"Decent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two-thirds of our entire wealth. Seventy-five per cent of the workers in the basic industry are unable to send their children to school. Seventy-one per cent of the heads of the families in our basic industries are unable to provide a decent living for their families without the assistance of the other members. Twenty-nine per cent of our laborers are able to live up to the myth that he is the head of the family. The results of these evils ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... painted in soft and cheerful tints. I would have the walls pleasantly colored, or covered with delicate, or bright, or warm-hued paper. The floor should be either tiled, or hidden under carpets, durable, if possible, at any rate, decent. Straw or rope matting is better than brown, yawning boards. There you have things put upon an entirely new basis. At no immoderate expense there is a new sky, a new earth, a new horizon. If a boy is rich and can furnish his room handsomely, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the morning when we reached Jalapa, tired to death, and shivering with cold. Greatly we rejoiced as we rattled through its mountainous streets, and still more when we found ourselves in a nice clean inn, with brick floors and decent small beds, and everything prepared for us. The sight of a fire would have been too much luxury; however, they gave us some hot tea, and very shortly after, I at least can answer for myself, that I was in bed, and enjoying the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Hicacal Cay, who will be sure to notice us as we go in. By the way, I picked up a rather useful little item of information while I was ashore this afternoon. I fell in with the harbour-master, who seems quite a decent sort of chap, as Spaniards go; he and I have gradually grown to be rather chummy since we have been in harbour here, and upon the strength of the fact that I was clearing for sea I took him into that place on the quay yonder and cracked a farewell bottle of wine with him. As we ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... bead industry of Venice is but a poorly-paid one; only the most skilful among the hands can manage to make a decent livelihood. Not very many of the women can earn more than about 4-1/2d. a day, so that for them all the fast-days decreed by their Church are quite superfluous; their fasts last from Ash Wednesday to Ash Wednesday. Even polenta, that very frugal Italian national dish, is ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... city. But the need thus pathetically shown in the children of many social strata in the United States indicates that not only should there be own mothers or substitute-mothers for every little child to start each aright along the way of life but every own mother or substitute-mother should have a decent place to live in so that all needed drill may be conducted in dignified privacy and in an atmosphere required for right results. The housing problem reaches back to the primal need to have a suitable living-place into which to put ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... Wild' has its closest English parallel in 'Barry Lyndon.' The burlesque in 'Tom Thumb' of the Lee and Dryden school of tragedy may remind us of Thackeray's burlesques of Scott and Dumas. The characters of the two authors belong to the same family. 'Vanity Fair' has grown more decent since the days of Lady Bellaston, but the costume of the actors has changed more than their nature. Rawdon Crawley would not have been surprised to meet Captain Booth in a spunging-house; Shandon and his friends preserved the old traditions of Fielding's Grub Street; Lord Steyne and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... a plausible talker," explained Will, "and he persuaded me he had a great scheme for making money. Well, before I knew it I had signed some papers—foolishly. At first I was given decent clerical work to do, and then the scheme failed, I was transferred to another part of the State, and to another company, and in some way, by a juggling of contracts, not knowing what I was doing, it seems that I signed an agreement to work in a ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... while she lived, to take an interest in Rachel Frost; it is very probable that their own child's death only made this interest greater. They were sufficiently wise not to lift the girl palpably out of her proper sphere; but they paid for a decent education for her at a day-school, and were personally kind to her. Rachel—I was going to say fortunately, but it may be as just to say unfortunately—was one of those who seem to make the best of every trifling advantage: she had grown, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... decent household,' she said; 'no mistress who respected herself would keep me a moment. I ought to be put out on the doorstep with my box and a ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... here for three days. Last night we were visited by some singers. We were very far from the music that I love, but the popular and sentimental tunes were quite able to replace a finer art, because of the ardent conviction of the singer. The workman who sang these songs, which were decent, in fact moral (a rather questionable moral, perhaps, but still a moral), so put his soul into it that the timbre of his voice was altogether too moving for our hostesses. Here are the ideal people: perhaps ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... who fed at his cost. But it was plain my presence or absence would be of as little importance in his eyes as that of one of his blue-coated serving-men. My cousins were mere cubs, in whose company I might, if I liked it, unlearn whatever decent manners, or elegant accomplishments, I had acquired, but where I could attain no information beyond what regarded worming dogs, rowelling horses, and following foxes. I could only imagine one reason, which was probably the true one. My father considered the life which was led at Osbaldistone ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... I've notified Mr. Cluff. You won't mind his being there? He's a rough diamond, but a thoroughly decent fellow." ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... essay on some subject, of their own composition, and in their own handwriting. I sent in two long poems on the Covenanters, which must have exceedingly amused them, as I had not learned to write even decent prose. But, much to my surprise, immediately on the close of the harvesting experience, a letter arrived, intimating that I, along with another young man, had been put upon the short leet, and that both were requested to appear in ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... hastily land again from their canoes, in which they had been carried beyond the Cichican* valley, differing one from another in manners, but inspired with the same avidity for blood, and all more eager to shroud their villainous faces in bushy hair than to cover with decent clothing those parts of their body which required it. Moreover, having heard of the departure of our friends, and their resolution never to return, they seized with greater boldness than before on all the country towards the extreme ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... question, how a man might become a god, was, "By doing that which was impossible for men to do." The eighth told him, "Life is stronger than death, because it supports so many miseries." And the last being asked, how long he thought it decent for a man to live, said, "Till death appeared more desirable than life." Then Alexander turned to him whom he had made judge, and commanded him to give sentence. "All that I can determine," said he, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... a bit worse off than Tom Green, Nicholas, and he has not got your money, and Tom is as jolly as anything, and everybody loves him, though he is a hopeless cripple, and can't even look decent, as you will be able to in a year or two. There is no use in having this sentiment about war heroes that would make one put up with their tempers, and their cynicism! Everybody is in the same boat, women and men, we chance being maimed by bombs, and ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... which Dr Johnson delivered those excellent arguments for a form of prayer which he has introduced into his Journey. I am myself fully convinced that a form of prayer for publick worship is in general most decent and edifying. Solennia verba have a kind of prescriptive sanctity, and make a deeper impression on the mind than extemporaneous effusions, in which, as we know not what they are to be, we cannot readily acquiesce. Yet I would allow also of a certain portion of extempore address, as occasion may ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... thing as cold or heat or pain, and therefore you could not feel cold. But now, since, according to the new creed, such things as uric acid, chromogens and purins had no existence, she could safely indulge in decent viands again. But her unhappy husband was not a real gainer in this respect, for while he ate, she tirelessly discoursed to him on the new creed, and asked him to recite with her the True Statement of Being. And on the top of that she dismissed the admirable ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... philosophical tinctures of any kind; he was quite content to be inconsistent—to be a Conservative at home and a Liberal abroad. There were very good reasons for keeping the Irish in their places; but what had that to do with it? The point was this—when any decent man read an account of the political prisons in Naples his gorge rose. He did not want war; but he saw that without war a skilful and determined use of England's power might do much to further the cause of the Liberals ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... underprivileged. Both of these manifestations of injustice have retarded happiness. No wise man has any intention of destroying what is known as the profit motive; because by the profit motive we mean the right by work to earn a decent livelihood for ourselves and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "Defection," said I, "is inevitable. The soldiers are drinking in their barracks the money which you have been giving them for some days past to purchase their fidelity. They say Louis XVIII., is a very decent sort of man, but 'Vive le ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... coaches, the abominable roads, the irresponsible drivers, the wretched delay, misery, and uncertainty rapidly gave place to lighter, stronger, and more commodious vehicles, better horses, more experienced drivers, careful guards, regular stages, marked by decent inns and comfortable hostelries, and improved roads. The post-office made a contract with the coaching speculator—a very safe contract indeed—by which he was to have two and one-half per cent of the money saved in the conveyance of letters. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... hardly be honest to take the "loafers" of Washington as fair representatives of their order: there are, no doubt, better—if not braver—soldiers in the front; and perhaps even the queer specimens then before me might look decent, if not dignified, under the earnest ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... "It's what most of the decent people in this country are thinking, I guess, even if they haven't begun saying it out loud yet. It strikes me the American people are a mighty patient lot—putting up with that demagogue. That was a rotten thing that happened up on the hill to-day, Quinlan—a damnable thing. ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... justified himself by alleging that, inasmuch as the queen was married first, although her sister was married immediately after, the ceremonial was not celebrated at the same time! This audacious departure from every decent observance of truth and honesty was perpetrated by a man who is lauded by the savons of France to this day as one of their illustrious number. His Memoir of Sir Robert Peel is popular in England, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... it was capital fun; but I think I was rather bewildered by it, though "Roderick Random" was and remains delightful. I don't remember having Sterne in the school library, no doubt because the works of that divine were not considered decent for young people. Ah! not against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and Trim, would I say a word in disrespect. But I am thankful to live in times when men no longer have the temptation to write so as to call blushes on women's cheeks, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... very busy, full of almost American activity. He thought a greater calm would have been more decent, and waited in the hope that the floor would presently cease to forget itself. As it showed no symptoms of complying with his desire he endeavoured to spurn it, and, in the fulness of time, gained ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... cheek unwet was seen. And ev'n the priest reluctant, and in tears, Op'd by a sudden plunge the offer'd breast. She, to earth sinking, 'neath her tottering limbs, Wore to the last a face unmov'd; ev'n then Her final care was in her fall to veil Limbs that a veil demanded, as she sank; And decent pride of modesty preserve. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... mean act; but do not always condemn the actor. They were to seize the fort, and cease firing. They affect great grief; but do not effect their purpose. Do you dissent from my opinion? The hill was difficult of descent. A decent regard for others' ills is human. They advise the young to take the advice of the old. The enemy will invade the rich province. They ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... well-recommended leg of mutton she had that day for sale as well. Priscilla shuddered at the sight of it and determined never to eat legs of mutton again. The bacon, too, piled up on the counter, revolted her. The only things that looked as decent raw as when they were cooked were eggs; and on eggs she decided she and Fritzing would in future live. She broke off a piece of the crust of the bread Mrs. Vickerton was wrapping up and ate it, putting great pressure on herself to do it carelessly, with ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... a really good fellow, decent, rich, "born of pious parents," and determined to have all the ready-made refinements and tastes that pure money could buy, came and sat with me at my ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... after Smart's release, that the now famous Song to David was published. A long and interesting letter in the correspondence of Hawkesworth, dated October 1764, gives a pleasant idea of Smart restored to cheerfulness and placed "with very decent people in a house, most delightfully situated, with a terrace that overlooks St. James's Park." But this relief was only temporary; Smart fell back presently into drunkenness and debt, and was happily relieved by death in 1770, in his forty-eighth year, at the close of a career ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... just sittin' there, in all the dust and cobwebs. When I get time, I aim to go over there and clean up the house for her—'t ain't decent for a body to live like that. I'll take you with me, to help scrub, and what I'm telling you all this for is so 's you won't ask any questions, nor act as if you thought it was queer for a woman to wear a white veil all the time. You'll ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... the English barrows, of the Danish kitchen middens, of the Swiss lake dwellings. The men who lived in it had domesticated the dog, the cow, the sheep, the goat, and the invaluable pig; they had begun to sow small ancestral wheat and undeveloped barley; they had learnt to weave flax and wear decent clothing: in a word, they had passed from the savage hunting condition to the stage of barbaric herdsmen and agriculturists. That is a comparatively modern period, and yet I suppose we must conclude with Dr. James Geikie that ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... of houses without anything in them deserving the name of furniture; hundreds of beds without clothing, and hundreds of children whose excuses for clothes are barely sufficient, with every contrivance decent poverty can suggest, to cover the body as civilized society demands. In the towns I have enumerated, in fact, if the least reliance may be placed in newspaper reports, in every town and village in the country the same want prevails to a much greater extent than can be conceived by such as Sir ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... partridges which needed "keeping down." He himself was "laid by" with a bad leg, but he would be very glad if Mr. Leith would "take his chance among the birds" any day, or days, he liked while at Welsley. The gentleman farmer could not offer much, just the ground, most of it stubble, and a decent lot of birds. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... living-room, which was behind the store, the chambers being overhead. She was gone home long before he put out the store lights and turned out the last lingering idler, for Cap'n Abe preferred to cook for himself. He declared the Widow Gallup did not know how to make a decent chowder, anyway; and as for lobscouse, or the proper frying of a mess of "blood-ends," she was all at sea. He intimated that there were digestive reasons for her husband's death at the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... infinite sadness, and he sighed even while the smile came back on the face he turned to us from the door as he said: "Sometimes I think he is studying law with old Charley Hedrick and sometimes I think he is in the bank with John Markley; but he is always with me, and was such a decent boy when I had him out to the College. But I saw him with Joe Nevison last night, and I ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... either, not one of us. We'd like nothin' better'n to be neighborly an' run in. It's the only decent way of doin' when folks live side by side. But Martin wouldn't listen to our doin' it, even if your aunt would—which I know she wouldn't. He's ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... cat's-meat, and burly-looking prize-fighters. They have the fortiter in re for kicking, but not the suaviter in modo for corns. Look at them villanously treed out at the "Noah's Ark" and elsewhere; what are they but eight-and-six-penny worth of discomfort! They will no more accommodate a decent foot than the old general would have turned his back in a charge, or cut off his grizzled mustachios. If it wasn't for the look of the thing, one might as well shove one's foot into a box-iron. We wouldn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... curious combination of stiffness and dandyism,—may be met every where; but till that time arrives, the offices of religion appear to engross all thoughts, for the shops are closed, and the streets deserted, except by persons passing to and from their several places of worship. How much more decent, to use no stronger expression, is this, than the sort of scenes which I had occasion to describe in a previous chapter,—how much better calculated to keep alive among the people some sense of religion, some ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... bride and her friends were distinguished by having a sort of brass nail-head driven through the right nostril of their noses. Good big boys were running about quite naked. But the conduct of the people, old and young, was quite decent. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... always be a bit too strict in his views of life, a bit narrow in many things. Nevertheless, he was changed. He was less harsh in his opinions of others since he had seen and heard how thousands who were not of his religious faith had gone forth to lay down their lives that the world might be made a decent place in which to live. He, Phares Eby, preacher, had formerly denounced all that pertained to actors and the theatre, yet tears had coursed down his cheeks as he had read the account of a famous comedian who ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... balls out and healing up the sores, so the bandits thought Pa was great. When he insisted that the leader let him know how much it would be to ransom us, so we could send to the circus for money, the leader told Pa he had been such a decent prisoner, and had been such good company, and had been such a help in digging the bullets out of the wounded, that the gang was going to let us go free, without taking a cent from us, but was going to consider us honorary members of the gang and ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... House, and laid before the marquis the whole matter from his point of view—that the tabernacles of the Lord were deserted for dens and caves of the earth; that fellows so void of learning as not to be able to put a sentence together, or talk decent English, (a censure at which Lord Lossie smiled, for his ears were accustomed to a different quality of English from that which now invaded them) took upon themselves to expound the Scriptures; that they taught antinomianism, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... rich states the money is too scattered, and clings too close to the hands of the owners, to be often obtainable in large quantities for new purposes. A place like Lombard Street, where in all but the rarest times money can be always obtained upon good security or upon decent prospects of probable gain, is a luxury which no country has ever enjoyed with even comparable ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... flesh, and to a few ardent souls these sensuous delights were an open highway to death eternal. Eulogius became the leader of this band of zealots. In lamenting the decadence of his people, he wrote, "hardly one in a thousand can write a decent Latin letter, and yet they indite excellent Arabic verse!" Filled with despairing ardor this man aroused a few kindred spirits to join him in a desperate attempt to awaken the benumbed conscience of ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... be had out of a good saddle horse!'" he quoted me. "'More excitement out of a polo pony, and as for the eternal matrimonial chase, give me instead a good stubble, a fox, some decent hounds and a hunter, and I'll show you the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... end of the first week in August, when the messenger arrived with the long-hoped-for report of the ratification of the treaty of peace, and General Mason's proclamation officially announcing it, there were not enough men left in the valley, outside of the barracks, to give a decent round of cheers for ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... said to him one evening when he came a-courtin', 'Jim,' says he, 'you'll never come to no good, if you act like Old Scratch as you do; you ain't fit to come into no decent man's house at all, and your absence would be ten times more agreeable than your company, I tell you. I won't consent to Sall's goin' to them 'ere huskin' parties and quiltin' frolics along with you no more, on no account, for you know ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... garments of enlightened self-government, but underneath those garments are, or were, the same vermin that infested the garments of so many communities less clean—parasites that suck existence from God's gifts to decent people. Indeed, that human vermin at one time infested East Haven even more than the other and neighboring towns; perhaps just because its clothing of civilization was more soft and warm than theirs; perhaps ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... France that, though he had never seen the lady, he fell ardently in love with her, and, being to join the armada, resolved that his port of embarcation should be no other than Genoa, in order that, travelling thither by land, he might find a decent pretext for visiting the Marchioness, with whom in the absence of the Marquis he trusted to have the success which he desired; nor did he fail to put his design in execution. Having sent his main army on before, he took the road himself with a small company of gentlemen, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... She has come to her senses again now, and pours out water in a basin for Oline to wash. "There—if you want to tidy yourself," she says. Oline too thinks it as well to make herself as decent as may be, but cannot see where the blood is, and washes the wrong places. Inger looks on for a while, and then points ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... member during the year, would send an advertisement of his own, or some other person's, business for the annual report, and would pay his own dues promptly on the first intimation from the secretary. Members whose dues for the year are not paid will not receive the annual report and, after a decent interval, their names will automatically drop from the roll of membership and not appear ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... difficulty in selecting guests, for the ears of many people would have been much confused at his loose talk, and their eyes much astonished to see him get drunk at the very commencement of the repast, in the midst of those who thought only of amusing and recreating themselves in a decent manner, and who never ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... It's up to you. Stand aside now, and I'll get across those mountains and become a decent man. Keep me here, and I'll be a killer. I know it; you know it. Why are you after me? Because your brother was killed by me. Dozier, think of your brother and then look at me. Was his life worth my life? You're ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... thankin' me," she muttered—"me that 'u'd die an' stay in hell forever for him? Now I must go mend up the fish-bag your Honor's brother's wife was for sendin' him an' which no decent fish would ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... reader. But when the poet or the story-teller invades the province of the man of science, he is on dangerous ground. I need say nothing of the blunders he is pretty sure to make. The imaginative writer is after effects. The scientific man is after truth. Science is decent, modest; does not try to startle, but to instruct. The same scenes and objects which outrage every sense of delicacy in the story teller's highly colored paragraphs can be read without giving offence in the chaste language of the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tomorrow, I'll ruin John Ellery as sure as I'm a living man. He'll be ruined in Trumet, anyhow. He'll be thrown out by the parish committee. I'm not sure that his church people won't tar and feather him. Marrying a low-down Come-Outer hussy! As if there wa'n't decent girls of good families he might have had! But losing this church won't be the only thing that'll happen to him. The committee'll see that he doesn't get another one. I'll use my influence and have him thrown out ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pleasant journey without any incident of note. We left the university town about nine, reckoning upon getting home comfortably before midnight. There was a bright slice of moon shining, and we did the dozen miles before reaching Royston at a decent pace. We went slowly over the hilly road out of Royston and had passed over the worst of it, and I had just put on a higher speed, when I fancied I heard the distant hum which once heard could never be ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony's head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at us ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... aye sae clean and neat, Baith decent and genteel, And then there's something in her gait Gars ony dress ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... sacrifice is required, for if the Treaty should be defeated, God only knows what would happen to the world as a result of it. In the presence of the great tragedy which now faces the world, no decent man can count his own personal fortunes in the reckoning. Even though, in my condition, it might mean the giving up of my life, I will gladly make the sacrifice ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... for early and second early; Boston Unrivaled (an improved form of Telephone) for main crop, and Gradus for autumn. These two peas are good yielders, free growers and of really wonderfully fine quality. They need bushing, but I have never found a variety of decent quality that does not. ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... as any decent woman would be to whom such a thing happened. She certainly didn't encourage Maxwell; but she found an appointment already made for her to go on the river with him. No doubt she took an exaggerated view of her—of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... After that I went on to the stable yard, and if you'll believe me, the two chaps there had never turned up at all—at half-past eight, mind you!—and there was Fennessy doing up the horses. He said he believed that there'd been a wake down at Enniscar last night. I thought it was rather decent of him doing ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Gouverneur walked together up Second Avenue, past the closed gateways of Stuyvesant Park. Millard was doing the talking, at a great rate. Philip was silent in regard to everything, or if he spoke he said only so much as a decent courtesy demanded. This soon became tiresome to Millard, who was relieving the internal pressure of his thoughts by mere bubble talk about things of no interest to himself, while it seemed impossible to excite ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... murmur about, while their only great nuisances pass unnoticed, the heaps of dirt, and crowds of beggars, who infest the streets, and poison the pleasures of society. While ladies are eating ice at a coffee-house door, while decent people are hearing mass at the altar, while strangers are surveying the beauties of the place—no peace, no enjoyment can one obtain for the beggars; numerous beyond credibility, fancy and airy, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... excellent objects are coveted exclusively for lower purposes. True, no one can find fault with a physician for making his profession, no matter how exalted, a means of earning an honest livelihood and a decent competency; but to ambition this career solely for its pecuniary remuneration would be to degrade one of the most sublime vocations to which man may aspire. There is unfortunately too much of this ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... as the misery of the people, and, except those employed under Bonaparte, and some few upstart contractors or army commissaries, the greatest privations must be submitted to in order to pay the enormous taxes and make a decent appearance. I know families of five, six, and seven persons, who formerly were wealthy, and now have for a scanty subsistence an income of twelve or eighteen hundred livres—per year, with which they are obliged to live as they can, being deprived of all the resource ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... she said, wiping the tear-drop from the end of her nose, "I do think as we ought not to leave it a-lying here, cramped up onto this sofy, where we can't stretch it straight. We ought to have it taken to her room and laid out on her bed, decent and in order." ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... hard to be always saying 'no'; and there ain't much to do in these places but to drink or to gamble. A man here ain't so much to be blamed as folks who live in comfortable houses, and have got wives and families and decent places of amusement, and books and all that sort of thing, if they take to drink or gambling. I have not any right to preach, for if I don't drink I do gamble; that is, I have done; though I swore off that when I got the letter telling ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... and to the Abbey: the Charity School and their families of course came; Wapshot's boys made a good cheerful noise, scuffling with their feet as they marched into church and up the organ-loft stair, and blowing their noses a good deal during the service. To be brief, the congregation looked as decent as might be in these bad times. The Abbey Church was furnished with a magnificent screen, and many hatchments and heraldic tombstones. The Doctor spent a great part of his income in beautifying his darling place; he ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... attraction, for we have so much to do on the farm. The men work us pretty hard, I can tell you; as, besides all our indoor work, we have had three afternoons cutting potatoes for seed, until our hands are too awful to look at, and the water is so hard that we never shall get them a decent colour again. Some "white elephants" potatoes, planted three weeks ago (thirty in number we cut into 420 pieces) already make a great show, and will want banking up next week. About ten acres of ground close to the house have been reserved and are called "the ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... luck," he cried. "The landlord had a couple of new packs, for he was expecting to give a little party to-night. But a relation of his wife died rather suddenly yesterday, and he put his guests off. A decent-minded fellow, I ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... "Decent or not," said Captain Glenn, "a pirate's a pirate, and if we can manage to get out of his clutches it's up to ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... poverty by the confiscation of their fortunes. But if the victims of Tiberius and Nero anticipated the decree of the prince or senate, their courage and despatch were recompensed by the applause of the public, the decent honors of burial, and the validity of their testaments. The exquisite avarice and cruelty of Domitian appear to have deprived the unfortunate of this last consolation, and it was still denied even by the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... a chance to thank him for that address!" I said, half regretfully. Little did we think that the only decent thing fate did for us on that trip ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... said Bob. "We're all sleeping in the same room and I have a call in for five-thirty. That will give us time to get up and have a decent ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... indicated in the last chapter as performed by me for the purpose of disgusting Colonel Snobley; viz, the using the fork in the guise of a toothpick. I once, I say, knew a man who, dining in my company at the 'Europa Coffee-house,' (opposite the Grand Opera, and, as everybody knows, the only decent place for dining at Naples,) ate peas with the assistance of his knife. He was a person with whose society I was greatly pleased at first—indeed, we had met in the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and were subsequently robbed and held ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... England we have an incalculable power of steam, of machinery, of modes of transit, roads, canals, railways, and everything which capital and human invention can bring to help the industry of the people; while in India there is nothing of the kind. In India there is scarcely a decent road, the rivers are not bridged, there are comparatively no steam engines, and none of those aids to industry that meet us at every step in Great Britain and Ireland. Suppose steam- engines, machinery, and modes of transit abolished in England, how much revenue would ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... why it isn't the decent and reasonable thing," concluded my husband, without stooping to acknowledge the interruption, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... marries, there are necessary consequences, I mean of expenses, which the wife ought not be charged with, and cannot be made accountable for—such as, first, furnishing the house; and let this be done with the utmost plainness, so as to be decent; yet it must be done, and this calls for ready money, and that ready money by so much diminishes his stock in trade; nor is the wife at all to be charged in this case, unless she either put him to more charge ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... my wish. I think that is sufficient for everybody concerned." Then, averting her face, which had suddenly lost a little of its colour: "A year is little enough," she said impatiently. "I—what has happened to us requires an interval—a decent interval for its burial. ... Death is respectable in any form. What dies between you and me can have no resurrection under the snow. ... So I bring to the burial my tribute—a year of life, a year of constancy, my friend; symbol of an eternity I could have given ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... twenty-five dollars. Bargaining with him stood the negro-driver, a tattooed African, armed with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the hive,—the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. The beds are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... my two feet, lady of the house, and when I saw the light below I thought maybe if you'd a sup of new milk and a quiet decent corner where a man could sleep {he looks in past her and sees the dead man.} The Lord have mercy on ...
— In the Shadow of the Glen • J. M. Synge
... pitched to a sudden slant and Saltash braced himself, protecting the fair head from a blow against the woodwork behind him. "I'm going to put you to bed in my bunk here," he said. "You've got to have a decent night's rest. Did Murray look you out any spare slops? I ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... not of such a kind as to either gratify or encourage him. At first he read prayers to the soldiers at the barracks from the drumhead, and as there were no seats provided, was desired to omit the sermon. Afterwards more decent arrangements being made, the families came in; but taking offense at his evangelical plainness, they asked that he should desist from extempore preaching. These European members of his flock were jealous and angry at his constant efforts for the salvation ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... had taken him for a decent, modest sort of fellow. But any one who will get into a ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... into topicks of this nature with barbers." One would not willingly, even now, discuss the foreign policy of her Majesty's Ministers with the person who shaves one. There are opportunities and temptations to which no decent person should be wantonly exposed. The bad effect of Whiggery on the temper was evident in this, that "the Mohocks are all of the Whiggish gang, and indeed all Whigs are looked upon as such Mohocks, their principles and doctrines leading thus to all ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... fortunate women as truly as her employer with other firms; she drank her tea at the expense of her less lucky sister, who had no work and no tea. What chance does this system afford for perfect fraternalism, or even for decent fraternalism, among ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... might be again sent to her. Bethinking herself of his poverty and his humble plight, she ordered that money should be forwarded to him, sufficient to bear his traveling expenses, and to furnish him with decent raiment. ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... and alarm lest there should be no election, and anarchy ensue, a wonderful effect was produced on the mass of federalists who had not before come over. Those who had before become sensible of their error in the former change, and only wanted a decent excuse for coming back, seized that occasion for doing so. Another body, and a large one it is, who from timidity of constitution had gone with those who wished for a strong executive, were induced by the same timidity ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... few women who do not at times have occasion to use face powder. A woman once remarked: "It isn't decent not to in summer—one looks so greasy without." There are many face powders on the market, some of which are comparatively harmless, while others are deleterious. The injury done by powder is that it fills the pores, stopping them up ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... and the imperial idea was a dominant note in Henry's mind. No king was more fond of protesting that he wore an imperial crown and ruled an imperial realm. When, in 1536, Convocation declared England to be "an imperial See of itself," it only clothed in decent and formal language Henry's own boast that he was not merely King, but Pope and Emperor, in his own domains. The rest of Western Europe was under the temporal sway of Caesar, as it was under the spiritual sway of the Pope; but neither to one ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... there in terror at the idea that Peer was to be taken away. And then, as the doctor was going, he looked at her more closely, and said: "You'd do well to be a bit careful yourself, my good girl. You look as if you wanted a change to a decent room, with a little more light and ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... are you? You seem decent enough. I've got a brother in the States. He used to own this stable with me. In St. Cloud, Minnesota, he is, you know. Minnesota's some kind of a shire. Either of you chaps been ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... was convulsed with passion, and when he was in a rage he lost all control to his tongue, using language that was simply frightful from a boy brought up in a decent home. And at this particular time he was so enraged that he forgot to be afraid! He rushed at me the instant he regained his feet, his arms beating the air like those of a windmill. He was a lubberly fellow ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... that purpose. The whole doggrel is only calculated to bring ridicule and contempt upon the Scriptures; but there are, besides, passages such as refer to Job's "Curse God, and die;" to Jeshuram waxing fat; to Jonah in the whale's belly; and other parts, which utterly unfit the MS. for decent perusal. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... thing Henry Lavine can do for me," cried Polly, turning an angry face now toward the shore. "He can stop telling stories about my father. He can be kind to him—be decent to him. I don't want anything else—and I don't want that as pay for fishing ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Telemachus, [4] To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd and wrought, and thought with me— That ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... never could bear to go half-dressed to the toilet-room as most men do, and stepped out of his berth fully appareled—in a natty business sack-suit of Scots-gray, a high turn-down collar, fine enamel shoes and a rather noticeable tie. Florian Amidon had always worn a decent buttoned-up frock and a polka-dot cravat of modest blue, which his haberdasher kept in stock especially for him. He felt as if, in getting lost, he had got into the clothes of some other man—and that other one of much less quiet and old-fashioned tastes ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... continually making terrific indictments of the German Government, yet he hated England to such a degree that he would splutter and get purple in the face whenever he mentioned the word. However, he could find it in his heart to be decent ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... you get all this? I sometimes think I'm not square with you at all. Why, I've been in all those places before! I saw the Bay of Naples long before I ever saw you—and yet I didn't really see it before at all. Don't you see? Eyes and appreciation and every decent thing I take from you. Where did you get it ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... reason to believe that the book is disapproved of by the decent portion even of the free colored population in this place, and it would be a cause of deep regret to me, and I believe to all my well-disposed fellow-citizens, if a publication of this character, and emanating from such a source, should be thought to be countenanced by any ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... them, soon enough," one of the others laughed. "As long as this war has been going on, one could put up with the heat, and the dust, and the horrible thirst one gets, and the absence of anything decent to drink; but now that it is all over, the idea of settling down here, permanently, would be horrible; except to men—and there are such fellows—who are never happy, unless they are at work; to whom work is everything—meat, and drink, and pleasure. It would have to be everything, out here; for ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... from the close precincts of a mangrove creek. Shock-headed it rolls and squirms. Soft-headed, too, for the weakest airs knead and mould it into ever-varying shapes. Now it has a lolling, impudent tongue—a truly unruly member, wagging disrespectfully at the decent night. Now a perky top-knot, and presently no head at all. Lumbering, low-lying, cowardly—a plaything, a toy, a mockery, a sport for the wilful zephyrs. Now it lifts a bully head as it creeps unimpeded across the sea and spreads, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... perpetually in the field, the education of their children at home must have been much neglected, and that young men of my friend's age know better how to use a broadsword, or to toss a pike, than the decent ceremonials of society." ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... of the children in "Our School Room" in America, as I went on to say, that they would not be willing to have Josiah go to school in his old worn out clothes, to be laughed at or shunned by well-dressed school-mates; nor that he should stay at home for want of decent and comfortable clothes. I knew what they would say, if they were with me; and so I offered to fit him out at the tailor's shop with a good comfortable suit, as a part of the Christmas present from his young friends on the other side of the ocean. The little ones ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author
... saying any thing that is really foolish, absurd, or ridiculous. The discipline of the college, at the same time, may enable him to force all his pupils to the most regular attendance upon his sham lecture, and to maintain the most decent and respectful behaviour during the whole time of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of opening my eyes to my own foolish and sinful course. You seem to thrive—so do we. My wife and children were half-naked and half-starved only this time last year. Look at them, if you please, now; for, so far as sweet, contented looks go, and decent raiment befitting their station, I'll match them with any man's wife and children. And now, madam, I tell you, as you told a friend of yours one day last year, that ''tis the FOOLS' PENCE which have done all this for us.' The fools' pence! I ought ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... mile behind Ted and his crowd!" jeered one fellow who must have had leanings toward the Slavin party; he had been detected in cheating so often in every game boys played that for months now he found himself left severely alone by decent fellows, and it was reported had applied for admission to the patrol Ward and Ted ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... estate into the hands of the Lord Fitz-Owen, in trust for his sons, who are his heirs of blood. Thirdly, that he shall retire into a religious house, or else quit the kingdom in three months time; and, in either case, those who enjoy his fortune shall allow him a decent annuity, that he may not want the comforts of life. By the last, I disable him from the means of doing further mischief, and enable him to devote the remainder of his days to penitence. These are my proposals, and I give him four-and-twenty ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... fields the hay-cocks and corn-ricks were just showing themselves above the water. It made one's heart ache for the farmers. Well, I turned back, of course, and took the London road to Huntingdon, which runs high all the way to Alconbury. I was getting jolly tired and wondering if I should find a decent bed before I reached Huntingdon, when I came to Saxon Cross. At the cross-roads stands a fine inn all by itself, and to judge by the names and addresses in the visitors' book, it is nearly as well known in America as in England. The Saxon Cross Hotel is not really a hotel at all, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... which this time might have been applied, the expenses of tobacco, pipes, snuff, and spitting boxes—and of the injuries which are done to the clothing, during a whole life, the aggregate sum would probably amount to several hundred dollars. To a labouring man this would be a decent portion for a son or daughter, while the same sum saved by a man in affluent circumstances, would have enabled him, by a contribution to a public charity, to have lessened a large portion of the ignorance or misery of mankind." But Lord Stanhope makes a far more liberal estimate ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... was connected with Deistical or with Socinian or Arian views, sometimes with a visionary enthusiasm, sometimes with a weak and nerveless religion of sentiment. They could point also to the obvious fact that thorough scepticism, or even mere irreligion, often found a decent veil under plausible professions of a liberal Christianity. There were some, indeed, who, in the excitement of hostility or alarm, seemed to lose all power of ordinary discrimination. Much in the same way as every 'freethinker' was set down as a libertine ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... down, Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort Or Gottingen, I have to thank for't? It may be Gottingen,—most likely. Through the open door I catch obliquely Glimpses of a lecture-hall; And not a bad assembly neither, Ranged decent and symmetrical On benches, waiting what's to see there: Which, holding still by the vesture's hem, I also resolve to see with them, Cautious this time how I suffer to slip The chance of joining in fellowship ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... wise, "I have brought you some help. These good women here seek lodging for the night—any decent kind will serve them—and they offer to pay for it in work. It will be such a rest for you, Mother, if you will take in one or two; and don't you think Franna would do the same, and old Turguia ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... "make two boxes in the lowermost story, fit and decent for gentlemen to sit in," and in the rest of the galleries "partitions between the rooms as they are in the ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... had the industrial education now given in some schools they might support themselves in the same communities where they teach, acquiring decent homes of their own, which would be a much-needed example and incentive to all about them. The lack of anything worthy to be called home is the most appalling obstacle to the elevation of the negro. If these ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... somewhere at some time or other, on condition that no one shall know it till he is ready? Mark it well, the man who so insults a lady and all her family never means to marry her, or else he is so coarse and brutal in all his instincts that no decent woman ought ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... photographs and anecdotes), we may take them as his ideal. He dislikes humbug: he tries to be polite. Could one sketch a sounder scaffolding on which to build all the odd divergencies—crankinesses and heroisms, stupidities and engagingnesses—which may go to make the edifice of an average decent soul's ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir |
