him, or indecently deny him. The Temple Church, indeed, is by no means the best of the Temple. Cunningham says that the two edifices most worth visiting are the church and the Middle Temple Hall, which I now preferred luxuriously to leave in my remembrances of 1882, and to idle about the grounds with my party, straying ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... what I complain of. The whiter your hair grows the younger your face gets. You're a contradiction, a paradox, you provoke conjecture, you're indecently noticeable. Mr. Ross would ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... which are opposed to the laws of English respectability, in the most profound mystery, and banish all that is improper, applying to the creature, as you have heard the Reverend Doctor Simpson say, the laws made by God for the creation. Have you ever seen the Earth behave itself indecently? Learn to suffer a thousand deaths rather than reveal your desires; in this suppression consists the virtue of the saints. The greatest privilege of Cats is to depart with the grace that characterizes ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... promised your father to make a man of you, and I will do it; if you cannot stand on your feet, I'll put you in irons. Then you will stand. Though I know all these holy words of yours are but ugly caprices that come from excessive drinking. But if you do not give that up, if you keep on behaving indecently, if you ruin, out of wantonness, the property accumulated by your father, I'll cover you all up. I'll have a bell forged over you. It is very ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... us have at some time or another felt that uncomfortable, almost indecently denuding question which comes to us at rare moments from the stage where some great drama is being played: What is higher, what is more real: this, or the life we live? In that sudden flash, the matters of today's and tomorrow's reality in our minds appear as vulgar trifles, things of which we are ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... range, too abstract in their nature, to be easily made a sport of before the multitude. A few pleasantries, used by Shakespeare in a moment of easy-going style, were laid hold of maliciously, and caricatured most indecently, by his antagonists, in order to entertain the common crowd there with. Innocent children, moreover, were made to act such satires: 'little eyases, that cry out on the top of the question, and are most tyrannically clapped ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... what sin has reduced the gentleman to such a plight. I think he must have had some misfortune, which causes him thus to demean himself, for one may lose his wits through grief. And any one can see that he is not in his right mind, for it would surely never be like him to conduct himself thus indecently unless he had lost his mind. Would that God had restored to him the best sense he ever had, and would that he might then consent to render assistance to your cause! For Count Alier, who is at war with you, has made upon ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... the details of the sordid room, a satin box of sweetmeats on the table, a penny bunch of sweet violets in a specimen-glass, one or two yellow-backed novels, and a few photographs ranged upon the imitation marble mantelpiece. There was one arm-chair, whose torn lining indecently revealed the interior stuffing, and there were three other chairs with wooden backs. The lady of the feathers did not dwell in ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a schoolmaster of Rorata, for refusing to change his religion, was stripped quite naked; and after having been very indecently exposed, had the nails of his toes and fingers torn off with red-hot pincers, and holes bored through his hands with the point of a dagger. He then had a cord tied round his middle, and was led through the streets with a soldier on each side of him. At every turning the soldier on ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... on the other Side, by which they usually enter'd, to dress in this little Room; and at the Report that was in an Instant made 'em, they hasted thither, and found Miranda and the good Father very indecently struggling; which they mis-interpreted, as Miranda desir'd; who, all in Tears, immediately threw her self at the Feet of the Provincial, who was one of those that enter'd; and cry'd, 'O holy Father! revenge ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... The best of us profane it readily, leaving the coarse prints of our heels upon its paths, mauling and man-handling the fairy blossoms with what pudgy fingers! Comes the poet, ruthlessly leaping the wall and trumpeting indecently his view- halloo of the chase, and, after him, the joker, snickering and hopeful of a kill among the rose-beds; for this has been their hunting-ground since the world began. These two have made us miserably ashamed ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... even told Boggley, though if he had eyes to see instead of being the blindest of dear old bats, my shining face would betray me. I keep on smiling in a perfectly imbecile manner, so that people exclaim, "Well, you are indecently glad to get away," and when they ask Why? I point them to the scene in the Old Testament where Hadad said unto Pharaoh, "Let me depart, that I may go to mine own country." Then Pharaoh said unto him, "But what hast thou lacked with me, that, behold, thou seekest to go to thine own ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... would gladly have gone to see one flogged; and he disliked the ministers and their sermons and their "prophesyings" with all the healthy ardour of prejudice. Once in the year did Dick approach the sacraments, and a great business he made of it, being unusually morose before them and almost indecently boisterous after them. He was feudal to the very heart of him; and it was his feudality that made him faithful to his religion as well as to his masters, for either of which he would resolutely have died. And what in the world he would do when he discovered, at ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... man, who at first appeared about five cubits, or seven feet and a half high—after which, the phantom dilated to twelve cubits, and appeared of a singular beauty. Apollonius asked him some frivolous questions, and as the young man jested indecently with him, he comprehended that he was possessed by a demon; this demon he expelled, and cured the young man. But all this ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... is the young man, whose clothes are finest in quality and fittest in fashion, but whose principles sadly need "patching." I dare say there are young men before me now who would not go into refined company indecently dressed for any consideration, but who will rush into the presence of their God before they sleep with a dozen oaths upon their lips. Will ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... of the governor's staff died, there were many applicants for the post, and some were indecently impatient. While the dead colonel was awaiting burial, one aspirant ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... for the payment of one's gambling debts. Yet there I was being collected by the winner at so early an hour as half-after seven. If I had been a five-pound note instead of myself, I fancy it would have been quite the same. These Americans would most indecently have sent for their winnings before the Honourable George had awakened. One would have thought they had expected him to refuse payment of me after losing me the night before. How little they seemed to realize that we were both intending to ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... to laugh last indeed, but oft-times it is best not to laugh at all, for who can foresee the particle of dust which may enter your indecently and injudiciously wide open mouth to choke you ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Laud's annual report on the diocese to King Charles I., in 1633, it is said that the Bishop (Dr. John Bowle) complained "that the cathedral suffered much for want of glass in the windows, and the churchyard lay very indecently, and the gates down, because the dean and chapter refused to be visited by him on pretence that the statutes were not confirmed under the broad seal." Here the king wrote in the margin: "This must be remedied one ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... society of their wives are reproachable if immoderate, and that a licentious and riotous abuse of them is a fault as reprovable here as in illicit connections. Those immodest and debauched tricks and postures, that the first ardour suggests to us in this affair, are not only indecently but detrimentally practised upon our wives. Let them at least learn impudence from another hand; they are ever ready enough for our business, and I for my part always went ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... feverishly, to see the thing confirmed. Oh yes! It was there. The Orb had suspended payment—the first growl of the storm faint as yet, but to the initiated the forerunner of a deluge. As an item of news it was not indecently displayed. It was not displayed at all in a sense. The serious paper, the only one of the great dailies which had always maintained an attitude of reserve towards the de Barral group of banks, had its "manner." Yes! a modest item ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... their roots indecently exposed to mere curiosity, on a bright, living early April day? Not much! I told my trouble to the professor of agriculture, whose eyes brightened, as he informed me he had no classes for that morning, and—"We would see!" We did see ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... of them at a great distance, who were either drunkards or far addicted to drinking. I could mention an ordination which took place about twenty years ago at which I myself was ashamed and grieved to see two aged ministers literally drunk, and a third indecently excited." [2] Our forefathers were resigned to that, but we are not. The most conservative of us so hates the colossal abomination of the liquor traffic, that we do not propose to cease our fight until victory has been won. We are belligerently unresigned. Or when ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... M. Ringuier, a Deputy from the second circumscription of Laon, unexpectedly died. The Order at once determined to capture his seat. With Brother Allain-Targe as Prefect, what could be easier? M. Allain-Targe hastened the new election almost indecently. Hardly a fortnight after the death of M. Ringuier, early in March 1888, the Brethren came up from all quarters to Laon, and it was announced that Brother Doumer had received the orthodox Republican nomination. Of course, with the prefecture and the freemason press of Laon, Chauny, Soissons, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... has lately forc'd a Dedication upon you, which favours too much of Presumption or Design; he has presum'd to surprize you with an unexpected Address, and appears very indecently before your Grace, because he has taken no care to express upon this Subject a due Respect and Reverence to the Governors in Church and State, such as is suitable to the Christian Religion, and his particular Function: The Reports and Authorities in his Book are Fruits of other Mens Collections, ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... been of paramount importance, while the grandmother, the older Empress Dowager, would have been relegated to a subordinate status. Consequently,—it may now be said, having regard to subsequent happenings,—the death of the Empress followed that of her husband at an indecently short interval, for no particular reason of health; and the old Empress Dowager became supreme. In order to ensure her supremacy, she had previously, on the very day of the Emperor's death, caused ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles |
