"Respectability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plans, no doubt, and it doesn't trouble you that you are standing in the way of your mother's respectability!" His voice was harsh, his sneer open. "Bless my soul! Is the generosity to be all on my side? Or has this man O'Neil forbidden you to ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... corruption of the name after its bearers took root in English soil—have been particularly distinguished—they never came much to the fore. Sometimes they were soldiers, sometimes merchants, but on the whole they have preserved a dead level of respectability, and a still deader level of mediocrity. From the time of Charles II. till the beginning of the present century they were merchants. About 1790 by grandfather made a considerable fortune out of brewing, and retired. In 1821 he died, and my ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... spotless raiment of the gambler is Cherokee Bob, who killed and plundered unchallenged throughout eastern Washington and Idaho during the early sixties; until the camp of Florence celebrated its third New Year's Eve with a ball in which respectability held sway, and he took his consort thither to mingle with the wives of others. Then he kindled a flame of resentment which his blackest murders had failed to rouse. The next morning the entire camp turned out to drive him forth together ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... course, had been a marriage of convenience. Blake, to do him justice, had made no pretence to anything beyond admiration and regard. Few things grow monotonous sooner than irregularity. He would tickle his jaded palate with respectability, and try for a change the companionship of a good woman. The girl's face drew him, as the moonlight holds a man who, bored by the noise, turns from a heated room to press his forehead to the window-pane. Accustomed to bid for what he wanted, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... his "Words and Their Uses," expresses his opinion of the locution is being in this wise: "In bad eminence, at the head of those intruders in language which to many persons seem to be of established respectability, but the right of which to be at all is not fully admitted, stands out the form of speech is being done, or rather, is being, which, about seventy or eighty years ago, began to affront the eye, torment the ear, and assault the common sense of the speaker of plain ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... on which an intimate and valued female friend of mine saw Mrs. Stafford Molyneux stepping into a brougham, with a splendid bay horse, and without a footman, (mark, if you please, that delicate sign of respectability,) and after a moment's examination of Mrs. S. M.'s toilette, her manners, little dog, carnation-colored parasol, &c., Miss Elizabeth Clapperclaw clapped to the opera-glass with which she had been regarding the new inhabitant of Our Street, came away from the ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... metaphors a trifle, a sort of trunk for the ego to twine itself around. There is uneasiness in the thought of breaking up habits, an uneasiness that grows the more as we become older and is deepened into agony if the habit is tinged with our status in life, if it has become a sort of measure of our respectability. Thus a good housekeeper falls into the habits of doing things which were originally a mark of her ability, which she holds as sacred and values above her health and energy. There are people who fiercely resent a new way of doing things; they have woven their most minor ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... without it very long," she said, mildly. "But we won't argue about respectability; and I won't even ask you whether you will marry her, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... If I can see any choice of respectability between kids and lambs, may I turn to a thoroughbred Southdown, and take the blue ribbon at the next Fair. Beasts of the field, all of them. The always-wide-awake-contrariness of womankind is a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... hotels, and restaurants of France. Lean, sallow, handsome, expert, and unwholesome, one saw them everywhere, their slim waists and sleek heads in juxtaposition to plump, respectable American matrons and slender, respectable American flappers. For that matter, feminine respectability of almost every nationality (except the French) yielded itself to the skilful guidance of the genus gigolo in the tango or fox-trot. Naturally, no decent French girl would have been allowed for a single moment to dance with a gigolo. But America, touring Europe ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... hearts," the man had smiled to himself—"a game in which the risk is nothing and the stakes—— With millions one may accomplish much in the wilderness, or retire into smug respectability—who knows? Or, losing, if worse comes to worst, a lady who can command millions, held prisoner, should be worth dickering for. Ah, yes, dear lady! By all means, you shall be helped to Christianize the North! To educate ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... time, Sinclair made his arrangements to go to New York, with the pleasant prospect of marrying the young lady in Fifth Avenue. In due time he arrived at Barker's with his young and charming wife and remained for some days. The changes were astounding. Common-place respectability had replaced abnormal lawlessness. A neat station stood where had been the rough contractor's buildings. At a new "Windsor" (or was it "Brunswick"?) the performance of the kitchen contrasted sadly (alas! how common is such contrast in these regions) with the promise of the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... by my conversation and actions, teach my children that character, and not wealth or connexions, constitutes respectability? ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... not married) should wait for three years. On the fourth year, she should look for a husband herself (without waiting any longer for her kinsmen to select one for her). The offspring of such a girl do not lose their respectability, nor does union with such a girl become disgraceful. If, instead of selecting a husband for herself, she acts otherwise, she incurs the reproach of Prajapati herself. One should wed that girl who is not a Sapinda of one's mother or of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the deceased appeared to have been entirely to blame and to have behaved with extreme brutality, there was nothing whatever to associate the prisoner with the crime. The young gentleman before them, as they had heard from the testimony of gentlemen of the highest respectability, bore an excellent character. That he had faults in temper he admitted, such faults being the result of the lad having been brought up among Indian servants; but Dr. Green and Mr. Porson had both told them that he had made the greatest efforts to master his ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... to finance him in the purchase of a new kit of tools—an up-to date burglar's kit costs something over two hundred pounds—but there were people who would lend the money, which eventually came out of the colonel's pocket. Some of the businesses he financed were on the border line of respectability. Some into which his money was sunk were frankly infamous. But it was a popular fiction that he knew nothing of these. Or, if he did know, that he was financing or at the back of a scoundrel, it was insisted that that scoundrel was engaged in (so far ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... self-made man. By his unaided energies he surmounted the difficulties that stood in the way of his advancement, and has achieved distinction by a career of great usefulness. His father was a man of high respectability, and most excellent character. He was a farmer in moderate circumstances, and being well advanced in life, and declining in health, when his youngest son, the tenth of twelve children, determined to acquire a liberal education, he was unable to ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... binds one to the land of one's birth. There a hundred subtile influences, the existence of which no one suspects until the moment they are withdrawn, unite to keep one in the straight path of rectitude, or at least of external respectability; and Ralph's life had been all in society; the opinion of his fellow-men had been the one force to which he implicitly deferred, and the conscience by which he had been wont to test his actions ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... out—a restless spirit. She awaited Sophie's recovery with no less of dread than of hope. Her life hung, as it were, upon her sister's. The moment in which Sophie recovered her faculties enough to think and speak would be the last that Cornelia could maintain her mask of honor and respectability, for Cornelia knew that Sophie was in possession of her secret; she had been up in her room, and the open window ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... is observed in nearly all Siamese families of respectability, with, of course, certain omissions and variations adapted to the rank ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... our own. Have we gained nothing by the war? Let any man look at the degraded condition of the country before the war,—the scorn of the universe, the contempt of ourselves, and tell me if we have gained nothing by the war. What is our present situation? Respectability and character abroad; security and confidence at home. If we have not obtained, in the opinion of some, the full measure of retribution, our character and Constitution are placed on a solid basis, never to ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... from Manchester people, that you were certainly coming this very summer to lecture among us: but now it seems, in your Letter, all postponed into the vague again. I do not personally know your Manchester negotiators, but I know in general that they are men of respectability, insight, and activity; much connected with the lecturing department, which is a very growing one, especially in Lancashire, at present;—men likely, for the rest, to fulfil whatsoever they may become engaged for to you. My own ignorant though confident ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... flirt—a pretty American flirt. He had never, as yet, had any relations with young ladies of this category. He had known, here in Europe, two or three women—persons older than Miss Daisy Miller, and provided, for respectability's sake, with husbands—who were great coquettes—dangerous, terrible women, with whom one's relations were liable to take a serious turn. But this young girl was not a coquette in that sense; she ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... observing that it has a peculiar and gratifying effect on the minds of the natives. I soon dried my tall hat, which, during the storm, I had attached to my button-hole by a string, and, though it was a good deal battered, I was not without hopes of partially restoring its gloss and air of British respectability. As will be seen, this precaution was, curiously enough, the human means of preserving my life. My hat, my black clothes, my white neck-tie, and the hymn-book I carry would, I was convinced, secure for me a favourable reception among the natives (if of the gentle brown Polynesian type), whom I ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... of the abandonment, misery, or sufferings of children. Mr. Bergh's society found itself besieged, and, after deliberation with his counsel, it was determined to establish another in New York, whose special mission should be the protection of children. An old gentleman of high respectability, belonging to the sect of the Quakers, Mr. John D. Wright, was elected to the presidency, which office he held until his death, which occurred on the 21st of August, 1880. His successor is Mr. Elbridge ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... undergoing a complete reorganization, and is unfolding a rapid series of events more astonishing than anything in history. Where it will stop, and what will be its results, nobody can tell. Royalty has certainly not added to its respectability by its conduct in its time of trial. Since the last steamer went, Italy has shaken off the Austrian yoke, Denmark has lost her German provinces, Poland has risen, or is about to rise, which will bring Russia thundering down upon Liberal Europe. . . . Our whole ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... parochial duties, which he discharged with zeal honourable to his heart and head, was devoted to his studies, and spent among his books. But this chase of wisdom, though in itself interesting and dignified, was indulged to an excess which diminished the respectability, nay, the utility, of the deceived student; and he forgot, amid the luxury of deep and dark investigations, that society has its claims, and that the knowledge which is unimparted, is necessarily a barren talent, and is lost to society, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... this type attempted to oppose Mr. Platt, they usually put up either some rather inefficient, well-meaning person, who bathed every day, and didn't steal, but whose only good point was "respectability," and who knew nothing of the great fundamental questions looming before us; or else they put up some big business man or corporation lawyer who was wedded to the gross wrong and injustice of our economic system, and who neither by personality nor by programme ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... whatever as to what should be done. He is offended that the disgraced son should come home at all; he would have thought better of him if he had hidden his shame in the country that had witnessed it. Probably his sense of pride and respectability is offended more than his love of virtue, though he characteristically gives his jealous anger the illusion of morality. This, I say, is the average social view. There are few things more cruel than affronted respectability. The elder brother is an eminently respectable person, totally ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... its tenets: it was an aggregate of offices the appointment to which was in the hands either of the political ministers or of the lay members of the ruling class. It was in reality simply a part of the ruling class told off to perform divine services: to maintain order and respectability and the traditional morality. It had no distinctive philosophy or theology, for the articles of belief represented simply a compromise; an attempt to retain as much of the old as was practicable and yet to admit as much of the new as was made desirable by political ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... roused from his slumbers by the entrance of the proprietor of the barn, a sturdy, good-humoured peasant, more surprised, than pleased, to find upon his premises a stranger of Paco's equivocal appearance. The muleteer's exterior was certainly not calculated to give a high opinion of his respectability. His uniform jacket of dark green cloth was soiled and torn; his boina, which had served him for a nightcap during his imprisonment, was in equally bad plight; he was uncombed and unwashed, and a beard of nearly six weeks' growth adorned his face. It was in a tone of some suspicion that the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... one of those streets of unimpeachable respectability that may be duplicated a hundred times in London. Its characteristics are monotony and dull mediocrity; a dead sameness makes all the houses appear alike. Before one of ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... invectives of nobles and people. To do him justice, he did what he could to conciliate antagonists and to compromise principles. If it had ever been possible to find the exact path between right and wrong, the President would have found it, and walked in it with respectability and complacency. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Aldermen. This restriction is admitted to have been most beneficial to the public, and the brokers themselves are fully sensible of its advantage to themselves by inspiring a reasonable confidence in their honour and respectability. All this, however, is to be done away with. Government care for none of these things. They prefer punishment to prevention. Let every man do as seemeth good in his own eyes, provided only that he escape conviction for evildoing. In that case the "majesty of ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... to end my Days—and I pray Heaven to allow this House and this Lot—whereon I this day brought my Family, to descend to my children and to my children's children, and may they increase in virtue and respectability, and become worthy ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... little or nothing of the industrial world in which he must live. To many boys and girls, especially to those from the poorest families, an "office job" is the acme of desire. It means to them, pitifully enough, a respectability they have never been quite able to encompass. As a result, perhaps, of our slow-changing educational ideals, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... conversation has filled me with thoughts too solemn for careless utterance. In this man's death I hear a cry for merciful consideration—a solemn warning—a protest against the headlong speed with which this generation is trampling respectability under foot. This man's death is a subject of gossip now, when it should be a subject of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these leadings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Think of it—I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my laboratory-door, give me but a second or two to mix ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... waive that objection, sir," said Costigan majestically, "in consideration of the known respectability ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I present them to you, gentle reader, in this little volume. I think they show how with a very limited income—and but for occasional assistance from Eliza's mother I do not know how we should have got along—a man may to a great extent preserve respectability, show taste and judgment, and manage ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... posted on the oaken door,—his first obtrusive intimation of the combination of church and state,—and hesitated. He was not prepared to find that this last resting-place of his people had something to do with taxes and tithes, and that a certain material respectability and security attended his votive sigh. God and the reigning sovereign of the realm preserved a decorous alliance in the royal arms that appeared above the official notices. Presently he pushed open the door gently and entered the nave. For a moment ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... for two or three consecutive hours, by bands of gentlemanly-looking individuals: clerks, book-keepers, foremen, business-managers, and such like responsible functionaries, whose unimpeachable outer integuments testify to their regard for appearances. This current of respectability sets in towards the city at about half-past six in the morning, and continues its flow until just upon ten o'clock, when it may be said to be highwater. Though a large proportion of these agents of the world's traffic are daily borne to and from their destination ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... say, sentimentally, that these great weaknesses are on the whole the necessary concomitants of great strength; that such highly organised and complex characters must not be judged by the rule of common respectability; and that it is a more or less fine thing to be capable at once of great virtues ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... strange letter! (Reads.) "And so the moth has come too near the candle at last, and has been singed into—shall I say Respectability? I congratulate him, and hope he will be as happy as he deserves to be." What does that mean? Is she ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... foot of an embankment one hundred feet down came to that catastrophe by getting two or three inches off the track. Some of the greatest domestic misfortunes and the widest resounding divorce cases have started from little misunderstandings that were allowed to go on and go on until home, and respectability, and religion, and immortal soul went down in ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... profession, and opinion, is rarer now than in the days of chivalry. Falsehood has become a current coin, and circulates with a certain degree of respectability; because it has an actual value. It is indeed the great Vice of the Age—it, and its twin-sister, Dishonesty. Men, for political preferment, profess whatever principles are expedient and profitable. At the bar, in the pulpit, and in the halls of legislation, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... authorized report, was not natural: the King of Valeria killed him in a sword duel in Ferida Palace on the principal street of Dornlitz. The lady then betook herself to Paris and took up her present life of extreme respectability—and political usefulness to our friends of Wilhelm-strasse. In fact, I understand that she has more than made good professionally, as well as fascinated at least half a ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... what use are fine speeches and Parliament, once you surrender an inch to the black waters? Indeed there has never been any explanation of the ebb and flow in our veins—of happiness and unhappiness. That respectability and evening parties where one has to dress, and wretched slums at the back of Gray's Inn—something solid, immovable, and grotesque—is at the back of it, Jacob thought probable. But then there was the British Empire which was beginning to puzzle him; nor was he altogether in favour of giving ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... lowering levels to which her husband had dropped, and if she hoped that in Fillmore Street they had reached bottom, she did not say so. Her unbetrayed regret was for the loss of what she would have called "respectability"; and the giving up, long ago, in the little city which had been their home, of the servant girl had been the first wrench. Until they came to Hampton they had always lived in houses, and her adaptation to a flat had been hard—a flat without a parlour. Hannah Bumpus regarded ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... it," he said, "if you ask me why I does it, without any intention of bettering myself, for the Lord hath placed me above need of that; but mainly for the sake of discipline, and the respectability of things. Suppose I was under you, sir, and knew you was getting no more than I was, why, my stomach would fly every time that you gave me an order without a 'Please, Zebedee!' But as soon as I feels that you pocket ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... against all things unworthy, low and deserving of contempt. It respects persons, but loathes whatever of sin or vice that is in, or comes from, unworthy beings. It is a virtue, and is the effect of a high sense of respectability. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... family prayers and back to the ice-box? I want to tell you," he concluded in the same low, even voice, "that in the Big Summing Up, the Celestial Clearing House will show many a poor gutter-runner more entitled to wear medals for having made a game fight for respectability than some of his anemic superiors who all their days walked slowly, and were called by their fellows examples of great character. Don't be too quick to size up a chap's pace, Lady Jane, until you know ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... indispensable resource in time of public danger? We seem to have abandoned its cause as desperate and irretrievable. Is commerce of importance to national wealth? Ours is at the lowest point of declension. Is respectability in the eyes of foreign powers a safeguard against foreign encroachments? The imbecility of our government even forbids them to treat with us: our ambassadors abroad are the mere ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... whole scene; his influence predominates throughout; his character is reflected from everything. Perhaps nothing less than his immense weight of mind could have kept the national system, at home, in that position which it held, immovably, for seven years; perhaps nothing but the august respectability which his demeanor threw around the American cause abroad, would have induced a foreign nation to enter into an equal alliance with us upon terms that contributed in a most important degree to our final success, or would have caused Great Britain to ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... you for crime—just as mine unfits me for respectability. I know you better than I did, and now I do not even recommend forgery. Go back to respectable courses, my man. YOUR lay is the philanthropic lay—that is your lay. With that voice—the Association for the Promotion of Snivelling ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... of speedy assistance. Encouraged by this promise, congress, who had recently neglected Washington's army, probably from the feelings of despair, made an extraordinary effort to give his troops some appearance of respectability before the arrival of their French allies. These allies arrived in July at Rhode Island, and they amounted to 6000 veteran troops. They were commanded by the Count de Rochambeau, an experienced officer, who had fought in the battle of Minden; but in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... were even then engaged in tossing up who should have the privilege of seeing her home. The lot fell to Mr. Richards, the excellent Vice-President, an elderly gentleman whose carefully parted hair and flowing beard made him the very picture of respectability. To look at him, one would have said that the dear lady could not ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... not know me, but turned out from his remarks, to be Picault, the owner of the mansion. His observations were general and of a kind of a conciliatory tone, and seemed to be each uttered after grave deliberation. There was a prudence and respectability and an air of inoffensiveness about his manner which indicated the quiet merchant of means. He spoke of Madame De Rheims with great respect, and drew my attention to quondam Mlle. Alvarez, the New Orleans beauty, as though her presence was a marked honor to his house; and hearing that I was not acquainted ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... This man was his father. His FATHER! The laws of life and of humanity demanded that he regard this man with veneration. Yet, offhand, without investigation, this man could jump to a vile conclusion regarding him. Not only that, but could accuse him, not of guilt, but of failing to conceal guilt!... Respectability! He knew he was watching a manifestation of the family tradition. It was wrong to commit an unworthy act, but it was a sin unspeakable to be caught by the public in ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... of an ordinary official, their condition anyhow presents a difference. Of late the number of the inmates has, day by day, been on the increase; their affairs have become daily more numerous; of masters and servants, high and low, who live in ease and respectability very many there are; but of those who exercise any forethought, or make any provision, there is not even one. In their daily wants, their extravagances, and their expenditure, they are also unable to adapt themselves to circumstances and practise economy; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... holes in mountains, but they are not competent to lay out even a decent highway. The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunnelled under the whole breadth of the land. Such a government is losing its power and respectability as surely as water runs out of a leaky vessel, and is held by one that ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... for enjoyment, and the first twenty-five years of one's life are worth all the rest of the longest life of man, even though those five- and-twenty be spent in penury and contempt, and the rest in the possession of wealth, honours, respectability, ay, and many of them in strength and health, such as will enable one to ride forty miles before dinner, and over one's pint of port—for the best gentleman in the land should not drink a bottle—carry on one's argument, with gravity and decorum, with any commercial ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... secrecy it doubtless seemed necessary to make an appeal to the general public by editorial utterances, in journals supposed to be impartial and of high standing in other directions. In a New York daily paper which claims to be conducted with special regard for respectability and avoidance of unseemly sensationalism, there appeared, therefore, an editorial opposing all inquiry on the part of the legislature into the methods of animal experimentation. It is worth while to see how matters of history were placed before its readers ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... rose painfully. The shock had brought him to himself. He was no longer berserk. He was a middle-aged gentleman of high respectability who had been behaving ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... disparity in the wealth of each; on the contrary, many were heard to assert, that of the two Fardorougha had the heavier purse. His character, however, was held in such abhorrence by all who knew him, and he ranked, in point of personal respectability and style of living, so far beneath the Bodagh, that we question if any ordinary occurrence could be supposed to fall upon the people with greater amazement than a marriage, or the report of a marriage, between any member of ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... has all the sameness of the desert without its dignity; the few towns and villages that break its monotony are mean and commonplace, there is nothing venerable about them, they have not even the picturesqueness of poverty; indeed, Don Quixote's own village, Argamasilla, has a sort of oppressive respectability in the prim regularity of its streets and houses; everything is ignoble; the very windmills are the ugliest and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... individual propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit being to the character rather than the form. If you make an Englishman smart, (unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen a few,) you make him a monster: his best aspect is that of ponderous respectability. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... collieries, and naturally finding it rather hard to give account of themselves. The peculiarity of the trials which I have attended has been that if a Kaffir could give the name of his father it was taken as a sufficient guarantee of respectability With one miserable Bushman, for instance—a child's caricature of man—it was really going hard till at last he managed to explain that his father's name was Nicodemus Africa, and then every one looked satisfied, and he left the court without a ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... married woman of social prominence and respectability was to unite with the church in her home town and desired the ordinance of baptism by immersion, preferring the primitive custom of going to the river. Among the number that gathered to witness the baptism was a little boy friend, Charlie, ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various
... only deceitful, they were more than usually deceitful with regard to these unfortunate people. In spite of their good furniture—that substantial outward sign of respectability which is the last thing which wise folk who fall into trouble try to dispose of—they were almost at the end of their tether. Already they had learnt to go hungry, and they were beginning to learn to go cold. Tobacco, the last thing ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... worldly things and earthly claims. At any rate, in the secular estate, in my opinion and perhaps that of many good men, I know not if you will find in this country, or even for the most part in others, a man of more learning, respectability, and virtue, accompanied by other good qualities and gifts with which God has graced him, and which are so well employed and profited by, as in himself. For his sole object is to serve God and desire his service and that of your Majesty, and the great good ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... congregation got suddenly rich, and, with wealth, self-conceit and pride entered his heart. He considered it necessary, to preserve his respectability, to separate himself from the humble society he hitherto frequented, and cease to be a member of the Congregation of the Madonna, composed of industrious and virtuous youths who labored honestly for their livelihood. St. Francis, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... all his virtues and respectability, was not a good man of business. People said he let himself be imposed upon by others who knew the value of money far better than he did. His own beautiful estate at Garden Vale, Rumour said, was managed at double the expense it should be; and of his ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... pleased, as I fancied, because so many people turned to look at us (Bloomer has retrograded physically until she is at times almost Uranian, probably as the result of wearing black, which appears to be the chromatic equivalent of respectability), when suddenly I became sensible of a familiar influence, which was quite startling because so unexpected. Looking everywhere, I caught sight of—who do you suppose? Our old friend Tuk.—Mr. Tuck, T-u-c-k here, if you please. He was about to enter a—a means of transportation, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... her, and they were married. The marriage took place only six weeks after her divorce from her former husband. This was considered a very scandalous transaction throughout, and Eleanora was now considered as having forfeited all claims to respectability of character. Still she was a great duchess in her own right, and was now wife of the heir-apparent of the English throne, and so her character made little difference in the estimation in which she ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... renouncing all hope of recovering their stolen lands, those victims of 'bills of discovery,' or of confiscation, burned or destroyed, or threw aside, as worse than useless, the records of their former possessions, the proofs of their former respectability, and seemed, in fact, desirous to efface all evidence of it. I know one case in which the title-deeds of an estate were searched for an important occasion, and in which it appeared that they had been given to tailors ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... have already hinted, Whitman has met with by far his amplest acceptance and appreciation in Europe. There is good reason for this, though it is not what has been generally claimed, namely, that the cultivated classes of Europe are surfeited with respectability, half dead with ennui and routine, and find an agreeable change in the daring unconventionality of the new poet. For the fact is, it is not the old and jaded minds of London, or Paris, or Dublin, or Copenhagen, that have acknowledged him, but the fresh, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... misery, in utter shame, mocked and insulted by all the great, the rich, the learned of His nation; one who had grown up as a man of low birth, believed by all to be a carpenter's son; without scholarship, money, respectability; even without a home wherein to lay His head—and here was the end of His life! True, He had preached noble words, He had done noble deeds: but what had they helped Him? They had not made the rich, the ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... Tristram Shandy, the master of Skelton Castle, at which Sterne was, throughout life, to be a frequent and most familiar visitor; and, unfortunately, also a person whose later reputation, both as a man and a writer, became such as seriously to compromise the not very robust respectability of his clerical comrade. Sterne and Hall were distant cousins, and it may have been the tie of consanguinity which first drew them together. But there was evidently a thorough congeniality of the most unlucky sort between them; and from their ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... married to a second wife, a woman of stern principles, full of decision and respectability, who had brought him a considerable fortune, and, under her lynx-eyed rule, had restored that order in household matters which, during the period her husband was a widower, had been far too much neglected; and though his power might still be absolute on board the Juno, it ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... was nominated on this broad platform for President, with Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice-President, both eminently respectable statesmen, but the times were not auspicious for mere generalized principles or mere respectability. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... was in truth a little rent, but not more than might seem admissible where the rough wear was considered to which the garment was necessarily exposed: when a little worse it would receive the proper attention, and be brought back to respectability! Kirsty grudged the time spent on her garments. She looked down on them as the moon might on the clouds around her. She made or mended them to wear them, not think ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... enlightened example of wholesale, industrial housing. But as Archie felt about it, the place was worse really than the more celebrated slums of older cities in its pretentious cheapness, its dreary monotony and colorlessness, its very respectability and smug tediousness. A life dropped into its maze and growing up in it must be lost for good and all—must become just another human ant crawling over Clark's Field, with the habits and coloring of all the other human ants striving there for life and happiness. Archie, ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... necessary to say that the character of this brutal young Laird is entirely imaginary. A gentleman, however, who resembled Balmawhapple in the article of courage only, fell at Preston in the manner described. A Perthshire gentleman of high honour and respectability, one of the handful of cavalry who followed the fortunes of Charles Edward, pursued the fugitive dragoons almost alone till near St. Clement's Wells, where the efforts of some of the officers had prevailed on a few of them to make ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... doubts as to the respectability of the agitators they determined to present a formal petition to parliament for the removal of the bishops, and to do the thing in style. "Accoutred in the best manner they could," they rode to Westminster ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... has about it an indescribable soothing atmosphere of respectability and comfort. Here rest the remains of the principal and loftiest in rank in their generation of the citizens of Portsmouth prior to the Revolution—stanch, royalty-loving governors, counselors, and secretaries of the Providence of ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to office, always descending in respectability, because always violating my promises not to drink. Occasionally I would make a desperate effort to reform, gathering about me every element of strength which I could possibly command, and for a while I would be successful, but just as hope would begin to light up my darkened path and my ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... The respectability of the witnesses, and the solemn terms of this marriage covenant, suffice to show that marriages thus solemnized were regarded as perfectly regular, and it is probable that in the absence of a minister competent to perform the ceremony this was ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... clients in small towns were in those days often cordially intimate. The traveller came with the lustre of a historic reputation around him; there was no need to fawn for orders; and the client's immense and immaculate respectability made him the equal of no matter what ambassador. It was a case of mutual esteem, and of that confidence-generating phenomenon, "an old account." The tone in which a commercial traveller of middle age would utter the phrase "an old account" ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... might have been driven to their ships in less than a year. The length of the war and its worst hardships had been chiefly due to want of organization. Congress had steadily declined in power and in respectability; it was much weaker at the end of the war than at the beginning; and there was reason to fear that as soon as the common pressure was removed the need for concerted action would quite cease to be felt, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... have our past; it's the way we possess it that's new in the world; that's what she meant. Any little advantage that you or I may have in our half-dozen or so generations of respectability and responsibility, is ours only to share, to make us tell more in the ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... had had a merry New Year, and been young again for an evening; but I was sorry to see the mark still there. One could not expect such an old gentleman to be much of a dandy or a great student of respectability in dress; but there might have been a wife at home, who had brushed out similar stains after fifty New Years, now become old, or a round-armed daughter, who would wish to have him neat, were it only out of self-respect ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her. She might be soft in her affections but she never swerved from her duty as she saw it. Alexina was a darling wayward child, who only needed a firm hand to guide her along that proud secluded old avenue of the city's elect, until she had ambled safely to established respectability and power. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... scientific research, his only other thought being a care for our education. He had lived on in the same old house which grew somewhat dingier and shabbier each year, whilst the neighbourhood fell from its pristine respectability to become the resort of foreigners of somewhat doubtful character, of ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... yellow velveteen collar turned high up, and one of those modest round hats to which she was addicted. For then you were aware only of the pale-gold hair fluffing round her school-mistress eye-glasses, her gentle air of respectability, and her undistinguished littleness. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... likewise great. Our souls have been touched, our thoughts directed and our visions enlarged. We are standing here upon the base swell of the mount of prosperity, viewing its lofty summit which towers above prejudice and contempt into the atmosphere of recognition and respectability. Enemies may assail us on our ascent, but will climb on: men have reached the top and we can reach it. Though our ideal is high, if we have the patience of our fathers and the courage demanded; if with unselfish devotion we act well our part upon the stage of life, everywhere promoting ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 3, September, 1898 • Various
... that my pursuer was gaining. I therefore stopped short, stepped into the heavy shadow of an evergreen, and waited for my new friend. Though it was dark I could see him as he came, and I assure you that it surprised me when I noted that the man was well-dressed and bore the appearance of respectability. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... stood for the king against Parliament. And finally, being quite moral himself (if chronic indulgence in port wine be excepted), and supporting a notoriously virtuous king against corrupt politicians and against the gambling Fox, Pitt became an idol of all lovers of "respectability." ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... has been promoted!' said the Darning-needle. 'I remain here; I am too fine. But that is my pride, which is a sign of respectability!' And she sat there very proudly, ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... him; he talked and played, and fared sumptuously every day. He took serious counsel with himself about the great Popish question; now inclining this way, now that: he was puzzling which to choose, when Chance entirely relieved him of the trouble. 'A person of respectability' in Munich wrote to Wuertemberg to make inquiries who or what this general favourite was; and received for answer, that the general favourite was a villain, and had been banished from Ludwigsburg for denying that there was a Holy Ghost!—Schubart was happy to evacuate ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... same duty of idolatrous worship, if not of relics and ikons, then of the Sabbath Day and the letter of the Bible. There is always the same activity directed to concealing the real duties of Christianity, and to putting in their place an external respectability and cant, as it is so well described by the English, who are peculiarly oppressed by it. In Protestantism this tendency is specially remarkable because it has not the excuse of antiquity. And does ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... leave behind them a reputation for flagrant selfishness, meanness, and dishonesty, or for a commendable prudence and judicious regard for self,—whether they always keep within the precincts of a decent respectability, or run into disreputable courses,—depends mostly on chance and fortune. This intimate association of the saint and the sinner in the same individual, common as it is, is a stumbling-block to moralists and legislators. The abnormal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... we should ever think of respectability at such a time!" said Mrs. Chipperton, with tears in ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... makes us win or lose on the turf; he sits joyfully grinning on the tops of bottles and tankards filled with alcoholic drinks; he entices us on Sundays to shut our museums and open our gin-palaces; to neglect the education of the masses; and then prompts us to accuse them with hypocritical respectability of drunkenness and stupidity. It is the Devil who turns us into friends of lapdogs and makes us enemies of the homeless. The Devil is the greatest master in dogmatism; he creates sects who, in the name of love and humility, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... distrust of each other, the man you would employ cannot meet the chief who directs him, there will be delay, confusion, panic, and you will all perish by the executioner. And for me, Pierre Guillot, consider my position. I am in some favour with the First Consul; I have a station of respectability,—a career lies before me. Can you think that I will hazard these, with my head to boot, like a rash child? Do you suppose that, in entering into this terrible contest, I would consent to treat only with subordinates? Do not deceive yourself. Again, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Philippe, who could take the tone of all varieties of sycophancy, became in the regions of the highest social life exactly what the position required him to be; just as at Issoudun, he had copied the respectability of Mignonnet. He had, moreover, a fine establishment and gave fetes and dinners; admitting none of his old friends to his house if he thought their position in life likely to compromise his future. He was pitiless to the companions of his former debauches, and curtly refused Bixiou ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... pity my less fortunate neighbors, bound hand and foot to the slavery of mothers-in-law. I attempted to joke them, and poke them severely in the ribs with my knuckles, when the magic name was mentioned. So often did I congratulate myself on the shrewd stroke of genius displayed, that I fear even her respectability became sadly impaired in my mind, and depreciated to such an extent that I was gradually led to think of her irreverently ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... was well selected for the job. For two years he had been groomed as the reformer who would introduce the State-saving Direct Primary Bill. So a railroad regulation measure introduced by Senator Wright might at least be calculated to bear the stamp of respectability. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... within the last thousand years, this process has produced effects thus marked, we may readily conceive how, during previous thousands, the titles of gods and demi-gods came to be used to all persons exercising power; as they have since come to be used to persons of respectability. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... [March 1803] I plunge alone into the depths of literary speculation. I am therefore honestly ambitious that my first appearance before the public should be such as will at once stamp my character and respectability. On this account, therefore, I think that your Play would be more advantageous to me than to any other bookseller; and as 'I am not covetous of Gold,' I should hope that no trifling consideration will be allowed to prevent my having the honour of being Mr. Colman's publisher. ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... centre of the square. Everything is neat, orderly and severely dull, the most dissipated tenants of the square being boarding-house keepers of a highly sedate description. The secret of all this tremendous respectability is to be found in the contiguity to the Charter-House itself, a portion of whose buildings abut on the square, which, with many of the streets adjoining, belongs to this wealthy institution. Four years ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... humble you in the eyes of others even by forcing you to face a scandal. I could not bear to humble you in your own eyes by letting you suspect that I knew the truth. I could not bring myself to disturb the outward respectability of your life by interrupting its outward calm. To be absolutely honest—though I had lost you, I could not bring myself to give you up,—as I felt I must, if I let any one discover—most of all you—what I knew. So, like a coward, I ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... losses" be, as affirmed by Dogberry in one of Shakspeare's most charming plays, and corroborated by Sir Walter Scott in one of his most charming romances—(those two names do well in juxtaposition, the great Englishman! the great Scotsman!)—If to have "had losses" be a main proof of credit and respectability, then am I one of the most responsible persons in the whole county of Berks. To say nothing of the graver matters which figure in a banker's book, and make, in these days of pounds, shillings, and pence, so large a part of the domestic tragedy of life—putting ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... most and the largest fish in the long run. Perhaps the fisherman ahead of you is such an one,—a man whom you have known in town as a lawyer or a doctor, a merchant or a preacher, going about his business in the hideous respectability of a high silk hat and a long black coat. How good it is to see him now in the freedom of a flannel shirt and a broad-brimmed gray felt with flies stuck ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... ungrateful for and wholly untouched by the beautiful benignity of Lawyer Brandon, continued firm in his stubborn denial to betray his comrade; and with equal obduracy he continued to insist upon his own innocence and unblemished respectability of character. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Abe. "Given a big man and a small sum and the large amount of respectability that's desired. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... enough; but the worldly, prudent, self-restraining man, with his five senses, which he understands how to gratify with tempered indulgence, with a conscience satisfied with the hack routine of what is called respectability, such a man feels no wretchedness; no inward uneasiness disturbs him, no desires which he cannot gratify; and this though he be the basest and most contemptible slave of his own selfishness. Providence will not interfere to punish him. Let him ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... pastime just described, or any moral mischief to which that and other customs might pave the way, can have led to the overthrow of Greenwich Fair; for it has often seemed to me that Englishmen of station and respectability, unless of a peculiarly philanthropic turn, have neither any faith in the feminine purity of the lower orders of their countrywomen, nor the slightest value for it, allowing its possible existence. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that life is a vast, tumultuous, vari-colored play of counter-motives and counter-characters, full of chance, surprise, change and bitter sweet: a thing of mystery, terror, pity and joy. It has its masks of respectability, its frauds of place, its beauty blossoming in the mud, its high and low of luck, its infinite possibilities betwixt heaven and hell. The effect of this upon the sensitive reader is to enlarge his ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... don't know that I called at Beacon Street, and found you were from home—with friends in Canada, they said—and I want to say, in self-defence, that I came very well introduced. I brought letters to people in Boston of the most undoubted respectability, and to people in New York, who are as near the social equals of the Boston people as it is possible for mere New York persons to be. Among other letters of introduction I had two to you. I saw the house in Beacon Street. ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... with a thin gamboge and burnt sienna glazing; and very blue under the eyes, which showed a great deal of their watery whites. This old woman had in her face and air, along with an expression of suspicion and anxiety, a certain character of decency and respectability, which made her altogether a puzzling ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... subcastes is given by Mr. Crooke, and this is an instance of the tendency of migratory castes to split up into small groups for the purpose of arranging marriages, owing to the difficulty of ascertaining the status and respectability of each other's families, and the unwillingness to contract alliances with those whose social position may turn out to be not wholly satisfactory. "The internal structure of the caste," Mr. Crooke remarks, "is far from clear; it would appear that they are ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... English memoirs, none are so rich in humor and various observation as those devoted to the players. CARLYLE somewhere says, that the only good biographies are those of actors; and he gives for a reason their want of respectability! Being 'vagabonds' by law in England, the truth of their histories he tells us is not varnished over by delicate omissions. The first branch of this assumption is certainly true, whatever cause may be at the bottom of it; and Mr. COWELL, in the very entertaining ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... vizier of Bussorah died about four years afterwards with great satisfaction, seeing a. branch of his family that promised so fair to support its future consequence and respectability. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... Churches is worth considering. We see that Mr. Gosse was driven from them in his youth by their sectarian narrowness and unwillingness to face intellectual inquiry; Mr. Shaw by the flippancy of the Irish Church, its class prejudice, its false respectability; Mr. Lowes Dickinson, among other reasons, because at a time when men are learning to adapt the processes of Nature to their ends, when it becomes them to "dwell less and less upon their weaknesses and more and more upon their strength," the orthodox Christians assert that we are "miserable sinners," ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... night after night, till his life's end, plenty and comfort and neatness and respectability and warmth in dull monotony; while outside somewhere in the cold and rain, in poverty and want and wretchedness, wandered Edith with the wailing baby in ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... supply its place with modern inventions, but as yet this ambition was remote, and the mill, worked after the process of an earlier century, had raised his position to one of comparative comfort and respectability. He was known to be a man of character and ambition. Already his name had been mentioned as a possible future representative of the labouring classes in the Virginia assembly. "There is no better proof of the grit that is in the plain people than the rise of Abel Revercomb out of Abner, his father," ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... old, Brangwen sent her to the dames' school in Cossethay. There she went, flipping and dancing in her inconsequential fashion, doing very much as she liked, disconcerting old Miss Coates by her indifference to respectability and by her lack of reverence. Anna only laughed at Miss Coates, liked her, and patronized her ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... miserable emanation of her own personality. She always shrank back lest others noticed it, and she always would. She particularly shunned strangers. The sight of a strange woman clothed about with utter respectability and strictest virtue intimidated her beyond her power of self-control, for she always wondered if she had been told about her, and realized that, if she had, her old disgrace had assumed in this ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... proposed and elected me to the office which now gives me the opportunity of addressing you. To them, to you, to the Livery at large, I again tender my thanks, and I beg to assure you that, whatever may be necessary to enhance the high, respectability of my office, to support its splendour, to maintain its rights, to add to its honour, and to make it more useful to my fellow-citizens—if it can be made more useful—I will attempt, and with your countenance and ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore |
