"Decorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... replied I, "where every body has hopes, at least possibility, of bettering his station, and advancing nearer to the limits of upper life, none except the most abandoned of their species will wholly lose sight of such decorous conduct as alone can grace them when they have reached their wish: whereas your people know their destiny, future as well as present, and think no more of deserving a higher post, than they think ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the world.' Francesca and I had our first experience yesterday in the intervals of nursing, driving to Dublin Castle, Trinity College, the Four Courts, and Grafton Street (the Regent Street of Dublin). It is easy to tell the stranger, stiff, decorous, terrified, clutching the rail with one or both hands, but we took for our model a pretty Irish girl, who looked like nothing so much as a bird on a swaying bough. It is no longer called the 'jaunting,' but the outside car and there is another charming word lost to the world. There ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the public service is "nobody"; and you could not make a common Englishman see why he should be anybody. But it must be owned that this turning of society into a political expedient has half spoiled it. A great part of the "best" English people keep their mind in a state of decorous dulness. They maintain their dignity; they get obeyed; they are good and charitable to their dependants. But they have no notion of PLAY of mind: no conception that the charm of society depends upon it. They think ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... five shillings for all the poetry that Southey had written" (see Letters, 1900, iv. Appendix IX. pp. 483, 484), calls attention to this unacknowledged borrowing, "It would have been honester," he says, "and more decorous if the writer of the following verses had mentioned from what bar he drew his wire." According to H. C. Robinson (Diary, 1869, iii. 114), Wordsworth acknowledged no obligation to Landor's Gebir for the image of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... state of doubt. Something had to be done; and it was not a handy time for explanations. He tried to get me to go out with him, but I held back; then he tried S., and he also declined. There was another guest, but there was no trouble about him. We finally went out in a pile. There was a decorous plunge for seats, and I got the one at Mr. Phelps's left, the Count captured the one facing Phelps, and the other guest had to take the place of honor, since he could not help himself. We returned to the drawing-room in the original disorder. I had new shoes on, and they were tight. At eleven ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... thoughts were dancing through Molly's head, and when she left her cats, after a general romp in which even decorous Granny allowed her family to play leap-frog over her respectable back, she had made up her mind not to have yellow ribbons on her summer hat if she got a pink muslin as she had planned, but to finish off Boo's last shirt before she ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... experience had not yet disciplined away the natural vanity which may sometimes lead a man of genius to fancy himself an object of the tender passion. And we are the more disposed to judge leniently of Falstaff, inasmuch as his merry persecutors are but a sort of decorous, respectable, commonplace people, who borrow their chief importance from the victim of their mischievous sport; and if they are not so bad as to make us wish him success, neither are they so good that ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... exhibit in every act the sanctity of the name he bears. But," continues the same historian, "if the Eve of Pentecost was spent in such worthy functions, the celebrations of the coming of the Holy Ghost on the following day were no less decorous and becoming to the spirit of the Church; for thus writes the master of the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... daughter, who looked after the accounts. There were occasional lady visitors at the hotel, attracted from the neighboring towns and settlements by its picturesqueness and a vague suggestiveness of its being a watering-place—and there was the occasional flash in the decorous street of a Sacramento or San Francisco gown. It is needless to say that to the five men who held the guilty secret of Committee Room No. 4 it only strengthened their belief in the super-elegance of their hidden treasure. At their last meeting they had fitted ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... number from another number and unity, because they are not the same absolute and infinite. Therefore was it well said by a theologian that as the fountain of light far exceeds not only our intellects, but also the divine, it is decorous that one should not discourse with words, but that with silence alone it ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... Exchange happened to be there, a decorous resort for those who became hungry, as I did, at the hour of noon each day. In my very pleasant boarding-house, where, to be sure, there was one dreadful boarder, a tall lady, whom I soon secretly called Juno—but let unpleasant things wait—in the very ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... silence was restored. Elizabeth knelt, with her eyes fixed on the wall: it was a green paper, patterned with bunches of nuts. How far she listened, or how much she understood, it was impossible to say; but her manner was decent and decorous. ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... a quiet corner of the porch with the tea-steam floating pleasantly from the silver nose of its pot and a decorous scarlet and yellow still-life of muffins and jam between them, Oliver felt that so far things had slid along as well as could be expected. Elinor's manners in the first place and her genuine liking for him in the second had come to his help as he knew they would—she was too concerned now ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... lovers and no fun!" said Gervase gayly. "And the possibility of a highly decorous marriage with a curate or a bankclerk, followed by the pleasing result of a family of little curates or little bank-clerks. It is ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... Parini, Byron and his biographers date from very much later, when the institution was long past its prime if not actually moribund. Now Smollett saw it at the very height of its perfection and at a time when our decorous protestant curiosity on such themes was as lively as Lady Mary Montagu had found it in the case of fair Circassians and Turkish harems just thirty years previously. [A cicisbeo was a dangler. Hence the word came to be applied ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... exclaimed, "how right you were to tell me to marry respectably; to have a solid position; to live in decorous fear of the world and one's wife; and to command the envy of the poor, the good opinion of the rich. You have practised what you preach. Delicious existence! The merchant's desk and the curtain lecture! Ha! ha! Shall we ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... beg you will not talk nonsense to Captain Kearney. Your ideas on some subjects are really hardly decorous. ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... The young ladies came in mostly one at a time, sometimes in pairs, the mistress came in from time to time. The ladies came in, in loose gowns, a chemise and slippers, all but undressed. Everything was quite decorous, the mistress mostly present. Each girl would deposit her gown and chemise on a chair, turning her rump to the other, and get into the bath. When they left it, they stepped out, and came straight to the spot where I could best see them, their cunts towards me, and began to dry themselves. Servants ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... where the grudge comes in. You can't stir about these foot-hills without coming across a woman, like as not, holdin' on to a posse of kids, and ridin' clothes-pin fashion in a looped-up skirt; when she sees you comin' she'll p'r'aps upset a kid or two assoomin' a decorous attitood. That's feeminine, and as such is approved by the ladies, but"—and here Leander put his head on one side and gave a grotesque impression of outraged decorum—"pants ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... earth was, in fact, one reason why Eustacia had thought that the part of the Turkish Knight, though not the shortest, would suit her best. A direct fall from upright to horizontal, which was the end of the other fighting characters, was not an elegant or decorous part for a girl. But it was easy to die like a ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... favor of a distinguished family-tree. ESTO PERPETUA! To have had somebody for a great-grandfather that was somebody is exciting. To be able to look back on long lines of ancestry that were rich, but respectable, seems decorous and all right. The present Earl of Warwick, I think, must have an idea that strict justice has been done him in the way of being launched properly into the world. I saw the Duke of Newcastle once, and as the farmer in Conway described ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... quiet, decorous talk, touching on nothing vital, but holding a smoldering fire underneath. The young men said nothing about the fact that the regiment had been called to duty, and soon the camp on the bluff would be breaking up. They dared not ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... faintly blue and misty like gauze hung down from the sky, down over the houses, but falling not quite on to the pavement which was hard and ugly and grey. The little street was very silent and quiet and had, like so many Petrograd streets, a decorous intimacy with the eighteenth century ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... ill-pleased to have the occasion to avenge. In truth, the words of Ursula, mystic and dark as they were in their denunciation, had left upon Villani's boyish impressions an unaccountable feeling of antipathy and hatred to the man it was now his object to betray. For the rest, every device seemed to him decorous and justifiable, so that it saved his master, served his ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... In her own single person, she could have comprised the duties of a first minister and a superintendent of police. Wise, firm, faithless; secret, crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and insensate—withal perfectly decorous—what more could ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... It was selfish of me not to have thought of it, and to have kept you so long waiting. The fact is, Auntie, that Leonard—I like to call him Leonard, since we were children together, and he is so young; though perhaps it would be more decorous nowadays to say "Mr. Everard"—has consulted me about his debts. You know, Auntie dear, that young men will be young men in such matters; or perhaps you do not, since the only person who ever worried you has been myself. But I stayed at Oxford and I know something of young men's ways; ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... misfortunes have a farcical nature which makes its appeal as much through the medium of one's love of the ludicrous as through that of one's interest in the romance of adventure. Those who are acquainted with Egypt will see in him one of the types of naif, delightful children of the Nile, whose decorous introduction into the parlour of the nations of to-day is requiring ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... road that overhangs the river, they came at length to the promontory itself. Here, beneath the huge State shamianah, gaily coloured Kashmir rugs were spread, for Govind Singh and his court: while curtained enclosures, set at duly decorous distance, concealed the women-folk, who had been conveyed thither under close cover much earlier in ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... opinion come round—for where are rules of accommodation to stop? The narrow path of truth and virtue inclines neither to the right nor left, it is a straight-forward business, and they who are earnestly pursuing their road, may bound over many decorous prejudices, without leaving modesty behind. Make the heart clean, and give the head employment, and I will venture to predict that there will be nothing offensive ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... sighs of bliss till she saw the towers of Paris embattling the horizon. They reminded her that she was now going to be occasionally divided from him; that when entered within those walls, it would no longer be decorous for her to pass days and nights in listening to his voice, in losing all of woman's love in the beautified ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... duties of active warfare, officers who aim at appearing in a decorous dress, in whatever emergency their presence may be required, make their toilet overnight before going ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... what new movement of spiritual awakening in the people—against what form of religious revival might not the same argument of offended culture and decorous holiness be employed? And where would the lower masses of men be to-day if Religion had not stooped out of her celestial heights—from the first chapters of Christendom until the last—to the intellectual and moral levels of the poor and lowly? In the sheet, knit at four corners, ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... disputation showeth a friendly spirit, then is my lord overfriendly; for it oft hath seemed of late to pleasure his mood to wax disputations, though, in sooth, lady fair, I have always maintained a wary and decorous demeanor." ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... is needed. If you loved him you would have learnt to do it. If you can't wail properly, you should wail a little, if only for example. It is always more decorous; or else one sees it is all words with you. Well, I'm going to pray to God; ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... fact, a thing must be well because it was his choice to do it. His journey to India might, it was true, be a matter of a few months, and involved diplomatic business for which a certain unimpeachable respectability was required. A more brilliant man, who had been less respectable in the most decorous British sense, would not have served ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "becomes a saturnale, during which servants forget their duty to their masters, children their reverence for parents, men their respect for women, and women all notions of modesty, delicacy, and gentleness; they become raging bacchantes." Usually the Hos are quiet and reserved in manner, decorous and gentle to women. But during this festival "their natures appear to undergo a temporary change. Sons and daughters revile their parents in gross language, and parents their children; men and women become ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... "th' best tarrier i' Riggan" were among the most faithful attendants. The lad's fancy for Anice had extended to Grace. Grace's friendly toleration of Nib had done much for him. Nib always appeared with his master, and his manner was as composed and decorous as if rats were subjects foreign to his meditations. His part it was to lie at Jud's feet, his nose between his paws, his eyes twinkling sagaciously behind his shaggy eyebrows, while occasionally, ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... decorous in the extreme, and if you don't see me again, suppose all goes right; I'll get shut up in Miss Garden's ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Even the strongest conservatives would have been "Free-Soilers,"—not only those who are conservatives in virtue of their prudence, moderation, sagacity, and temper, but prejudiced conservatives, conservatives who are tolerant of all iniquity which is decorous, inert, long-established, and disposed to die when its time comes, conservatives as thorough in their hatred of change as Lamennais himself. "What a noise," says Paul Louis Courier, "Lamennais would have made on the day of creation, could he have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Physic, who has killed more men than the Knight, talking to a Clerk of Laws. There is a merry Friar, a lover of good cheer; and when seated in a tavern among his companions, singing songs it would be scarcely decorous to repeat, you may see his eyes twinkling in his head for joy, like stars on a frosty night. Beside him is a ruby-faced Sompnour, whose breath stinks of garlic and onions, who is ever roaring for wine,—strong wine, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... not sign "Mr. F.'s aunt." "I bet she doesn't know her Dickens; it won't convey anything to her," he begged; "I'll cut out two cigars a day if you'll let me do it?" She would not let him, so the letter was perfectly decorous.)—"Of course it was not the proper way to treat an old friend, and marriage is too serious a business to be entered into in this way. Also I am sorry that there is any difference in age between you and ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... In that decorous mansion I could not follow her; and my impulse to dash after her and knock at her door till she answered me, I was forced to put ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... the mid-day meal is served for the whole household, as of old, with the salt-cellar in the middle, but with a far larger company above it than when first we saw it. The seven young folks preserve a decorous silence, save when Fraulein Ermentrude's cookeries are good-naturedly complimented by her father, or when Baron Friedmund Maximilianus breaks out with some wonderful fact about new armour seen at Ulm. He is a handsome, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Rufus by the hand and they shot free of the procession, up and down dim and decorous streets, swerving round corners and past astonished policemen whose "Now then, you young devils" was lost in the clatter of their feet. Cosgrave gasped, but Robert's hold was relentless, compelling. He could have run faster by himself, but somehow he could not let Cosgrave go. "You've got to stick ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... ardour of youth and with all the decorum recommended by Herman Hoppe, the self-instructor of good manners. In this regard the girls also responded to their intentions. Both with these and with the others it was accounted especially decorous and well-bred to dance as rigidly as possible, keeping the arms hanging down, while the heads were raised high and inclined to one side with a certain proud, and, at the same time, tired and enervated air. In the intermissions, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... your Majesties, there is not in the world a better nation, nor a better land. They love their neighbours as themselves; and their discourse is ever sweet and gentle, and accompanied with a smile; and though it is true that they are naked, yet their manners are decorous and praiseworthy." ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... sacrosanct. due to, merited, deserved, condign, richly deserved. allowable &c. (permitted) 760; lawful, licit, legitimate, legal; legalized &c. (law) 963. square, unexceptionable, right; equitable &c. 922; due, en r gle; fit, fitting; correct, proper, meet, befitting, becoming, seemly; decorous; creditable, up to the mark, right as a trivet; just the thing, quite the thing; selon les r gles[Fr]. Adv. duly, ex officio, de jure[Lat]; by right, by divine right; jure divino[Lat], Dei gratia[Lat], in the name of. Phr. civis Romanus sum [Lat][Cicero]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the midst of this. Plenty of people, the whole of Market Square and East Elgin, a good part, too, probably, of the Town Ward, were unaware of his arrival; but for the little world he penetrated he was clothed with all the interest of the great contingency. His decorous head in the Emmetts' pew on Sunday morning stood for a symbol as well as for a stranger. The nation was on the eve of a great far-reaching transaction with the mother country, and thrilling with the terms of the bargain. Hesketh ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... That leaned against a Druid oak, his pipe Pendent beneath his chin—a double one— (Meaning the pipe); reluctant was his breath, For he had mingled in the Morris dance And rested blown; but damsels in their teens, All decorous and decorously clad, Their very ankles hardly visible, Recalled his motions; while, for chaperon, Good Mrs. Grundy up against the ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... to caper with a sort of decorous hilarity before their teacher. " Look at the sausage, professor. Did you ever see such sausage " Isn't it salubrious " And see these other things, sir. Aren't they curious " I shouldn't wonder if they were alive. Turnips, sir? No, sir. I think they are Pharisees. I have seen a Pharisee look ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... a rather more decorous manner among the aristocrats at Father John's end of the table—though even here they were carried on in a somewhat rapid and voracious fashion. The priest helped Feemy and Ussher, Mary and her husband; ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... comfort of the homestead, we found a vast array of eatables and drinkables; every one was welcomed, but notwithstanding the unusual number of guests, all was well-ordered and decorous. The Thurlows and their numerous clan are a fine-looking folk; the men, sturdy, well set-up—a fighting people, yet generous, kindly and hospitable. The women—gracious, lovely, and altogether charming. Beyond the universally cherished idea of beautiful ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... graces of disposition, and to do their work among men faithfully, are forgetting meanwhile the law of love which bids every follower of Christ go about doing good as the Master did. To be a Christian is far more than to be honest, truthful, sober, industrious, and decorous; it is also to be a cross-bearer after Jesus; to love men, and to serve them. Ofttimes it is to leave your fine room, your favorite work, your delightful companionship, your pet self-indulgence, and to go out among the needy, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... Burns's advent had worn off by his second winter in Edinburgh, and, though it may be a weakness, novelty always counts for something in human affairs. Then, again, the quiet decorous men of Blair's circle knew more of Burns's ways and doings than at first, and what they came to know was not likely to increase their desire for (p. 091) intimacy with him. It was, it seems, notorious that Burns kept that formidable memorandum-book already ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... such was not the case at the Palazzo Castelmare. Presided over on such occasions as that of the great annual Carnival ball by a widowed sister-in-law of the Marchese, the Castelmare palace was the most decorous and respectable house, as its master was the most decorous and ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... for the suggestion that a veiled throat and bust may charmingly fulfil the requirements of evening dress, and also satisfy that sense of delicacy peculiar to some women who have not inherited from their great-great-grandmothers the certain knowledge that a low-necked gown is absolutely decorous. ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... clerical instinct in him winced at some of them. Robert had nothing of the sectary about him by nature; he was always too deeply and easily affected by the great historic existences about him. But when the Oxford man or the ex-official of one of the most venerable and decorous of societies protested, the believer, or, if you will, the enthusiast, put the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... years ago, when some business had brought me into a corridor of one of the old court buildings facing the Place d'Armes, a loud voice from within one of the court-rooms arrested my own and the general ear. At once from all directions men came with decorous haste towards the spot whence it proceeded. I pushed in through a green door into a closely crowded room and found the Supreme Court of the State in session. A short, broad, big-browed man of an iron sort, with silver hair close shorn from a Roman head, had just begun ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... parent—then, not even a servant of honest repute would have been seen to eat or drink within a tavern!" "In the good old times," says the citizen of Aristophanes [210], "our youths breasted the snow without a mantle— their music was masculine and martial—their gymnastic exercises decorous and chaste. Thus were trained ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wager, for instance, that he was not unacquainted with the works of Herbert Spencer; and yet where, in all the history books, shall we lay our hands on two more incongruous contemporaries? Mr. Spencer so decorous—I had almost said, so dandy—in dissent; and Whitman, like a large shaggy dog, just unchained, scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon. And when was an echo more curiously like a satire, than when Mr. Spencer found his Synthetic Philosophy reverberated from the other shores of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... church-tower and spire loomed up above us in grey twilight. The tireless wind still swept thin snow from fell and forest. But the frenzied bells had sunk into their twelvemonth's slumber, which shall be broken only by decorous tollings at less festive times. I wondered whether they were tingling still with the heart-throbs and with the pressure of those many arms? Was their old age warmed, as mine was, with that gust of life—the young men who had ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... readers will probably have some practical knowledge of the small, round paper pellets known as "throw-downs," which explode when flung against anything; and it was difficult to imagine that any member of the select and decorous Melchester School Debating Society would cause an interruption by flinging such things about in the middle ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... disposed of them we could give the proceeds to a charity, so there would be nothing really wrong about it. But nothing of that sort lies within the Mappined limits of my life. One of these days somebody dull and decorous and undistinguished will 'make himself agreeable' to me at a tennis party, as the saying is, and all the dull old gossips of the neighbourhood will begin to ask when we are to be engaged, and at last we shall be engaged, and people ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... their signs in the countenance, and to broaden and confuse the clear-cut, statuesque lines of early youth. Evidently, that is the head of an easy-going, pleasure-loving man, who has waxed warm with good living, and performs the duties of his office with an unctuous grace as something becoming and decorous to be gone through with. Evidently, he is puzzled and half-contemptuous at the revelations which come through the grating in hoarse whispers from those thin, trembling lips. That other man, who speaks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... and because these were usually mere curiosities, without intrinsic value, they often evaded the pawn-shop in those years of dire distress, when more negotiable articles passed irretrievably away from the family possession. And with them too, in stiff, decorous frames, are those certificates and testimonials which a master mariner always collects, together with photographs of gratuitously ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... since it is derived from the cart, and signifies the draught or pull of the horses." The phrase "a prince's pelf" is reprobated, because pelf means properly "the scraps or shreds of taylors and of skinners." He gives strict rules for the decorous behaviour of ambassadors and all who address themselves to princes, being himself a courtier, and having probably exercised some diplomatic function. "I have seen," says he, "foreign ambassadors in the queen's presence laugh so dissolutely at some rare pastime or sport ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... thyself! Look around thee! These are the streets in which thou weft wont to appear only on the Sabbath-day, when thou didst walk modestly to church; where, over-decorous perhaps, thou wert displeased if I but joined thee with a kindly greeting. And now thou dost stand, speak, and act before the eyes of the whole world. Recollect thyself, love! How can this ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... and half ostentatiously lifting his glass. "I pledge you, Frank, with my whole heart, believe me," taking a draught too decorous to be large, but which, small though it was, was followed by a slight involuntary wryness to ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... much in the same way you know Jim Bloxam. By the way, do you call him 'Jim'?" (The two girls nodded assent.) "Ah, I like to ask about these things: proprieties differ in different counties; it strikes me Fernshire is of the rigidly decorous order." ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... I've done what I could to make the place attractive. But what is an old woman to do for a girl in a garden? We ought to have brought some other young people—some of the Inglehart boys. But we're respectable, we Americans abroad; we're decorous, above all things; and I don't know about meeting you here, Mr. Colville. It has a very bad appearance. Are you sure that you didn't know I was to go by ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... Doctor. "Faith, I forgot that. I was going to High Mass meself, but I ran over to see ye. Yes, it's his turn. Sure, the poor man puts me to sleep, and sleepin' in the House of God is neither respectful nor decorous. But what is a ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... "Lawyer Roberts" go by, and would bid "God bless him" for what he had done. This dear old man was my first tutor in Radicalism, and I was an apt pupil. I had taken no interest in politics, but had unconsciously reflected more or less the decorous Whiggism which had always surrounded me. I regarded "the poor" as folk to be educated, looked after, charitably dealt with, and always treated with most perfect courtesy, the courtesy being due from me, as a lady, to all equally, whether they were ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... common people would not have dared to do in his native town. The foreigners themselves impressed him still more disagreeably: it was the period when new settlers could assume the tone of conquerors to the conquered, and when the life of the "open ports" was much less decorous than now. The new buildings of brick or stuccoed timber revived for him unpleasant memories of the Japanese colored pictures of foreign manners and customs; and he could not quickly banish the fancies of his boyhood concerning Occidentals. Reason, based on larger knowledge ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... best means of doing this, which took so much time to carry out that the business of arraying her for her first banquet as a Royal Hostess had to be got through more hurriedly than her ladies of the Bedchamber thought at all decorous. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... was full of subdued bustle and decorous excitement; and all the bustle and all the excitement were caused ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... men, the Middle Temple as the society frequented by Templars of narrow means, and Lincoln's Inn as the abode of gentlemen—is, of itself, a proof that the pervading manners of the last three institutions were outwardly decorous. Under the least favorable circumstances, a barrister's wife living in chambers, within or near Lincoln's Inn, or the Temple, during Charles II.'s reign, fared as well in this respect as she would have done had Fortune made ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... very next day, in the decorous Times (Great—Guns— How the headlines ran!) In spite of the kings and the wars and the crimes, There were five full columns ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... feasts are still less interesting. Here and there the clergyman of the parish has succeeded in turning what was a rude saturnalia into a decorous "fete," with tea in a tent. But generally the feasts are falling into rapid disuse, and would perhaps have died away altogether had not the benefit societies often chosen that day for their annual club-dinner. ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... serious. I may have been ridiculous. Catherine evidently found me so, for, after gauging me with that wry but humourous look which I knew so well of old, for which I had been waiting this afternoon, she went off into the decorous little fit of laughter in which it had ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... a flash of horror pass over Rickie's face. The horror disappeared, for, thank God, he was now a man, whom civilization protects. But he and Gerald had met, as it were, behind the scenes, before our decorous drama opens, and there the elder boy had done things to him—absurd things, not worth chronicling separately. An apple-pie bed is nothing; pinches, kicks, boxed ears, twisted arms, pulled hair, ghosts at night, inky books, befouled ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... replied in a tone so reasonable, decorous and temperate as to wring unwilling admiration even from his opponents. He pointed out briefly the weak points that rendered the governor's position utterly untenable, ignored the implied warning of resistance to the law; and succinctly stated that he relied upon ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... 27 on the afternoon of his return to London. She had seen him twice or three times, and he had struck her as a coldly decorous person, tall, white-faced, slow speaking; the last man to behave violently or surprise a head chambermaid in any way. On the morning of his departure she was told by the first-floor waiter that the occupant of Room 26 had complained of an uproar ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... rustle of silk on the sidewalk; Just now there passed by a tall hat; But there's gloom in this "boom" and this wild talk Of the "future" of Poverty Flat. There's a decorous chill in the air, Joe, Where once we were simple and free; And I hear they've been making a mayor, Joe, Of the man who ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... am to take it for a month's warning, of course." Matthew understood well enough that this was merely an expression of his master's displeasure, and, being anxious for his master's welfare, knew that it was decorous that some decision should be come to at once as to Miss Thoroughbung, and that time should not be lost in his own little personal quarrel. "She is waiting, you know, sir, and she looks uncommon irascible. There is the other lady left ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Maryland or Virginia. I am of Mr. Bacon's opinion—return the sovereignty to the states. I hope we shall preserve peace with Spain. I observe, with much gratification, that the debates in Congress are much more decorous ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... up at five. The sky is grey. There is a cold, unpleasant wind that reminds one of Moscow. It is dull. I wait for the church bells and go to late Mass. In the cathedral it is all very charming, decorous, and not boring. The choir sings well, not at all in a plebeian style, and the congregation entirely consists of young ladies in olive-green ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... political affections and ideals. Their leaders saw only two possibilities. British connection was the sheet-anchor of the old colonial Tories; but their vision of the country's future was an aristocracy, a landed gentry, a decorous union of church and state—in short, a colonial replica of old Tory England. On the other hand, the Radical leaders, French and English alike, saw before them only an independent republic, or fusion with the United States. How limited was the vision of both time has made blindingly clear. The instinct ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... through the hall she met Holliday. His appearance was decorous and subdued, as befitted the occasion, yet as he came up the stairs in his dark, inconspicuously correct attire, she felt in his manner something assured, almost proprietary, as if he considered himself already master here. She inclined her head slightly and was hurrying past when, to her surprise, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the Lady Eveline, to all those who had suffered by the late inroad. Death-meals, as they were termed, were also spread in honour of the deceased; but the lady herself, and most of her attendants, observed a stern course of vigil, discipline, and fasts, which appeared to the Normans a more decorous manner of testifying their respect for the dead, than the Saxon and Flemish custom of banqueting and drinking ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... fellow!" emptying his goblet with satisfaction. And, rising to his firm and graceful height, he strolled away toward the salon where play progressed amid the most decorous and ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... the sand? Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries; O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach! O wild and dismal night storm, with wind—O belching and desperate! O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace, But away at night as you fly, none looking—O then the unloosened ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... agonies, what convulsive struggles he may take to cast the torture off from him; and then finally the last departure of life itself, and how he lies extinct and ended, either wrapt like Caesar in decorous mantle-folds, or unseemly sunk together, like one that had not the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... know not how it happened, though I found, on recovering my self-possession, that I was folding Lucy to my heart, while Rupert was doing the same to Grace. This little mistake, however, was soon rectified, each man embracing his own sister, as in duty bound, and as was most decorous. The girls shed torrents of tears, and assured us, again and again, that this was the only really happy moment they had known since the parting on the wharf, nearly a twelvemonth before. Then followed looks at each other, exclamations ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... of a gayer and more gorgeous society than any he had ever known. Wealth and great houses existed even then in New York and upon occasion their owners made full use of both, but there was a restraint about the Americans, the English and the Dutch. Their display was often heavy and always decorous, and in Quebec he felt for the first time the heedless gayety of the French, when the Bourbon monarchy had passed its full bloom, and already was in its brilliant decay. Truly, they could have carved over the doorway, "Leave all ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... through the ancestral hall. The sunlight edged it like a bright border. The doors were wide open, and Dong-Yung saw the decorous rows of square chairs and square tables set rhythmically along the walls, and the covered dais at the head for the guest of honor. Long crimson scrolls, sprawled with gold ideographs, hung from ceiling to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... know it takes nearly that time for a well-brought-up young lady to get over a real matrimonial disappointment. However, shy or not shy, they certainly ought to be explicit. It's too bad to miss a chance because we cannot interpret the metaphor in which some bashful swain thinks it decorous to couch his proposals; and I once knew a young lady who, happening to dislike needlework, and replying in the negative to the insidious question, "Can you sew a button?" never knew for months that she had actually ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... Elizabeth. And there is no knowing what might have happened if the decorous Nannie had not come to ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... hundred dollars; whereof anon. America is fertile in mixtures: what do we not owe her? Sherry cobbler, gin sling, cocktail, mint julep, brandy smash, sudden death, eye openers. Well, one day she outdid herself, and mixed Fullalove: Quaker, Nimrod, Archimedes, Philanthropist, decorous Red ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... hastily to take the air for half-an-hour before dinner. In the middle of Magdalen Bridge we met a woman with a child in her arms. Shelley was more attentive at that instant to our conduct in a life that was past, or to come, than to a decorous regulation of the present, according to the established usages of society, in that fleeting moment of eternal duration styled the nineteenth century. With abrupt dexterity he caught hold of the child. The mother, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... the best of men. On the other side, Ephorus is as much out of the way in his encomiums. For, however ingenious he is in supplying unjust acts and wicked conduct with fair and worthy motives, and in selecting decorous and honorable terms, yet when he does his best, he does not himself stand clear of the charge of being the greatest lover of tyrants, and the fondest admirer of luxury and power and rich estates and alliances ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... into the restaurant; scrutinized the tables; and selected the best lighted one. The waiter, a decorous elderly man, approached with some severity of manner, and handed a bill of fare to Marmaduke. She snatched it from him, and addressed ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... for a moment supposed that anything in my attire of simple decorous work-clothes could awaken pity. Yet pity it was and nothing less ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... besought his hearers to prepare for the fasting and prayer of the Lenten season, failed to rouse Blake from his moody abstraction. But at the end of the regular service, when the white-gowned choir-boys flocked out and the majority of the congregation began to crowd into the aisles with decorous murmurings and the soft rustling of silken skirts, Blake raised his head and followed their departure with ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... was, also, about her something wayward and different from the conventional, aristocratic set. The disordered golden hair proclaimed it, while in the depths of the fine, blue eyes manifold changing lights told of a capriciousness out of the pale of a stiffly decorous and ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... and shovel lay a pair of riding boots, still so wet and mud-spattered that he must have pulled them off within the hour. A decanter of rum was near him on a stand. On his knee was a volume of Rabelais, which was affording him decorous amusement. ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... the ring eyed a watch, raised a hand; the two umpires were on foot in their places; the pair of opposing seconds hurried out cheery or bolt-business words to their men; and the champions advanced to the scratch. Todds first, by the courtesy of Ines, whose decorous control of his legs at a weighty moment was rightly read ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... confided to Pecuchet that he did not think this imitation of a tomb in the midst of vegetables quite decorous. Hurel, as he withdrew, made a low bow to the company. M. Marescot had disappeared after dessert. Madame Bordin again went over her recipe for gherkins, promised a second for plums with brandy, and made three turns in the large walk; but, passing close to the linden tree, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... the usual dinner hour took place in the long vacation; that it was introduced for the convenience of study, and that the doctor, could he so far have forgotten his dignity as to have joined the four o'clock party, would have found decorous manners, and more than one brother fellow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of the open window. Down in the street a footman was settling the rug over the knees of a lady in a carriage, and the decorous immovability of both their faces, which were clearly visible to him, was like a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of his adopted mother and retaining fast hold of her hand, assumed a grave and decorous demeanor such as might befit a person of matured taste and understanding who should find himself in a temple dedicated to some worship which he did not recognize, but felt himself bound to respect. The exercises had ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... steep bank by the Dawson barracks with fluttering heart and shaking knees. The dogs were so weak that he was forced to rest them, and, waiting, he leaned limply against the gee-pole. A man, an eminently decorous-looking man, came sauntering by in a great bearskin coat. He glanced at Rasmunsen curiously, then stopped and ran a speculative eye over the dogs ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... drama there had been much that was reprehensible. But whoever compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with those contained in the volume before us will see how much the profligacy which follows a period of overstrained austerity goes beyond the profligacy which precedes such a period. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... submission to blame on his, while every now and then there was an implied protest—whenever the payments of the interest became due, or whenever my lady stinted herself of any personal expense, such as Mr. Horner thought was only decorous and becoming in the heiress of the Hanburys. Her carriages were old and cumbrous, wanting all the improvements which had been adopted by those of her rank throughout the county. Mr. Horner would fain have had ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Walkingshaw, accompanied as usual by his eldest son, set forth from his decorous residence. It was one of a circle of stately houses, broken in two or three places to permit the sedatest kind of street to enter. The grave dignity of these mansions was accentuated by the straight, deep-hewn furrows at the junctions ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... finger first solemnly began to trace its route. In doing this, I observed that his Highness's hand kept swerving far into the Netherlands, so, gently pulling it by the thumb towards Paris, I used as much force as I thought decorous, to induce it to advance in a straight line; however, finding my efforts ineffectual, I ventured with respectful astonishment, to ask, 'Why travel ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... mistake my meaning. It is not for the selfish purpose of keeping you here near me that I advise you to defer your marriage for a time. It is because I think it is decorous that some months should elapse between the betrothal of a young pair and their wedding. Though, of course, there are some cases in which a short engagement and a speedy marriage become expedient or even necessary. As, for instance, my child, if I felt myself near death now I should certainly wish ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... rode home in the crisp starlight gurgling and leaning over their saddle-horns in spasmodic fits of laughter. But when they trooped into the bunk-house they might have been deacons returning from prayer meeting so far as their decorous behavior was concerned. Happy Jack was in bed, covered to his ears and he had his face to the wall. They cast covert glances at his carroty top-knot and went silently to bed—which was contrary ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... September 21, 1876, relates the following incident: "A late English traveler found a Baptist mission church, in far-off Burmah, using for the communion service Bass's pale ale instead of wine. The opening of the frothing bottle on the communion table seemed not quite decorous to the visitor, who presented the pastor with a half-dozen bottles ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... tomatoes looked ashamed of being red; and only a suit of drab apiece seemed wanting, to make the pumpkins as respectably grave as the other members of the community. Two small boys, in wide-brimmed hats and legs of discreet tint, were weeding these decorous vegetables. They raised their heads and took one good stare as the big wagon rattled past, then they lowered them again, and went on with their work, laying the pig-weeds, which they pulled out of the ground, in neat little piles ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... capital. It was of little moment that petty wars were being waged in East and West, and that bulletins sometimes brought news of a general's defeat. Rome was accustomed to these things; and her efforts were still marked by their usual characteristics of steady expansion and decorous success. To predicate failure of her foreign activity for this period is to predicate it for all her history, for never was an empire more slowly won or more painfully preserved. It is true that at the commencement of this epoch an imperialist might have been justified in taking a gloomy view ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... escape any more of Sir George's complaints. "Just be so kind, Miss Effingham, ma'am, to look into this here pantry, once! Them niggers, I do believe, have had their fingers in every thing, and it will take Toast and me a week to get things decorous and orderly again. Some of the shrieks" (for so the steward styled the chiefs) "have been yelling well in this place, I'll engage, as you may see, by the manner in which they have spilt the mustard ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Booddhism, its mystic creed and imposing ceremonies, and have made very many changes in the form of worship; but, apparently, they are no more Christians than were their respective fathers, the late first and second kings. They treat Christianity with outward respect, because they esteem it decorous to do so; and the same is true of the regent and prime minister; but none of them even profess any real regard for the worship of the true God. The concessions made thus far indicate progress in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... rise of an entirely new style of English prose. The ancient and universal restraints were swept away, the decorous stateliness of all the buried centuries was abandoned, and there arose a band of writers, to whom De Quincey and Ruskin were the leaders, who withdrew all veils from their emotions, threw away all the shackles ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... The decorous, orderly machinery of knowledge rolls over one—one listens to It, to the soft clatter of the endless belt ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... beginning. The black glaring figure in the portico did not stir. I almost thought it was really a statue. In another moment the grey area was golden with gaslight as the basement door was opened suddenly and a small and decorous housemaid ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... gradually developed in its present form. Upon its publication in 1805, it achieved an immediate success. The vividness of its descriptive passages, the buoyant rush of its meter, the deep romantic glow suffusing all its pages, took by storm a public familiar to weariness with the decorous abstractions of the eighteenth century poets. The first edition, a sumptuous quarto, was exhausted in a few weeks; an octavo edition of fifteen hundred was sold out within the year; and before 1830, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... short time with Maren, and then came to Appledore, where she lived at service two years, till within a fortnight of her death. The first time I saw Maren she brought her sister to us, and I was charmed with the little woman's beautiful behavior; she was so gentle, courteous, decorous, she left on my mind a most delightful impression. Her face struck me as remarkably good and intelligent, and her gray eyes were full ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Where, in the map of Africa, would he hide her? And how would he take care of her? What would he do to her? Make love to her? Marry her? Take home a wife from an Egyptian harem—a surprising acquisition with which to startle and enchant his decorous ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... any rate, had a crowd to receive him, for it was Saturday evening. On Saturdays by custom the fishing-fleet of Port Nassau made harbour before nightfall, and the crews kept a sort of decorous carnival before the Sabbath, of which they were strict observers. In the lower part of the town, by the quays, much buying and selling went on, in booths of sail-cloth lit as a rule by oil-flares. For close upon a week no boat ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... business, a father and two sons, to whom Squercum was a pest and a musquito, a running sore and a skeleton in the cupboard. It was not only in reference to Mr Longestaffe's affairs that they knew Squercum. The Bideawhiles piqued themselves on the decorous and orderly transaction of their business. It had grown to be a rule in the house that anything done quickly must be done badly. They never were in a hurry for money, and they expected their clients never to be in a hurry for work. Squercum was the very opposite ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... evident unhappiness, the son promised never to write again for the obnoxious periodical. The second number was so dull and decorous that Zachary Macaulay, who felt that, if the magazine went on through successive quarters reforming its tone in the same proportion, it would soon be on a level of virtue with the Christian Observer, withdrew his objection; and the ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... piece of work for her, a silk quilt. No one had gone insane over crazy work then. This was shapely, decorous diamonds, with the name of the wearer, or a date, embroidered on each block. The Morgans had given her pieces from Paris and Venice and Holland, and even Hong Kong. Some were a hundred and more years old, and were gowns ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... captain, when all had assumed a decorous silence, "what do you think that war ship supposed ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown |
