"Decorum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be thought a thing ridiculous To present eyes, and to all future times A gross untruth, that any poet, void Of birth, or wealth, or temporal dignity, Should, with decorum, transcend Caesar's chair. Poor virtue raised, high birth and wealth set under, Crosseth heaven's courses, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... clothes-pin fashion in a looped-up skirt; when she sees you comin' she'll p'r'aps upset a kid or two assoomin' a decorous attitood. That's feeminine, and as such is approved by the ladies, but"—and here Leander put his head on one side and gave a grotesque impression of outraged decorum—"pants is considered unwomanly." ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... prisoner's head was hung an account of his misdeeds, placed there by some of his cronies. These crimes were in the nature of certain breaches of public decorum and decency, the details of which the bystanders were ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... their childrens sight, For terror, not to vse: in time the rod More mock'd, then fear'd: so our Decrees, Dead to infliction, to themselues are dead, And libertie, plucks Iustice by the nose; The Baby beates the Nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... every mark of respect, consistent with safe custody, and his confinement as mild and comfortable also, as that would permit. These are the distinctions to which a Consul is entitled, that is to say, of a particular decorum of deportment towards him, indicative of respect to the sovereign whose ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... did not keep a decorum, in making every one speak as well as himself. Spenser's stanza pleased him not, nor his matter; the meaning of the allegory of the Fairy Queen he delivered in writing to Sir Walter Raleigh, which was, that by the bleating beast he understood the Puritans; ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... "ladies do not always understand Latin, but a certain Roman poet called Horace once said, 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'. Let me modify it by saying, 'to offer in time of need to die for your country.' It does not follow that a man who fights for his home and liberty dies. Good lad. ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... the authors are men of learning, erudition, and eloquence. And then, when they quote the Holy Scriptures!—anyone would say they are St. Thomases or other doctors of the Church, observing as they do a decorum so ingenious that in one sentence they describe a distracted lover and in the next deliver a devout little sermon that it is a pleasure and a treat to hear and read. Of all this there will be nothing in my book, for I have nothing to quote in the margin or to note at the end, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... galloping up and down the wide dusty streets at every hour of the day and night. It was a picturesque sight during the three days the meetings lasted. There was always at least one big dance at the hotel. There were few dress suits, but there was perfect decorum at the dance, and in the square dances most of the men knew the figures far better than I did. With such a crowd in town, sleeping accommodations of any sort were at a premium, and in the hotel there were two men in every bed. On one occasion I had a roommate whom I never saw, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... mentioning her, most unequivocally settled the crown, in case of a demise, upon the Princess of Orange; and, above all, the circumstance of his having, when driven from England, twice chosen Holland for his asylum. By his cousins he was received, not so much with the civility and decorum of princes, as with the kind familiarity of near relations, a reception to which he seemed to make every return of reciprocal cordiality. It is not rashly to be believed, that he, who has never ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... Macready not only enriched the scene, but he purified the audience; and for the first time since the reign of Charles II, a father might have taken his daughters to a public theatre with as much safety from all that could shock decorum as if he had taken them to the house of a friend. And for this reason the late lamented Bishop of Norwich made it a point to form the personal acquaintance of Mr. Macready, that he might thank ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... to enter a church she always manifested the utmost decorum. She had bought a handsome missal, which she never opened, for use when she was invited to a funeral or a wedding. She knelt and rose at the proper times, and made a point of conducting herself with all propriety. She ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... nothing to say, no little pretence even to herself that she had guarded the proprieties, had comported herself circumspectly, leaving her with not even a little rag of a claim that she had conducted herself with seemly decorum, she sprang from him and began to cry. Whatever the cause, Mr. Middleton could not look upon feminine unhappiness with composure and here where he was himself responsible, he was indeed smitten with keen remorse and hastening to comfort her, gathered her into ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... three-caped coat of the Paris cocher set the fashion. He had the grace to be ashamed of himself, often apologizing for his clothes and assuring us that he could not help himself, which was his reason, I fancy, for accepting at an early age the professorial chair where the decorum of his hat and coat was in need ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... cared for her as if he occupied the place of her own brother who fell in the battle of Marchfield. It would have given him most pleasure—he had said so himself—to dance everything with her, but decorum and the royal dames who kept him in attendance would not permit it. However, he came to her in every pause to exchange at least a few brief words and a glance. During the longest one, which lasted ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had in no degree mended his morality or bettered his reputation. Edinburgh citizenship has always been commended for keeping a strict eye to the respectabilities, and the standard of public and private decorum was held puritanically high in the middle of the last century; but even in the most loose-lived of European cities, even in the frankest freedom of barracks or of camp, John Porteous, if his reputation did not belie him, might have been expected ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Sunday evening after dinner, when the drawing-room was filled with guests, who more or less preserved the decorum which etiquette demands in the presence of royalty, (the Duke of Sussex was of the party,) Charles Fox and Lady Anson, great-grandmother of the present Lord Lichfield, happened to be playing at chess. When the irascible dominie beheld them he pushed his way through the bystanders, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... not apparent in rules and time-tables. The girls wore a school uniform, were well fed and taught, strictly looked after, taken out for walks and excursions, allowed a private correspondence, shown how to mend their clothes, made to keep their rooms tidy, encouraged in piety and decorum. In these strenuous times it sounds a little old-fashioned, and as a matter of fact a school of this kind fits a girl for a sheltered home but not for the open road. For everyone concerned about the education of women the interesting spectacle in Germany to-day is the campaign being carried on by ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... spirit and fearlessness of this young woman; nor could he conceive where, in staid and formal England, she had grown up to be such as she was, so without manner, so without art, yet so capable of doing and thinking for herself. She had no reserve, apparently, yet never seemed to sin against decorum; it never appeared to restrain her that anything she might wish to do was contrary to custom; she had nothing of what could be called shyness in her intercourse with him; and yet he was conscious of an unapproachableness in Alice. Often, in the old man's presence, she ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in my heart by faith and the moral law dwells in my members, the one to keep up peace with God, the other to keep my conversation in a good decorum, then am I ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... looked upon as the highest affront, and would be thought to merit a drawn sword through the midriff. Should any one see his most intimate friend any where with a woman, he must never take notice of it, or mention it afterwards. Every thing of this nature is conducted with all imaginary gravity and decorum, by which the practice of gallantry becomes decent and easy; yet there are some jealousies in this regular commerce of love, which sometimes end fatally. A story of this kind happened shortly before I ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... had affected formality; the comic poet laughed at decorum. The Puritan had frowned at innocent diversions; the comic poet took under his patronage the most flagitious excesses. The Puritan had canted; the comic poet blasphemed. The Puritan had made an affair of gallantry felony without benefit of clergy; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gravity, fixed attention, and decorum of these sons of the forest was calculated to make for them a most favorable impression.—GRAY: ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... ceremonial, rather than their doctrine, served to deepen and diffuse a reverence for religious things. Whatever the licentiousness of other mysteries (especially in Italy), the Eleusinian rites long retained their renown for purity and decorum; they were jealously watched by the Athenian magistracy, and one of the early Athenian laws enacted that the senate should assemble the day after their celebration to inquire into any abuse that might ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or both. English justice cannot be bought, they say, and if it is dear, excessively dear even, they rather like to feel they have paid a long price for a good article. Yet it may be that here, as in other things, they take outward propriety and decorum for the inward and ineffable grace. That a judge should be incorruptible is not so important as that he should ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... gardens where a more refined and exclusive section of the company have hired seats, in order to contemplate, without sharing, the rude dances or jostling promenade of the promiscuous merry-makers. Much hubbub, much humour; some persons for the dog, some against him; privilege and decorum here, equality and fraternity there. A Bonapartist colonel sees the cross on the soldier's breast, and, mille tonnerres! he settles the point. He pays for three reserved seats,—one for the soldier, one for the child, and a third for the dog. The veteran enters,—the child, not strong enough to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... master and Desmoulin wandered down to the Thames towing-path, they found fresh food for observation and comment among the boating fraternity. With some gay parties were damsels whose disregard for decorum was strongly reminiscent of Asnieres and Joinville-le-Pont; and it was slightly embarrassing to stroll near the river in the evening, when at every few yards one found young couples exchanging kisses in the shadows of the trees. After all it was ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... pauperized, much more civilized, and much happier than our own peasantry." * * * "The dancing itself, even in those tents frequented by the poorest peasants, is quite as good, and is conducted with quite as much decorum, as that of the first ballrooms of London. The polka, the waltz, and several dances not known in England, are danced by the German peasants with great elegance. They dance quicker than we do; and, from the training in music which they ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Public decorum forbade that the queen should ostensibly accept the offer of a man who made her a widow ten weeks before. Therefore Bothwell waylaid the queen at the Brig of Almond, some miles from Edinburgh, dispersed ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... of P.P. clerk of this parish,' and who is obliged to join her father and relatives, now in exile there, to avoid being shut up in a monastery, because the Pope's decree of separation required her to reside in casa paterna, or else, for decorum's sake, in a convent. As I could not say with Hamlet, 'Get thee to a nunnery,' I am preparing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... shrieks and efforts to flee were alike unavailing. They were dragged rapidly beyond the power of making themselves heard. As soon as they were deemed to be beyond the danger of rescue, they were treated with the utmost indulgence and decorum. ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... rosier—this frost of powder on my hair! All these I wear, Euan, so that man's delight in me may do you honour. All I am to please them—my gaiety, my small wit, which makes for them crude verses, my modesty, my decorum, my mind and person, which seem not unacceptable to a respectable society—all these are but dormant qualities that you ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... appeared to give leave, of not forgetting, too, familiarly, that in addition to being important she was also sensitive, had the effect of throwing over their intercourse a kind of silver tissue of decorum. It hung there above them like a canopy of state, a reminder that though the lady-in-waiting was an established favourite, safe in her position, a little queen, however, good-natured, was always a little queen and might, with small ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... the critical Jack Ketch. Mr. Channing must be hung, that's true. He must be hung in terrorem —and for this there is no help under the sun; but then we shall do him all manner of justice, and observe every species of decorum, and be especially careful of his feelings, and hang him gingerly and gracefully, with a silken cord, as Spaniards hang their grandees of the blue blood, their nobles of the ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... using wisdom is the expedient; but I will further dilate on this a little; first by removing from the crowd and leading a hermit's life, depending entirely on alms for food, extensively practising rules of decorum, religiously adhering to right rules of conduct; desiring little and knowing when to abstain, receiving whatever is given in food, whether pleasant or otherwise, delighting to practise a quiet life, diligently studying all the Sutras and Sastras; observing ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... his father was not usually one of those things that young Kearney either speculated on with pleasure beforehand, or much enjoyed when it came. Certain measures of decorum, and some still more pressing necessities of economy, required that he should pass some months of every year at home; but they were always seasons looked forward to with a mild terror, and when the time drew ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... rejoicing harmony on their violins, guitars, and dulcimers, and the women servants, grouped at the door, uttered in chorus that wild, shrill cry, which accompanies all such festivals in the East. The bride was careful to preserve the decorum expected of her, by speaking no word, nor losing the sad, resigned expression of her countenance. She ascended to the divan, bowed to each of us with a low, reverential inclination, and seated herself on the cushions. The music and dances lasted ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... by the host, instead of by the guest. Provinces were ransacked for fish and fowl and game for the tables of the great, and sensualism was thought to be no reproach. They violated the laws of chastity and decorum. They scourged to death their slaves. They degraded their wives and sisters. They patronized the most demoralizing sports. They enriched themselves by usury, and enjoyed monopolies. They practiced no generosity, except at their banquets, when ostentation balanced their avarice. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... climbed upon seats to look, and there was confusion. A baby or two in the mothers' class began to cry, but the mothers themselves soon understood what was taking place, and forgot the decorum of Sunday-school, to crowd up to ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... in fulfillment— manners debonair and gay are toned down to the "family" standard. Should you light a cigarette, mine host will touch you on the "arrum" and remind you that the proprieties are menaced. "Antonio" entices and beguiles from fiery legend without, but "O'Riley" teaches decorum within. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... holding out a pink-edged blanket. "Jest put in on your lap, sir." There was about her that utter peculiar lack of decorum that is common to nurses and mothers and Cameron, blushing furiously, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... brandy." She obeyed without comment, but after a pause she opened her eyes again and looked down at the new garment which clad her. She had that moment turned back from the door of death, but her first breath was used to set the scene for a return to a decent decorum. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... revolution in the societal organization, either in the family form, the productive industry, or the political discipline. The Hawaiians were a people of a very cheerful and playful disposition. The missionaries trained the children in the schools to serious manners and decorum. Such was the method in fashion in our own schools at the time. The missionary society refused the petition of the Hawaiians for teachers who would teach them the mechanic arts.[155] This is like the refusal of the English missionary society to support Livingstone's ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... is all a variorum; We regard not how it goes, Let them cant about decorum Who have ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... bag which hung behind Vikram's royal back broke off the end of this offensive sentence. And the warrior king did not cease that discipline till the Baital promised him to preserve more decorum in his observations. ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... but it judges of them with tolerance and good temper. Moreover, a sense of the ridiculous is a sound preservative of social virtues. It places a proper emphasis on the judgments of our associates, it saves us from pitfalls of vanity and self-assurance, it lays the basis of that propriety and decorum of conduct upon which is founded the charm of intercourse among equals. And what it does for us individually, it does for us collectively. Our national apprehension of a jest fosters whatever grace of modesty we have to show. We dare not inflate ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... dancing recommenced, and the hilarity of the evening reached its highest pitch when half a dozen sailors, dressed in turbans made of flags (one of them a lady with the face of the tragic muse), came forward and danced the cancan, with a gravity and decorum that would have greatly edified what Gavarni calls "la ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... stones, and went across the circle to where she stood beside the altar. I did not prostrate myself. At the prescribed distance I made the salutation which she herself had ordered when she made me her chief minister, and then hailed her with formal decorum as Empress. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... frolicing, the gayest, cheeriest bantering and laughter, to the utmost decorum was the transformation effected in two minutes after Miss Woodhull's and Miss Baylis' entrance. With the exception of Tweedle-dum, Tweedle-dee, Will-o'-the-Wisp and Jack o' Lantern, the girls ceased dancing and stood in groups and even the ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... matter of decorum," the attorney's wife replied, "and my husband agrees with me. What would people in town say if the sons of the two best families here, who have always studied together, should not live together? Everybody would think that something ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... words, however, the grim Doctor appeared ashamed both of the heat and of the tenderness into which he had been betrayed; for rude and rough as his nature was, there was a kind of decorum in it, too, that kept him within limits of his own. So he went back to his chair, his pipe, and his tumbler, and was gruffer and more taciturn than ever for the rest of the evening. And after the children went to bed, he leaned back ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fellow whom John Bunyan anathematizes under the name of Shame. The company rose on his entrance; the men bowed and the women curtsied, and all remained standing while he addressed to each with punctilious decorum those inquiries in regard to health and well-being which preface a social interview. Then, at a dignified sign from Mrs. Katy, he advanced to the table, and, all following his example, stood, while, with one hand uplifted, he went through a devotional ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... recognized conditions; and there is about a hoary institution a saving grace which cannot be transferred to parvenus. Practised in a modern Cis-Atlantic seat of learning, as I have seen it done, without the historical background, the same disregard of normal decorum becomes undraped rowdyism—boxing without gloves. The scene and its concurrences at Oxford have been witnessed by too many, and too often described, for me to attempt them. I shall narrate only my particular experiences. I had been desired to appear ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... add to those sterling good qualities which she really possessed. In heart and feeling she was a modest girl, although the buoyancy of her spirits often carried her beyond the bounds prescribed by decorum, and often called forth a blush upon her own animated countenance, when her good sense, or the remarks of others, reminded her of her having committed herself. It was impossible to know Mary and not like her, although, at a casual ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... be mistaken for any but mariners, even if their torn and worn garments had not revealed that they must be the very men about whom we had been so much interested. Not only were they behaving with perfect decorum, but their rough faces wore an aspect of solemnity which I do not suppose was by any ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... dress and the number of horses their fathers keep; in the country town, where strict lines are drawn between the professional or wholesale man and the retailer; in gatherings of well-dressed people, stiff with decorum and ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... his family he had done him immense honour, was proportionately indignant at this show of indifference. But, by the same easy formula with which he could account for anything in Nina's conduct by her 'coquetry,' he was able to explain every deviation from decorum of Joe Atlee's by his 'snobbery.' And it is astonishing how comfortable the thought made him, that this man, in all his smartness and ready wit, in his prompt power to acquire, and his still greater quickness to apply knowledge, was after ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... understand, in truth, why so harmless a co-existence should be so long repulsed by the enlightened people of the United States. There are negroes in Spanish America who have reached the highest grades of the army, and who show as much intelligence, decorum, and dignity in command as white men could do. I myself have seen at Paris, a clergyman of ebony blackness, who was really the most distinguished, unexceptionable man that it was possible to meet; he was a remarkable ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... spite of the officers, because they are of the same age, and I thought it would be well to get them to vote for good order in the first place. We shall never accomplish any thing in such a society unless we have as much decorum as there is in the meetings of adults, and without it we ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... in the Forest; and above me stood the Yew, Stood like a slumbering giant, shrouded in impenetrable shade; Then I pass'd into the citizen's garden, and marked a tree clipt into shape, (The giant's locks had been shorn by the Dalilahshears of Decorum;) And I said, "Surely nature is goodly; but how much goodlier is Art!" I heard the wild notes of the lark floating far over the blue sky, And my foolish heart went after him, and lo! I blessed him as he rose; Foolish! for far better ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... first rendered those on the outside speechless, but after a time they burst forth into cries and lamentations. The confusion in the interior of the Temple was not, however, as great as would naturally have been expected, because the strictest order and decorum were always enforced there, particularly with regard to the regulation to be followed by those who entered to make their sacrifice, and those who left after having offered it. The crowd was great, but the ceremonies were so solemnly carried ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... serious.[536] Then a return to the classical of the Empire; and finally, since the beginning of this century, to a conglomerate, lawless imitation of forms and styles, utterly meaningless and uninteresting, as well as wanting in ecclesiastical dignity and decorum. We are glad to believe that we are ourselves striving to reconstruct some sort of style that shall be able to express poetical and religious ideas, especially in our church decorations. At any rate, it must be of some ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... his own. Have you read Maupassant's story called "Le Horla"? That is as good a bit of diablerie as you could wish for. And the Frenchman has, of course, far the broader range. He has a keen sense of humour, breaking out beyond all decorum in some of his stories, but giving a pleasant sub-flavour to all of them. And yet, when all is said, who can doubt that the austere and dreadful American is far the greater and more ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... truffle into her mouth; he tugs at her ear with one hand, and uses his stick upon her nose with the other. The brute screams with anger, but will not open her jaws wide enough for him to slip his stick in and hook the truffle out. The prize is swallowed, and the old man, forgetting all decorum, and only thinking of his loss, calls his companion a pig, which in France is always an insult. Our truffle-hunting to-day has opened badly, although one party thinks differently. In a few minutes, however, another truffle is found, and this time the old man delivers a whack on the nose at the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... received.... We scientifically denominated them the Vespertilio-homo or Bat-man; and they are doubtless innocent and happy creatures, notwithstanding that some of their amusements would but ill comport with our terrestrial notions of decorum.' The omitted passages were suppressed in obedience to Dr. Grant's private injunction. 'These, however, and other prohibited passages,' were to be presently 'published by Dr. Herschel, with the certificates of the civil and military authorities of the colony, and of several ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Admiral's double-bass was still droning the "Dead March" to Miss Limpenny's laurestinus grove. It was the requiem of our decorum. Long after I was in bed that night I heard the voice of Mr. Moggridge trolling down ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the means of making away with his nephews, whose deaths were considerably more essential to him. But can this accusation be allowed gravely? if Richard aspired to the crown, whose whole conduct during Edward's reign was a scene, as we are told, of plausibility and decorum, would he officiously and unnecessarily have taken on himself the odium of slaying a saint-like monarch, adored by the people? Was it his interest to save Edward's character at the expence of his own? Did Henry stand in his way, deposed, ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... I never before felt how completely it was high breeding to be as punctual as possible. The maitre d'hotel had as much as he could do to announce the company, who entered as closely after each other as decorum and dignity would permit. I presume one party waited a little for the others in the outer drawing-room, the reception being altogether ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... some sense, be classed as branches of learning. Beside and beyond these there is a further range of social facts which shade off from the region of learning into that of physical habit and dexterity. Such are what is known as manners and breeding, polite usage, decorum, and formal and ceremonial observances generally. This class of facts are even more immediately and obtrusively presented to the observation, and they therefore more widely and more imperatively insisted on as required evidences of a reputable degree of leisure. It is worth while to remark that ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... always flow westward,—converting, as in London, the market-gardens of the poor into the 'Palace Gardens' of the rich; and, with steady advance, sweeps away our landmarks,—turning the gravel pits of western London into the decorum ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... when receiving instructions, instead of standing in a respectful attitude with his hands at his side in a state of rest; enters a room with his shoes down at heel, or without socks; omits to rise at the approach of his master, mistress, or their friends, and commits numerous other petty breaches of decorum which would ensure his instant dismissal from the house of a Chinese gentleman. We ourselves take a pride in making our servants treat us with the same degree of outward respect they would show towards ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... frequently in the way of the full efficiency of his morals. In many respects a hero, in all respects benevolent, he still was not like Romilly, a man of grit. Politeness has been defined as benevolence in small things. To be benevolent in great things, decorum must sometimes yield to duty; and Draco, though in the king's drawing-room, and loyally supporting in Parliament the measures of the ministry, is still Draco, though cruelty in him has learned the dialect of fashion and clothed itself in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... her eyes at this speech. Probably she'd never heard any talk of theology from Somerled, and was puzzled by his sudden interest in her spiritual decorum. I guessed that he wanted to give her the brilliant spectacle at St. Giles as a surprise on his last day of guardianship, but it occurred to me also that there might be other reasons in his mind for cutting short the tour. He might be tired of me as a guest thrust ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... thought that if the prudence of reserve and decorum dictated silence in some circumstances, in others a prudence of a higher order would justify her in declaring her sentiments. Accordingly she withdrew from the clasping arms of Mr. Somerset, and whilst her beautiful figure seemed to dilate ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... freedom from artificial conventions and for the originality and homeliness of their human intercourse; but even the average German official—wedded as he may be to his rank or his title, anxious as he may be to preserve an outward decorum in exact keeping with the precise shade of his public status—is often the most delightfully unconventional, good-natured, unsophisticated, and even erratic being in the world, as soon as he has left the cares of his office behind him. Germany is the classic land of queer people. It is the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... said, and looked shyly at Miss Lucretia and cleared his throat, and spoke with the elaborate decorum he used on occasions, "Miss Penniman, I wish to thank you again for your ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Corisca's wanton blandishments and professed cynicism, but Mirtillo's rapturous dithyrambs on kissing, Dorinda's melting moods of tenderness, and Amarilli's delicate regrets that love must be postponed to honor, justified Bellarmino's censure. Without anywhere transgressing the limits of decorum, the Pastor Fido is steeped in sensuousness. The sentiment of love idealized in Mirtillo and Amarilli is pure and self-sacrificing. Ama l'onesta mia, s'amante sei, says this maiden to her lover; and he obeys her. Yet, though the drama is ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... when describing heaven and hell, so that in comparison they are childish and trifling;" and yet, perhaps, he had the most regular and best governed imagination of any man, and observed the greatest decorum in his descriptions. "There are I know," said the elegant Joseph Addison, "men of heavy temper and without genius, who can read the words of Scripture with as much indifference as they do other papers; however, I will not despair to ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... tragic misfeasance. In that city, where, if it may be said with respect, there has existed from of old a fashionable circle not convinced of its own gentility and insisting the more rigorously on minor decorum, Lincoln went to the opera, and history still deplores that this misguided man went there and sat there with his large hands in black kid gloves. Here perhaps it is well to say that the educated world of the Eastern States, including those ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... amusing. His religion is not of a very exalted character; he rises to no sublime heights of emotion, and would simply be puzzled by the fervours or the doubts of a more modern generation. In short, it seems to be compounded of common-sense and a regard for decorum—and those are not bad things in their way, though not the highest. He is not a very ardent reformer; he doubts whether the poor should be taught to read, and is very clear that everyone should be made to know his station; but still he talks with sense and moderation, and even gets ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... was a good little girl who never soiled her pinafore, nor dreamt of anything she could not see, and she worked hard at school and remained persistently in the middle of the class, and gained high marks for neatness and decorum. She never had a chum because she is incapable of caring for ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sleep is light. At such times the simpler and more practised functions, such as recall of images, can go on, though criticism, good judgment, reasoning, and all that sort of delicate and complex activity, do not occur. Daytime standards of probability, decorum, beauty, wit, and excellence of any sort are in abeyance; consistency is thrown to the winds, the scenes being shifted in the middle of a {500} speech, and a character who starts in as one person merging presently ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... scholarship, classical taste, and fine literary style of the superior men in public life led the Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords, in 1775, to pay "a tribute of eloquent homage to the intellectual force, the symmetry, and the decorum of the state papers recently transmitted from America, which was virtually an announcement that America had become an integral part of the civilized world, and a member ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... But anybody by no means included his daughter. At the thought of anything amiss with her, presto! his sad eyes flamed. Very needlessly too. Cassy was as indifferent to other people's conceptions of decorum as he was himself. The matter did not touch her. Clear-eyed, clean-minded, she was ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... drew the line in exactly the right place between things that might be funny and unrefined, and things which were merely coarse and gross. The fact was that he had a perfectly simple manliness about him, and an infallible tact, which was wholly unaffected, as to the limits of decorum. The result was that one could talk to him with the utmost plainness and directness. His was not a cloistered and secluded temperament. He knew the world, and had no fear of ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this appearance of modesty be any thing else than the custom of the country; and allege that, notwithstanding so much decency and decorum, they have their peculiar modes of intriguing, and embrace every possible opportunity of putting them in practice; and that, in these intrigues, they frequently scruple not to stab the paramour they had invited to their ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Would have a queen his beggar, you must tell him That majesty, to keep decorum, must No less beg than ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hurt and fell to purring to me at a great rate and to making little gentle thrusts against my arm with the fore paw that was sound. And so we went aft in great friendship and contentment and had a gay dinner together: the cat sitting on the table opposite to me with all possible decorum—but manifesting his daintiness by refusing to eat anything but tinned chicken, and only the white meat ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... Sheriff Hank Fowler, but almost as he spoke the decorum was again broken by a voice which cried ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... was commented on in the newspapers, and much talked of. At length, at the end of January, Elizabeth entered her mother's house in a wretched condition—emaciated and exhausted, and with scarcely a sufficiency of clothes on her person for mere decorum. She was, of course, asked eagerly to give an account of her misfortunes. Her narrative by degrees resolved itself into this shape: She set out on her visit at eleven o'clock in the day, and stayed with her uncle till nine o'clock in the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... in the corner of the sofa, with her legs tucked up under her, and the light playing a game of magic amid the reds and golds and browns of her hair, while she cheerily discoursed to us of Hamdi's villainy, I never noticed the dull decorum of this room. I was struck with the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... drawing-room door, at which the Emperor reappeared talking to the hostess. A young man, looking distraught, pounced down on the ladies, asking them to move aside. Some ladies, with faces betraying complete forgetfulness of all the rules of decorum, pushed forward to the detriment of their toilets. The men began to choose partners and take their places for ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... what they are, don't you, Jim?' said the Colonel, laughing, and taking no notice of Jim's breach of decorum in wedging his black ideas into ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in the dress Dwindling the clothes to nothingness Saving, for due decorum placed, A huckaback about the waist, Or wanton towel-et, whose touch Haply may spare to chafe o'ermuch: A languid frame, from head to feet Prankt in the arduous prickle-heat: An erring fly, that here and there Enwraths ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... full of gentleness and tenderness, which might have taught my heart to overflow with rapture. If you knew, fair excellence, how much pain and uneasiness your silence has given me, you could not surely have been so cruel. The most rigid decorum could not have been offended by one scanty billet that might just have informed me, I still retained a tender place in your recollection. One solitary line would have raised me to a state of happiness ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... artfully here and there that it mightn't fly away. And a string of big lumpish amber beads. She could have got into that costume in about two minutes and there was probably next to nothing under it. From the on-looker's point of view, it mightn't violate decorum at all; indeed, clearly did not. But Miss Wollaston herself, if she hadn't been more or less rigidly laced, stayed, gartered, pinched, pried and pulled about; if she could have moved freely in any direction without an admonitory—"take care"—from ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to us means that we stand before the Past; this gradual perishing of things in neglect and defilement, may very well have formed a necessary part of our ancestors' present. Our own standard and habit of tidiness, decorum, and uniformity may be quite recent developments; barbarism, in the sense of decay and pollution, may have existed together with prosperity. It is quite possible that dead donkeys were left in the streets of Haroun-al-Raschid's Bagdad, or Semiramis' Babylon, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... hundred pretty gentle antics with a little hare that danced fearlessly within his grasp. Then in would come twelve elephants, six males in togas, six females with the veil and pallium; they took their places on couches around an ivory table, dined with great decorum, playfully sprinkled a little rosewater over the nearest spectators, and then received more guests of their unwieldy kind, who arrived in ball dresses, scattered flowers, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lust of externalities, and the utter negligence of the inward sanctities of the spirit. It thinks more of decorum than of holiness, more of etiquette than of equity, more of ritualism than of "the robe of righteousness and the garment of salvation." Pharisaism lives in the streets: it does not dwell in the inner chambers of ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... being the birthday of his Excellency, General Washington, the same was celebrated here by all the true friends of American Independence and Constitutional Liberty with that hilarity and manly decorum ever attendant on the Sons of Freedom. In the evening an entertainment was given on board the East India ship in this harbor to a very brilliant and respectable company, and a discharge of thirteen cannon was fired ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... halls, however, improprieties are deliberately fostered. The waltzes and two-steps are purposely slow, the couples leaning heavily on each other barely move across the floor, all the jollity and bracing exercise of the peasant dance is eliminated, as is all the careful decorum of the formal dance. The efforts to obtain pleasure or to feed the imagination are thus converged upon the senses which it is already difficult for young people to understand and to control. It is therefore not remarkable that in ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... following morning, while Mr and Mrs Inglis and their sons were sitting at breakfast, Mr Inglis knit his brows, for old Sam, without studying the lesson upon decorum that his master had given him but a few days before, burst into the breakfast-room again, but this time through the French window ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... with due decorum at the banquet, especially as the king did them the honour of sitting down to table with them, the only exception being on the part of the spoilt children, whom not even the presence of royalty itself could restrain from personal encounters over the ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... sense of decorum, sprang forward to receive him. The general put out his hand in a cordial manner, and with many compliments congratulated him on his success. The admiral having listened to an account of the action, dragged off the general to see some improvements on the farm; the Indies of the ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... instinct of self-preservation. The deeds of strength and valour which he is occasionally made to perform, seem rather to arise from the author's remembering that his hero must do something to support the character, than to result naturally from the situations in which he is placed, and his love of decorum is carried, on all occasions, to an absurd extent of prudery. "Le heros de la piece est d'une sagesse qui a donne lieu a des railleries assez plaisantes," says Bayle; though the instance usually cited—a box on the ear, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the most temperate of the set; and if the club consisted chiefly {p.139} of persons, like Ballantyne himself, somewhat inferior to Scott in birth and station, his carefulness both of sobriety and decorum at their meetings was but another feature of his unchanged and unchangeable ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Each century calls for its type of Christian perfection. At one time it was martyrdom; at another it was the humility of the cloister. To-day we need the Christian gentleman and the Christian citizen. An honest ballot and social decorum among Catholics will do more for God's glory and the salvation of souls than midnight flagellations ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the preparation of food. During the course of the ensuing week, the chief mourners receive their several relatives and friends at tea. The assembly is sorrowful and dull. It has been asserted, though not corroborated, that such is the poverty and disregard of decorum on the part of the Portuguese government, that when a person dies without leaving behind sufficient to defray the expenses of his funeral, the dead body is laid on the pavement of the most public street, with a box upon the breast, into which passers-by drop copper ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... by flavoring the compound with a link of sausage. The mother brings the dinner and her tawny brood of nestlings. A shady spot is selected for the feast. The father dips his wooden spoon first into the vapory bowl, and mother and babes follow with grave decorum. Idle loungers passing these patriarchal groups, on their way to a vapid French breakfast at a restaurant, catch the fragrance of the olla and the chatter of the family, and envy the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... entered. As they passed the threshold, Jimmie stumbled, but recovered himself. He saluted the ladies with decorum, and the three sat down upon the edge of the chairs that were offered to them. Then Miss Edna Parkinson, who was the only person present besides Pete who understood what was meant by a P.P.C. call, and who knew also that, the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... disguise himself, exchanged his clerical garb for a friend's blue coatee bedizzened with metal buttons; and also had erected a very tasteful and sharp coxcomb on his head, out of hair usually reposing sleek and quiet in the most saint-like decorum; and then, at the bid from the pulpit-stump, out stepped Mr. Sprightly from the opposite spice-wood grove, and advanced with a step so smirky and dandyish as to create universal amazement and whispered demands—"Why! who's that?" And some of his very people, who were present, as they told me, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... reached home, tired to death with a hand-to-hand encounter with the demon who gives poor mortals their bread and butter for an equivalent of flesh and blood and spirit, I noticed that the little folks greeted me with an air of subdued decorum as though fresh from a funeral. There were no caperings, no flauntings, no cavortings. Each young minx had on her Sunday go-to-meeting air, and the boy stood with his hat on one side of his head, as though for a sixpence he would fight all creation. ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... looks there in her bridal dress, She was all gentleness, all gayety, Her pranks the favorite theme of every tongue. But now the day was come, the day, the hour; Now, frowning, smiling, for the hundredth time, The nurse, that ancient lady, preached decorum: And, in the luster of her youth, she gave Her hand, with her heart in ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... sympathy and admiration with a passion as deep. That was how they came to speak about it, in the Burmese garden, under the pale sky, with sheaves of severed vegetation, misty and odorous, in the night around their feet. I think they behaved themselves with decorum for quite a time after that, though Mrs Basil spent so many hours over the accounts of the Ashburnham estate that she got the name of every field by heart. Edward had a huge map of his lands in his harness-room and Major Basil did not seem to ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... cultivated that class of society in which the feelings are more elementary and simple, in which the thoughts speak a plainer language, and in which the restraints of factitious or conventional decorum are exchanged for the restraints of mere sexual decency. It is a noticeable fact to all who have looked upon human life with an eye of strict attention, that the abstract image of womanhood, in. its loveliness, its delicacy, and its modesty, nowhere makes itself ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of the room with that perfect decorum which proclaims the well-trained domestic of an aristocratic house. As soon as the tall mahogany doors were closed behind him, Mme. la Duchesse took her spectacles off from her high-bred nose and gave a ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... should defile him. In consequence beauty is a foremost attribute of temperance which above all hinders man from being defiled. In like manner honesty [*Honesty must be taken here in its broad sense as synonymous with moral goodness, from the point of view of decorum] is a special attribute of temperance: for Isidore says (Etym. x): "An honest man is one who has no defilement, for honesty means an honorable state." This is most applicable to temperance, which withstands the vices that bring most dishonor on man, as we shall state further on ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... part of my narrative. If there ever were any motives of prudence or delicacy, that could impose a qualification upon the story, they are now over. They could have no relation but to factitious rules of decorum. There are no circumstances of her life, that, in the judgment of honour and reason, could brand her with disgrace. Never did there exist a human being, that needed, with less fear, expose all their actions, and call ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... Jacqueline's voice that arrested him. It was sharp and almost angry. She, too, was selling flowers, while at the same time she was helping Madame de Nailles with her toys; but she was selling with that decorum and graceful reserve which custom prescribes for young girls. "Fred, I do hope you will wear no roses but mine. Those you have are frightful. They make you look like a village bridegroom. Take out those things; come! Here is a pretty boutonniere, and I will fasten ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... this incident to show the tender side of George's heart. His gravity, decorum, and thoughtful habit were such as almost to preclude the possibility of his being captivated by a "lowland beauty." But this incident shows that he was much like the average boy ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... astonished at your behaviour; will you never learn any regard to decorum? Will you still look upon every apartment as your own, or as belonging to one of your country tenants? Do you think yourself at liberty to invade the privacies of women of condition, without the least decency or notice?"——"Why, what a pox is the matter now?" quoth the squire; ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... teacher has not sufficient confidence that the general sense of propriety among his pupils will preserve good order and decorum during the exercise, it may be better for him to read a prayer selected from books of devotion, or prepared by himself expressly for the occasion. By this plan his school will be, during the exercise, under his own observation, as at other times. It may, in some schools where the ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... full a belief in his extraordinary powers as she felt herself; but as a female interpreter of the rank and appearance of Madame Blavary did not exactly correspond with the count's notions either of dignity or decorum, he hired a person named Vitellini, a teacher of languages, to act in that capacity. Vitellini was a desperate gambler, a man who had tried almost every resource to repair his ruined fortunes, including among the rest the search for the philosopher's stone. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Andrew Crosbie, a Scotch Advocate, whom he had seen at Edinburgh, and the Hon. Colonel (now General) Edward Stopford, brother to Lord Courtown, who was desirous of being introduced to him. His tea and rolls and butter, and whole breakfast apparatus were all in such decorum, and his behaviour was so courteous, that Colonel Stopford was quite surprized, and wondered at his having heard so much said of Johnson's slovenliness ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... unction with which he preached, excited their admiration and tears. They looked on him as the favourite of God, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit, and honoured with communications from heaven; and he, on his part, was careful, by the piety of his language, by the strict decorum of his court, and by his zeal for the diffusion of godliness, to preserve and strengthen such impressions. In minds thus disposed, it was not difficult to create a persuasion that the final triumph of "their ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... Irishman rebellious and schismatical. On this head he was inclined to be disputatious. His prejudices did not prevent him from passing the claret, nor from laughing, as heartily as a plethoric asthma and sense of the decorum due to the occasion would permit, at the quips and quirks of the Irishman, who, he admitted, notwithstanding his heresies, was a pleasant fellow in the main. And when, in addition to the flattery, a pipe had been insinuated by the officious Titus, at the precise moment that Small yearned ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... soldiers, unable this time to keep their delight within the bounds of military decorum; and, turning to the right-about, they marched away, leaving the officers to renew the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 'Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, 'art sure no craven, Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore, Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore: Quoth the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the Injins. They had their impulses, too, and the first thing they did was to assist Mr. Warren and his daughter to alight from their wagon. This was done, not without decorum of manner, and certainly not without some regard to the holy office of one of the parties, and to the sex of the other. Nevertheless, it was done neatly and expeditiously, leaving us all, Mr. Warren and Mary, my uncle and myself, with a cluster of some fifty ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... man named D'wiri, who knew every step of every dance, saw this and said in his stern way that it was shameless. But he was old and was, moreover, in fear for the decorum of his own obsequies if these outrageous departures from custom were approved or allowed ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... was good, but not wise. He offended the Russian demand for decorum in a czar by riding through the streets on a furious stallion, like a Cossack of the Don. In religion he was lax, favoring secretly the Latin Church. He chose Poles instead of Russians for his secretaries. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was now standing on his feet, all the sympathy gone from his face, "you will give me your word of honor not in any way again to do violence to the decorum of this court during this trial, or I shall order the sheriff to bind you hand and foot. Do I have your promise?" and he fixed his eyes sternly on the white ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... looking very sweet and dainty in her fresh summer frock, and laughingly expressed her willingness to keep the house party in order and decorum. ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... very desirous of having his court a model of decorum and of morals. Lucien owned a beautiful rural mansion near Neuilly. Upon one occasion he invited Napoleon, and all the inmates of Malmaison, to attend some private theatricals at his dwelling. Lucien and Eliza were the performers in a piece called Alzire. The ardor of their declamation, ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... have enjoyed from early times a reputation for rough manners and deceit (Stein, Ancient Khotan, p. 49 n). Stein, p. 70, recalls Hiuan Tsang's opinion: "The disposition of the men is fierce and impetuous, and they are mostly false and deceitful. They make light of decorum and politeness, and esteem learning but little." Stein adds, p. 70, with regard to Polo's statement: "Without being able to adduce from personal observation evidence as to the relative truth of the latter statement, I believe ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... conscious of. In a Love-song where the Lover declines a Physician for the wound which the Wind (Love) has caused, he says 'For only he who has hurt can cure me.' 'N.B. The masculine pronoun is always used instead of the feminine in Poetry, out of decorum: sometimes even in conversation.' {69b} (It being as forbidden to talk of women ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... [Greek: pi beta]." When the House of Commons passed the Bill prohibiting duels it ought to have made an exception in favour of its own Members. Nothing would have done more to raise the tone of debate, for offenders against decorum would gradually have eliminated one another. Yet Parliament has its merits, not the least of them being the scope it still affords for hereditary talent. Lord Derby, at the moment the most prominent man on the Home Front after the Premier, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... the (p. 122) aggregate, highly important. The Speaker is, first of all, the presiding officer of the House. In this capacity he is a strictly non-partisan moderator whose business it is to maintain decorum in deliberations, decide points of order, put questions, and announce the result of divisions. The non-partisan aspect of the English speakership sets the office off in sharp contrast with its American counterpart. "It makes little difference to any English ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the West Indies been our object, on success in France, everything reasonable in those remote parts might be demanded with decorum, and justice, and a sure effect. Well might we call for a recompence in America, for those services to which Europe owed its safety. Having abandoned this obvious policy connected with principle, we have seen the regicide power taking the reverse course, and making ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... exist in wedlock. But in Love there is such self-control and decorum and constancy, that if the god but once enter the soul of a licentious man, he makes him give up all his amours, abates his pride, and breaks down his haughtiness and dissoluteness, putting in their place modesty ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Birkbeck Hill, i. 294); although it must be admitted that these have come to be among the famous spots of the Dictionary, and have given gentle amusement to thousands, to whom it has been a delight to see 'human nature' too strong for lexicographic decorum. ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... myself to think of this so "faithful Nina," as she styled herself. I resumed my reading, and continued it even at dinner, during which meal Vincenzo waited upon me with his usual silent gravity and decorum, though I could feel that he watched me with a certain solicitude. I suppose I looked weary—I certainly felt so, and retired to rest unusually early. The time seemed to me so long—would the end NEVER ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... news that our brilliant friend was doing well excited universal complacency, and the Princess graciously remarked that he was only to be commiserated for missing the society of Miss Collop. Mrs. Wimbush, whose social gift never shone brighter than in the dry decorum with which she accepted this fizzle in her fireworks, mentioned to me that Guy Walsingham had made a very favourable impression on her Imperial Highness. Indeed I think every one did so, and that, like the money-market or the national honour, ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... dominant. That was an age of adolescence, in which men were and dared to be themselves for good or evil. Hypocrisy, except for some solid, well-defined, selfish purpose, was unknown: the deference to established canons of decorum which constitutes more than half of our so-called morality, would have been scarcely intelligible to an Italian. The outlines of individuality were therefore strongly accentuated. Life itself was dramatic in its incidents and motives, its catastrophes and contrasts. These conditions, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He and he only knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest appearance. Some great decorum, some fetich[62] of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up[63] by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... like all powerful monarchs and individuals who are put into power without any of the qualities of fitness to fill a high post, always believed that his presence on earth was an act of supreme Providence. Philip, in proclaiming his glorious advent for the good of mankind, explained it with a decorum that had a fascinating flavour. Unlike some imitators of great personalities, he was never vulgarly boastful in giving expression to the belief that his power came from above and would be sustained by the mystery that ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... effete old is passing away, and out of the ashes of its decay is springing forth the young and vigorous new. Change, transition, every where and in all things: how can society fail to be disrupted, and who can speak, write, or think with the calm decorum of by-gone days? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... draped women and men in evening clothes, their strong blacks and whites revealed in the light of the street door. And this Lily Cardew lived in state, bowed to by flunkeys in livery, dressed and undressed—his Scotch sense of decorum resented this—by serving women. This Lily Cardew would wear frivolous ball-gowns, such things as he saw in the shop windows, considered money only as a thing of exchange, and had traveled all over Europe ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the house, hemmed in by high hedges and trees from what seemed to be a public road beyond, were fairly spacious, but the sleek decorum of their arrangement, while it pleased him, was scarcely interesting. He liked better to study the house itself, which in the daylight revealed itself as his ideal of what a historic English country-house of ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... see the people entering this little clearing by two or three footpaths and two highways, a few in wagons and sleds drawn by oxen, but mostly on foot. They are plainly but neatly clad, and every requisite of becoming Sabbath decorum is plainly to be seen in both adults and children, and even in young men and misses. The family chairs are occupied by the aged and the ailing, while most of the people sit upon benches without backs. The singing is superior, ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... concentration of scorn, hate, fury, or exultation as is absolutely stunning to a man of ordinary nerves. Talk of their being bridled! They never had a bit in their mouths. Before the war they ran wild, and now they ride rough-shod over decorum, decency, and Davis himself. But the dictator endures it like a philosopher. "He lets it pass," said Judge Ould to me, "like the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... world where the seemingly prosaic table had not a living fresco for its background, where you could see, if you had eyes, the smoke and fire of some upheaving sentiment, or the dreary craters of smouldering or burnt-out passions? You look on the black bombazine and high-necked decorum of your neighbor, and no more think of the real life that underlies this despoiled and dismantled womanhood than you think of a stone trilobite as having once been full of the juices and the nervous thrills of throbbing and self-conscious being. There is a wild creature ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sudden appearance deepened into a genuine perplexity concerning what was best to do. However that may be, he went on as if he had no thought of interruption and no thought of the unusual element which he had introduced into the decorum of the First Church service. And all the while he was speaking, the minister leaded over the pulpit, his face growing more white and sad every moment. But he made no movement to stop him, and the people sat ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... Inquisitor. "You, Amine Vanderdecken," cried the public accuser. At this moment an unusual bustle was heard in the crowd under the pulpit, there was struggling and expostulation, and the officers raised their wands for silence and decorum—but ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... though his mouth watered to taste it, that he had not a chance until I came up and shot it. He was, in consequence, the staunchest dog in the country. Only once, in this respect, did I know him guilty of a breach of decorum, and that too, I must say, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... men of the Geats then together assembled, In the beer-hall blithesome a bench was made ready; There warlike in spirit they went to be seated, Proud and exultant. A liegeman did service, [19] Who a beaker embellished bore with decorum, ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... lasting, corrosive contact with whatever should be the most vital to social happiness. If there be, into the account, the wants, anxieties, and vexations of severe poverty, they will generally aggravate all that is destructive to domestic complacency and decorum. ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... as for the stage are walking about, keeping their eyes open for sharps, for possible scandal-raisers, or would-be suicides. The greatest care is taken to preserve decorum. If you lose your whole fortune there you must not shout it out and strike a heroic posture or blow your brains out. These strong lackeys will whisk you dexterously from the scene before the other gamblers realize what ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham |
