"Decent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her: what decorous calm! She, with her week-day worldliness sufficed, Stands in her pew and hums her decent psalm With decent dippings at the name of Christ! And she has mov'd in that smooth way so long, She hardly can believe that she shall ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... a great deal—sometimes; but I have learned to conceal my feelings. You may not perhaps be aware that English boys are educated in this fashion, nowadays. At a public school it is considered 'bad form' to be enthusiastic on any subject. 'Not bad' or 'pretty decent' are the superlatives of praise, and anything more emphatic is sure to be snubbed. Perhaps I have been too apt a disciple ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... remarkable man, not only immensely popular for his great professional merit, but so much respected for an order of merit not apt to be enthusiastically admired by Parisians—that of a moral character and decent life—that at his funeral a very serious riot occurred, in consequence of the Archbishop of Paris, according to the received opinion and custom of the day, refusing to allow him to be buried in consecrated ground; the profane player's calling, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... steamers. Even the charities of a decently managed company are large. Firemen and engineers become disabled and must be supported; or they are killed in the service of the ship, leaving families which no decent company can disregard. The amount which the West-India Royal Mail Company pays in this way, and which our noble American lines advance to the deserving, are beyond all ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... governor large advances, both of provisions and money, which amounted to 50,000 francs; he had continually, at his house, Mr. Schmalz, his family and a numerous suite. The general opinion was that, Mr. Durecur had got by his acts of generosity, a decent profit of a hundred per cent; he was, besides, recompenced, on the application of the governor, by that decoration, which it seems, ought to be conferred for some brilliant action,[40] and not for a very profitable commercial ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... took in a cup of broth, but she was soundly asleep. Have some steak while it is hot. The saints be praised for a mouthful of decent food." ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... "A decent-lookin' workin'-like body," she answered. "I couldna see her verra weel, it's sae foggy the nicht aboot ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... said Moore, changing the subject. "Decent old Johnny, wasn't he? Jolly nice of him to bring all those papers in case he came across ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... wine, for the waiting—nothing was right. It was great fun. He kept it up all the evening. When saying good-bye to Their Excellencies, he said: "I can't tell you how sorry I am about everything being so bad to-night, but I'll ask you out to a restaurant another night and give you some decent ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... together, and they had been cronies from their earliest school-days. Two of them were usually well dressed; and the others were somewhat ragged, and considerably patched, showing the efforts of their protectors to keep them decent. They had all been to school up to the present time, and now it was vacation; and the next thing to be decided by their friends was what should be done with them. Dick and Corny were to go to the high school; but the others must go to work, and earn ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... having trees on each side. On particularly dark nights a dozen oil-lamps standing at long intervals apart are lighted, but when it is even moderately starlight these aids to finding one's way about are prudently dispensed with. There is not a single handsome and hardly a decent building in the whole place. The streets, as I saw them after rain, are veritable sloughs of despond, but they are capable of being changed by dry weather into deserts of dust. It is true, I have only been as yet twice down to the town, but on both visits it reminded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Japanese people know practically none of the diversions which give joy and color to American and English country life, it is no wonder that thousands of farmers are leaving their two and three acre plots, too small to produce a decent living for a family, to try their fortunes in the factories and the towns. Specifically, it may be mentioned that the boys from the farms who go into the army for the compulsory two years' service are reported as seldom returning ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... survive her just punishment, we command you to make sufficient provision for her daily wants, but no more, and to charge the same against the sum due Us from the revenues of Lesbos. Should she die at once, or at any future time, give to her decent private burial, and report to Us the circumstances of her death ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... distinct little faces characteristic of these artists stare at you with a solemn formalism. Some are faded and injured, and many so ill-lighted and ill-placed that you can only glance at them with decent conjecture; the great group, however— four paintings by Giotto on the ceiling above the altar—may be examined with some success. Like everything of that grim and beautiful master they deserve examination; but with the effect ever of carrying one's appreciation ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... bitterly this false Charity often comes out in individual cases. We will just take an illustration. We will suppose here is a family of decent, respectable, professedly Christian people, who have been to church or chapel most of their lives. Or here is a Church, we will suppose, of the same character—nothing particular has happened; they fear the Lord, and ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... in Konnaia Square had been founded in the year 1679, by the third of the line, Alexis Gregorievitch, who had purposely placed the dwelling of his race in this far corner of the city, out of the possible range of decent dwellings. And none of the succession of Peters and Mikhails that followed, ever thought to reproach this act of their ancestor. The details of the life of one of these men would have sufficed for all, until the breaking of the direct line. But the last Prince had died childless; ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... no occult "bearing down" that led him to order her admitted the instant her card came. He liked her; he wished to see her again; he felt that it was the decent thing, and somehow not difficult gently but clearly to convey to her the truth. On her side she, who had looked forward to the interview with some nervousness, was at her ease the moment she faced ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... ordinem pertinent, non habenda esse pro humanis placitas, quia divinitus approbantur. Therefore we think concerning such canons, "that they are necessary to be observed so far forth only, as the keeping of them maintaineth decent ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... whilst I praise Young "Peter" sleek before the fire, A proper dog, whose decent ways Renew the virtues of his sire; "Patroclus" rests in grassy tomb, And "Peter" ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... hint, and watch the somersaulting pair. What an editor the elder brother would make! He could turn as sudden and perfect a somersault as did Mr. DANA, when he transformed the Sun in a single night from a decent daily to what it now is. Or what a politician the younger brother might become, were he to exhibit in the arena of public life the agility in turning flip-flaps, and reversing himself by unexpectedly standing on his ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... at his front door. The fact that he is there is an obstacle to your peace of mind. If you did not see him so often, you would more readily come to believe that he possessed a conscience and some shred of principle and decent doctrine. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... with reverence in its proper place. The fulsome clench that nauseates the town, Would from a judge or alderman go down— Such virtue is there in a robe and gown! And that insipid stuff which here you hate, Might somewhere else be call'd a grave debate: Dulness is decent in the church and state. But I forget that still 'tis understood Bad plays are best decried by showing good. Sit silent, then, that my pleased soul may see A judging audience once, and worthy me. My faithful scene from true records shall tell, How Trojan valour did the Greek excel; Your great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... sell me faded goods that never were anything else but faded, at twice the price they ever were, when they couldn't have been worth half of it if the color hadn't faded that never did, because there wasn't no decent color to fade. I'll——" ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... beaver hat was a valuable asset which might be handed down to the second or even the third generation. A decent broadcloth suit would cost a man as much as he could earn in three months at the current rate of wages, after paying his board; consequently the early settler did not often indulge in the luxury of a new suit. Leather breeches were commonly worn, and from ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... him in rags, and he was glad. He felt he hated his philosophy only less than he hated life—hated, yet desired as the man hates a mistress he covets, and has never yet possessed. "Never had anything, never done anything, never felt anything decent yet," ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... second visit to Cherry Orchard haunted Anstice for days. There was something so incongruous in the notion of this woman having served a sentence of imprisonment for an offence which, of all others, might well be supposed the most impossible for any decent person to commit; yet Anstice knew instinctively that Mrs. Carstairs had spoken the truth; and although for the last few years he had been far too much occupied with his own private grudge against Fate to spare any pity for the woes of others, ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... his lordship was the next day sworn of the privy-council, and declared lord chamberlain of the household, 'A place, says Prior, which he eminently adorned by the grace of his person, the fineness of his breeding, and the knowledge and practice of what was decent and magnificent.' It appears by the history of England, that he had the honour to stand godfather, with King William to a son of the prince and princess of Denmark, born at Hampton-court, the 24th of July 1689, and christened the 27th by the name of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... him; "but I don't want you to think it's because I don't care any more. It was mostly because I was trying to help Skinny. Anyway, it's all over now. How did the fellows treat him to-day? If they'd known it was his last day, they'd have treated him decent, I bet." ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in the lumpy bed which she and her daughter shared and said, with a querulousness undiminished by her sleepiness, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lena Quincy, gallivanting around at this hour of night. It ain't decent. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... of Lancashire and Yorkshire, on which the country hand-loom weavers eke out a miserable livelihood by cultivating patches of grass land, there is distress more acute than ever was known in a Dorset village. But in Northumberland, by exception, there is a decent country life. 'What I saw of the northern peasantry impressed me very strongly in their favour; they are very intelligent, sober, and courteous in their manners.... The education in Northumberland is very good; the people are intelligent and cute, alive to the advantages of knowledge, and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... ignorance of it, unknown multitudes of boys have suffered anxiety sometimes amounting to terror, have become moody and dejected, lost interest in work and studies; and finally thousands of them, ashamed to ask counsel or enlightenment from any decent source, have had recourse to the venereal quack, who so artfully spreads his snares for them in daily paper and widely circulated pamphlet. Once the victim is in his hands there is almost no limit to the evil that may result.[38] High-school principals tell of watching the faces of their ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... payment of the honorarium. As my letter about the withdrawal of "Rienzi" was written with a view to being shown, it may very likely have puzzled you; but I know that it was intended only to frighten D., and to supply you with a weapon for forcing him into a decent and business-like attitude. In consequence, I hoped that the success of this little manoeuvre would secure me the receipt of the wretched twenty-five louis d'or before the new year. Upon this sum I looked ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... all, at such a crisis in your married life, you get into a window corner with that ogling dame von Rosen. I do not dream that there was any harm; but I do say it was an idle disrespect to your wife. Why, man, the woman is not decent.' ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that he might go and give himself up. Now he could see the girl; the danger from that was as nothing compared with the danger from his own conscience. He had promised Keith not to see her. Keith had been decent and loyal to him—good old Keith! But he would never understand that this girl was now all he cared about in life; that he would rather be cut off from life itself than be cut off from her. Instead of becoming less and less, she was becoming ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... pride, luxury, and avarice in one class gave motive and temptation to the grosser forms of evil in another. How gentle, and yet how searching, are his rebukes of self-complacent respectability, holding it responsible, in spite of all its decent seemings, for much of the depravity which it condemned with Pharisaical harshness! In his Considerations on the True Harmony of Mankind be dwells with great earnestness upon the importance of possessing "the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... we do with such a fool as you?" cried M. Lecoq angrily. "I begin to think you are a rascal too. A decent fellow would see that we wanted to get him out of a scrape, and he'd tell us the truth. You are prolonging your imprisonment by your own will. You'd better learn that the greatest shrewdness consists in telling the truth. A last time, will ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... savings bank. Dickie bought carving tools and went to the Goldsmiths' Institute to learn to use them. The front bedroom was fitted with a bench for Dickie. The back sitting-room was a kennel for the dogs which Mr. Beale instantly began to collect. The front room was a parlor—a real parlor. A decent young woman—Amelia by name—was engaged to come in every day and "do for" them. The clothes they wore were clean; the food they ate was good. Dickie's knowledge of an ordered life in a great house helped ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... to horse-buying; the place was like a fair; everyone who owned even the framework of a horse brought it out and offered it for sale; and officers were competing busily for the purchase of any decent animal. I found time to go down and listen to the river—strange sights the water that is flowing so quietly must have passed this morning! For one of our 6-inch siege guns was sent up to Warrenton last night, and opened at ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... appreciation of the English public, has undergone, within the last few years, a notable change. We need revert to no distant period to recall the day when the word "Paris" on the title-page of a book of fiction, was, to the work so inscribed, virtual sentence of exclusion from respectable library and decent drawing-room this side the Channel. It was the foul-bill of health, the signal of a moral quarantine, interminable and hopeless of pratique. French novels came to England and were read; but the arrivals were comparatively rare, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of Gaudisso would have been cast out a prey to dogs and vultures, had not Sherasmin, under the character of nephew of the deceased, been permitted to receive it, and give it decent burial, which he did, but not till he had taken possession of the beard and grinders, agreeably to the orders ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... he received a remittance of five pounds from London, with which he provided himself a decent coat, and determined to go to London, but unhappily spent his money at a favourite tavern. Thus was he again confined to Bristol, where he was every day hunted by bailiffs. In this exigence he once more ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... conditions. The aid of several mothers' clubs among the colored women was enlisted to instruct immigrant mothers in the proper diet and clothing for children in a northern climate. From the outset, the aim was not only to put each migrant in a decent home but also to connect him with some church. Many times the churches reciprocated with considerable material ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... ices and looking the worse for wear in his clothes of the night before. As this meant delay in the execution of her wishes, Zora prescribed habits less irregular. By means of bribery of chambermaids and porters, and the sacrifice of food and sleep, he contrived to find himself dressed in decent time in the mornings. He would then patiently await her orders or call modestly for them at her residence, like the butcher or ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... large cavalcade, which included Mr. Keeley, a prisoner. He went on with his escort at daybreak, leaving us full of sympathy for his poor wife. I sent by his bodyguard, under the command of another Dietrich, brother to the drunkard, who seemed a decent sort of man, a letter to General Snyman, begging for a pass into Mafeking to rejoin my husband. Mr. Keeley told me their Intelligence Department was very perfect, as they had been aware of every one of my movements since ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... were mathematically safe—if they depended on the laws of chance. No ship moving through the Asteroid Belt would dare to move at any decent velocity without using radar, so the people on this particular lump of planetary flotsam would be able to spot a ship's approach easily, long before their own weak detection system would register on the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... from the gallantry of preceptors is broken down, and your families are no longer protected by decent pride and salutary domestic prejudice, there is but one step to a frightful corruption. The rulers in the National Assembly are in good hopes that the females of the first families in France may become an easy prey to dancing-masters, fiddlers, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... say, 'before you could look round you,' the man at the helm replaced by one of my men, the crew bundled down into the slave-hold to give them a taste of its horrors, and the sails trimmed for seaward instead of towards the land. The captain, who seemed a decent fellow, cried like a child. He said: 'If I had seen you five minutes before you would never have taken me. Now I am ruined.' I consoled him as well as I could and treated him well, as he really seemed half ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... Gib was a decent man if he would resist the devil of pride. She charged me to tell you that you would never be out of her prayers, and that she would live to be proud of you. 'John will never shame ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... know there are nights when a king like Conchubor will spit upon his arm ring, and queens will stick their tongues out at the rising moon. We're that way this night, and it's not wine we're asking only. Where is the young girl told us we might shelter here? LAVARCHAM. Asking me you'd be? We're decent people, and I wouldn't put you tracking a young girl, not if you gave me the gold clasp you have hanging on your coat. NAISI — giving it to her. — Where is she? LAVARCHAM — in confidential whisper, putting her hand on his arm. — Let you walk back into the hills and ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... why hasn't someone tried?" Bridget waited for him to answer a decent two seconds and then ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... of strange and beautiful things. Among them, I knew, by pictures I had seen, the armor of knights, when they fought on their horses' backs. Before people had money they must have misered other things. Some girls miser their clothes, and never go decent!" ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... structure of our modern society, like an old Mexican temple, must be built upon a layer of living men, flung in for a foundation? Can it not be helped that there should be streets in our cities into which it is unfit for a decent woman to go by day alone, and unsafe for a brave man to venture after nightfall? Must men and women huddle together in dens where decency is as impossible as it is for swine in a sty? Is it an indispensable part of our material progress and wonderful civilisation that vice ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Hutchins, the driver, hears that he may probably be given charge of a lavatory at one of the stations. He is a decent, bluff, short-spoken old chap, with his heart in his work. Just now you'll find him at his worst—bitter and suspicious. The thought of swabbing down a lavatory and taking pennies all day is ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... a single soul within it, we made within a few minutes an agreeable acquaintance. After we passed the Isar Gate, we began looking for a decent inn, for the day's walk was very fatiguing. Presently a young man, who had been watching us for some time, came up and said, if we would allow him, he would conduct us to a good lodging-place. Finding we were strangers, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... chance, started from the opposite ends of Paris to meet in the office of the lawyer who was engaged by both. The supplies liberally advanced by Derville to Colonel Chabert had enabled him to dress as suited his position in life, and the dead man arrived in a very decent cab. He wore a wig suited to his face, was dressed in blue cloth with white linen, and wore under his waistcoat the broad red ribbon of the higher grade of the Legion of Honor. In resuming the habits of wealth he had recovered his soldierly style. ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... Whitefolks mighty decent to me now, and I always tried to teach my children to be respectful and act like they think the whitefolks they dealing with expects them to act. That the way to git along, because some folks been taught one way and some been taught ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... a lesson to you. You ought not to indulge habits that are liable any moment to involve you in such distress. Now look at you, a big, healthy, able-bodied man, on a night like this too, with all the splendour and glory of sky and woods and river about you, with decent company too, and a good fire, and yet you are incapable of enjoyment. You are an abnormality, and you have made yourself so. You need treatment; I am going to administer ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... The King was walkin' one mornin' by the edge of the lake, lamentin' his cruel fate, and thinking of drowning himself, that could get no diversion in life, when all of a sudden, turning round the corner, whom should he meet but a mighty decent young man coming up ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... thought Henry would take it that way, I'd rather had the wall bare, Mr. Gubb. I've cried and cried, and last night I made up my mind it was all my fault and that when Henry came home he'd find a decent paper on the wall. I don't mind telling you, Mr. Gubb, that when the paper was on the wall it looked worse than it looked in the roll. It ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... house of Esau. He knew his wives far too well to entrust so precious a treasure to them; they were in the safe-keeping of his mother. Besides, he used them most frequently in the house of his parents. As a rule, he did not lay much stress upon decent apparel. He was willing to appear on the street clad in rags, but he considered it his duty to wait upon his father arrayed in his best. "My father," Esau was in the habit of saying, "is a king in my sight, and it would ill become me ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... out the approximate force required to drive back a moving body of that weight while traveling forward, say, fifteen miles an hour. There are angles of resistance to be calculated, too, so it offers a decent problem. Meanwhile, the vital question ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... (eleventh and twelfth centuries extra) 21 0 0 For bombs warranted to destroy an ordinary church. 30 0 0 For bombs suited to wreck really superior Buildings, such as Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's 50 0 0 For disturbing public meetings and the general harassing and annoyance of all peaceable and decent people ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... Calixtus 2nd, in the reign of Henry 1st, who declared at a London Synod, it was an intolerable enormity, that a priest should dare to consecrate, and touch the body of Christ immediately after he had risen from the side of a strumpet, (for that was the decent appellation he gave to the wives of the clergy), but it happened, that the very next night, the officers of justice, breaking into a disorderly house, found the Cardinal in bed with a courtezan; an incident, says Hume, [72:1] ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... Dancing. The Musick consisted of 3 Drums, and the Dancing was mostly perform'd by 2 Young Women and one Man, and this seem'd to be their profession. The dress of the women was such as we had not seen before; it was neat, decent, and well chose, and in many respects not much unlike a European dress; only their Arms, Necks, and Shoulders were bare, and their headdress was the Tomow stuck with Flowers. They made very little use of ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... (see chapter xxx), steps must of course be taken to prevent the marrying of the unfit-or, at least, their breeding. With our rapidly decreasing birth rate, and the spread of education, which will do away with "lower" classes and fit every one in some decent degree to be a parent, this will probably be the ultimate solution. With the disappearance of poverty, the miserable living conditions of so large a proportion of our population will automatically ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... espied, at the upper end of the street, a negro-slave standing at his door; so I went up to him and said to him, 'Hast thou a place where I may abide for an hour of the day?' 'Yes,' answered he, and opening the door admitted me into a decent house, furnished with carpets and mats and cushions of leather. Then he shut the door on me and went away; and I misdoubted me he had heard of the reward offered for me, and said to myself, 'He hath gone to inform ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... at once he saw that it was not sand but fine shingle, and the discovery of this mistake surprised him so much that he kept on looking at the shingle through the little telescope, which showed it quite plainly. And as he looked the shingle grew coarser; it was stones now—quite decent-sized ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... to bathe my temples. As soon as I began to recover, I caressed the soft hand of the dear pagan lady, and implored her, partly in Siamese, partly in English, to intercede for me with her husband, that a decent home might be provided for us. She assured me, while she smoothed my hair and patted my cheek as though I were a helpless child, that she would do her best with him, begging me meanwhile to be patient. But that ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... young men," said I, "that are going down to ruin there. They have no home, no decent shelter even for a ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... with a generosity free from ostentation. He went himself to meet the two travelers, whom he led into a commodious apartment, where he desired them to repose themselves a little. Soon after he came and invited them to a decent and well-ordered repast during which he spoke with great judgment of the last revolutions in Babylon. He seemed to be strongly attached to the queen, and wished that Zadig had appeared in the lists to dispute the crown. "But the people," ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... to be worn that night; but it was true enough that Mary did not mind what she was about; she was too busy planning how her old black gown (her best when her mother died) might be sponged, and turned, and lengthened into something like decent mourning for the widow. And when she went home at night (though it was very late, as a sort of retribution for her morning's negligence), she set to work at once, and was so busy and so glad over her task, that she had, every now and then, to check herself in singing merry ditties, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... decent Hampshire hog would scorn to be lodged as many a knight and squire and lady too is now, pigging it in styes and hovels and haylofts by night, and pranking it ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and goin' to work on the farm, and that's where I'm goin' to stay. I was a fool ever to leave it for this confounded place. I could live decent put there, and that's more than I can do ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... You should see me when I say to myself, 'It ought to go now,' and sit down to the piano and put together some miserable rubbish, which I fling away again like an idiot. I know quite well the kind of musical trash I produce.... Believe me, it is no good expecting me to do anything decent. Sometimes I really think it was Reissiger who inspired me to ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... who now came into the room was a very different looking person from the wild, unkempt creature who had confronted Natalie Lind in Curzon Street. The voluminous red beard and mustache had been cropped; he wore the clothes of a decent workman, with a foreign touch here and there; he was submissive and docile ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... form; for his parliamentary and official talents made all his faults conspicuous. His courage, his vehement temper, his contempt for appearances, led him to display much that others, quite as unscrupulous as himself, covered with a decent veil. He was the most unpopular of the statesmen of his time, not because he sinned more than many of them, but because he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... believe me, the two chaps there had never turned up at all—at half-past eight, mind you!—and there was Fennessy doing up the horses. He said he believed that there'd been a wake down at Enniscar last night. I thought it was rather decent of him doing their work ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... that will henceforth be in your service," replied Fink, jumping down. "They seem decent folk," said he, turning to Anton; "but I had some trouble to collect them. Hands are scarce just now, and yet nothing gets done. We have been drumming and bribing in your country like recruiting sergeants. These fellows would hardly have been got here merely to work; the gray jackets and the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... banner of truth, should back this assertion of his wife's, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, really required resignation to put up with; argued a blindness, an infatuation, which seemed to his sister hardly decent. Because after all, facts were facts, and you didn't alter them by pretending that they ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... offered to ghosts are very economical; for if the offering is of food, the living eat it up after a decent interval; if it is a valuable, they remove it and resume the use of it themselves. The principle of this spiritual economy probably lies in the common belief that ghosts, being immaterial, absorb the immaterial essence of the objects, leaving the material ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... discover ourselves smiling over puns and remarks which, on casual perusal, we might pronounce flavourless imbecilities. Indeed, for sheer laughable absurdity on the stage, Sir Tophas would be hard to beat. The following scene will also show the decent quality of wit which Lyly bestowed upon his Pages—lineal descendants of the old Vice through those younger sons, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... first irresistible impulse to dip his fingers in the till and get away with what he thought would be unnoticed petty cash. It had been her fault that the thing had happened, of course. She could have given him a decent amount of spending money, instead of doling it out to him from his own wages as if she were giving money for candy to a schoolboy. She could have treated him more like the man ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... to my lord's design, we were all met. The Master had by that time plucked off his patched boots and made a toilet suitable to the hour; Secundra Dass was no longer bundled up in wrappers, but wore a decent plain black suit, which misbecame him strangely; and the pair were at the great window, looking forth, when the family entered. They turned; and the black man (as they had already named him in the house) bowed almost to his knees, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as fearlessly in his presence as if he were a grown-up nephew. They prized him as a discovery of their own, for they had stumbled on him one day before any one else had found him out, when he was sketching at Fontainebleau. They liked the look of his picture, as they viewed it at a decent remove over his shoulder, and after they got by Burton proposed to go back and kill the fellow on account of the solemn coxcombery of his personal appearance. His wife said: "Well, ask him what he'll take for his picture, first," and Burton returned and said with brutal directness, ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... meal was finished, I don't know why, but instead of sleeping a decent siesta of two hours, the Spanish tonic to digest a dinner, I never awoke before sunset; and only then, because I began to feel a motion that was far from being pleasant. In fact, the waves were beginning to rise in sharp ridges, covered with foam; the mild ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... women, though of irregular and slovenly habits, may exist among this odd fragment of our motley population. It is for the sake of their children, who ought to be, at least equally with those of the English labouring classes, since they cannot get it from their parents, provided with means of decent Christian education, that Mr. George Smith has brought this subject under public notice. The Gipsies, so long as they refrain from picking and stealing, and do not obstruct the highways, should not be persecuted; for they are a less active nuisance ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... maids were reduced to tears, and each policeman cleverly insulted as such. But the testimony of all four remained unshaken; and the judge himself soothed the young women's feelings with a fatherly word, while wigs were shaken in the well of the court. That was no road to the soft side of a decent, conscientious, hard-headed jury, of much the same class as these witnesses themselves; even the actors and authors had a sound opinion on the point, without waiting to hear one from the professional gentlemen in the well. But the man in front with the very white hair—the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... were well armed with muskets and bayonets, and provided with the usual implements of foot soldiers. Harvey knew resistance to be vain, and quietly submitted to their directions. In the twinkling of an eye both he and Caesar were stripped of their decent garments, and made to exchange clothes with two of the filthiest of the band. They were then placed in separate corners of the room, and, under the muzzles of the muskets, required faithfully to answer such interrogatories ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the man is kissed and deserted. If Mr. Jones of the nineties bragged he'd kissed a girl, every one knew he was through with her. If Mr. Jones of 1919 brags the same every one knows it's because he can't kiss her any more. Given a decent start any girl can beat a ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... night, but with great reluctance we were now obliged to give up this round. From Morteau to St. Hippolyte is a day's journey, only to be made by starting at eight in the morning, and there are not even decent wayside inns. So we patiently waited till the storm was over, and as by that time it was past midday, there was nothing to do but drive leisurely back to Maiche. More fortunate travellers than ourselves, in the matter of weather, however, are particularly ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the little children being stunted mentally and physically in our mills and factories, if these thousands of young women, many of them enjoying the wealth made out of these little human souls, refused to wear or buy anything made under any but decent living conditions! Think what it would mean if they decided that every child should have a seat in school, that every neighborhood should have a play-ground and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... before the kurios. "Behold all that is left of the father of Jael, the fisherman who followed the call of the Gaulonite to liberty from oppression, nor was the head that once this covering clung to, allowed its right to rot in a decent tomb. What hast thou of help to offer the oppressed?" and with a sudden twist he wrapped the cloth about his outstretched hand and held it toward ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... customary in Scotland, gave thanks and asked a blessing before meals, not merely as a matter of form and decent Christian manners, for he regarded food as a gift derived directly from the hands of the Father in heaven. Therefore every meal to him was a sacrament requiring conduct and attitude of mind not unlike that befitting ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... everything in sight today," laughed Henry teasingly. "The trouble is, they don't bear any decent fruit. I'd give five dollars if anyone would show ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... world and talked his own tongue. The prospect of genuine intercourse disclosed itself. None but those who have felt it can imagine the relief, the joyous expansion, which follow the discovery after long years of imprisonment with decent people of a person before whom it is unnecessary to stifle what we most care to express. No wonder he ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... person, in such a case, and she gladly promised to be a better woman, but she had been more than once to the thorn for grapes, and we fear will go again. There was a young fellow brought up for drunkenness and obscenity, whose fine was paid by his mother. She looked a decent but poor woman, and one could not but wonder what she had parted with to raise the money, to keep what one of the Magistrates called a blackguard, out of prison. But what will not a mother's love do! These are a few of the ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... there is no feud, and it doesn't seem so romantic when you're in it. The man my sister married I thought was frightfully boring except for his family place, and being in the army, which is rather decent. He talks," she smiled, "like a phonograph with ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... pretty decent sort of a man-driver, isn't he?" said Lidgerwood, doing premeditated and intentional violence to what he had come to call his unjust prejudice against ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... which Cato always highly cried up, Aristides preserved truly pure and untainted. But Cato's marriage, unbecoming his dignity and age, is a considerable disparagement, in this respect, to his character. For it was not decent for him at that age to bring home to his son and his wife a young woman, the daughter of a common paid clerk in the public service: but whether it were for his own gratification or out of anger at his son, both the fact and the presence were unworthy. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... pity of it is that the Austrian is quite a good fellow, the Saxon is a decent sort of man, the Bavarian is chiefly a brute in drink, whilst the Prussian—we all know what the Prussian is, the black centre of hardness, the incarnation of the shady trick, and the very complex ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... lady of great beauty, of decent stature, and of an excellent shape. In her youth she was adorned with a more than usual maiden modesty; her skin was of pure white, and her hair of a yellow colour; her eyes were beautiful and lively. In short, her whole body was well made, and her face was adorned with a wonderful and sweet beauty ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... bachelor apartment, as he loved to call his three rooms at the top of a lodging house which had once been a fashionable private home, faced south and west, rather than east. At the Rhodes House, whose boarding-house clamor and lack of privacy he had abandoned upon taking the flattering job and decent salary of "Special Investigator attached to the District Attorney's office," he had grown accustomed to using the hot morning sun upon his reluctant eyelids as ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... nor any other absurdity? And does it not appear to you that neither by this nor any other example you have done right in painting the picture in this manner, and that it can be proved right and decent? ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus; When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... apricot-colored cassimere, were so old that the color had disappeared in spots; and the buckles, instead of being of steel, seemed to me to be made of common iron. His white, flowered waistcoat, now yellow from long wearing, also his shirt, the frill of which was frayed, betrayed a horrible yet decent poverty. A mere glance at his coat was enough to convince me that my friend had fallen into dire distress. That coat was nut-brown in color, threadbare at the seams, carefully brushed, though the collar ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... see that," he said. "I seem to have exhausted my credit all round. It's decent of you, Tommy, to have been as forbearing as you have. Now what is ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... him had just declared her love, and that he had so clumsily and bluntly "refused" her. For the first time in his life it was his lot to learn by experience how little that a man does depends on his own will, and to suffer in his own person the feelings of a decent kindly man who has against his will caused his ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... got to do everything we can to get out of this jam! Let's signal them! Damnation! Maybe they'll realize we're decent people!" ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... gentle to ring quite true. Vernon was a type with which in a more crude stratum of humanity she had become familiar in the gaming-rooms of the Blue Chip. Weak without being absolutely vicious, crafty without initiative, he would be a mere tool in dominant unscrupulous hands or an average, decent fellow if his better ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... dispatched to a secret address, is a very ordinary complaisance on the part of small London stationers; hundreds of such letters are sent and called for every week within the metropolitan postal area. It did not take Monica long to find an obliging shopkeeper; the first to whom she applied—a decent woman behind a counter which displayed newspapers, tobacco, and ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... made, the names of the most deserving applicants are to numbers of people perfectly well known. The members have now got before them a plain statement of fact as to these charges; and it is for them to say whether they are justifiable, becoming, or decent. I beg most earnestly and respectfully to put it to those gentlemen who belong to this institution, that must now decide, and cannot help deciding, what the Literary Fund is for, and what it is not for. The question raised by the resolution is whether this is ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... snares to inveigle more of them. However, Sir, excuse me this once, and I will be more modest for the future in trespassing on your kindness. Yet, before I break out on my new wants, it will be but decent, Sir, to answer some ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "a decent man does not marry under such circumstances. If he does, he commits a crime, consciously or unconsciously, not only upon a woman, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the King, tranquilly, secluded in his golden box, could see and examine the lady at his leisure, without compromising himself or embarrassing her by his gaze. As for her, her decent and quite appropriate attitude merited for her the approval of her old friend, of the King, and of ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Montenegrin border, which was quite close to his garrison, and has been in Montenegro ever since, wearing the national costume and married to a girl of the country. Stephan was certainly a most violent-tempered man, but he was often entertaining, full of fun, a decent cook, and could sing a host of odd songs and snatches picked up in Austrian garrison towns. Otherwise he was a thorough Montenegrin, though he considered himself vastly their superior. His temper at other times ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... said the detective instantly. "Never mind. It's a fairly decent world, taken en bloc. I ought to speak with authority. I see enough of the seamy side of it, goodness knows. Now, forewarned is forearmed. Don't be nervous. Don't take risks. Everything will come right in time. Remember, I'm not far away in an emergency. Should I chance ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... advances, the meaning of bread changes. The university professor, no less than the day-laborer, finds his income too small for him, and says, "I, too, do income-work which does not bring me bread, books, travel, society, a summer home, and surroundings which are not only decent and sanitary, but refined ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... Witch's Magic Glue, which worked perfectly. That was the hardest part of my job, however, because the bodies didn't match up well and some parts were missing. But by using a piece of Captain Fyter here and a piece of Nick Chopper there, I finally got together a very decent body, with heart ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... had built for them. I have a man and his wife to look after them, and I try to make it as nearly like a happy family as I can. But Miss Brown says she can't stay there any longer. This young man—a decent enough chap he had seemed to me—is pestering her with his attentions. He is quite in love ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... in the meantime his wife died from actual starvation. Being unable to purchase the timber for a coffin in which to bury her, poor M'Loughlin held over the remains for upwards of forty-eight hours; but yet anxious to earn what would give her decent sepulture, and at the same time procure food for his children, he went each of the two days her remains were in his cabin to labour, and spent the night in sorrowing over his departed wife. At length the story came to the ears of the parochial clergy, one ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... exists, no feeling of kinship is awakened by their peril; they will assist at a shipwreck, like the fisher-folk of Lunga, as spectators, and when the fatal scene is over, and the beach strewn with dead bodies, they will fence their fields with mahogany, and, after a decent grace, sup claret to their porridge. It is not wickedness: it is scarce evil; it is only, in its highest power, the sense of isolation and the wise disinterestedness of feeble and poor races. Think how many viking ships had sailed by these islands in the past, how many vikings had landed, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his hands and taking long strides, "this begins well. Provided I can appear to advantage, provided that the deceased husbands of the widow had decent figures and that their clothes will not disfigure me too much, I shall please—I shall captivate the widow; and this animal of a buccaneer, ousted by me from the heart of Blue Beard, will return to-morrow—perhaps even to-night, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... diamond in the rough, Mary," he assured her gravely, but with a twinkle in his eyes. "He may be one of the leading citizens of the state twenty years from now, and even if he isn't, he's one of the few young fellows of the settlement, and a decent one at that, and you can't afford to snub him ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... ancient world. Periander,[80] the tyrant of Corinth, on one occasion wished to consult his wife's spirit upon a very important matter; but she replied, as she had doubtless often done when alive, that she would not answer his questions till she had some decent clothes to wear. Periander waited for a great festival, when he knew that all the women of Corinth would be assembled in their best, and then gave orders that they should one and all strip themselves. He burnt the clothes ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... needn't be lonely any more; I've talked to some of the guests, and they want to make friends with her. She'll find them nice people, and you must make her meet them halfway. Perhaps she'll become interested in some decent young fellow. I'd like ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... taste, but these internal powers Active, and strong, and feelingly alive To each fine impulse,—a discerning sense Of decent and sublime, with quick disgust From things deform'd, or disarranged, or gross In species? This, nor gems, nor stores of gold, 520 Nor purple state, nor culture can bestow; But God alone, when first His active hand Imprints ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... he prayed pardon if we asked him to believe in us. "Conduct," he said once, "is the outcome of selfishness limited by self-conceit." It was his way so to put things as to strip them of friendly, decent covering; had he said self-interest limited by self-respect, the axiom would have been more accepted and less quoted. A superficial person used to exclaim to me, "And yet he is so kind!" A man without ideals finds kindness the easiest thing in the world. In truth he was kind, and in ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... not to, do not allow yourselves to be in situations which make it unduly difficult to carry out your decision. Drink stimulates the sex urge; few decent people would enjoy remembering that their first sex experience came when they were stimulated by liquor. If you drink, avoid emotional situations in secret thereafter, until this stimulus has worn off. If you harass your serenity and loving contacts by reopening the ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... reading of the warrant that morning, Charley Balaam had shown Carrington the road to the Forks, assuring him when they separated that with a little care and decent use of his eyes it would be possible to fetch up there and not pass plumb through the settlement without knowing where he was. But Carrington had found the Forks without difficulty. He had seen the old mill his grandfather had built almost a hundred years before, and in the churchyard ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... effectiveness. But her methods are coarser and more commonplace than Becky's; she never could have long sustained such an ordeal as the tenure of the house in Curzon Street without losing even an equivocal position in decent English society; and it must always be remembered that she was under the orders, so to speak, of Lisbeth, and inspired ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... uniformly kind and compassionate; and I can truly say, as Mr. Ledyard has eloquently said before me—'To a woman, I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. If I was hungry, or thirsty, wet, or ill, they did not hesitate, like the men, to perform a generous action. In so free and so kind a manner, did they contribute to my relief, that if I were thirsty, I ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... that is a new business for you, I think. Well, run up to Aunt Chloe, and tell her I want you made decent with all possible haste or you will be too late for tea. But stay," he added as she was turning to go, "you have been crying; what ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... himself in the main thoroughfare of last night, which he now knew to be Montgomery Street. It was more thronged than then, but he failed to be impressed, as then, with the selfish activity of the crowd. Yet he was half conscious that his own brighter fortune, more decent attire, and satisfied hunger had something to do with this change, and he glanced hurriedly at the druggist's broad plate-glass windows, with a faint hope that the young girl whose amused pity he had awakened might be there again. He found California Street quickly, and in a few moments ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... unusual brilliancy. She was going out with John Jr., who, just as she finished speaking, appeared in the doorway, and catching a glimpse of her face, exclaimed in his blunt, jocose way, "Upon my word, Meb, if you keep on, you'll get to be quite decent ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... not at liberty to violate the sanctity of private life, by mentioning the names of the parties concerned in this little anecdote. I only wish to have it understood that I am a gentleman, and live at least in DECENT society. Verbum sat. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some months, and relate a remarkable incident that befell her in the said character. On the first of August in this year, a good Christian woman, one of her patients, asked her to call on Mr. Barkington, that lodged above. "He is a decent body, miss, and between you and me, I think his complaint is, he don't ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... me say that. I don't really want to snub her. I don't want to hurt her feelings. But, of course, I can't have those pauper children at my party—Amy and Gummy. 'Gummy!' What a frightful name! And his pants are patched at the knees. They wouldn't—either of them—have a decent thing to wear, ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... solace she could in solitude. Norma was not wantonly cruel; she could impale a foe, but she had no desire to witness his contortions. After a death-scene she shrank from the grewsomeness of burial; she preferred a decent drop-curtain and ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... the city, and I found no difficulty in discovering where he lived. I abstained from entering his house, and making any direct inquiries concerning the fate of my friend; but I stopped at the shop of a barber in the neighbourhood, both because I wanted his assistance in giving a decent appearance to my head and face, and because I knew that he would be the most likely person to inform me of the real state of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... wonder if we are? I wonder if that poor, little, brown-skinned fool isn't after all as much a victim as I am. She doesn't know better, maybe; but Charlie does, and he doesn't seem to care. It merely embarrasses him to be found out, that's all. It isn't right. It isn't fair, or decent, or anything. We're just for him ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... devil out of him so that he'll be all quiet for the afternoon," cried Torode, as he sped past us one time. And Gray Robin tried to look after his mate, and jogged comfortably along thanking his stars that if he did feel somewhat of a fool, he had decent quiet folk on his back, and was not as badly off as some he ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... suffer from brain-fag on occasion, but alcohol never suggested itself as an ameliorative. Heavens! Editorial acceptances and cheques were all the amelioratives I needed. A thin envelope from an editor in the morning's mail was more stimulating than half a dozen cocktails. And if a cheque of decent amount came out of the envelope, such incident in itself was a ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... thing that we're lovin' more than money, grub, or booze, Or even decent folks that speaks us fair; And that's the Grand Old Privilege to chuck our luck and choose, Any road at any time for ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... he made, with his decent portliness, his whiskers, the money in his purse, the excellent cigar that he now lighted, recurred to his mind in consolatory comparison with that of a certain maddened lad who, on a certain spring ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a somewhat nervous fashion: "Him? Look here, Jue: leave me out of it—I haven't the cheek to talk of myself in that connection—but if there was a decent sort of fellow whom that girl really took a liking to, do you think he would let that elderly and elegant swell out in Jamaica stand in his way? He would be no such fool, I can tell you. He would consider ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... indecent to show themselves decolletees. They sit, however, in postures which leave their legs uncovered.[1406] A peasant woman could not wear the dress of a lady of fashion. Where men or women wear only a string around the waist, their dress is decent, but it is indecent to leave off the string. The suggestive effect of putting on ornaments and dress at one stage is the same as that of leaving them off at another stage. Barbarians put on dress for festivals, dances, and solemn occasions. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the reason, in Heaven's name," answered the matron, keeping her eyes firmly shut, and still shrewish in her expostulation, though in the very extremity of terror, "what is the reason that you should come and frighten a decent house, where you met naething, when ye was in the body, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... course, they will be beaten." The statement is almost a query, and they continue, "but they are putting up a decent fight." For being beaten does not greatly matter in Ireland, but not fighting does matter. "They went forth always to the battle; and they always fell," Indeed, the history of the Irish race ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... being a wonderful person, to be desired beyond all others. Often the critical faculty in us is entirely suspended by this attraction; and "her" words seem wise, though in fact they are silly, and "he" seems noble, though in fact he is only an averagely decent man. Two such persons long ardently to be together, though they do not nearly always want to talk to each other. They are held by something they do not understand, ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... only improvements, outside of vine and tree growth, that can be made; the wear of time even cannot be repaired, for the occupant has nothing to spare for repairs or improvements, and even the necessaries of life are a tug, and as to decent clothing for himself and wife and other dependants that is not to be thought of while he is loaded down with that bane of ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... dirtiness of the suite we had passed through. This total want of keeping, it may be mentioned, is quite in Oriental taste. They know tolerably well how to be magnificent on occasions; but they never learn how to be uniformly decent. The Asiatics, and even some other nations which might be named nearer home, can seldom afford to be taken by surprise. Indeed, I am not sure if more than one country can be alluded to, in which the people are at all hours ready to receive strangers, and have no occasion to make ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... is the father, we are the youngsters. Those of us who can do a decent thing learned how from him; and whoever will not ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... public government; for here a man shall be valued purely for his merit, and rise by it too, though it be but to a halter, in which there is a great deal of glory in dying like a hero, and making a decent figure in the cart to the last two staves of the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... I guilty—I speak not of acts, but of so much as a single thought of crossing his will or tarnishing his honour. Now a man there is—his name, indeed, I know not, but he seems to me to be a gentleman, and, if I mistake not, he is much with you—a fine man and tall, his garb dun and very decent, who, the bent of my mind being, belike, quite unknown to him, would seem to have laid siege to me, insomuch that I cannot shew myself at door or casement, or quit the house, but forthwith he presents himself before ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... "It's a very decent letter," said Yaspard, "and everybody who knows the young Laird says he is a brick; but I know how Uncle Brues would flare up over this. One has only to utter 'holme' or 'Lunda' in uncle's hearing if one wants to bring the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... prevent any destruction of human life and property which might take place at the instigation of irresponsible extremists. In this difficult and ofttimes dangerous duty the men who stand for constitutional order in society will always have the support of decent intelligent citizens. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... Pannell, he either found or made his parishioners peaceable, and complying with him in the decent and regular service of God. And thus his Parish, his patron, and he lived together in a religious love and a contented quietness; he not troubling their thoughts by preaching high and useless notions, but such plain truths ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... ridiculous old men forcing her on people this way. If we had known the party was given to her, we never should have come, but now that we are here we naturally must behave as gentle folk and be decent." ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... are only four. The Ladle; which is introduced by a preface, neither necessary nor pleasing, neither grave nor merry. Paulo Purganti; which has likewise a preface, but of more value than the tale. Hans Carvel, not over-decent; and Protogenes and Apelles, an old story, mingled, by an affectation not disagreeable, with modern images. The Young Gentleman in Love has hardly a just claim to the title of a tale. I know not whether he be the original author of any tale which he has given us. The adventure ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... were sold for fourscore pounds upon his death, which happened in September 1714, being upwards of threescore years of age; and (he) lyes buried in the church-yard of Clerkenwell, without monument or inscription: being attended to his grave, in a very solemn and decent manner, by a great concourse of people, especially of such as frequented the Musical club, that was kept up for many years at his own charges (he being a man of a very generous and liberal spirit) at his ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Dolphin House, Troy, a Mr Samuel Pinsent, ship-chandler, who by general consent was the funniest fellow that ever took up his abode in the town. He came originally from somewhere in the South Hams, but this tells us nothing, for the folk of the South Hams are a decent, quiet lot, and you might travel the district to-day from end to end without coming across the like ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... my head was bandaged up, and I was in quite a decent little room, lying on a couch, with Mr. Ivan Abramovitch sitting opposite to me. I couldn't give a guess where it was, for the window only looked out on a blank wall. I sat up, and ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... he knew that it would disappoint and mortify Lady Glistonbury. The interests of his hatred seemed, indeed, to occupy his lordship more than the interests of Vivian's love; but politeness threw a decent veil over these feelings; and, after saying all that could be expected of the satisfaction it must be to a father to see his daughter united to a man of Mr. Vivian's family, fortune, talents, and great respectability; and after having given, incidentally and parenthetically, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... these were decent girls at the start, at the beginning of the war. But you know women, how they run after men, especially when the men wear uniforms, all gilt buttons and braid. It's not the men's fault that most of the women in the War Zone are ruined. Have you ever watched the village ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... to fail were stripped of the earnings of years, and besides, are compelled to bear the name of dishonorable debtors, are the most worthy of sympathy of any the world knows. The decrepit old chattel slave had hope of a home until the end, and a decent burial, but the debtor has nothing, not even ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... don't keep them home where they belong. Some librarians may choose to be so wishy-washy and turn their libraries into nursing-homes and kindergartens, but as long as I'm in charge, the Gopher Prairie library is going to be quiet and decent, and the books ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... courage to say how life should run after they were gone. And then because constitutions are difficult to amend, zealous people with a taste for mortmain have loved to write on this imperishable brass all kinds of rules and restrictions that, given any decent humility about the future, ought to be no more permanent ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... this: fine family, good blood, decent habits, handsome, healthy, poetic. He might even be affectionate. His one fault is that he is not adjusted to modern commercial standards. He cannot make money, or he will not—it ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke |
