"Indecency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tempered by the gloomy tone of the tale which succeeds, and which has variants in the Bagh o Bahar, a Hindustani versionof the Persian "Tale of the Four Darwayshes;" and in the Turkish Kirk Vezir or "Book of the Forty Vezirs." Its dismal peripeties are relieved only by the witty indecency of Eunuch Bukhayt and the admirable humour of Eunuch Kafur, whose "half lie" is known throughout the East. Here also the lover's agonies are piled upon him for the purpose of unpiling at last: the Oriental tale-teller knows by experience ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... too that people who wear crinoline could see the indecency of their own dress as other people see it. A respectable elderly woman stooping forward, invested in crinoline, exposes quite as much of her own person to the patient lying in the room as any opera-dancer does on the stage. But no ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... in an indecent way; phallic orgies were a part of them, and phallic orgies of a gross kind. The Egyptians tolerated incest, and could defend it by the example of the gods. Osiris had married his sister; Khem was "the Bull of his mother". The Egyptian novelettes are full of indecency and immorality, and Egyptian travellers describe their amours very much in the spirit of Ferdinand, Count Fathom; moreover, the complacency with which each Egyptian declares himself on his tomb to have possessed every virtue, and to have been free from all vices, is most remarkable. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Woodside—No Dwellings there; Marsh Level; Holt Hill—Oxton; Wallasey Pool; Birkenhead Priory; Tunnel under the Mersey; Tunnel at the Red Noses—Exploration of it; The Old Baths; Bath Street; The Bath Woman; The Wishing Gate; Bootle Organs; Sandhills; Indecency of Bathers; The Ladies Walk; Mrs. Hemans; the Loggerheads; Duke Street; Campbell the Poet; Gilbert Wakefield; Dr. Henderson; Incivility of the Liverpool Clergy; Bellingham—His Career and History, Crime, Death; ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... Tabitha Bramble. This is the best-preserved and most severe of all Smollett's characters. The resemblance to Don Quixote is only just enough to make it interesting to the critical reader, without giving offence to any body else. The indecency and filth in this novel are what must be allowed to all Smollett's writings.—The subject and characters in Count Fathom are, in general, exceedingly disgusting: the story is also spun out to a degree of tediousness in the serious and sentimental ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... alone calls him Statius, says that he became a Christian and eventually a bishop—like Hellodorus, whom he imitated—but there is no evidence of this. Photius, while severely criticizing his lapses into indecency, highly praises the conciseness and clearness of his style, which, however, is artificial and laboured. Many of the incidents of the romance are highly improbable, and the characters, except the heroine, fail to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... further explanation, in order to be satisfied as to the moral of this play: but is it not a very bitter satire upon the country, which calls itself the politest nation in the world, that the incidents, the indecency, the coarse blasphemy, and the vulgar wit of this piece, should find admirers among the public, and procure reputation for the author? Could not the Government, which has re-established, in a manner, the theatrical censorship, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on this play, which is noted for its novel and successful attempt to represent humour without indecency. Aristophanes here alludes to the prevailing custom of concluding every group of three tragedies with a play in which the chorus consisted of Satyrs: a custom which ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... what He meant by a neighbour, selected as an example a heretic and an alien. Last year, we remember, it was represented by a pious writer in the John Bull newspaper, and by some other equally fervid Christians, as a monstrous indecency, that the measure for the relief of the Jews should be brought forward in Passion week. One of these humorists ironically recommended that it should be read a second time on Good Friday. We should have had no objection; nor do we believe that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... been twice dramatised previously. A lost play, 'Palaemon and Arcyte,' by Richard Edwardes, was acted at Court in 1566, and a second piece, called 'Palamon and Arsett' (also lost), was purchased by Henslowe in 1594. The non-Shakespearean residue of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' is disfigured by indecency and triviality, and is ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... belonged to nobody and had done nothing—nothing even at Cambridge—had only the uncanny spell he had cast upon her younger daughter to recommend him; but if her younger daughter had a spark of filial feeling she wouldn't commit the indecency of deserting for his sake a deeply dependent and ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... great artists of the two operas sing in private; was regaled with information concerning the remarkable decency or indecency of their private careers. She saw fashionable plays which instructed the public about squalor, murder, and men's mistresses, which dissected very skilfully and artistically the ethics of moral degradation. And being as healthy and curious ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... said that, seeking, I think, to command his voice: and then he began his speech, which I think he had learned by heart; and it was one of the most moving discourses that I have ever heard, though he committed a great indecency in it, when he said that henceforth no man could ever doubt again that it was the Papists who had burned London; and professed himself—(though this I suppose he was bound to ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... puberty will be natural and normal, and when the more serious and difficult problems of adolescence present themselves, he will be prepared to handle them on the basis of right thinking and right living. Natural and healthy sport in the open air, and the avoidance of foul language and indecency should be stressed. The use of alcohol, coffee and tea by children tends to weaken their sexual organs. Every boy should know that chastity means continence. He should know that lascivious thoughts lead to lascivious actions, and that these are a ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... payment fail, and they knew perfectly well what the result would be. The children of the upper world could not even by chance give a thought to the sources whence their needs are supplied; speech on such a subject in their presence would be held indecent. In John Hewett's position, the indecency, the crime, would have been to keep silence and pretend that the needs of existence are ministered to as ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... have the honour of it all, whose sweet, natural, and easy modesty, in person, behaviour, and conversation, forbid indecency, even in thought, much more in word, to approach you: insomuch that no rakes can be rakes in your presence, and yet they hardly know to what they ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... flesh, once he hears the Voice of God, and all eternity cleaves the earth at his feet with a glare of truth. Once in her loathsome life, that woman, brazen with sin and shame, flaunting on the pavement, the scorn and jest of decency and indecency, the fearful index of corrupt society,—even she has her hour of softness, when the tiny grass that creeps out from the stones comes greenly into a spring sunshine, and as with a divine whisper recalls to her the time before she fell, the unburdened heart, the pure childish pleasures, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... his legs, blue with the cold, showed through the tatters of his nether garments. This, under the circumstances, provoked neither jeers nor pity. No one cared how the next man felt or looked. Colonel D'Hubert himself hardened to exposure, suffered mainly in his self-respect from the lamentable indecency of his costume. A thoughtless person may think that with a whole host of inanimate bodies bestrewing the path of retreat there could not have been much difficulty in supplying the deficiency. But the great majority of ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... inward. Do you see nothing that causes you to feel ashamed and foolish? Do you—you—fail to recognize the indecency of a woman of your mental age permitting herself to fancy that she is experiencing the authentic passions of youth? Are you capable of creating life? Can you love with unsullied memory? Have you the ideals ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... his own private contemplation as shining an object of moral perfection as he portrayed himself before others. His perversity was of the spirit, not of the letter, and thus escaped his own recognition. His indecency and falsehood were in his soul, but not in his consciousness; so that he paraded them at the very moment that he was claiming for himself all that was their opposite. No one who knew him took him seriously, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... handles—he generally can. "You are suffering from morbid senile relapse into puerile enjoyment of indecency," he or Mrs. Momus (whom later ages have called Grundy) may be kind enough to say. "You were a member of the Rabelais Club of pleasant memory, and think it necessary to live up to your earlier profession." "You have said this in print before [I have not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... for a moment she had weighed the possibility. "Why, they might take a photograph of my child AND PUT IT IN THE PAPERS!" Mrs. Welland exclaimed when her mother's last plan was hinted to her; and from this unthinkable indecency the clan recoiled with a collective shudder. The ancestress had had to give in; but her concession was bought only by the promise that the wedding-breakfast should take place under her roof, though (as the Washington Square connection said) with the Wellands' house in easy reach it ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... rebel-looking rascals." Whatever our feelings and resentments may be on account of impressment, inhuman treatment, and plundering our fobs and pockets, and of our clothing, we never speak of the British king and government in terms of gross indecency; whereas, we American prisoners of war, are often assailed with the bitterest sarcasms and curses of the President of the UNITED STATES, the CONGRESS, and ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... said something with a chuckle, which I took to be the equivalent of 'O, you women, you women; it is true of you all!' I fear it was not complimentary. At no time was there the least sign of the ugly indecency of the eastern islands. All was poetry pure and simple. The music itself was as complex as our own, though constructed on an entirely different basis; once or twice I was startled by a bit of something very like the best English sacred music, but it was only ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... follows the traditional Anglo-Saxon lines. Anybody who knows no more of Japan than may be gathered from the pages of LAFCADIO HEARN will at least have learned that her youth is taught to regard the love-interest of an ordinary English novel as an indecency; and so will recognise the improbability of the romantic element in the play. Still, all that is of little consequence, for there must have been very few who went to His Majesty's to improve their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... for looking knowing and indecent beyond words, rolling her eyes and pitching her eyebrows in a certain way—oh, it was quite sufficient for her companions! And yet, if they had ever actually demanded a dirty story or a really open indecency from her, she would ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... is, "Restrained within due limits of propriety; free from indecency or lewdness; not excessive or extreme; moderate." A Christian's apparel should be modest in cut, that is, in the way it is made; it should cover the body as a modest person would cover it, not displaying those parts that the prevailing standards of modesty require to be covered.(1) ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... to consider one matter of special importance in the book- -its turpiloquium. This stumbling-block is of two kinds, completely distinct. One is the simple, naive and child like indecency which, from Tangiers to Japan, occurs throughout general conversation of high and low in the present day. It uses, like the holy books of the Hebrews, expressions "plainly descriptive of natural situations;" and it treats in an unconventionally free and naked manner of subjects ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the horrid indecency of Miss Chudleigh's habit at the Ranelagh Masquerade some five years back, when Mrs Montagu, observing her, said: "Here is Iphigenia for the sacrifice, but so naked the high priest may inspect the entrails of the victim without more ado." And says ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... have observed," Captain Cook wrote, "that our friends in the South Seas have not even the idea of indecency, with respect to any object or any action, but this was by no means the case with the inhabitants of New Zealand, in whose carriage and conversation there was as much modest reserve and decorum with respect to actions, which yet in their opinion were not criminal, as are to be found among the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and written ordinary press-work. During this time, which was very short, and this time only, his friends admit a certain indulgence in drinking, which he gave up completely, but which was used against him with as much pitilessness as indecency in Blackwood; though heaven only knows how the most Tory soul alive could see fitness of things in the accusation of gin-drinking brought against Hazlitt by the whiskey-drinkers of the Noctes. For the greater part of his literary life he seems ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... but to the taverns of London, you will see modest women, at all hours of the day, often alone, sitting in the midst of the men. In the Palais Royal, at no hour of the night do you witness scenes of gross indecency or riot. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... That which Mr. Stephens attempts to show existed once in Yucatan,[149-4] rests entirely by his own statement on a fancied resemblance of no value whatever, and the arguments of Lafitau to the same effect are quite insufficient. There is a decided indecency in the remains of ancient American art, especially in Peru (Meyen), and great lubricity in many ceremonies, but the proof is altogether wanting to bind these with the recognition of a fecundating ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... and all the handsome young Women of our Acquaintance, shew yourselves to no other Purpose than to gain a Conquest over some Man of Worth, in order to bestow your Charms and Fortune on him. There's no Indecency in the Confession, the Design is modest and honourable, and all your Affectation cant ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... experiences; insurrection was putting the hand to the plough; actual rebellion, fighting the good fight; and regicide, doing the great work of the Lord. This vocabulary became grievously unfashionable at the Reformation, and was at once swept away by the torrent of irreligion, blasphemy, and indecency, which were at that period deemed necessary to secure conversation against the imputation of disloyalty and fanaticism. The court of Cromwell, if lampoons can be believed, was not much less vicious than that of Charles ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... to take the opportunity of testifying, of severing any connection that might yet exist in any one's mind between them and the other products of their parents. They did so, with the uncompromising decision proper to their years, and with, perhaps, the touch of indecency, regardlessness of the proprieties, which was characteristic of them. Their friends soon discovered that they need not guard their tongues in speaking of Potterism before the Potter twins. The way the twins ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... songs of the French Canadians are simple, almost infantine, in their language, and as chaste in expression as the hymns of other countries. Impure songs originate in classes who know better, and revel from choice in musical slang and indecency. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... even can sew well? The cottage girl is always a poor hand at her needle, and has to be taught by the elder servants when she first goes into her place. Accustomed from childhood to what would be considered abominable indecency in a higher class of life; constantly hearing phrases which it is impossible to allude to; running wild about the lanes and fields with stalwart young men coarser and ruder than those at home; seeing other girls none the worse off, and commiserated with rather than condemned, what wonder is it ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... aesthetically mature enough to appreciate Ibsen does not leave "The Ghosts" with eugenic reform ideas. The inherited paralysis on a luetic basis is accepted there as a tragic element of human fate. On the height of true art the question of decency or indecency has disappeared, too. The nude marble statue is an inspiration, and not a possible stimulus to frivolous sensuality, if the mind is aesthetically cultivated. The nakedness of erotic passion in the drama of high aesthetic ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... said not another word. He turned his back on the whining boy and went to his room. He felt sick with shame. The indecency of the whole thing revolted him. It was as if his naked heart had been torn from his breast and held up to the jeers of a vulgar world by the merciless hand of a scorned and jealous woman. He felt stunned as if by a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... question as you would any other question. Don't treat it reverently; don't treat it rakishly. Treat it naturally. Don't insult your intelligence and lower your moral tone by thinking about either the decency or the indecency of matters that are familiar, undeniable, and unchangeable facts of life. Don't look on woman as mere female, but as human being. Remember that she has a mind and a heart as well as a body. In a sentence, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... indecency of your suggestion is almost grotesque. To impose upon a timid, trusting Thou is either base or dastardly—I forget which. I am glad none of the others were here to hear what I feel sure to have been but a thoughtless, idle word. I shan't say anything ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... the "high priest" performed a gross act of indecency, the girl swore the "widgies' oath" on the "bodgies' bible".—Sydney "Truth" ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... so great a point should be decided. On a division, in which though many said aye to adjourning, nobody would go out for fear of losing their seats, it was carried by 379 to 31, for proceeding—and then—half the House went away. The ministers representing the indecency of this, and Fitzherbert saying that many were within call, Stanley observed, that after voting against adjournment, a third part had adjourned themselves, when, instead of being within call, they ought to have been within hearing; this was ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... beautiful young woman came to look at us, perfect in every way, and nearly naked, but unconscious of indecency; a very Venus in black. The light-grey, red-tailed parrot seen on the West Coast is common in Rua, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... virtue to its dignity, and taught innocence not to be ashamed. This is an elevation of literary character "above all Greek, above all Roman fame." No greater felicity can genius attain than that of having purified intellectual pleasure, separated mirth from indecency, and wit from licentiousness; of having taught a succession of writers to bring elegance and gaiety to the aid of goodness; and, if I may use expressions yet more awful, of having ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... "but you're mistaken, aren't you?" She was, in truth, horribly uncomfortable, dismayed, indeed, disillusioned. She disliked the turn things had taken quite intensely. The indecency of it afflicted her. The suffering implied by the tone appalled her. She looked at Mary furtively, with eyes that were full of apprehension. But if she had hoped to find that these words had been spoken without ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Capitolinus, (which is rather difficult,) Falco behaved with the most petulant indecency to Pertinax, on the day of his accession. The wise emperor only admonished him of his youth and in experience. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... publicly exposed, without much private injury to the individuals who partake of them. It is, however, not a little remarkable, that till lately, on the very opposite side of the road, the neighbourhood has exhibited scenes of vice, immorality, and indecency, which it is the great object of this Charity if possible to prevent, by an endeavour to reclaim the miserable and deluded wretches from their evil ways. I remember the late John Home Tooke related in the House of Commons a curious anecdote, in allusion ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... into their hands, and retained them as indecent publications. Burned them, I hope he meant, and so, I fear, will all holders of this notorious publication, for prices will advance, and Sir Richard will chuckle to think that indecency is a much better ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... drunkard on the park bench Touches a girl's breast That throbs with its own ruthless and stupid delight. The new-born child crawls in his mother's filth. Life, the sleep walker, Lifts toward the skies An immense gesture of indecency. ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... long volleys; the lightning showed him the shapes of things within the room, with a weird distinctness that rent from them all likeness to the purpose they were made for, bereaved them of utility, of their matter-of-factness, presented them as skeletons, abstractions, with indecency in their appearance, like the naked nerves and sinews of a leg preserved in, spirit. The sound of the rain against the house stunned his power of thinking, he rose to shut his windows; then, returning to his bed, threw himself down again. He stayed there till ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... material. And then appeared Goldsmith, too much influenced by the fad of sensibility, but aiming to depict human life as governed by high ideals, and helping to cleanse the English novel from brutality and indecency. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... sees nothing to justify this opinion, remarking that Catullus was not the man to use a veil of allegory in saying an indecency. "He preferred the bare, and even coarse, word; and he is too rich in this style of writing to need ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... parents. At present, no class of her Majesty's subjects cries so loud, and so vainly, to her motherly bosom, and the humanity of Parliament as these poor little children; their parents, the lowest and most degraded set of brutes in England, teach them swearing and indecency at home, and rob them of all decent education, and drive them to their death, in order to squeeze a few shillings out of their young lives; for what?—to waste in drink and debauchery. Count the public ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... there, and of the orders Catherine got to kiss it, with a "KOPF AB (Head off, if you won't)!" from the bantering Czar, whom she had to obey,—is not incredible, after what we have seen. It seems, he begged this bit of Antique Indecency from Friedrich Wilhelm; who, we may fancy, would give him such an article with especial readiness. That same day, fourth of the Visit, Thursday, 23d of the month, the august Party went its ways again; Friedrich Wilhelm convoying "as far as ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... books except, perhaps, fiction. The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer round that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences which is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself. New truth is only useful to supplement the old; rough truth ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... letter with indescribable emotion. The purport of it was to invite him to dinner, and to ridicule his chivalrous respect for me. He assured him, 'that every woman had her price, and, with gross indecency, hinted, that he should be glad to have the duty of a husband taken off his hands. These he termed liberal sentiments. He advised him not to shock my romantic notions, but to attack my credulous generosity, and weak pity; and concluded with requesting him to lend him ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... paper pellets at the dogs. A stout perspiring Jew in a shabby evening suit came forward and begged for decorum. Then there appeared a stout little man in a top hat who wished to recite verses of, I gathered, a violent indecency. I was uncomfortable about Vera Michailovna, but I need not have been. The indecency was of no importance to her, and she was interested in the human tragedy of the performer. Tragedy it was. The man was hungry and dirty and not far from tears. He forgot his verses and glanced nervously into ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... despair—I mean hope. What do I mean? That's the worst of music! I want to dance, laugh, eat pink cakes, yellow cakes, drink thin, sharp wine. Or an indecent story, now—I could relish that. The older one grows the more one likes indecency. Hah, hah! I'm laughing. What at? You said nothing, nor did the ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... vista of enormous possibilities—literally enormous possibilities; but upon this dazzling vista, after one stare of amazement, he resolutely shut his eyes, even as a conscientious "scientist" should. After that, the Food of the Gods sounded blatant to the pitch of indecency. He was surprised he had used the expression. Yet for all that something of that clear-eyed moment hung about him and broke ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... you find his Demetrius and Leontius staying in the midst of a routed army, to hear the cold mirth of the Lieutenant; and Demetrius afterwards appearing with a pistol in his hand, in the next age to Alexander the Great[3]. And for his Shepherd, he falls twice into the former indecency of wounding women. But these absurdities, which those poets committed, may more properly be called the age's fault than theirs. For, besides the want of education and learning, (which was their particular unhappiness) they wanted the benefit of converse: ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... asking about Hinduism, "Surely if the idolatry, and folly, and indecency, which we know exists in the religion as it now is could be cleared away, we should find remaining some deep philosophic thoughts and mystical poetical fancies which ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... maintain the tie between Great Britain and her colonies. This attack upon his character made him one of England's enemies, and, as it proved, one of the most dangerous of them. His conduct is not palliated by the indecency of his opponents. It has been urged in his defence that, as Whately had shown the letters to certain English politicians, it was fair that Boston politicians should also see them, that as agent he was bound to do the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... that band play for here to-day? She has been dead and I so short a time!... Her little hands are hardly cold as yet; But they can show such cruel indecency As to ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... of St. Louis, therefore, is a highly flourishing establishment, and the proprietor knows his business well enough to be aware that indecency never pays expenses in the United States,—as all will finally discover who try it. At Cincinnati there is also a Varieties Theatre, but such a theatre! A vast and dirty barn, with whitewashed walls and no ceiling, in which a minstrel band ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... him as if they had been cut by little, little knives close under the eyeballs. He turned from her, shamed, as if he had witnessed some indecency, some outrage ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... have been grateful to Charlie for not letting us miss it, and it was perfectly true that the way to see it was to be alone with it; there would, indeed, have been a positive indecency in seeing it in any other way. He had spared our decency. And yet I think we hated him for having sent us there. It was as if he had sent us to look at something horrible, at an outrage, at violence ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... writings of Petronius Arbiter, read with rapture the amorous sallies of Ovid's pen, and chuckle over the story of Lucian's ass; yet, if a modern author presumes to relate the progress of a simple intrigue, are shocked at the indecency and immorality of the scene;—who delight in following Guzman d'Alfarache, through all the mazes of squalid beggary; who with pleasure accompany Don Quixote and his squire, in the lowest paths of fortune; who are diverted with the adventures ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... let matters rest on suspicion. He soon gave open proofs of his interest with the Confessor in procuring an office of some importance for one Rollo, a Roman of mean extraction and very despicable parts. When I represented to the king the indecency of conferring such an honor on such a fellow, he answered me that he was the archbishop's relation. 'Then, sir,' replied I, 'he is related to your enemy.' Nothing more passed at that time; but I soon ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... sorry that my poor Publication, which seems after all to be of no more Significancy in their Opinion than "a Man of Straw" has given so great Uneasiness to some of his Honor's Friends—This Advertiser indirectly chargeth me with Indecency in "undertaking to answer a Governor's Message." Now I did not undertake to anwer a Governor's Message; and to speak plain, I did not think it worth while to undertake it—I believe I am not alone in the Opinion, that some messages might ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... 1746 his pen seems to have been always busy. He first tried his hand on some satires, which gained for him numerous enemies; and in 1748 he produced his first novel, Roderick Random, which, in spite of its indecency, the world at once acknowledged to be a work of genius: the verisimilitude was perfect; every one recognized in the hero the type of many a young North countryman going out to seek his fortune. The variety is great, the scenes are more varied and real than those in Richardson and Fielding, the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... most part the streets were quite empty; and even in the chief piazza, where there was still some belated show of buying and selling, and about the doors of the caffes, where there was a good deal of languid loafing, there was no indecency of noise or bustle There were visibly few people in the place, and it was in decay; but it was not squalid in its lapse. The streets were scrupulously neat and clean, and the stuccoed houses were all painted of that pale saffron hue which gives ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... since then that I do not instinctively compare it with the compliment this mountain farmer paid his wife that day. I never hear the love of a man for his wife misnamed by the new disillusioned thinkers of our times that I do not recall the charming testimony of this husband against the injustice and indecency of their views. ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... to pass Clause before Sitting adjourned. Question put that Clause 3 pass. Then SAGE, smelling obtrusively of cigarettes, interposed, and declared it "would be indecent" to accept the Clause without further discussion. Nothing House shrinks from just now more abjectly than from charge of indecency. Accordingly debate stood over, and Thursday may, if the SAGE and his Party please, and the Closure is not invoked, be appropriated for further discussion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... diatribe against him delivered by the coarse and brutal Wedderburn, while members of the Privy Council who were present, with the single exception of lord North, "lost all dignity and all self-respect. They laughed aloud at each sarcastic sally of Wedderburn. 'The indecency of their behaviour,' in the words of Shelburne, 'exceeded, as is agreed on all hands, that of any committee of elections;' and Fox, in a speech which he made as late as 1803, reminded the House how on that memorable occasion 'all men tossed up their hats and clapped their ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Marine Committee reported to Congress that "Captain Barry ought, within twenty days, make full acknowledgment to the Navy Board of having treated Mr. Hopkinson with indecency and disrespect." Nothing further appears on record, so it is presumed Captain Barry complied and the case closed. At this time Barry was, by order of the same Committee, actively at work destroying British supplies in the lower Delaware from Mantua ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... his ear the suggestion that princes, ere this, had been known to have two wives— one of them unofficial. He could have struck himself in the face for the iniquity of the suggestion; he flushed from the indecency of it; but so have sinners ever flushed as they set forth on the garish road to Avernus. Yet—yet somehow he must carry on the farce of being single until the adoption and the succession had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... working at cases and writing the books which are still carefully studied by every young man who wishes to make himself a master of our law. In private they had perpetual squabbles, and they quarrelled with equal virulence and indecency before the world. The matrimonial settlement of their only and ill-starred daughter was the occasion of an outbreak on the part of husband and wife, that not only furnished diversion for courtiers ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the power of the playground over moral character. Perhaps a smaller number realize how dangerous are some of the elements at work there. Play of itself is immensely valuable, but play means playfellows, and some of these are simply purveyors of indecency and moral contagion in conversation and act. We are required to send our children to school; we have a right to demand freedom from moral contagion. Do you know what goes on in secret places on the grounds? Do you know that the vilest ideas and phrases are current in pictures, cards, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... followed a train of Seloucian music-girls, who sang songs derisive of the effeminacy and cowardice of the proconsul. After this pretended parade of his prisoner through the streets of the town, Surenas called a meeting of the Seleucian senate, and indignantly denounced to them the indecency of the literature which he had found in the Roman tents. The charge, it is said, was true; but the Seleucians were not greatly impressed by the moral lesson read to them, when they remarked the train of concubines ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... I could name him, but it would be an indecency to do so, for part of his charm is his complete unconsciousness of the affection, and even adoration, of the little group of younger men who call themselves his "fans"—I suppose that B——'s talk is as ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... with black teeth that we are asked to admire as a Japanese beauty. The traveller in China is early impressed by the contrast between the almost entire freedom from apparent immorality of the Chinese cities, especially of Western China, and the flaunting indecency of the Yoshiwaras of Japan, with "their teeming, seething, busy mass of women, whose virtue is industry and whose industry ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... accused him of treating them with contempt, and of embezzling public money; while he retorted by charging them with encroaching on the royal prerogative and treating the representative of the King with indecency. Under such conditions an efficient conduct of the war ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... fury, a few twaddling copybook headings about 'the sacred duty of order' will lay the storm again? What spirit is there but the devil's spirit in bloodthirsty threats of revenge?"—"I denounce the weapons which you have been deluded into employing to gain you your rights, and the indecency and profligacy which you are letting be mixed up with them! Will you strengthen and justify your enemies? Will you disgust and cripple your friends? Will you go out of your way to do wrong? When you can be free by fair means will you try foul? When you might keep the name of Liberty ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... father's illness. There had been a going and coming of her maid, a thumping about of boxes, an ordering of four-wheelers; it appeared to old Mrs. Tramore that something of the objectionableness, the indecency, of her granddaughter's prospective connection had already gathered about the place. It was a violation of the decorum of bereavement which was still fresh there, and from the indignant gloom of the mistress of the house you might have inferred not so much that ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... not easy for us to understand how such a farrago of absurdity, profanity, and indecency could ever have been gravely produced in a so-called court of justice in England as a state paper—a bill of indictment against a body of noblemen and gentlemen; against an order that for two hundred years had been ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... feature of a topic which pure chance and impure idiocy have of late conspired to pull about in the public prints,—I mean the question of "indecency" in writing,—is the patent ease with which this topic may be disposed of. Since time's beginning, every age has had its literary taboos, selecting certain things—more or less arbitrarily, but usually some ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... (INDIGNEMENT) wanting in the respect they owe you, and in the consideration which is due to all sovereigns [French not famous for their refined demeanor in Saxony this time]. Why could not I fly to prevent such disorders, such indecency! I can only offer you a great deal of good-will; but I feel well that, in present circumstances, the thing wanted is effective results and reality. May I, Madam, be so happy as to render you some service! May your fortune be equal to your virtues! ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... occurred. The captain broke loose upon the dead man like a thunderclap. Oaths rolled from his lips in a continuous stream. And they were not namby-pamby oaths, or mere expressions of indecency. Each word was a blasphemy, and there were many words. They crisped and crackled like electric sparks. I had never heard anything like it in my life, nor could I have conceived it possible. With a turn for literary expression myself, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... almost universally recognised as an honest and honourable artist, and as a great master in his craft. Nobody who is at all instructed ventures any longer to say that Zola is indecent because he loves indecency, or is pleased by the contemplation of the squalid and obscene. We see him as he truly is—a pessimist in humanity—sad and oppressed, and bitter with the gall of a hopeless sympathy with suffering ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... amidst so many ingenious tricks, apologues, tales, portraits and dialogues, in earnest as well as when masquerading, his deportment throughout is irreproachable and his tone is perfect. If; as an author, he develops a paradox it is with almost English gravity. If he fully exposes indecency it is with decent terms. In the full tide of buffoonery, as well as in the full blast of license, he is ever the well-bred man, born and brought up in the aristocratic circle in which full liberty is allowed but where good-breeding is supreme, where every idea is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and to please our brutes, they have appeared immodest in the extreme. Yet they lay this charge wholly at our door, and say that Englishmen are ashamed of nothing, and that we have led them to public acts of indecency never before practised among themselves. Iron here, more precious than gold, bears down every barrier of restraint; honesty and modesty yield ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... and spreading scandal. The injustice he saw practiced on shore had always turned him with a sense of relief to the cleansing challenge of the sea; always, brought in contact with cunning and self-seeking men and heartless schemes, with women cheapened by a conviction of the indecency of life, he was in a state of hot indignation. From all this Taou ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... mirth and sportful divertisement are mean and petty matters; anything at least is by playing therewith made such: great things are thereby diminished and debased; especially sacred things do grievously suffer thence, being with extreme indecency and indignity depressed beneath themselves, when they become the subjects of flashy wit, or the entertainments of frothy merriment: to sacrifice their honour to our vain pleasure, being like the ridiculous fondness of that people which, as AElian reporteth, worshipping ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... and permitted it to be written in the clearest terms. And, therefore, though there are passages in the "Inferno" which it would be impossible for any poet now to write, I look upon it as all the more perfect for them. For there can be no question but that one characteristic of excessive vice is indecency, a general baseness in its thoughts and acts concerning the body,[40] and that the full portraiture of it cannot be given without marking, and that in the strongest lines, this tendency to corporeal degradation; which, in the time of Dante, could be done frankly, but cannot ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... express himself on this occasion have become memorable. "Where the devil, Master Lodovick," said the reverend personage, "have you picked up such a parcel of trumpery?" The original term is much stronger, aggravating the insult with indecency. There is no equivalent for it in English; and I shall not repeat it in Italian. "It is as low and indecent," says Panizzi, "as any in the language." Suffice it to say that, although the age was not scrupulous in such matters, it was one of the last words befitting the lips of the reverend Catholic; ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... the very prologue, that we could not present even that piece of writing entire in our extract. We are informed that the circulation in England of the works of Rabelais, in translation, has been interfered with by the English government, on the ground of their indecency. We are bound to admit, that, if any writings whatever were to be suppressed on that ground, the writings of Rabelais are certainly entitled to be of the number. It is safe to say that never, no, not even in the boundless license of the comedy of Aristophanes, was ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Judge's procedure, from the time of his arrival in the Province down to his departure therefrom. To the serious grounds of complaint which had unquestionably been given were added numerous delinquencies of the most petty and trifling nature. It was stigmatized as "a great indecency" that Judge Willis had been seen in a dress "but little according with his situation."[113] In view of the interests involved, and of the grave nature of the questions to be decided, it seems ludicrous that the appellant should ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... case in a manner contrary to that followed by her stepmother. If the latter, like Augustus, wore garments of wool woven at home, Julia affected silks purchased at great price from the oriental merchants. These the ladies of the older type considered a ruinous luxury because of the expense, and an indecency because of the prominence which they gave to the figure. Where Livia was sparing, Julia was prodigal. If Livia preferred to go to the theater surrounded by elderly and dignified men, Julia always showed herself in public with a retinue of brilliant ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... shocking to the religionists could have been invented; they united in denouncing the defiant indecency. Hundreds of persons, not all of them venerable and frocked, were seen to rise and depart, shaking the dust from their feet. In course of tile third circuit, the tripods were coolly picked up and returned to their ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... over Rosalind.... But why in heaven's name isn't Jimmy at home this very moment,—with a wife and carpet-slippers and a large-size bottle of paregoric on his mantelpiece,—instead of here, grinning like a fool over some blatant indecency? He ought to marry; every young man ought to marry. Oh, you futile, abject, burbling twin-brother of the first patron that procured a reputation for Bedlam! why aren't you married—married years ago,—with ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... that the best kind is one that is safe to ride in, presentable when dismounted, and easily arranged, which conditions are thoroughly fulfilled by my patent. There are riding women who object so much to the indecency of apron skirts (Figs. 55 and 56) that they adopt the dangerous closed pattern. My skirt would commend itself to those of my sex who are sufficiently old-fashioned in their ideas to desire a safe and, at the same time, decent and graceful covering. Some ladies consider ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... understand me very well,' returned von Rosen. 'I have not your philosophy. I wear my heart upon my sleeve, excuse the indecency! It is a very little one,' she laughed, 'and I so ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conditions; the confusion of costumes and rags beside uniforms, old men beside young; even children, some carried in their mothers' arms, others holding their father's hand or his garments; common prostitutes, their silken dresses soiled and torn, indecency on their brow, and insult on their lips, hundreds of women of the lowest description, and from the dregs of the people, recruited to swell the cortege, and excite commiseration from the garrets of the faubourgs, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... must enter a loud, a screeching protest against the Arab brutes—the schieks being the very worst of the brutes—who have these monuments in their hands. Their numbers, the filthiness of their dress—or one might almost say no dress—their stench, their obscene indecency, their clattering noise, their rapacity, exercised without a moment's intercession; their abuse, as in this wise: "Very bad English-man; dam bad; dam, dam, dam! Him want to take all him money to ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... How can we fancy a lie told by a gentleman in golden uniform, or a lady in a lace dress? But if the defenders of the civilization of Rossia and of the noble manners of its aristocracy knew all the cruel judgments of Rossian masters, the lewdness, recklessness, indecency, and shallowness often concealed beneath their artificial good breeding and apparent courtesy, they would learn that laces may cover coarse tissues, and gold hide corroded brass. The gaudy dress and uniform serve but to permit more daring deeds; the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Appointments, in order to promote Interviews of greater Secrecy, and no Manner of Lewdness is ever suffer'd to be transacted in them; which Order is so strictly observ'd, that, bar the Ill Manners and Noise of the Company that frequent them, you'll meet with no more Indecency, and generally less Lasciviousness there, than with us are to seen at a Play-House. Thirdly, the Female Traders, that come to these Evening-Exchanges, are always the Scum of the People, and generally such, as in ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... to my mind its size bordered on indecency. I like a box to look sufficiently large to take all I think a woman ought to need for a night's stay. Pauline often assures me it does hold everything, squashed tight, of course. I say it must be squashed very tight, and she says it is. "That's the ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... your property, and place you in such an awkward position that you cannot find a single article in that thick code of laws of yours which will enable you to bring an action against your uncle, because he had the indecency not to die." ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... arrival she hastened down to the water side in order to receive him. The worthy old sea captain, on landing, embraced his lady with tenderness and true affection. This, as there were many spectators by, gave great offence to the puritanical landsmen, and was considered as an act of indecency and a flagrant profanation of the Sabbath. The next day, therefore, the captain was summoned before the magistrates and selectmen, who, with many severe rebukes and pious exhortations, ordered him to ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... called the king his dad, and used to sign himself, in his letters, "your slave and dog Steeny." There are extant some letters which passed between the king and his favorite, written, on the part of the king, in a style of grossness and indecency such that the chroniclers of those days said that they were not fit to be printed. They would not "blot their pages" with them, they said. King Charles's letters ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott |
