"Propriety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is usually called, Center. It is a famous street—famous for its elms, which supply, as it has not infrequently been pointed out, the dignity of a nave; famous for the doorways and windows of its colonial houses; and famous for the distinction and propriety of its inhabitants. ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... business matters, in affairs of finance and in the conduct of the mines I should not presume to dispute your judgment. But on the propriety of assembling the Coal and Iron Police and of evicting a woman who has the sympathy of the entire mining district I believe that I am better able to judge of the effect these acts will have than you are, for I come into close contact ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... Warren in due course turned her two establishments into hotels that gradually acquired a well-founded character of propriety and were in time included amongst those recommended to quiet, studious people by first class tourist agencies. Their names were changed respectively from Hotel Leopold II to Hotel Edouard-Sept, from The Homestead, Roquebrune, to Hotel du Royaume-Uni. Mrs. Warren or Mme. Varennes ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... when I heard you sing. By all the Muses! but you, too, like us, have some fire in your veins, you are not one of the lukewarm sort; you are an artist, and a better one than I; and if you ever should feel the right love, then—then take care lest you break loose from propriety and custom—or whatever name you give to the sacred powers that subdue passion—even more wildly than I—who am an honest girl, and mean to remain so, for all the fire and flame in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... may venture to say, with the Strictest Propriety, that I have read as much as any Lady that has Existed in the Circle of Literature.— not the great Daicer excepted: but I hope Mr. Pasquin you have nothing in your Exhibition that is Shocking to Chastity, no double Entendres in your Examinations; If you have I shall certainly explode them. You ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... little, so in the great world, reason will tell you that old age or antiquity is to be accounted by the farther distance from the beginning and the nearer approach to the end,—the times wherein we now live being in propriety of speech the most ancient since the world's creation.—GEORGE HAKEWILL: An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... your fifth year, your mother spoke several times of the propriety of teaching you the first rudiments of book-learning; but I insisted that you should not be taught the first letter until you became five. [2] I think, though, that at about four, or four and a half I taught you to count, as far, perhaps, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... always catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides, and where this poet seems to have gathered his comick dialogue. He is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any other authour equally remote, and among his other excellencies deserves to be studied as one of the original ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... and took refuge at the Fiddletown Hotel, with only the clothes she had on her back. Here she staid for several weeks, during which period it is only justice to say that she bore herself with the strictest propriety. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... this fault on a large scale, for, as it now stands, it does not appear to be levelled against any particular set of men; but were it to be refined a little further, it might afterwards be applied to the Tories with a degree of striking propriety: those men have been remarkable for drawing sudden conclusions from single facts. The least apparent mishap on our side, or the least seeming advantage on the part of the enemy, have determined with ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Amy proposed, and called in Mr. Campbell as a fourth, and it was at last decided, that, on consideration that she removed with her family to a distance of fifty miles from Faristone, she should have an income of L300 per annum, as long as she conducted herself with propriety and did not marry again. The last clause was the only one which she complained of. Mr. Campbell had, at the request of my father, discharged Lady Musgrave's parent from the office of steward and called in the old steward to resume his situation, and ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... becoming taste and perception," observes Sir Leicester, "to decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments expressed by Mr. Rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the dog, and the consequent interference with the cropping and the digestion of the food, he will attach more importance to the good temper of the dog and of the shepherd than he has been accustomed to do. There would be no injustice, or rather a great deal of propriety, in inflicting a fine for every tooth-mark that could be detected. When the sheep, instead of collecting round the dog, and placing themselves under his protection on any sudden alarm, uniformly fly from him with terror, the farmer may he assured there is something radically wrong ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... which all should observe in the daily intercourse of life, and in the propriety of which all must concur, I send this to "NOTES AND QUERIES" (the long wished-for medium), in the hopes that some kind "note-maker" can inform me from whence this motto is taken, and to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... head them at the double-quick: stout old gentlemen unaccustomed to the double-quick, stouter Frauen gathering up their skirts with utter disregard to all propriety, slim Fraulein clinging to their beloved would run after him. Nervous pedestrians would fly for safety into doorways, careless loiterers would ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... avoid all practices which offend the taste of others; all unnecessary violations of the conventional rules of propriety; all rude and disrespectful language and deportment; and all remarks which would tend to wound the ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... motion to that effect, it may be observed, will always be out of order, although any Brother may respectfully request the Worshipful Master to order such a reconsideration, or suggest to him its propriety or expediency. ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... the man who wrote it never saw the British Government and wouldn't know it if he met it in the road. To him it is a mere legal entity, a wicked, impersonal institution against which he has the task of drawing an indictment—not the task of trying to persuade it to confess the propriety of a certain course of conduct. In his view, it is a wicked enemy to start with—like the Louisiana lottery of a previous generation or the Standard ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... church; there was something exceedingly touching in the profound silence that reigned throughout the congregation, and induced one to think highly of that rule amongst those excellent people, who with great propriety are termed Friends. Public worship was attended both in the morning and afternoon, and I returned to London, feeling myself a much better man than when I left it, with a full determination to revisit a place where so much pleasure ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... indeed, any one; towards juniors and inferiors he was always good-natured and considerate; and towards the judicial bench he exhibited uniformly a demeanour of dignified courtesy and deference. He was very tenacious of his own opinions—confident in the propriety of his view of a case—apparently so, always, for he could assume a confidence though he had it not—and would persevere in his efforts to overcome the adverse humour of judges and juries, to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... first at the speaker, then at me, as if he was not quite sure about the propriety of allowing me out of his sight, ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... reflection, and remove the sense of uneasiness arising from a disorder in her stomach. In a word, she became an habitual dram-drinker; and this practice exposed her to such communication as debauched her reason, and perverted her sense of decorum and propriety. She and her husband gave a loose to vulgar excess, in which they were enabled to indulge by the charity and interest of some friends, who ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... simple. He wanted her; she wanted him. She had known it from the moment of their meeting. The man had found his woman, the woman her man. Nature had settled the whole affair in an instant. And now civilization, propriety, etiquette, whatever one cared to call it, must needs step in with the rules and regulations ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... quit the banks of the Ribble, leaving his Isabel to suffer the pangs of suspense, and to pine under those limes and alders that had sheltered him from persecution? Her behaviour told him she would conduct herself with propriety in every situation. Her society had been his chief consolation in sorrow, and he saw that her fortitude would support him in the hour of trial, her wisdom guide him in difficulty, and her participation give the fairest colouring to success. Whether he sat in the senate as ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... been buried in oblivion. Licentious as the times are, we trust it will obtain no imitators of the heroine in this country. It may act, however, as a warning to those who fancy themselves at liberty to dispense with the laws of propriety and decency, and who suppose the possession of perverted talents will atone for the well government of society ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... public letters bearing his signature, it is certain that he could not have maintained so extensive a correspondence with his own pen, even if he had possessed the ability and promptness of Hamilton. That he would, sometimes with propriety, observe upon, correct, and add to any draught submitted for his examination and signature, I have no doubt. And yet I doubt whether many, if any, of the letters ... are his own draught.... I have even reason to believe that ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... gigantic weeds that grew in the angle of the house, and the heavy projection that overshadowed her, and the time-worn framework of the door,—none of these things belonged to her sphere. But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall into what dismal place it may, instantaneously creates for itself a propriety in being there, so did it seem altogether fit that the girl should be standing at the threshold. It was no less evidently proper that the door should swing open to admit her. The maiden lady herself, sternly ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... they shall be wanting, for the necessary subsistence of the colony: but the want of express approbation from the national legislature must ere long produce a presumption that they contemplate perhaps other modes of relieving the colony, and dictate to us the propriety of doing only what they shall have regularly and previously sanctioned. Their decree, before mentioned, contemplates purchases made in the United States only. In this they might probably have in view, as well to keep the business of providing supplies under a single direction, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and try to make it up to Lil and Harry by being extra nice to them. It's too bad. But then, these marble statue sort of women always sacrifice their love for their pride or their fool notions or propriety." ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... direct eye of the sovereign World-Planter. The torture of souls on the one hand, and the singing of psalms on the other, may be doctrines infinitely more orthodox; but, to our mind, they seem immeasurably inferior in grandeur, in propriety, in noble conception of the appointments of the creature, and the wondrous and lovely designs ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... disturb me, with all his raving and ranting, for my mind had work on hand, and it labored on diligently, night and day, whether my hands were idle or employed. I was altering and amending the plans for my house, and thinking over the propriety of having the billard-room in the attic, instead of on the same floor with the dining-room; also, I was trying to decide between green and blue for the upholstery of the drawing-room, for, although my preference was blue I feared it was a color that would be too easily damaged ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from the frozen snows of the Polar regions to Greece, or Spain, or Italy, or far Lochaber. When the tales are found they are adapted to the needs of British children by various hands, the Editor doing little beyond guarding the interests of propriety, and toning down to mild reproofs the tortures inflicted on wicked stepmothers, and other ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... fully regained consciousness, when Lilian Rosenberg, regardless of propriety, led him into her sitting-room, bathed his forehead, dosed him with brandy, and making up a bed for him on the sofa, bade him rest ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... to read and write it. He had been several years in Spanish vessels, and had acquired that language so well that he could read books in it. He was between forty and fifty years of age, and was a singular mixture of the man-of-war's-man and Puritan. He talked a great deal about propriety and steadiness, and gave good advice to the youngsters and Kanakas, but seldom went up to the town without coming down "three sheets in the wind.'' One holiday, he and old Robert (the Scotchman from the Catalina) ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... generations. As a reformer he was so engaged in the immediate prospect of results that his imagination did not turn to the possibilities of a remoter future, though these would logically follow from his recognition of "the inseparable propriety of time which is ever more and more to disclose truth." He hopes everything from his own age in which learning has made her third visitation to the world, a period which he is persuaded will far surpass that of Grecian and Roman learning. [Footnote: Advancement, ii. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... long time respecting the propriety of the methods by which the war was brought about, but once begun it was eminently desirable for the interests of the world, and even, perhaps, ultimately to the interests of Spain herself, that it should result in the success of ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... and recitals aroused considerable interest in John Bunyan's work, "The Pilgrim's Progress." Many were the arguments over the propriety of the work as presented by ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... On the whole, the two thousand people in the bay live very quietly, certainly more so than the same number of whites would without any police. It is not quite clear in what respect our civilization could improve them, as, like most aborigines, they have a pronounced sense of propriety, justice and politeness. There is very little disputing or quarrelling, and differences of opinion are usually settled by a joke, so that in this respect the savages show a behaviour far superior to that of many a ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... praise; on this night, and other nights. Frequent were the meetings. Yet never did this Shimo pass the bounds of propriety. Carried away by the gust of passion, incited by the lover's presence and solicitation, yet Shimo's filial duty kept her person pure. A night came when he failed at the rendezvous. So with the next, and following nights. He had laughed at parting, and said that where was the will, there a means ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... construction is admirable. I have the strongest belief in its making a great success. But I must add this proviso: I never saw a play so dangerously depending in critical places on strict natural propriety in the manner and perfection in the shaping of the small parts. Those small parts cannot take the play up, but they can let it down. I would not leave a hair on the head of one of them to the chance of the first night, but I would see, to the minutest particular, the make-up of ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... Dryden's dedication of his Juvenal, will there perceive, that in that great man's opinion, coelestial machines might with the utmost propriety be introduced in an Epic Poem, built upon a christian model; but at the same time he adds, 'The guardian angels of states and kingdoms are not to be managed by a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... been preserved to us; and, although a loose passage, in a private letter of the Earl of Salisbury, contradicted by another passage in the same letter, would indicate that the earl was the man; yet even Mrs. Macaulay acknowledges the propriety of attributing the discovery to the king's sagacity. Several proofs of his zeal and reflection in the detection of imposture might be adduced; and the reader may, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... far as George is concerned, there is no doubt but what the work was done right well, for under the influence of what is, with doubtful propriety, known as the "tender passion," that estimable character was rapidly drifting within a measurable distance of a lunatic asylum. The checks and repulses that he had met with, instead of cooling his ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... common people without dispute or effort to organised priesthoods for religious purposes, you would be inevitably including a vast number of other purposes in the self-same destination. This does not in the least prejudice practical ways of dealing with certain existing circumstances, such as the propriety or justice of allowing a catholic people to have a catholic university. It is only an argument against erecting into a complete and definite formula the division of a society into two great ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... reed to trust to (remembering what those young gallants were), with Caesar against him, now at the head of his legions just outside the gates of Rome. He himself seriously contemplated suicide, and consulted his friends as to the propriety of such a step in the gravest and most business-like manner; though, with our modern notions on the subject, such a consultation has more of the ludicrous than the sublime. The sensible and practical ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... consulting the Senate; the establishment of a salary without law; and the payment of that salary out of a fund which itself is derived from the use of the public treasures. This, Sir, is my other reason for concurring in the vote of the 28th of March; and on these grounds I leave the propriety of that vote, so far as I am concerned with it, to be judged of by ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... modern to the ancient practice; and I hope I may be allowed to recommend to those, whose thoughts have been perhaps employed too anxiously on verbal singularities, not to disturb, upon narrow views, or for minute propriety, the orthography of their fathers. It has been asserted, that for the law to be KNOWN, is of more importance than to be RIGHT. Change, says Hooker, is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better. There is in constancy and stability a general and lasting ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... household matters, of a decorative and mundificatory character, are not pleasing to the sense of men trained in middle-class proprieties; but the taste to which these effects of household adornment and tidiness appeal is a taste which has been formed under the selective guidance of a canon of propriety that demands just these evidences of wasted effort. The effects are pleasing to us chiefly because we have been taught to find them pleasing. There goes into these domestic duties much solicitude for a proper combination ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... again urges us to look carefully to Foreign Literature, and another points out the propriety of our making our paper as British as possible, so that our topographical facts should, as far as practicable, be restricted to the illustration of British counties, and our biographical ones to such as should contribute towards ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various
... was seldom ungrammatical, and her intonation was not flagrantly vulgar, but the accent of the London poor, which brands as with hereditary baseness, still clung to her words, rendering futile such propriety of phrase as she owed to years of association with educated people. In the same degree did her bearing fall short of that which distinguishes a lady. The London work-girl is rarely capable of raising ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... propriety of her spouse's suggestion; but, nevertheless, was unable to refrain from dropping hints to sundry gossips concerning her anticipations of coming good fortune; and the vagueness and mysterious importance of her manner created a sensation, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... by leaf, and every time to discover new sweetness. Nobody knew her so well as I, for she was generally timid and silent; but I in a manner studied her excellence. Never did I meet with more intuitive rectitude of mind, more native delicacy, more exquisite propriety in word, thought, and action, than in this young creature. I am not exaggerating; what I say was acknowledged by all who knew her. Her brilliant little sister used to say that people began by admiring her, but ended by loving Matilda. For my part, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... of poison, declares 'the tackle of his heart is cracked,' and 'all the shrouds wherewith his life should sail' wasted 'to a thread.' Polonius tells Laertes, 'the wind sits in the shoulder of your sail'—a technical expression, the singular propriety of which a naval critic has recently established; whilst some of the commentators on the passage in King Lear, descriptive of the prospect from Dover Cliffs, affirm that the comparison as to apparent size, of the ship to her cock-boat, and the cock-boat to a buoy, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... the form of old Carson, turned a herd of bellowing steers out into the fields lying between the meadow and the ranch-house that afternoon just as Marcia, making a late concession to propriety, was shaking her skirts and lifting her parasol. It was scarcely to be wondered at that the steers seemed to Marcia a great herd of bloodthirsty beasts. Then there were her pink gown and ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... himself behind the instructions of his client. The client has no right to require him to be illiberal—and he should throw up his brief sooner than do what revolts against his own sense of what is demanded by honor and propriety. ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... to the cold manner of the bench. "Perhaps we may not talk with propriety of this kind of action, but I am induced to say that you are performing a questionable charity in preserving this negro's life. As near as I can understand, he will hereafter be a monster, a perfect monster, and probably with ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... employed to furnish the materials of the stately structure which has been, however imperfectly, described in the above lines. Of one in particular, which stood near the centre of the grove, it is remembered that it was known as the Hanging Oak. The propriety of that title is confirmed by the fact that a quantity of human bones was found in the soil about its roots, and that at certain times of the year it was the custom for those who wished to secure a successful ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... nearly equal in number to the freemen. We have no evidence to justify the assumption, that mankind in future will act differently. The condition of some of our states, never-the-less, is such, that measures of this kind may with great propriety be urged, and kept constantly in view of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... her of any effort, and yet he displayed a repressed excitement that was disturbing. In his eyes there was a gloating look of possession hard to endure. Despite her icy formality, he appeared to be holding himself within the bounds of propriety only by an effort of will, and she was not surprised when, at the conclusion of the meal, he cast ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... the water's edge is planted with trees, and the whole has a picturesque effect. These buildings have been almost entirely erected by the soldiers, who are compelled to work from morning till night at every kind of laborious employment. This arrangement has saved the state much money; yet the propriety of employing soldiers altogether in this manner is very questionable. Desertions are frequent, and the punishment hitherto inflicted for that crime has been flogging; but Jackson declares now that shooting must be resorted to. The soldiers are obliged to be servilely respectful ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... to the point of deference, yet never condescending. His manners to all alike—young and old, rich and poor—are the ceremonious manners of the old school, and his demeanour towards ladies is a model of chivalrous propriety. It would therefore have been to the last degree improbable that he should make a departure from his usual habits in the case of a lady who was also his Sovereign. And, as a matter of fact, the story is so ridiculously wide of the mark that it deserves mention only ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... that? Now he expects me to tell him all about everything, just as though I was present at the beginning of Nature, and knew all its manifestations. If I cannot do it, he will not admit my plea of ignorance;—he will not admit the propriety of my saying, I do not know." He is not bound to explain either the past or the future: "What went before and what will follow me I regard as two black impenetrable curtains, which hang down at the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... healthy, fat and beautiful animals; which were always examined with the closest and most exact attention. This ceremonial, which doubtless had its origin in gratitude, or in some ideas of fitness and propriety, at length, degenerated into trifling niceties and superstitious ceremonies. And it having been once imagined that no favour was to be looked for from the gods, when the victim was imperfect, the idea of perfection was united with abundance of trivial circumstances. The entrails were examined with ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... of money degraded her: him too, by contact. Money she might have had to any extent: upon application for it, of course. How was he to imagine that she wanted money! Smilingly as she welcomed him and his friends, entertaining them royally, he was bound to think she had means. A decent propriety bound him not to think of the matter at all. He naturally supposed she was capable of conducting her affairs. And—money! It soiled his memory: though the hour at Rovio was rather pretty, and the scene at Copsley touching: other times also, short ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sitting, say, in Danbury, Connecticut. Even Trampas merged quietly with the general placidity. The Virginian did not, to be sure, look like Danbury, and his frame and his features showed out of the mass; but his eyes were upon Dr. MacBride with a creamlike propriety. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... much from his father, at whose feet he loved to sit; and his brother's tastes for the arts and for the experimental sciences, especially the former, had passed to him. In moral qualities he was superior to both. He was one of those young men of whom it is said that they have no fault. His strict propriety of demeanour bordered on maiden bashfulness: a serious and temperate soul spoke from his calm eyes. He had a natural gift for apprehending even the most complicated questions, and he was a good writer. From his ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... and institutions. Accordingly, after him a servile race of ignorant and despicable imitators sprung up, and wandered from place to place, spreading doctrines subversive of all public order and peace. We acknowledge the propriety and justice of allowing every reasonable indulgence to men in matters of religion. The laws of toleration being part of our happy constitution, it lies with men to learn their duty from them, and claim protection ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... hang about Miss Doane's sense of propriety. I need a stenographer who will carry out my instructions. I've carried out Miss Doane's long enough. I've let that schoolma'am hector me for years. She can go when ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... a stifled growl, which sounded from his deep chest like distant thunder. But he saw his master, and acknowledged his presence by wagging his tail and couching his head, abstaining from more tumultuous or noisy greeting, as if his noble instinct had taught him the propriety of silence in a sick ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... people who have a delicate sense of propriety, we are in misery on their account when anything unbecoming is committed. So I always feel for and with Charlotte, when a person is tipping his chair. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Mr. Westwood, for your kind defence of me against the stupid, blind, cur-dog backbiting of the American writer. I will tell you. Three weeks ago I had a letter from my brother, apprising me of what had been said, and pressing on me the propriety of a contradiction in form. Said I in reply: 'When you marry a wife, George, take her from the class of those who have never printed a book, if this thing vexes you. A woman in a crowd can't help the pushing up against her of dirty coats; happy if somebody ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... take things for granted. The sloth and self-indulgence of the clergy in Portugal, being his first glimpse of conventuals in Latin countries, had deeply shocked him. The vows of a monastic poverty that was kept carefully beyond the walls of the monastery offended his sense of propriety. That men who had vowed themselves to pauperism, who wore coarse garments and went barefoot, should batten upon rich food and store up wines that gold could not purchase, struck ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... Lizzie to such an extent that she fled to the familiar propriety of the kitchen; but before she was out of hearing, Mrs. Doothnack ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... at Baden with those of Zurich and Glaris, to regulate certain Affairs relating to the Town and County of Baden, which formerly belonged to the Eight Eldest Cantons, but in the last Swiss War was given up to Zurich and Berne in Propriety, with a Reservation to the Canton of Glaris (which is mostly Protestant) of the Share it had before in the Sovereignty of that District. The three Deputies of Zurich, Lucern &c Ury, who were commissioned by the late General Dyet to ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... up their fortune this night,—he, to sell his gold; Eugenie to fling hers into the ocean of affection. She put the pieces back into the old purse, took it in her hand, and ran upstairs without hesitation. The secret misery of her cousin made her forget the hour and conventional propriety; she was strong in her conscience, in her devotion, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... managed to live without quarrelling with his children; but then he was a poor creature, and even was so unkingly, and so little like what a Plantagenet should have been, that he actually disliked war! He might with absolute propriety have worn the lowly broom-corn from which his family-name was taken, while it was a sweeping satire on almost all others who bore it. His heir, Edward I., was a king of "high stomach," and as a prince he stood stoutly by his father in the baronial wars. He, too, though the father of sixteen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Picos a man who had been formerly her own servant. Had she attempted to conceal that fact she was satisfied that Ezekiel's independence and natural predilection for embarrassing situations would have inevitably revealed it. She had even gone so far as to consider the propriety of investing him with a poor relationship to her family, when Dona Rosita herself happily stopped all further trouble. On her very first introduction to him, that charming young lady at once accepted him as a lunatic whose ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... there may be with regard to the propriety of cooking the food of stock, we believe there ought not to be a doubt as to the desirability of mechanically treating the harder kinds of feeding stuff. It is quite evident that a horse fed upon hard grains of oats and ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... considerable moral effect on the people of Japan. Nothing of the kind seems to have been the case. The practical civilization of China was accepted, but not her ethical code. For any palpable moral influence the arrival of Buddhism had to be awaited. Already the principles of loyalty and obedience, propriety, and righteousness were recognized in Japan though not embodied in any written code." Dr. Ariga writes: "Our countrymen did not acquire anything specially new in the way of moral tenets. They must have been surprised to find that in China ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... valley, and I have known women come to their cottage doors high up on this side to carry on a shouting conversation with neighbours opposite, four hundred yards away. You see, they were under no constraint of propriety in its accepted forms, nor did they care greatly who heard what they had to say. I have sometimes wished that they did care. But, of course, the more comfortable way of intercourse was to talk across the quickset hedge between two gardens. Sometimes one would hear—all an afternoon it seemed—the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... of the busy weekday. The English could not pale the sunshine, but they could in some miraculous way slow down the hours, dull the incidents, lengthen the meals, and make even the servants and page-boys wear a look of boredom and propriety. The best clothes which every one put on helped the general effect; it seemed that no lady could sit down without bending a clean starched petticoat, and no gentleman could breathe without a sudden crackle from a stiff shirt-front. As the hands of the clock neared eleven, on this ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Mingo, Mrs. Mingo, and Miss Mingo, as they had been named, had made great progress in civilization. All of them were regular attendants at the meetings in Conference Hall, and always behaved themselves with the greatest propriety. The mother usually occupied one of the arm-chairs, while the baby was held in the lap of one of the ladies. They looked at the speaker just as though they understood what he was saying. They joined in the applause when the lecturer presented himself ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... himself for the people and the legions, and to have added, that the consul Publius Decius was then deemed by the immortal gods an offering equally pure and pious, as if his colleague, Titus Manlius, had been devoted. And might not the same Publius Decius have been, with propriety, chosen to perform the public worship of the Roman people? Was there any danger that the gods would give less attention to his prayers than to those of Appius Claudius? Did the latter perform his private acts of ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... in his Sunday-best broadcloth was a marvel of propriety. It seemed to Stephen that his face wore a graver expression on Sunday when he met him standing on Miss Crane's doorstep, picking the lint from his coat. Stephen's intention was not to speak. But he remembered what the Judge had said to his mother, and nodded. Why, indeed, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and propriety of the wishes of the gentleman from Maryland, to try the proposition now before the Conference upon its merits. I certainly do not desire to have time taken up in unnecessary delay. I do not think much of these statements about civil war. Nor is there any attempt here to defame or injure any section. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... no sort of connexion with the Morning Post at present, nor acquaintance with its late Editor (the present Editor of the Courier) to ask a favour of him with propriety; but if it will be of any use, I believe I could get the insertions into the British Press (a Morning Paper) ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Atossa told Anne she was very sorry to hear she had taken to writing novels; nobody born and bred in Avonlea would do it; that was what came of adopting orphans from goodness knew where, with goodness knew what kind of parents. Even Mrs. Rachel Lynde was darkly dubious about the propriety of writing fiction, though she was almost reconciled to it by that ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... inconveniences of superfluity, and at last, like him, limit his desires to five hundred pounds a year; a fortune indeed, not exuberant, when we compare it with the expenses of pride and luxury, but to which it little becomes a philosopher to affix the name of poverty, since no man can with any propriety be termed poor who does not see the greater part of mankind richer ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... was always a certain element of comfort about Felix—the assurance that he would not interfere. He was very delicate, this pure-minded Felix; in effect, he was her brother, and Madame Munster felt that there was a great propriety, every way, in that. It is true that Felix was delicate; he was not fond of explanations with his sister; this was one of the very few things in the world about which he was uncomfortable. But now he was ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... "O, the propriety of the LOCALE is easily vindicated," replied her father, with a sneer. "You know, Miss Vere (for you, I am well aware, are a learned young lady), you know, that the Romans were not satisfied with embodying, for the purpose of worship, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... During her repeated visits to France she came in contact with the brilliant court of Louis XIV., and with the most distinguished men and women of the day. She sympathized with the ever-varying intellectual pleasures of the court without sacrificing in the least her strong, inborn sense of honor and propriety. On this very account, perhaps, she was the leader of a certain naive opposition, and her correspondence gives many a hint of the courage and independence with which she could defend her sound principles and firm opinions, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... were the case, the propriety of Ferdinand's conduct in refusing the ratification depends on the question how far a sovereign is bound by the acts of a plenipotentiary who departs from his private instructions. Formerly, the question ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... everything of the kind: that its course is marked by great honesty of purpose, and its exalted aim will never allow it to stoop to anything so beneath the dignity of its character, and so repugnant to every sense of rectitude and propriety. It is no presumption to assert that, under such overt influences, it remains unmoved and immovable; and to reiterate a remark made in the former part of this article, "its independency can never be bribed, or its patronage won by unlawful means." Looking at it in its ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... The finest new genus hitherto found in New Holland has been destined by Linnaeus, with great propriety, to transmit to posterity the name of Sir Joseph Banks, who first discovered it in his celebrated ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... is the nice lady I was telling you of who has got the bird singing and the flower-fields——" he began. Peaches drew back, her eyes wide with wonder and excitement, but her mind followed Mickey's lead, for she shocked his sense of propriety by adding: "and the good ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... under which kind eyes were closed, and warm hearts lay cold, till, reaching the porched entrance of the church itself, he paused, brought to a halt by the sound of voices which were pitched rather too loud for propriety, considering the sacredness ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... beautiful silver medallion, sent out to me by the Royal Humane Society—to which I had transmitted an account of the occurrence. Nor was the heroine of my story forgotten. A similar medallion was given to him for his sister. She could not, with propriety, be present herself, as it was the annual muster-day of ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... habitual, when the temper of it is acquired, what was before confinement ceases to be so by becoming choice and delight. Whatever restraint and guard upon ourselves may be needful to unlearn any unnatural distortion or odd gesture, yet in all propriety of speech, natural behaviour must be the most easy and unrestrained. It is manifest that, in the common course of life, there is seldom any inconsistency between our duty and what is called interest: it is much seldomer that there is an inconsistency ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... to "set," so he thought, his baby parson on to Jude. There was excitement in the idea. While he stood there Gaston came and took his stand at the other narrow door. The architect of the St. Ange church had had ideas of propriety in regard to ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... of the want of propriety In forming our city so crooked and long; Our ancestors, bless them, were fond of variety— 'Tis naughty to say that they ever were wrong! Tho' strangers may grumble, and thro' the streets and stumble, Take care they don't tumble through crevices small, For ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Propriety and decorum were extinguished among the helpless sick. Females of rank seemed to forget their natural bashfulness, and committed the care of their persons, indiscriminately, to men and women of the lowest order. No longer were women, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... his childhood, he had sympathies with children, and kept his heart the fresher thereby, like a reservoir into which rivulets were pouring not far from the fountain-head. Though prevented, by a subtile sense of propriety, from desiring to associate with them, he loved few things better than to look out of the arched window and see a little girl driving her hoop along the sidewalk, or schoolboys at a game of ball. Their voices, also, were very pleasant to him, heard at a distance, all swarming and intermingling ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prayer; so that when the commissary visited him later in the day and questioned him again, although he still refused to implicate others in any charge, he spoke of his own convictions with modesty and propriety, so that the commissary began to question whether he were, after all, so black a heretic as had been painted, and promised that he should have food sent him, together with pens and paper, on which he was desired to set forth a confession of his faith. He was not, however, released from the stocks ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... boots are waterproofed, part-songs are sung, and about half-past eight I cross the crisp grass to my cabin, always expecting to find something in it. We all wash our own clothes, and as my stock is so small, some part of every day has to be spent at the wash tub. Politeness and propriety always prevail in our mixed company, and though various grades of society are represented, true democratic equality prevails, not its counterfeit, and there is neither forwardness on one side nor condescension ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... a nun! I look on the house as ruined." The Princess came, and insisted on her right as foundress; she had compelled a friar to give her the habit before her husband was buried, and when she came to Pastrana she began her religious life by the most complete disobedience and disregard of common propriety. Don Vicente's description of her is almost literally correct, though intended only for a general summary ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... consort, excellent, consistant in the School, of steady deportment and conversation, being an example for us to follow when we are separated. We sincerely wish his preservation in all things laudable and believe we can with propriety hereunto set ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... himself already he determined that this white and perchance fallen wanderer was one whom, perhaps, it would be his duty to lead back into the paths of Christian propriety ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... Do not compel her to do it. Woman does not like compulsion. It is not human to like compulsion. Give to woman the same freedom you do to man. Open the whole width of the field of life to her, and she will choose with avidity her own appropriate place. She has a strong sense of propriety and a good judgment in the choice of her sphere ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... natural stuff out of which such mystic transferences must be made. That there is no single name of preference, no Beatrice or Laura, by no means proves the young man's earlier desires merely "Platonic;" and if the colours of love inevitably lose a little of their force and propriety by such deflection, the intellectual purpose as certainly finds its opportunity thereby, in the matter of borrowed fire and wings. A kind of old, scholastic pedantry creeping back over the ardent youth who had thrown it off so defiantly (as if Love himself ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... unwind, in nation as in man, which life is for—we see, fore-indicated, amid these prospects and hopes, new law-forces of spoken and written language—not merely the pedagogue-forms, correct, regular, familiar with precedents, made for matters of outside propriety, fine words, thoughts definitely told out—but a language fann'd by the breath of Nature, which leaps overhead, cares mostly for impetus and effects, and for what it plants and invigorates to grow—tallies ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... terraces, flights of stone steps, masses of brilliant flower-beds; and beyond, the wide green spaces of the park, with its groups of trees all standing in exactly the right places, well ordered, stately, correct, as though the very shrubs and plants had been trained to hold themselves with propriety. ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... have bought a paper on the street. While I was remembering all the things a millionaire's son can't do if he happens to be without a nickel in his pocket, we pulled up before a place that, for the sake of propriety, I am willing to call a hotel; at the time, I remember, I ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... person of Nathan Rockwell, an agnostic doctor, who had arrived in Lebanon with a reputation for morality somewhat clouded; though, where his patients in Manitou and Lebanon were concerned, he had been the "pink of propriety." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to see her fellow-sufferer; but Darnford was still more earnest to obtain an interview. Accustomed to submit to every impulse of passion, and never taught, like women, to restrain the most natural, and acquire, instead of the bewitching frankness of nature, a factitious propriety of behaviour, every desire became a torrent ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... comfortable in the prospect before her, for of course the queen could not do it all. As for the king, he made up his mind, with what courage he could summon, to meet the demands of the case, but wondered whether he could with any propriety require the First Lord of the Treasury to take a share in ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... is carried forward each time, and steadily recruited and intensified. It does not seem possible for any man to become just what Emerson is from the stump, though perhaps great men have been the fruit of one generation; but there is a quality in him, an aroma of fine manners, a propriety, a chivalry in the blood, that dates back, and has been refined and transmitted many times. Power is born with a man, and is always first hand, but culture, genius, noble instincts, gentle manners, or the easy capacity for these things, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Finally, fasten them on the seat before me, and keep one eye steadily upon the yellow torments, till I forget all about them, in chat with the gentleman who shares my seat. Having heard complaints of the absurd way in which American women become images of petrified propriety, if addressed by strangers, when traveling alone, the inborn perversity of my nature causes me to assume an entirely opposite style of deportment; and, finding my companion hails from Little Athens, is acquainted with several of my three hundred ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... in the whole range of subjects with which life abounds will lend itself for a monologue theme—provided the writer can without straining twist it to the angle of humor; but propriety demands that nothing blatantly suggestive shall be treated, and common sense dictates that no theme of merely local interest shall be used, when the purpose of the monologue is to entertain the whole country. Of course if a monologue is designed ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... dark in his lodgings, he was aware; and non-paying patients would be importunate in proportion to their poverty. The poor are often the most exacting of hypochondriacs. Margaret noticed his reluctance to go contending with a sense of what he owed to propriety. ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... there, of course; but Bertram says they spun around like tops gone mad for a time, but finally quieted down enough to summon a married sister for immediate propriety, and to establish Aunt Hannah for permanency ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... who familiarizes himself with the grave. For me; I must deny myself, for I go tomorrow to take part in festivities the reverse of funereal. I commend the propriety and aptness of your ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... greatly improved Wilkins' scenes. The well-drawn character of Betty Flauntit is her own, and the realistically vivacious bagnio episodes of Act iv replace a not very interesting or lively tavern with a considerable accession to wit and humour, although perhaps not to strict propriety. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... Since the first edition, it has been suggested by one of the clubs, who knew Mr Vesey better than Dr Johnson and I, that we did not assign him a proper place; for he was quite unskilled in Irish antiquities and Celtick learning, but might with propriety have been made professor of architecture, which he understood well, and has left a very good specimen of his knowledge and taste in that art, by an elegant house built on a plan of his own formation, at Lucan, a few miles from Dublin.] ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... whites have the privilege to procure these unfortunate creatures a whipping like that inflicted on slaves, upon an accusation, proved by two witnesses. Several of these females have enjoyed the benefits of as careful an education as most of the whites; they conduct themselves ordinarily with more propriety and decorum, and confer more happiness on their "friends," than many of the white ladies to their married lords. Still, the white ladies constantly speak with the greatest contempt, and even with animosity, of these unhappy and oppressed beings. The strongest language ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... ends in alternation with that of night watchman. Cleaning, heating and lighting the front rooms of the centre building belong to him; he shall see that the front windows and doors are kept secured during the day, and that visitors about the premises do not transgress the rules of propriety by talking with the patients at ...
— Rules and Regulations of the Insane Asylum of California - Prescribed by the Resident Physician, August 1, 1861 • Stockton State Hospital
... a long interval. In 1718, the remote county of Caithness, where the delusion remained in all its pristine vigour for years after it had ceased elsewhere, was startled from its propriety by the cry of witchcraft. A silly fellow, named William Montgomery, a carpenter, had a mortal antipathy to cats; and somehow or other these animals generally chose his back-yard as the scene of their catterwaulings. He ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... forgot," smiled Pao-yue, "all about propriety and gesticulated, yet quite inadvertently. But what care I whether ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the fact that the firm of Russell, Majors, & Waddell were operating a daily coach from the Missouri River to Salt Lake City, and he urged Mr. Russell to consider seriously the propriety of starting a pony express over the same route, and from Salt ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... intend to come to Athens, or to call himself to power. An agreement, he said, had been reached between M. Jonnart and M. Zaimis to the effect that a mixed Ministerial Commission should be formed to negotiate the unification of the country.[10] That was true. With his usual sense of propriety, the High Commissioner would not dream of usurping the place of the acknowledged chiefs of the Greek people. It was for them to take the initiative. The "guaranteeing" Powers which he represented respected the national will too much to dictate the terms of the fusion between ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... Gheta and had not calculated the effect of her speech upon Cesare. She was scrupulously careful not to mislead the latter with regard to her feeling for him. She went to a rather needless extreme to demonstrate that she conducted herself from a sense of duty and propriety alone. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... lingered some doubt as to the propriety of the suggested arrangement. "But why should men come in here? I do not need the money. My man ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... room, where a bureau with a swinging mirror had been placed for the convenience of the women. The druggist stood awkwardly outside the door of the feed room, his coat collar turned up against the draughts that drifted through the barn, his face troubled, debating anxiously as to the propriety of putting on his gloves. The Spanish-Mexican family, a father, mother and five children and sister-in-law, sat rigid on the edges of the hired chairs, silent, constrained, their eyes lowered, their elbows in at their sides, glancing furtively from under ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... The trial of cases in the law courts shall be conducted publicly, but those affecting public peace and order or propriety may be ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... sustained an important relation to the Reform movement, and at this Grand Rally of Non-Partisan Citizens in the Interest of Reform, he had, with great propriety, selected himself to be Master of Ceremonies. Colonel Sneekins was a non-partisan citizen. He looked upon partisanship as the curse of the Republic, and in his more enthusiastic moments had declared that if he could ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... rather ashamed. She was barely two years younger than her sister, but on almost every subject—on questions of good manners and propriety above all—Jacinth's verdict was always accepted by her as infallible, though whence Jacinth had derived her knowledge on such points it would have been difficult to say. No one could have been less a woman of ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Simpson (191. Piccadilly) will be engaged on Monday and two following days in the Sale of a Library rich in works on every branch of what is now known as Folk Lore and Popular Antiquities, and which may certainly, and with great propriety, be styled "a very curious collection." The mere enumeration of the various subjects on the title-page of the Catalogue, ranging, as they do, from Mesmerism and Magic, to Celestial Influences, Phrenology, Physiognomy, &c., might serve ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... great contemporary poet who made them fashionable; and Esther, proud of owning them, had called them by the names of their parents, Romeo and Juliet. No need here to describe the whiteness and grace of these beasts, trained for the drawing-room, with manners suggestive of English propriety. Esther called Romeo; Romeo ran up on legs so supple and thin, so strong and sinewy, that they seemed like steel springs, and looked up at his mistress. Esther, to attract his attention, pretended to throw one ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... clearness and promptness of decision. She is at a loss, now, to know what to do with Mr. Tarbox. Here he is for the seventh time. But there is always a plausible explanation of his presence, and a person of more tactful propriety, it seems to her, never put his name upon her tavern register or himself into her company. She sees nothing shallow or specious in his dazzling attainments; they rekindle the old ambitions in her that Bonaventure lighted; and although Mr. Tarbox's modest loveliness is not visible, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... offences the operations of his edicts, with the previous allowance of a short respite for confession and pardon. A painful death was inflicted by the amputation of the sinful instrument, or the insertion of sharp reeds into the pores and tubes of most exquisite sensibility; and Justinian defended the propriety of the execution, since the criminals would have lost their hands had they been convicted of sacrilege. In this state of disgrace and agony two bishops, Isaiah of Rhodes and Alexander of Diospolis, were dragged through the streets of Constantinople, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... like that of their father. Dressed in white, with their locks curled, arrayed indeed in the most coquettish style, they looked like big fragile dolls. The parents were touched in their worldly pride at sight of them, and insisted on their playing their parts with due propriety. ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... so determined in gestures, tone, and manner, that she seldom errs, like other actors, because she doubts her powers or comprehension. She studies her author attentively, conceives justly, and describes with a firm consciousness of propriety. She is sparing in her action, because English nature does not act much; but it is always proper, picturesque, graceful, and dignified: it arises immediately from the sentiments and feeling, and is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... be a disgrace to an enlightened country and an insult to the eye of a cultured community." Mr. Gilbert says: "Such exhibition is a disastrous one to the morals of the community. Are these proper pictures to put out for the public to look at, to say nothing of the propriety of females appearing in public dressed like ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... staid with me all the afternoon, and went hence in the evening. Then I went with my wife, and left her at market, and went myself to the Coffee-house, and heard exceeding good argument against Mr. Harrington's assertion, that overbalance of propriety [i.e., property] was the foundation of government. Home, and wrote to Hinchinbroke, and sent that and my other letter that missed of going on Thursday ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of blacking your boots! It is more inevitable than seasickness, and may have something to do with it. It is like the ducking you get on crossing the line the first time. I trusted that these old customs were abolished. They might with the same propriety insist on blacking your face. I heard of one man who complained that somebody had stolen his boots in the night; and when he found them, he wanted to know what they had done to them,—they had spoiled them,— he never put that stuff on them; and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... your own way. I have an objection to the publication of my private conversations, which are never intended but for those to whom they are addressed. I cannot, therefore, without an entire disregard of the rule which I have followed in other cases, and in violation of my own sense of propriety, assent to what you propose. I hope, therefore, you will excuse me. What you may think proper to publish I hope will be the result of your own observations and convictions, and not on my authority. In the hasty perusal which I have been obliged ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... have you at his mercy—you shan't go!" laughed another girl, "it would be flying in the face of Providence as well as of Propriety!" ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... more clothes on top of those that you all wear now. The outer garments of to-day will become the under-clothes of some destined to-morrow, and centuries hence a man found walking on the public highways dressed as you are will be arrested by the police for shocking the sense of propriety of the community, and so on. It will go on and on until you will find human beings everywhere decked out in layer after layer of clothes until he or she has lost all semblance to that beautiful thing that an all-wise Providence ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... well measure my friend too," remarked Madame Depine, as she reassumed her glossy brown wig (which seemed propriety itself ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... not give way to the happiness she felt, lest their talk should exceed the conventional limits of propriety. She had never heard the vibrating tones of a sincere and youthful love; a few more words, and she ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... crocodile as Henrietta Petowker. Mr Kenwigs argued that she must have been bad indeed not to have improved by so long a contemplation of Mrs Kenwigs's virtue. Mrs Kenwigs remembered that Mr Kenwigs had often said that he was not quite satisfied of the propriety of Miss Petowker's conduct, and wondered how it was that she could have been blinded by such a wretch. Mr Kenwigs remembered that he had had his suspicions, but did not wonder why Mrs Kenwigs had ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... tenet of her church that "wearing-apparel was instituted by God as a necessity for the sake of propriety and also for healthful warmth, but when used for purposes of adornment it becomes the evidence of an un-Christlike spirit." Now Tillie knew that her present yearning for new caps was prompted, not by the praiseworthy and simple desire to be merely ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... Erminia and Clorinda, the one woman adoring him, the other beloved by him—the melancholy graceful modern Tancredi, Tasso's own soul's image—is the veritable hero of the Gerusalemme; and by a curious unintended propriety he disappears from the action before the close, without a word. The force of the poem is spiritualized and concentrated in Clorinda's death, which may be cited as an instance of sublimity in pathos. It is idyllized in the episode of Erminia ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... to stay for a time among them under Mr. Darlington's ample and eminently respectable wing. She hated being careful, but even she, admonished by Mr. Darlington, realized that immediately after emerging from the shadow of a great scandal she had better play propriety for a time. It really must be "playing," for, as had been proved at the trial, she was a thoroughly proper person who hadn't troubled to play hitherto. So she rested at Hook Green, till the season was ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... with his students, as to the shrewd wisdom and profound knowledge of human nature generally and of student nature particularly, on the part of that gentle lady, the professor's wife. Mrs. Macdougall was of the old school, with very beautiful if very old-fashioned notions of propriety. Her whole life was one poetic setting forth of the manners and deportment proper to ladies, both young and old. But none the less her shrewd mother wit and kindly heart instructed her in things not taught in the schools. The consequence was that, while she herself sat erect in fine scorn of the ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... the prince, turning his threatening eyes toward the door. "Oh, I will release you from further molestation by this madman, for I tell you the gentle words of your husband will not be able to do so. Baron Weichs is not the man to lend a willing ear to sensible remonstrances or to the requirements of propriety and decency. He has graduated at the high-school of libertinism, and any resistance whatever provokes him to a passionate struggle in which he shrinks from no manifestation of his utter recklessness. Well, am I not right? Does he not even dare to ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... condition. My first panic was succeeded by the perturbations of surprise to find myself alone in the open air and immersed in so deep a gloom. I slowly recollected the incidents of the afternoon, and how I came hither. I could not estimate the time, but saw the propriety of returning with speed to the house. My faculties were still too confused, and the darkness too intense, to allow me immediately to find my way up the steep. I sat down, therefore, to recover myself, and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... not be supposed for a moment, however, that there was ever the slightest breach of good manners at Mr. Kecskerey's social evenings. Any one supposing the contrary would be making the greatest mistake in the world. The most rigorous propriety was the order of the day, or rather of the evening. First of all, the artists and artistes recited, sang, and played the piano, and then those who chose might dance a few modest quadrilles and waltzes together. Then every one went to supper in the most perfect order, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... to call upon Verty to cease his savage and outrageous conduct, or Mr. Rushton, who was in the other room, would soon issue forth and revenge such a dreadful violation of law office propriety, when the door of that gentleman's sanctum opened, and he appeared ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... happened that the gods of the infernal regions have mistaken their aim, and seized one person instead of another. In any view, it is right to afford the opportunity for correcting these mistakes, so as not to expose to the flames a person who is still alive. Hence the propriety of these pauses, each of which continues half of the quarter ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... few that have been before published, are inserted either because more correct copies have been discovered, or because they are so intimately connected with some of the others that they could not with propriety ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... left to me a legacy of a thousand pounds, and the sole guardianship of his daughter's person till her eighteenth year; conjuring me, in the most affecting terms, to take the charge of her education till she was able to act with propriety for herself; but, in regard to fortune, he left her wholly dependent on her mother, to whose ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... certain conventional modern usage, especially in England, requires us to say that we drive in a carriage, ride upon a horse; tho in Scripture we read of riding in a chariot (2 Kings ix, 16; Jer. xvii, 25, etc.); good examples of the same usage may be found abundantly in the older English. The propriety of a person's saying that he is going to drive when he is simply to be conveyed in a carriage, where some one else, as the coachman, does all the driving, is exceedingly questionable. Many good authorities prefer to use ride in the older ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... make an impression. Herein alone he is good for a commonwealth, that he sets many on work with building, ruining, altering, and makes more business than time itself; neither is he a greater enemy to thrift than to idleness. Propriety is to him enough cause of dislike; each thing pleases him better that is not his own. Even in the best things long continuance is a just quarrel; manna itself grows tedious with age, and novelty is the highest style of commendation ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... an obeisance—for Chiron had taught him how to behave with propriety, whether to kings or beggars—"I have come hither with a purpose which I now beg your majesty's permission to execute. King Pelias, who sits on my father's throne (to which he has no more right than to the one on which your excellent majesty is now seated), has engaged ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... this temple lived the family of a district official, Chen by surname, Fei by name, and Shih-yin by style. His wife, nee Feng, possessed a worthy and virtuous disposition, and had a clear perception of moral propriety and good conduct. This family, though not in actual possession of excessive affluence and honours, was, nevertheless, in their district, conceded to be a clan of well-to-do standing. As this Chen Shih-yin was of a contented and unambitious ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... painter never works without a principle) that tree trunks ought to lean first one way and then the other as they go up, and ought not to stand under the middle of the tree, he sketches a serpentine form of requisite propriety; when it has gone up far enough, that is till it begins to look disagreeably long, he will begin to ramify it, and if there be another tree in the picture with two large branches, he knows that this, by all laws of composition, ought to have three ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... fear whatever that either my daughter or any gentleman who may be among the guests will transgress the laws of propriety," said Lady Cinnamond icily. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier |
