|
|
|
More "Decent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Girondins, by Insurrection; and became extinct as a Party: not without a sigh from most Historians. The men were men of parts, of Philosophic culture, decent behaviour; not condemnable in that they were Pedants and had not better parts; not condemnable, but most unfortunate. They wanted a Republic of the Virtues, wherein themselves should be head; and they ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a brown study to hear. Presently she spoke. "I believe that love is best founded upon a degree of respect and veneration which it is decent in youth to render unto ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... might learn the extent of their conviction, by applying at the commissary's office. Such as might appear to have been sent out for life were told they need not despair of being, in due time, again the masters of their own labours; as every one must have seen, that a decent, orderly, industrious and obedient conduct, had frequently recommended many of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... fourteen pence;[180] and the same printer's book of Common Prayer for four shillings. Yet if you wanted a superbly bound Prymer, it would have cost you (even five and twenty years before) nearly half a guinea.[181] Nor could you have purchased a decent Ballad much under sixpence; and Hall's Chronicle would have drawn from your purse twelve shillings;[182] so that, considering the then value of specie, there is not much ground of complaint against the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... ought to be provided with a decent fairy godmother," she gulped. "If mine did her duty she'd come to rescue me now. Yes, she would, and ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... may, the trade unions are the only form of working-class organisation to-day which can secure for the workers a decent standard of existence under capitalist conditions of industry. Anything which tends to weaken them and reduce their influence, whether in the interests of the employers or for the supposed advancement of r-r-r-revolutionary proletarian ...
— Bolshevism: A Curse & Danger to the Workers • Henry William Lee
... indecency is this!" she cries commandingly. "How many times must it be repeated to you, that you must not jump out on the street during the day, and also—pfui!—only in your underwear. I can't understand how you have no conscience yourselves. Decent girls, who respect themselves, must not demean themselves that way in public. It seems, thank God, that you are not in an establishment catering to soldiers, but in a respectable house. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... the cloth to lie upon the Mensa, or upper surface of the Table, but do not require the whole Table to be covered or enveloped therewith. The linen cloth is to be laid upon the covering described in Canon 82 as 'a carpet of silk or other decent stuff.' ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... cold-blooded suggestion, yet I did not utter one word of refusal, and must have led Gottlieb to believe that I was of a mind with him, for he slapped me on the shoulder and bade me good luck. Good luck! Was ever a man of decent birth and education forced upon such an errand? The convoying of a drunken criminal to—where? I knew not—somewhere ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... wait there." Then she went on with her judgment. Yes, she went on, although her eyes were blind, and the blood beating in her ears sounded like the roll of drums. She finished it, and after a decent interval, bowed her head in acknowledgement of the customary salutes, and made the sign which intimated that the Court ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... surprised me, for under other governments I had seen that foreigners were considered anything but necessary to the colony and after having opposed, more or less openly, the intruder's initiative, the Authority seized the slightest pretext, that offered itself under a decent aspect, to send the new-comer back over the frontier for fear that their digestion might ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... turning round; "I am a bad, ungrateful man, but I'm not utterly wanting in decent feeling. You touch me on a ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... ten pieces in a frugal manner, and Aladdin, though used to an idle life, had left off playing with young lads of his own age ever since his adventure with the African magician. He spent his time in walking about, and conversing with decent people, with whom he gradually got acquainted. Sometimes he would stop at the principal merchants' shops, where people of distinction met, and listen to their discourse, by which he gained some little knowledge ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... great cat, with Nick Barry, now his song was done, lolling against her, and two white women, one young and well favoured, and the other harshly handsome, both with their husbands present, and I doubt not decent women enough, though something violent of temper. As I entered, Mistress Allgood, one of them, begun a harangue at the top of a shrill voice, with her husband plucking vainly at her sleeve to temper her vehemence. Mistress ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... poisoned by that pestiferous river and bad living! Bowles said he was sure he was not eating meat enough. I dare say that greasy woman gives him nothing fit to eat! Albinia, you must talk to him—find out whether old Goldsmith gives him a decent salary!' ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the house. The door was opened by Lucy and he entered unperceived by the domestics. The first operation was to cut off the whole of his hair close to his head. He was then attired in Herbert's clothes, and looked, as Lucy told him, a quiet and decent young gentleman. Then he took his place on a couch in the sitting-room, and Herbert rung for supper, which he had ordered to be prepared for a guest as well as ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... number of decent cottages had been put up, I offered them to the tenants at the same rents that they had paid for the ruinous ones, which I then had pulled down, as I found they were utterly unfit to be repaired. On their sites, after the ground had been drained, I erected others; and in the ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... is where any worke is learnedly compiled in measurable speech, and framed in wordes conteyning number or proportion of just syllables, delighting the readers or hearers as well by the apt and decent framing of wordes in equal resemblance of quantity—commonly called verse, as by the skylfull handling ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... undisturbed in its patient backwater. It recks as little of sky-scrapers as of transportation. Its towns are not ashamed of being villages, and the vanity which it guards is not the vanity of shapeless size, but the rarer vanity of a quiet and decent life. ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... trembling with the effort, restrained himself to a more decent bearing before the woman, the lady, the friend's wife. His arms fell by his side, and he repeated in lower tones, though the flame of his gaze ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... old maidens, the younger one—Sophia Ivanovna—was the kindlier, while the older one—Maria Ivanovna—was of austere disposition. Sophia Ivanovna kept the girl in decent clothes, taught her to read and intended to give her an education. Maria Ivanovna said that the girl ought to be taught to work that she might become a useful servant, was exacting, punished, and even beat her when in bad humor. Under ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... resumed Mr. Hardcastle, "it stands to reason children should learn to like what their elders have liked before them. That's the only decent and Christian way of living. And as I said to my son,—to my Dick, you know" (Mr. Hardcastle had a son of whom he always spoke as if sole owner of him, and indeed solely responsible for his being),—"'Dick,' I said, when he spoke disrespectfully ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... rules by heart. It means turning Latin and Greek into English, for the mere sake of being able to do it, and without the smallest regard to the worth, or worthlessness, of the author read. It means the learning of innumerable, not always decent, fables in such a shape that the meaning they once had is dried up into utter trash; and the only impression left upon a boy's mind is, that the people who believed such things must have been the greatest idiots the world ever saw. And it means, finally, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... but little change was visible in the family arrangements, for though a sensitive she was a spirited woman. Her garden, which had been the pride and delight of her husband, still flourished in perfect neatness. After the usual time of decent seclusion, she again interchanged visits with her friends and neighbors, and continued to maintain the stand in the village society which had always been conceded to her. But this state of things did not long continue, for alas! the gathering as well as the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... still prefer to any such violent means is that you reason with him privately, and compel him to bring me home to your parish in a decent and careful manner, in the way that would be adopted by any respectable man, whose wife had been living away from him for some time, by reason, say, of peculiar family circumstances which had caused disunion, but not enmity, and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Jacobins. I replied, and informed him that his notions about jacobinism were thoroughly ridiculous, and that if he ever heard any sentiments delivered of which he disapproved, and, in answer to which he could not find arguments, stated in decent language, the only way for him to act was, to walk out of the room; for he might depend upon it, if he ever insulted any one of the company in future, by giving them the lie, or calling them Jacobins and enemies to their country, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... more," "If my husband should be out of the way." [is only] for petit-maitres: and for himself, Philodemus says, he chooses her, who neither stands for a great price, nor delays to come when she is ordered. Let her be fair, and straight, and so far decent as not to appear desirous of seeming fairer than nature has made her. When I am in the company of such an one, she is my Ilia and Aegeria; I give her any name. Nor am I apprehensive, while I am in her company, lest her ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Kensington wrote a respectful letter to the King, explaining that upon State occasions it would, of course, be his duty to observe what formalities the King thought proper, but that it was really awkward for a decent householder not to be allowed to go out and put a post-card in a pillar-box without being escorted by five heralds, who announced, with formal cries and blasts of a trumpet, that the Lord High Provost desired ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... a foreign guest proposed to wash himself in water, though by the joyous custom of that house there was no other liquid on the premises but wine? If there is in both countries, in Serbia and Bulgaria, a movement against the cynicism which does not clothe its corruption with a decent Western drapery, that is something; if there is a further movement in the direction of probity, that is something more. And, whatever some Serbs may tell you, it is undeniable that honesty has made important strides in ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... ain't particular, sir, provided it's sharp, like that poor girl, who, now that she's gone, I am sorry to have spoke hard on, though I don't approve of her morals in getting married, which I consider too quick to be decent. Still, sir," and poor Job turned a shade paler as he said it, "I do hope it ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... would treat a young traitor, I tell you that I take it as a sign of an awakening public conscience when reputable lawyers refuse to defend a man who has done what your father has done. And, finally, I predict that, try as you may, you will not be able to find a decent lawyer who will dare to take his case. And I glory in it, and consider it the result of my work!" He bowed to her. "And now, Miss West, ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... Soon Mary and I had nothing left. There was no work for us. We had sold everything that anyone would buy. The rent was overdue. They turned us out—on the streets.... I was too young; but Mary.... She found a place where I could stay. They were decent people, but hard.... ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... disclaims all classic lore; Else I should here, in cunning phrase, display, How forth THE MINSTREL fared in days of yore, Right glad of heart, though homely in array; His waving locks and beard all hoary grey: And, from his bending shoulder, decent hung His harp, the sole companion of his way, Which to the whistling wind responsive rung: And ever as he went ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... Schiller on his release from the academy, in December, 1780, turned out a wretched mockery of his hopes. He had, or supposed he had, the right to expect a decent position in the public service and a measure of liberty befitting a man who had served his time under tutelage. What his august master saw fit to mete out to him, however, was neither the one nor the other: he was stationed ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... reasonable, and Fosdick made no objection. The boys succeeded in getting two decent trunks at three dollars apiece, and ordered them sent to their room in Mott Street. It must be remembered by my readers, who may regard the prices given as too low, that the events here recorded took place several ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... said, wiping the tear-drop from the end of her nose, "I do think as we ought not to leave it a-lying here, cramped up onto this sofy, where we can't stretch it straight. We ought to have it taken to her room and laid out on her bed, decent ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... her death as long as was decent, I took possession of all her property, a particular account of which she gave me before she died; and the corn you sold for me was ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... ungracious demand on life; not bad in any way, oh no; nor actively repulsive, but trite, empty, everyday, in the sense of what everyday often, alas! really is, but certainly no day or hour or minute, in a decent universe, should ever be. And suddenly a new traveller gets in; and, turning round, you realize that things are changed, that something from another planet, and yet something quite right and so familiar, has entered. ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... sandalwood, porcelains, sonnets, pearls, Sunsets gay as Joseph's coat and seas like milky jade, Dancing at your birthday like a mermaid's dancing curls —If my father'd only brought me up to half a decent trade! ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... may exist among this odd fragment of our motley population. It is for the sake of their children, who ought to be, at least equally with those of the English labouring classes, since they cannot get it from their parents, provided with means of decent Christian education, that Mr. George Smith has brought this subject under public notice. The Gipsies, so long as they refrain from picking and stealing, and do not obstruct the highways, should not be persecuted; for they are a less active nuisance than the Italian organ-grinders in our city streets, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... and we were still some thirty miles from Ajaccio. It was Saturday, and we wished to get to the end of our journey in order to enjoy a quiet Sunday. There was nothing on the road to tempt us to linger, and no probability of finding decent accommodations; while at Ajaccio, we should be in clover, and get a fresh outfit, our baggage having been forwarded there. On the other hand, it was a long pull, and Filippi remonstrated on behalf of the mules and himself. The first objection was overruled, and the other removed by ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... jungle, he soon gets to think that these nice books he reads may be true; and if new books describe the jungle the way it is, he says they're unhealthy. "There are aspects of life in the jungle," he says, getting hot, "that no decent tiger should ever be aware of, ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... we chatted for quite all of an hour. The lady did, as I have intimated, a bit of charring, a bit of plain sewing, and also derived no small revenue from her vegetables and fruit, thus managing, as she owned the free-hold of the premises, to make a decent living for herself and child. I have said that she was cheerful and competent, and these epithets kept returning to me as we talked. Her husband—she spoke of him as "poor Judson"—had been a carter and odd-job fellow, decent enough, I dare say, but hardly the man for her, I thought, after studying ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... mutatis mutandis, that of the Bethunes, and many a noble young Scotsman more. Parents holding a farm between Perth and Dunkeld, they and theirs before them for generations inhabitants of the neighbourhood, "decent, honest, God-fearing people." The farm is lost by reverses, and manfully Robert Nicoll's father becomes a day- labourer on the fields which he lately rented: and there begins, for the boy, from his earliest recollections, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... have come to receive your confession. We gave you credit for being a quiet, decent boy, and now it seems that you and that man of yours have been engaged in some disreputable riot, out all night, and coming in on two strange horses, which, for aught we know, have been carried off ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... Professor's dictation, and he usually spent the evening in hunting up references and passages which bore upon the next day's work. This Willoughby Smith has nothing against him either as a boy at Uppingham or as a young man at Cambridge. I have seen his testimonials, and from the first he was a decent, quiet, hardworking fellow, with no weak spot in him at all. And yet this is the lad who has met his death this morning in the Professor's study under circumstances which ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mother's heart and her father's heart, and when she do find it in her own heart to leave that sinful place—the the-a-tre—and dress herself like a decent wife and a good woman, and sing for God and not for the devil, and sing for love and not for money, aw, then, who will love her as quick and as warm as I will? But if you do want a message, tell her she have broken her good father's life ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... friends," said Sir James. "It's Grayson's whim, of course, and really, my dear, this seems to be a decent sort of boy. Very rough, of course, but Eddy will give him polish. This class of boy is very quick at picking up things; and if, after a few weeks, Grayson is disappointed and finds out his mistake, why, then, we have behaved in a neighbourly way to ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... he said again; 'they've never been in any decent society, never been acquainted with a single decent woman, while I have here,' he cried, hurriedly pulling a pocket-book out of his side-pocket and tapping it with his hand, 'a whole pack of letters from a girl whom you wouldn't find the equal of in ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... to it as a preposterous requirement that, remaining under strict guard and wholly cut off from communication with the outside world, we should sign such a pledge as the only condition on which we could receive decent shelter. I asked Major Gee if the rigor of our confinement would be in any way relaxed. He answered bluntly, "No."—"Well, where's the reciprocity?" I demanded; "what are you giving up?"—"Well," he replied, "if you don't choose to sign the parole, you can't have the buildings. Other Federal ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... faces, all looking so miserable and showing the discomfort and fatigue they were enduring so plainly! I call it positive suffering, and I never want to see another Drawing Room. My soul desires nothing now but decent clothing and hot tea.' And that is all she has ever said about the Drawing Room in my hearing. But wasn't it a very curious view for a girl to take? Of course the arrangements are detestable, and one does suffer a great ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... are irregularly lozenge-shaped, like the notes or "pricks" in Queen Elizabeth's "Virginal-Book," and are placed on the staff without bars. Ainsworth, in his preface, says, "Tunes for the Psalms I find none set of God: so that ech people is to use the most grave decent and comfortable manner that they know how, according to the general rule. The singing notes I have most taken from our Englished psalms when they will fit the mesure of the verse: and for the other long verses I have also taken (for the most part) ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... felt as if I should not much like to undertake such another expedition as the last, and that it would be pleasanter to remain content with the roast beef and very decent bread our men contrived to make in the old furnace after it had been a bit modified, or with the "cookies" that were readily made on an iron plate over a fire of glowing embers. Oh no! I don't mean damper, that stodgy cake of flour and water ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... the money for a week or so, then put it back, and have a nice little scoop, at no one's cost. I thought it was a dead-sure thing—and I was hard up, and Kathleen wouldn't lend me any more. If Kathleen had only done the decent thing—" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... You persistently talked to me when you didn't know me—you're doing it now for that matter!—and you began by telling me that I was fool-hardy, not really courageous in the decent sense of the word, and that I was a self-conscious stick and a horribly inhuman and unnatural object generally—and all because I wouldn't flirt ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... of a Swede cur—he'll do more dirt than a Portugee. I know what yer thinkin' 'bout. I had them notions too when I fu'st come aboard—gettin' all the decent sort tergether, and takin' the vessel. 'Twon't work; thar ain't 'nough who wud risk it, and if thar wus, yer couldn't get 'em tergether. Sanchez is too damn smart fer thet. Every damn rat is a spy. I ain't hed no such talk ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... other, angry in an instant. "Do you insinuate that I'm not worthy to have a decent, well-brought-up girl for ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... "Very decent of you, Miss Field!" breathed Mrs. Jay, in a voice like that of a horn. "You girls run along now—people will be comin' at any minute. I'm going to take Miss Field to the table. Three hundred people comin'," she confided as Harriet followed her across the lawn, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... moral standard of honesty in the face of all deflections of inclination and particular situations. It makes no iota of difference what the result of telling the truth in a particular instance may be. It makes no difference what urgent and plausible and practically decent reason one has for not telling the truth. The truth must be told, as justice must be done, though the heavens fall. We have a case, let us suppose, where telling bad news to a very sick man may ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... them did it appear. They were all, as Donald himself said, Fouros, and Beuros, and Lebranos, and Dranos, and other outlandish and unchristian-like names. Not a heeland or lowland shopkeeper amongst them. No such a decent and civilized name to be met with as Gorm, or Brolachan, or M'Fadyen, or Macharuarich, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... thought," said he. "No chance to give a decent burial to this or any other human remains we may come across here. The slightest disturbance totally disintegrates them. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... plainly was that you cannot eat flowers. Their spirits required no refreshment, but their bodies needed much, and therefore radishes were more precious than wallflowers. Nor was my youth wholly destitute of radishes, but they were grown in the decent obscurity of odd kitchen garden corners and old cucumber frames, and would never have been allowed to come among the flowers. And only because I was not a boy here they were profaning the ground that used to be so beautiful. Oh, it was a terrible misfortune not to have been a boy! And how sad and ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... thanks for that, or he would have owed them thanks if he considered his life to be worth anything. But he owed them nothing because they had spoiled the life they had given him, had spoiled it by depriving him of everything he had a right to expect from them—love, sympathy, decent treatment. They had given him instead, blows, kicks, ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... throughout this landscape of manifest life. Where are they—all the dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? Where do they hide their little last hours, where are they buried? Where is the violence concealed? Under what gay custom and decent habit? You may see, it is true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a snail's shell; but these little things are, as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for apology, ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... seeing that the pair were likely to make friends; and before ten minutes had elapsed each was in possession of the other's history. Kate's, indeed, was simple enough; her seventeen years in the infirmary being preceded by a quiet life in a very uninteresting neighbourhood; but she "came of decent people," being connected with "the rale ould O'Rorkes," and her father had been "in business"; two circumstances which impressed Mrs. Brady very much, and caused her to unbend towards "Miss Mahony," ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... Dumouriez with Pache. In truth, both Powers began the war very badly; but France repaired her faults far more quickly, chiefly because the young democracy soon came to award the guillotine for incompetent conduct over which the nepotism of Whitehall spread a decent cloak. The discovery by the Jacobins of the law of the survival of the fittest served to array the military genius of France against Court favourites or the dull products of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... but they were too brave to be killed in this way. Some proposed making them run the gauntlet. At last it was decided (in pity for the girls, it is said) that the parents should be killed in a more decent and quiet way. They were to be tomahawked and scalped, and the girls were still to be kept prisoners. With the morning's light they started out to execute the sentence. That the poor girls might not see their parents murdered the ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... Generally am. This air makes one feel queer after that stinking hole, doesn't it? If you can call this air. I've seen you there a lot lately and often thought I'd like to talk to you. You're the only decent- looking fellow in the whole of this town, if you'll forgive my saying so. Isn't it a bloody hole? But of course you think so too. I can see it in your face. I suppose you go to that pub after that girl. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... what to do, I guess. The moment he starts in to make those houses decent, the articles ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of these special gentlemen and of Mexicans in general. He knew Mexicans and knew where he could hit hardest. He wound up with gentle intimation that the town would have made a respectable pigsty, but that a decent pig would have a hard time keeping his self-respect among so many descendants of the canine tribe. It was a beautiful, an eloquent piece of work, and even as he delivered it he felt rather proud of his command of the Mexican idiom. Then he made ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... indignantly, "that after all these years I do not know you as well as I do the contents of my linen chest? I have never before known you open your purse strings one inch wider than was necessary. Have I not always had to ask, until I am verily ashamed, before I can get a new gown for myself, or a decent cloak for the girls? You have ever been hard fisted with your money, and never disposed to spend a groat, save on good occasion. There is not the wife of a trader of your standing in Plymouth but makes a braver show than I do, when we ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... when he drew up level with her. "Put yourself through your mangle, washerwoman," she called out, "and iron your face and crimp it, and you'll pass for quite a decent-looking Toad!" ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... capture vibrations that radiate from private and secret actions and discover them to others who have no business to know them? This would be a fine world if every body could peep into every one else's affairs, wouldn't it? And here is your Character Marker. Nice thing for a decent person to own, isn't it? Any one who would take advantage of such a sneaking invention as that would be worse than a thief! Oh, I've used them, of course, and I ought to be spanked for having been so mean and underhanded; but I'll never be guilty ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... no more to be said for justifying the imposition of the ceremonies by law established than what is contained in the beginning—of this Section.... Inasmuch as lawful authority hath already determined the ceremonies in question to be decent and orderly, and to serve to edification: and consequently to be agreeable to the general rules of ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... said Tanno. "Horse-training is, at least, and always, an activity fit for a gentleman and wholly decent and respectable." ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... hint, and watch the somersaulting pair. What an editor the elder brother would make! He could turn as sudden and perfect a somersault as did Mr. DANA, when he transformed the Sun in a single night from a decent daily to what it now is. Or what a politician the younger brother might become, were he to exhibit in the arena of public life the agility in turning flip-flaps, and reversing himself by unexpectedly standing on his head, which ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... about. So would Graveairs here have made something out of our name if he had represented it. My Lord Graveairs would have done very well. Yes, you have a very pretty way, and would have made a very decent, grave speaker." And here she began to imitate Esmond's way of carrying himself and speaking to his face, and so ludicrously that his mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself could see there was some likeness in the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... senate found itself in a difficulty, not wishing to put him in military command, or daring to offend him by an open refusal (Dio, xxxix. 12). The tribune C. Cato found up a Sibylline oracle forbidding the employment of an army for the purpose, which served the senate as a decent excuse. The commission to Lentulus was eventually withdrawn by an auctoritas senatus, and Lentulus did not venture to do it. Ptolemy, finding that he could not succeed in getting Pompey commissioned, retired to Ephesus, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... requested it. Yet the man was no worse than his fellows, and had an element of unselfish kindness in him, which was shown by his giving them the old sack to sit upon. Under happier auspices he would probably have been a very decent sort of person, but the hopeless hardship of his existence had gradually wiped out every ambition and hope, till at last he had sunk into something ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... it—"E-lizabeth says they couldn't do without her. I guess between 'em those girls will make E-lizabeth House School go right. That investment will be a dividend payer. And there's Morton Bassett, that I never took much stock in, why, he's settled down to being a decent and useful citizen. There ain't a better newspaper in the country than the 'Courier,' and that first editorial, up at the top of the page every morning, he writes himself, and it's got a smack to it—a ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... yacht up to Fiume to meet me. I hear you have all sorts of craft at Vissarion. The MacSkelpie, I hear, said you received her as a Queen; so I hope you will do the decent by one of your own flesh and blood, and the future Head of the House at that. I shan't bring much of a retinue with me. I wasn't made a billionaire by old Roger, so can only take my modest "man Friday"—whose name is Jenkinson, and a Cockney at that. So don't have too much ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... opposition? But a cherry-garden isn't grown in a day. Mrs. Furnace had dropped into it (so to speak) when the trees that William John had planted were already on the way to yield good profit. Also she was a woman who knew how to keep a pleasure-garden decent, however near it might lie to a great town and a naval port. Simple woman though she seemed, ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... just to content myself, as the working man always must in such circumstances, with the shelter I could get. My bed was situated in the one end of the room, and my landlady's and her husband's in the other, with the passage by which we entered between; but decent old Peggy Russel had been accustomed to such arrangements all her life long, and seemed never once to think of the matter; and—as she had reached that period of life at which women of the humbler class assume the characteristics of the other sex, somewhat, I ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... luxury of that first dinner at the castle!—the only decent meal of which we had partaken since our landing—with the quiet evening which followed it, spent in a large, lofty, well-furnished apartment, lighted up by a massive silver lamp of elaborate workmanship, and cooled by the ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... separate me from your ideal unless I marry Margot Lorenzi, then divide me from that cold perfection forever. I'm not cold, and I'm far from perfect. But I can't feel it a decent thing for a man to marry one woman, promising to love and cherish her, if his whole being belongs to ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... isn't decent to leave you here alone, when you've got folks that can take care of you. What will people think? It places us in an awfully ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... of an hour. Then came another cross-examination of that unhappy man; then a series of cross-questions, after we had all gone into the hat again. "And then," I said to myself with chagrin and disgust, "they will gather up all that remains of us from the floor and send us home for decent interment." Here is one little trifle, that would easily fill up a half-year's study in ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... what you propose is nothing else, is no more an occupation than playing at the public lottery and much less one than playing at baccarat. There at least you are responsible for your own mistakes and in decent society you are safe from the machinations of dishonest people. That would matter less if the chances were in your favour, as they might have been a year ago and as they were in mine from the beginning. They are against you now, because ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... Forcellini's Lexicon]. Now we ought to be guided by the measure in all things appertaining to us: for it is written (Titus 2:12): "We should live soberly and justly and godly," where a gloss remarks: "Soberly, in ourselves"; and (1 Tim. 2:9): "Women . . . in decent apparel, adorning themselves with modesty and sobriety." Consequently it would seem that sobriety regards not only the interior man, but also things appertaining to external apparel. Therefore drink is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... announced Bernice. "There aren't any decent shops in Berwick, and I'm going to get lots of things ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... distinction gay: But true expression, like th' unchanging Sun, 315 Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon, It gilds all objects, but it alters none. Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent, as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd, 320 Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd: For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort, As several garbs with country, town, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... at Sunday school and church was to be inexpressibly weary of them. What I learned at home I can perhaps define but little better. I gained no important result from any direct instruction. I gained something of good-boy behavior and decent manners, diligently trained into me. But what was most valuable in my home education was unconscious infiltration from a good home-atmosphere. This is an influence of incalculable importance, a thousand times outweighing all the schools. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... with the sundry divinations of poets, might in fact be kept suspended with advantage over human passion and ignorance, to furnish them with decent expression. But once indulged, divination is apt to grow arrogant and dogmatic. When its oracles have become traditional they are almost inevitably mistaken for sober truths. Hence the second kind of supplement offered to science, so that revelations with which moral life has been intertwined ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... returning unexpectedly to the subject—"therefore it is no reason to suppose that Dr. Riccabocca is averse to cleanliness and decent care of the person, because he is a philosopher; and, all things considered, he never showed himself more a philosopher than when he left off his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... they did, and appointed certain persons to oversee the work, and expended several summs thus in repairs, mending the leads, securing the roof, glazing several windows, and then fitting up the quire, and making it pretty decent for the congregation to meet in. And this they did, by taking the painted boards that came off from the roof of the ladies chapel, and placing them all along at the back of the quire, in such manner as they continue ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... the chambers being overhead. She was gone home long before he put out the store lights and turned out the last lingering idler, for Cap'n Abe preferred to cook for himself. He declared the Widow Gallup did not know how to make a decent chowder, anyway; and as for lobscouse, or the proper frying of a mess of "blood-ends," she was all at sea. He intimated that there were digestive reasons for her husband's death at the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... the inhabitants of easternmost Asia ("like such individuals, who are not wanting in clean, decent, and comfortable dwellings, clothing, and surroundings; but who never feel the necessity for a higher enlightenment") with the Greeks ("in the case of the Greeks, even among the most educated inhabitants of Attica, the contrary often happens to ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... throughout a victim. It does not absolve Violante, but it allows something for honest parental feeling in the old couple's desire for a child; and something for the good done to this human waif by its adoption into a decent home. According to this version, it is the Count and his brother who lay the matrimonial trap, and the Comparini parents and child who fall into it. "The grim Guido is at first kept in the background. Abate Paolo makes the proposal. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to—privations which often bordered on starvation—Cephyse, young, pretty, of warm temperament, and surrounded by brilliant offers and seductions—brilliant, indeed, for her, since they offered food to satisfy her hunger, shelter from the cold, and decent raiment, without being obliged to work fifteen hours a day in an obscure and unwholesome hovel—Cephyse listened to the vows of a young lawyer's clerk, who forsook her soon after. She formed a connection with another clerk, whom she (instructed by the examples set her), forsook ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... I am going to try to do, though it may be too late. As soon as definite news was received, our church held a meeting, raised a fund, and decided to send me off to find Mr. and Mrs. Illingway, if alive, or give them decent burial, if I could locate their bones. The reason they selected me was because I had been in Africa, and knew ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... to die, it shall be a decent death—not stung by some horrible reptile. I'll risk losing my way going ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... exclaimed the other, and then shook his head. "No, it's impossible. You see the poor chap could hardly talk halfway decent English, and I'm sure he never could write my name like this. Besides, Tom," Jack went on triumphantly, "I never bothered to mention to him that I had a name. To him I was simply an American ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... to that simple people who had desired to live in peace and had no quarrel with any Power. It was in a kind of stupor that I saw the vanguard of this nation in retreat, a legion of poor old women whose white hairs were wild in this whirl of human derelicts, whose decent black clothes were rumpled and torn and fouled in the struggle for life; with Flemish mothers clasping babies at their breasts and fierce-eyed as wild animals because of the terror in their hearts for those tiny buds of life; with small children scared out of the divine security of childhood ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... that's sure," snapped Cora. "She's a nobody, I believe. I don't believe she belongs in this school with decent girls." ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... receive the visits of men whose acquaintance they have made on the street or at some place of amusement. Very often the proprietor of the house is simply victimized by such people, and several respectable houses have been so far overrun by them that decent persons have avoided them altogether. One or two of the smaller hotels of the city bear a most unenviable reputation of this kind. Even the first-class hotels cannot keep themselves entirely free from the presence of courtezans of the better class. Rich men keep their mistresses at ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... not decent," he says, "that it should sit in the Governor's antechamber any longer. His guards and valets make such a noise, that we cannot hear each other speak. I have continually to tell them to keep quiet, which causes them to make ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Lawless, "the row and bother, 128and the whole kick-up altogether, has made me alarmingly hungry; the only decent bit of chicken I managed to lay hands on at supper Di Clapperton ate: precious twist that girl has, to be sure; even after all the ground she's been over to-night, going a topping pace the whole time too, she ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... told him that I worked a little in the same trade as his own. This worthy man bade me come into his shop, and at once gave me work to do, and spoke as follows: "Your good appearance makes me believe you are a decent honest youth." Then he told me out gold, silver, and gems; and when the first day's work was finished, he took me in the evening to his house, where he dwelt respectably with his handsome wife and children. Thinking of the grief which my good father might be feeling for me, I wrote ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... fact that the Protestant members of the Chamber outnumber the Catholics is in no respect due to religious intolerance, which in this body is totally unknown. Anybody who pays a guinea a year may be elected a member, whatever his religion, whatever his circumstances, providing he is a decent member of society, which is the only qualification required. Members are certainly elected by ballot, but during the many years I have belonged to the Chamber not a single person has been black-balled. If the Protestants ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... a favourite, she came to me pretty often. But she had inordinate self-love, and was not tolerant of other women. At the 'Cavalchina,' the masked ball on the last night of the carnival, where all the world goes, she snatched off the mask of Madame Contarini, a lady noble by birth, and decent in conduct, for no other reason, but because she happened to be leaning on my arm. You may suppose what a cursed noise this made; but this is ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... to think about it, Stanley," she said gently. "I want to do the decent thing by you ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... you could wink, An', come to look, they each on 'em hed gut behin' a tree, An' Pomp poked out the leg a piece, jest so ez I could see, An' yelled to me to throw away my pistils an' my gun, Or else thet they 'd cair off the leg an' fairly cut the run. I vow I did n't b'lieve there wuz a decent alligatur Thet hed a heart so destitoot o' common human natur; However, ez there worn't no help, I finally gev in An' heft my arms away to git my leg safe back agin. Pomp gethered all the weapins up, an' then he come ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... in the slums of the village, where the doorways were greasy, and women flitted about in the hottest weather with thick woolen shawls over their heads. Yet his finances did not permit him to aspire to lodgings much more decent. If he could only secure a small room somewhere in a quiet neighborhood. Possibly Mrs. Durgin would let him have a chamber in her cottage. He was beginning life over again, and it struck him as nearly an ideal plan to begin it on the identical spot where he had, in a manner, made his first start. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... capita income is found which must provide for all other expenses, that is, for each person's share of food, clothing, light, fuel, medicine, and all incidentals. It was estimated that a family could not maintain a decent standard of living on a per capita income of less than $1.50 a week. Although each case is considered on its merits, aid is almost always given when the per capita income is less than $1.50; in some special cases it is granted when the income exceeds this amount. The following table shows ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... visitation of the monasteries, and again exhorted a reform; but his efforts were even slighter than Morton's, and in their results equally without fruit. The maintenance of his order in its political supremacy was of greater moment to him than its moral purity: a decent veil was cast over the clerical infirmities, and their vices were forgotten as soon as they ceased to be proclaimed.[95] Henry VIII., a mere boy on his accession, was borne away with the prevailing stream; and trained from his childhood by theologians, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... and Miss Gaines, thank you for the opportunity of playing in the sand in pleasant company. Mrs. Haile, Miss Hopkins, I go to attend some home-grown niggers who of course don't need a hospital, nor even a decent school, in our Christian midst. Ladies, good afternoon!" He made a fleering motion of the hand and was gone. Mrs. Haile and Miss Hopkins smiled indulgently. Evidently, Doctor Geddes was one brother they were willing to forgive though he offended ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... our plans," he went on, pleased with our discomfiture and our despising of him. "Next day some chap came to see me, pretending he was my brother. And I carried out my part of it by cursing him at first and then begging him to give me decent burial. So he went away, and, I suppose, received permission to get me right after ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... items certainly, and if we had difficulty about it here in a decent sort of country, what might be expected on farther? Well, we have had our outing; I only hope they won't give us up at Irkutsk. I suppose it depends where their grazing-grounds are. There are another two months of summer; I wish we could have ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... railway drove up as I reached the lodge; and out got a grizzled, elderly man, so miserably lean that he looked as if he had not got an ounce of flesh on his bones in any part of him. He was dressed all in decent black, with a white cravat round his neck. His face was as sharp as a hatchet, and the skin of it was as yellow and dry and withered as an autumn leaf. His eyes, of a steely light grey, had a very disconcerting trick, when they encountered your eyes, of looking as if they expected something more ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... "Decent or not," said Captain Glenn, "a pirate's a pirate, and if we can manage to get out of his clutches it's up to us to ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... theatre of upright hills, St. Julien in the Limousin, Aubusson-in-the-hole, Puy (who does not connect beauty with the word?), Mansle in the Charente country—they had all been half dead for over a century when the railway came to them and made them jolly, little, trim, decent, self-contained, worthy, satisfactory, genial, comforting and human [Greek: politeiae], with clergy, upper class, middle class, poor, soldiers, yesterday's news, a college, anti-Congo men, fools, strong riders, old maids, and all that makes a state. In England the railway brought in that beneficent ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... that which the world holds good. The rich and worldly wore handsome garments, they would wear rags; those of the world were careful of their personal appearance, they would despise it; those of the world were cleanly, the hermits were filthy; those of the world were decent, and had a care for outward observances, and so hermits had no care for either decency or modesty. The world was evil, surely, and therefore all that the world held good was surely evil too. Wisdom was to be sought in the very opposites of ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... reasonable regard for cleanliness in the stable and dairy room, with a prompt cooling of the milk, will limit the bacterial growth to this standard, and the requirement, meaning, as it does, only a decent regard for such cleanliness as a self-respecting dairyman would recognize as essential, works no hardship on any one. New York City prints its dairy rules on linen and has them tacked up in every cow barn concerned in the city milk supply, and while they have merely ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... way, I rather thought you'd be living at this hotel," said Bateman, as he strolled out of the garden with Edward. "I understand it's the only decent one here." ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... woman heartily. "My daughter and son-in-law have been looking for a decent cottage for I don't know how long. It's all the war. Upset things terribly, it has. But excuse me, sir, it'll be too dark for you to see much of the house. Hadn't you better ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... don't work decent," observed Step Hen. "It misses an explosion every third one, and acts like it might go out of business any minute on us, that's ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... has now the road to himself. Money is the clothing of a gentleman: he may wear it well or ill. Some, you will mark, carry great quantities of it gracefully: some, with a stinted supply, present a decent appearance: very few, I imagine, will bear inspection, who are absolutely stripped of it. All, save the shameless, are toiling to escape that trial. My gentleman, treading the white highway across the solitary heaths, that swell far and wide to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... any one possessing a spark of humanity could perceive anything to excite his mirth in the circumstance of a fellow-creature's being forced out of his bed at such an hour! After exhibiting many contortions of the mouth, produced by a decent desire to maintain a gravity suitable to the occasion, he, at length, burst into a loud laugh; and exclaiming (with a want of feeling I shall never entirely forget) "Well, I wish you joy of your journey—you must be UP at four!"—away ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... deficiency out of the money I got for the Barlingford business, thinking I should be able to stand out and make a connection; but the connection gets more disconnected every year. I suppose people came to me at first for the novelty of the thing, for I had a sprinkling of decent patients for the first twelve months or so. But now I might as well throw my money into the gutter as spend it on circulars ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... companions' says the proverb, 'and I will tell you what the man is;' and this is, and must be true; because all men seek the society of those who think and act somewhat like themselves: sober men will not associate with drunkards, frugal men will not like spendthrifts, and the orderly and decent shun the noisy, the disorderly, and the debauched. It is for the very vulgar to herd together as singers, ringers, and smokers; but, there is a class rather higher still more blamable; I mean the tavern-haunters, the gay companions, who herd together ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... answered. "It's a poor place; but you'll find it neat and nice enough—thanks to your good master. He's helping the two women to begin life again out of this country; and, while they're waiting their turn to get a passage, they've taken an extra room and hired some decent furniture, by your master's own wish. Oh, here's the boy; he'll show you the way. One word before you go. What do you think ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... threshold of life into an eternity of punishment? Look me in the face, you father of six! No, of course you don't believe it. Nobody does. And the difference is not that religion has ceased to teach it—for it hasn't—but that men have grown decent and put it, with like doctrines, silently aside in disgust. So it has happened to Satan and his fork: they have become 'old hat.' So it will happen to all the old machinery of hell: the operating decency of human nature will grow ashamed ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... opening all of your minds, friend and foe alike, to each other, so that you may all see for yourselves what depths of rottenness exist there and just how unfit your world is to associate with the decent worlds of this or any other galaxy. It would take God Himself to do anything with such material, and I am not God. Therefore, when we have rid this world of atomics we will leave and you will start all over again. If you really try, you can not ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... the much-maligned Turk, proved to have decent possibilities if given a decent chance. Certainly he is no longer the Terrible Turk of tradition. Most of the Turks I encountered in Bulgaria were prisoners of war, evidently rather pleased to be in the hands of the Bulgarians who fed them decently, a task which their own commissariat had ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... skipper a safe run to a better harbor, and went back to the wharf, where the carpenter intercepted him. He was a rough, blunt-spoken man, but was evidently "good at his trade," as Ben had said, and did not despair of making the Culm huts decent and habitable; and after a long talk with him, Noll started for home, as the afternoon was fast giving way to a gray and lowery night. His heart was full of gratitude and love to Ned, and he stopped more than once on his homeward walk to read ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... in Italy for a few francs. He will not go far without finding matter quite as surprising as what I shall put down in this tale, though in all likelihood much more unsavoury to his modern taste. Moreover, there is proof that a good many of those accounts are quite as accurate as what a fairly decent newspaper gives us nowadays for truth; and they are not, as a whole, more nasty, though they are differently worded, because in those days Boileau was calling 'a cat a cat, and Rolet a rascal,' and even people who were not poets called a ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... you say here," he said bitterly. "Sure, we've been in the same classes. You know me, so you try to be decent. But what do you really think? And how about everyone else? You think they're being all nice and understanding about this?" ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... contracted from that scale which had been suitable when great kings and commonwealths were constant suitors within the gates of Delphi, still clung (like the Venice of modern centuries) to her old ancestral honors, and kept up that decent household of ministers which corresponded to the altered ministrations of her temple. In fact, the evidences on behalf of Delphi as a princely house, that had indeed partaken in the decaying fortunes of Greece, but naturally was all the prouder from ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... was a Hungarian baron in the automobile business, and two English sirs. The baron was quite a decent fellow: I had a talk with him in the smoking room one night. He didn't put on any airs at all. You would have thought he was an ordinary man. But the sirs kept to themselves. All they did the whole voyage was to write letters, wear their dress ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... turns, till I got some tip and bought some fresh ones—such jolly ones, all over acrobats and British flags; and after all, didn't I catch it? Wilmet was no end of disgusted to miss her little stupid speckotty ones, vowed these weren't decent for the Cathedral, and boned them all for Theodore! Now, hush! or I ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... really familiar, and what we come to find out about our own can be no more than what other people have shewn us. Upon ourselves they react but indirectly, through our imagination, which substitutes for our actual, primary motives other, secondary motives, less stark and therefore more decent. Never had Legrandin's snobbishness impelled him to make a habit of visiting a duchess as such. Instead, it would set his imagination to make that duchess appear, in Legrandin's eyes, endowed with all the graces. He would be drawn towards the duchess, assuring himself the while that he was yielding ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... as I was that Mrs. Van Dam knew his name, and that he would oppose the dance even more strongly than did Aunt; and I wished that I could go without him. But it was useless to think of this, with even the General suggesting a bodyguard. I resolved that he should at least consult a decent tailor. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... that could stand rereading. At the top of all I should place Fay Yauger's "Planter's Charm," published in a volume of the same title. With it belongs "The Hired Man on Horseback," by Eugene Manlove Rhodes, a long poem of passionate fidelity to his own decent kind of men, with power to ennoble the reader, and with the form necessary to all beautiful composition. This is the sole and solitary piece of poetry to be found in all the myriads of rhymes classed as "cowboy poetry." I'd want Stanley Vestal's "Fandango," in a volume of the same title. Margaret ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... said the host, "I fancy you have got nice since you were in England. These people are decent enough, I reckon, though rather down in their luck, like some others of us. I wish I had such a house to receive you in as that I built on the—Road. I had plenty rooms there; but you see it was not licensed, and I was ruined—at least brought down ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... past, all the hopes of the future. He must he a university of knowledges.... We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame.—The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant.—The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any but the decorous ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... half-mediaevalized design of her—as she never looked. Copy in your own person; and even if you do not descend as low—or rise as high—as washing the household clothes, at least learn to play at ball; and sing, in the open air and sunshine, not in theatres and concert-rooms by gaslight; and take decent care of your own health; and dress not like a "Parisienne"—nor, of course, like Nausicaa of old, for that is to ask too much:—but somewhat more like an average Highland lassie; and try to look like her, and be like her, of whom ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... the rest of the servants, about twenty in number, who had assembled to await Cromwell's entrance, and do honour to their young lady by as numerous and well arranged a show as they could collect. They were all dressed in deep and decent mourning, except the women of Lady Frances, who walked behind her to the great entrance, where she and Constantia stood ready to receive his Highness. As he alighted, the advanced-guard formed a semicircle beside the carriage; and when his foot rested on the first step of the entrance-stairs, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... offering a prayer, and exhortation, suitable to make an impression upon the living, while they are yet in the very presence of the relics of him whom they have but lately seen such as they themselves, and who now is such as they must in their time become. But this decent and praiseworthy practice was not adopted at the time of which I am treating, or at least, Mr. Blattergowl did not act upon it, and the ceremony proceeded without any ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... in the Carolinas. Ramsay, the early historian of South Carolina, said that hospitality was such a virtue that innkeepers complained that their business was not worth carrying on. The doors of citizens were open to all decent travellers, and ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... jump the track, this train will land us in the city we are looking for," said Anguish, stretching out his legs comfortably. "I'll admit it has been a tiresome journey, and I'll be glad when we can step into a decent hotel, have a rub, and feel like white men once more. I am beginning to feel like these dirty Slavs and Huns ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the fumes, but there was nothing else I could do. The stuff was shallavan, outlawed on every planet in the Terran Empire and every halfway decent planet outside it. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... about! Later, his work, wholly unsatisfactory to himself comes to you for criticism and you take your blue pencil or your pen with red ink and put in the marks if any are needed, indicate the misspelled words and sigh as you say, "Will Charlie ever learn to write a decent composition?" Certainly he will, when his writing becomes mechanical, when his hand makes the letters, puts in the marks, and his lower brain spells the words for him, without disturbing the higher cells which are ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... pleased Polly was. By George, it is strange what will please people. He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying horses, how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the sight of the first decent sized wheat field just went to his heart, when he was coming back. Someway he could not laugh at anything that morning, for Polly was dead. And Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed to see her yet, how she ran after the colt the day it broke out of the ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... satisfaction to be had out of a good saddle horse!'" he quoted me. "'More excitement out of a polo pony, and as for the eternal matrimonial chase, give me instead a good stubble, a fox, some decent hounds and a hunter, and I'll show you the real ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... wind—like this. (If you don't do it better'n that, I'll stoush you.) Make your face a bit longer and keep your lips dry—don't lick them, you damned fool!-breathe on them; make 'em dry as chips. That's the only decent pair of breeks you've got, and the only shoon. You're a Presbyterian—not a U.P., the Auld Kirk. Your mate would have come up to the house only—well, you'll have to use the stuffing in your head a bit; you can't expect ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... boil over, or to burn," he remarked. "It's the only decent meal I get in the day, you see, miss. But it won't take a minute to show you where I found the pipe. Now—what's the idea, sir," he went on, turning to Neale, "about Mr. Horbury's disappearance? Is it known that he came out ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... decent of her," said Levine. He was dark, nervous and solemn-eyed, a lean man of his race, and handsome. Sophy Brodrick had not loved her husband when she married him. She adored him now, because of the beauty that had passed from him ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... doctor answered. "Swimming is a real athletic exercise and you've got to keep in shape to swim well. What's more, you've got to have a decent heart to start with. But if a youngster piles into cigarettes, it's a safe bet that he's going to cripple himself for athletics ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the year of our Lord 391, in a narrow street leading from the commercial harbor known as Kibotus, an old man was slinking along close to the houses. His clothes were plain but decent, and he walked with his head bent forward looking anxiously on all sides; when the patrol came by he shrank into the shadow; though he was no thief he had his reasons for keeping out of the way of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... large and larger. Their island, they told us, was called Syee. They appeared to be well satisfied with their condition, having an abundance of every thing absolutely needful for a comfortable subsistence, and decent clothing of their own manufacture. What surprised me not a little, was to find the people as white as the Arabs of Lower Egypt, whereas the inhabitants of Nubia are quite black, though their features are not those ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... the failure of his Coromandel scheme, he sought, without consulting his friends, to be examined at the College of Physicians for the humble situation of hospital mate. Even here poverty stood in his way. It was necessary to appear in a decent garb before the examining committee; but how was he to do so? He was literally out at elbows as well as out of cash. Here again the muse, so often jilted and neglected by him, came to his aid. In consideration of four articles furnished ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... there whaur it was used sae lang to be;—do that, an' it's my opinion ye'll hear nae mair o' sic unruly gangin's on." The auld gentleman tuik the advice, kennin' no better. But it was the richt advice, for frae that moment the romour was ower, they had nae mair o' 't. They laid the heid in a decent bit box i' the cellar, an' there it remaint, weel content there to abide the day o' that jeedgment that'll set mony anither jeedgment to the richt-aboot; though what pleesur could be intil that cellar mair nor intil a hole i' the earth, is a thing no for me to say! So wi' ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... looked for a lodging in Camden Town, attracted by the probable cheapness, and by the grass in the Regent's Park; and having found a decent place, took my things away while Charley was out. I had not got them, few as they were, in order in my new quarters before he made his appearance; and as long as I was there few days passed on which we ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... knaw the truth fust as last. Mr. Grimbal's writ you two straight, fair letters 'bout this job, so he've explained to me, an' you never so much as answered neither; so, seem' this here's a right Christian cross, ban't decent it should bide head down'ards for all time. An' Mr. Grimbal have brought up a flam-new granite post, hasp an' all complete—'t is in the cart theer—an' he called on me as a discreet, aged man to help un, an' so I did; an' Peter Bassett an' Sam Bonus here ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... particular districts, it aliens, its criminals and its vices—all these problems of social pathology arise from the fact that the conditions of modern industry have brought people together who have few interests in common, and who were compelled to arrange themselves in some kind of decent order within a limited area, without sufficient time being given to evolve a suitable environment, or to prepare themselves for the environment which they actually found on every side of them. London in the ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... isn't free love," he said; "they're decent enough. They believe in general love, not particular, I suppose.... 'Thalia, do you think it's worth while to wait over a train ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... and shaking hands with SIR RANDLE.] It might be that it 'ud be more decent and appropriate for me to write you a letter, Sir Randle; but I'm not much of a hand at letter-writing, and I've your daughter's permission to tell you by word of mouth that—that she—[to LADY FILSON] but perhaps you can ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... John, "I'm lookin' at you because I think you're real handsome, an' I think it's a terrible pity for ye to be traipsin' about like this. Why don't you leave your uncle and aunt and go to live with decent people—and put on shoes and stockings?" ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... Sunday school. But she threw plates occasionally at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the guests, and created in the Sabbath school a sensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dulness and placidity of that institution, that, with a decent regard for the starched frocks and unblemished morals of the two pink-and-white-faced children of the first families, the reverend gentleman had her ignominiously expelled. Such were the antecedents, and such the character of M'liss, as she stood ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... asked again. 'Wha's that ye're conversin' wi' at the door, Robert? Gin it be ony decent laddie, tell him to come in, and no stan' at the door in ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... class, nor of any other class about her. "I don't know whether ye can or not," came the frank reply. "I'm thinkin' about it. You don't look as if ye were flat broke. If you're goin' to take me room, I don't want to be watchin' ye, and I won't! Once we know ye're clean and decent, ye can have the run of the place and welcome to it. We had one dead-beat here last month, and that's enough. Out with it now! How is it that a"—she hesitated an instant—"yes, a gentleman like you wants to live over ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... conscience; but in drawing out a system of rules he is obliged to go by logic, and follow the exact deduction of conclusion from conclusion, and must be sure that the whole system is coherent and one. You hear of even immoral or irreligious books being written by men of decent character; there is a late writer who says that David Hume's sceptical works are not at all the picture of the man. A priest might write a treatise which was really lax on the subject of lying, which might ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... more precious than rubies. On this account she is man's first and last solace. Suffering never appeals to woman in vain. "I never addressed myself," says Ledyard, "in the language of decency and friendship to woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. With man it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the barren plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the wide-spread regions of ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... to "understand easily," Father Pollen writes, "the new preachers were loudly claiming for themselves the property of the rivals whom they had displaced." {186} For themselves they were claiming a few merks, and a few bolls of meal, a decent subsistence. Mr. Taylor Innes points out that when, just before Darnley's murder, Mary offered "a considerable sum for the maintenance of the ministers," Knox and others said that, for their sustentation, they "craved of the auditors the things that were necessary, as of duty the pastors might ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... did not survive Mr. Combe long, for he dy'd in the Year 1616, the 53d of his Age. He lies buried on the North Side of the Chancel in the great Church at Stratford; where a Monument, decent enough for the Time, is erected to him, and plac'd against the Wall. He is represented under an Arch in a sitting posture, a Cushion spread before him, with a Pen in his Right Hand, and his Left rested on a Scrowl of Paper. The Latin Distich, which is placed under the Cushion, has been given ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... bitterly this false Charity often comes out in individual cases. We will just take an illustration. We will suppose here is a family of decent, respectable, professedly Christian people, who have been to church or chapel most of their lives. Or here is a Church, we will suppose, of the same character—nothing particular has happened; they fear the Lord, and go comfortably along, and are just ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... tidy houses of a well-to-do village in the cockney rural districts. I have no doubt the scene is a real one within some twenty miles from London, and painted mostly on the spot. The houses are entirely uninteresting, but decent, trim, as human dwellings should be, and on the whole inoffensive—not "cottages," mind you, in any sense, but respectable brick-walled and slated constructions, old-fashioned in the sense of "old" at, suppose, Bromley or Sevenoaks, and with a pretty little church belonging ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... extraneous succour, than upon their own exertions. The women and the children undoubtedly suffered great hardships, which they bore with praiseworthy resignation. The sailors, the soldiers of the line, and levies of peasants which formed the Mobiles, fought with decent courage. But the male population of Paris, although they boasted greatly of their "sublimity," their "endurance," and their "valour," hardly appeared to me to come up to their own estimation of themselves, while many of them seemed to consider that heroism was a ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... then I have a decent regard for her old father's wealth; and I am by no means insensible to her personal attractions. I group all that is desirable into one grand consideration—beauty, wealth, standing, mental endowments, ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... child of that marriage. He married agin when I was about two year old, an' how I ever got raised 's more 'n I c'n tell ye. My sister Polly was 'sponsible more 'n any one, I guess, an' the only one o' the whole lot that ever gin me a decent word. Small farmin' ain't cal'lated to fetch out the best traits of human nature—an' keep 'em out—an' it seems to me sometimes that when the old man wa'n't cuffin' my ears he was lickin' me with a rawhide or a strap. Fur 's that was concerned, all his boys used to ketch it putty reg'lar ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... not a Neapolitan, but an Englishman," she answered, "and can have no concern with the justice of your king. He would scarcely think it decent to interfere with the execution of the ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... as Miss Sperrit observed, after the M.F.H. had said some things to him at a gate: 'It is a pity you don't know as much as your horse, but you will in time. It takes years and yee-ars. I've been at it for fifteen and I'm only just learning. But you've made a decent kick-off.' ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... then, that the Morgan fragment is a piece of the Parisinus, and that we may compare with Aldus's text the very words which he studied out, carefully collated, and treated with a decent respect. On the basis of the new information furnished us by the fragment, I shall endeavor, at some future time, to confirm my present judgement of Aldus by testing him in the entire text of Pliny's Letters. ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... now that they should seriously consider how they stood. Andrew had nothing to do, and the wages paid him in advance were nearly exhausted. They decided that they would move into cheaper lodgings. They had some difficulty in finding any that were decent but they obtained three miserable rooms at the top of a house occupied by a man who sold firewood and potatoes in one of the streets running out of the Blackfriars Road. They left Miss Tippit without bidding her good-bye, for she was still unwell, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... as we do) considered a person accused to stand in such a doubtful situation that from the moment of accusation he assumed either a mourning or some squalid garb, although, by the nature of their constitution, accusations were brought forward by one of their lowest magistrates. The spirit of that decent usage has continued from the time of the Romans till this very day. No man was ever brought before your Lordships that did not carry the outward as well as inward demeanor of modesty, of fear, of apprehension, of a sense of his situation, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his Uncle Osman and the dervishes. It has always been upon my mind that I was therein instrumental in furnishing a dervish recruit to the cause of furious anarchy, and I am relieved to think Mousa is not without compunction, if not a decent modicum of conscience. But your proper Hadendowa is ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... times the lot of us have to pack canoes and duffle from one creek to another. But Francois here is after saying we're getting near the end of our long voyage, and Tamasjo, the red Injun, backs him up. So let's try and forget our troubles, and settle down for a decent night's rest." ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... did not expect a tenant and would not welcome a visitor. Was there nothing but this forbidding house-front to make the place alive with some breathing memory? I saw crossing the street a middle-aged woman,—a decent body, who looked as if she might have come from the lower level of some not opulent but respectable household. She might have some recollection of an old man who was once her neighbor. I asked her if she remembered Mr. Carlyle. Indeed she did, she told us. She used to see him often, in front ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... flight, Inhabitant of deep disastrous night; Homeward with pious speed repass the main, To the pale shade funereal rites ordain, Plant the fair column o'er the vacant grave, A hero's honours let the hero have. With decent grief the royal dead deplored, For the chaste queen select an equal lord. Then let revenge your daring mind employ, By fraud or force the suitor train destroy, And starting into manhood, scorn the boy. Hast ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... their voices, and he did not even shrink from occasionally quizzing a little the national peculiarities of his own countrywomen; a sure piece of flattery to their American cousins. He would gladly have devoted himself to Mrs. Lee, but decent civility required that he should pay some attention to his hostess, and he was too good a diplomatist not to be attentive to a hostess who was the wife of a Senator, and that Senator the chairman of ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... said the leader of the little party. "You, Tom, we can manage him.—Get out, will you, dogs!—Here, take them with you. Run to the mine hut, and get some rope to tie him. Be as smart as you can. The master'll give us something decent for a ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... the time when Lombroso saw her first, Eusapia was just beginning to be known to scientists, but no one of special note had up to this time (1891) reported upon her. She was known as the wife of a small shop-keeper in Naples, and seemed a decent, matronly person, quite untouched by mysticism. Although not eager to sit for Lombroso and his party of scientists, she finally consented. Among those who took part in these celebrated experiments were Professor ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... fires. Every human being that has in it a living germ of spirit shall be liberated and helped toward the light, not by any so-called personal redeemer—that is not possible—but by the power of its own aspiring soul, and even moderately decent folk shall come to enjoy all that they have imagined and longed for, and all great souls shall find the peace they have dreamed of. All souls everywhere in the spirit world will have all they have truly earned in their ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... at length returned from the fiddler hunt, and being whisped over, and made tolerably decent, Mr. Watchorn, having exchanged the postilion saddle in which it had been ridden for a horn-cased hunting one, had mounted, and, opening the kennel-door, had liberated the pent-up pack, who came ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... of delirious suspicion, and the last morsels were snatched from the lips of the women and children. One is tempted to quote some of the stories of Josephus about this, but they are so awful that it would be scarcely decent to repeat them. ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... horrible little truth. Bridget-Mary had been deceived by both of them from the very beginning. Estimate the numbing, overwhelming weight of that blow, delivered by a hand so worshipped, upon so proud a heart. Those who saw her, and should have honoured her great grief with decent reticence, say that she was mad for a while; that she grovelled on the earth in her abandonment, calling upon God and man to be merciful and kill her. Pass over this. I cannot bear to think ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the other. 'She'd say, "you go on wearin' the coat and pants, but if you are in mournin' for me, show it by puttin' on a black vest, as is no more than decent."' ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... "blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus," in the prayer. The little Papist had been taught to repeat the salutation of the Angel Gabriel in Latin, so, at bedtime, he changed to "Benedictus fructus ventris tui" and the careful lady thought it sounded "more decent"! ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... proposal for a commander, who was ignorant of the amount of disaffection in his ranks, and who could not safely spare a single man from his force, already far too feeble for the undertaking. Yet, by insisting on the wants of the little colony of San Miguel, he afforded a decent pretext for the secession of the malecontents, and swept away the barrier of shame which might have still held them in the camp. Notwithstanding the fair opening thus afforded, there were but few, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... unavoidably fixed for some time at the house, she thought it proper and decent to attempt softening Lady Margaret in her favour. She exerted all her powers to please and to oblige her; but the exertion was necessarily vain, not only from the disposition, but the situation of her ladyship, ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... this thing to go on? Are you engaged to Kersley Battersby, or are you not? For if you're not, I don't think it's decent to keep him dangling on ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... to the plant and told Jack what had happened, sent a call to the Army that everything was settled, arranged with Cybernetics for a rewiring on three hundred assorted 5-Types. Then I went home to a pot of Rob's coffee—the first decent brew I'd had ...
— Robots of the World! Arise! • Mari Wolf
... party again pressed forward, and were speedily delighted to observe several flocks of ptarmigan busily feeding on the crests of the low hills which here and there crossed the route. These birds proved rather shy, though not so much so as to have prevented the sportsmen making a very decent bag had they been provided with fowling-pieces. As it was, however, the birds were, of course, permitted to go free and undisturbed. A mile further on a small drove of musk-oxen were seen grazing ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... say, these were women, with one or two exceptions in favour of men—like the Hatter—who perhaps might be called "old women of the male sex," save that the expression is a vile libel upon the sex that still contains the best of us.) Decent people expressed the belief that it would do Augustus a lot of good—much-needed good; and the crystallized male opinion was that the poisonous little beast was uncommon lucky, but Mrs. Pat Dearman would find him out sooner ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... result; he felt that he had grown larger in his own eyes—that the old Adam who had ruled over him so long had become suddenly dwarfed and insignificant. "To like a woman and yet not to make love to her," he repeated in his thoughts. "By Jove, it will be something decent, something really worth while." Then he remembered that he had never known intimately a woman of commanding intellect, and the novelty inspired him with the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... bleeding and tattered, spatchcocked against barbed wire, and had to leave them sticking to it, their eyes haunt you, your blood gets up, you long for a hundred hands to shoot with, instead of only two. When you've seen the result of Prussian militarism on decent German soldiers, you know that it's your duty to destroy it, to give the German people, as well as the rest of the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... whether this is considered a decent return for an investment of capital among the descendants of Israel; but I am convinced that at the conclusion of a purchase in Unyoro each party to the bargain thought that he had the best of it. This was ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... began to extend up the island, the Bowery commenced to lose caste. Decent people forsook it, and the poorer and more disreputable classes took possession. Finally, it became notorious. It was known all over the country for its roughs or "Bowery B'hoys," as they were called, its rowdy ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... flourishing in their native soil, and ripened by the benignity of an happier climate. In the one case they are considered as unnatural productions, whose beauty is surpassed by the Natives of the soil; in the other they are regarded as just and decent ornaments, whose real excellence is properly estimated. The same remark may be applied indiscriminately to all the other branches of this art. Though they are originally the offspring of one Parent, yet there ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... Chamber outnumber the Catholics is in no respect due to religious intolerance, which in this body is totally unknown. Anybody who pays a guinea a year may be elected a member, whatever his religion, whatever his circumstances, providing he is a decent member of society, which is the only qualification required. Members are certainly elected by ballot, but during the many years I have belonged to the Chamber not a single person has been black-balled. If the Protestants are more numerous, the fact simply demonstrates their ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... sad night,—that at the Commandant's hut, and a sad morning followed upon it. It must be remembered that they had there none of those appurtenances which are so necessary to make woe decent and misfortune comfortable. They sat through the night in the small hut, and in the morning they came forth with their clothes still wet and dirty, with their haggard faces, and weary stiff limbs, encumbered with the horrid ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... situation. The fountain of Domremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies, that the parish priest (cure) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep them in decent bounds. ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... equilibrium. At the same time that the executioner was dragging the bodies of his friends through the streets of the capital, he had sought to save the life of the blood-stained Fimbria, and, when the latter died by his own hand, had given orders for his decent burial. On landing in Italy he had earnestly offered to forgive and to forget, and no one who came to make his peace had been rejected. Even after the first successes he had negotiated in this spirit with Lucius Scipio; it was the revolutionary ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the same breath, and with that strange cruel cunning of the shallow mind, which is the abortive twin of decent feminine intuition, she leapt at the difficulty she saw threatening, ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... burdens in proportion as they increase ours. We saw the misery to which such despotism would reduce us. We, for ten years, incessantly and ineffectually, besieged the throne as supplicants; we reasoned, we remonstrated with parliament in the most mild and decent language." ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... faction or schism, as certainly as the itch is destroyed by butter and brimstone. In a word, it makes wise men fools, and fools wise men, and both knaves. The very colour of this precious balm is bright and dazzling. If it be properly applied to the fist, that is in a decent manner, and a competent dose, it infallibly performs all the cures which the evils of humanity crave.' Thus having spoken, he killed the six horses of Bradshaw's coach, and went contemptuously on ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... that if Edward does marry this young woman, I never will see him again.' That was what I said immediately. I was most uncommonly shocked, indeed! Poor Edward! he has done for himself completely,—shut himself out for ever from all decent society! but, as I directly said to my mother, I am not in the least surprised at it; from his style of education, it was always to be expected. My poor mother was ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... looked at that in incredulous delight. Why, here on Odin there hadn't been an election in the past six centuries that hadn't been utterly fraudulent. Nobody voted except the nonworkers, whose votes were bought and sold wholesale, by gangster bosses to pressure groups, and no decent person would be caught within a hundred yards of a polling place on an election day. He ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... Dessoubre, reaching St. Hippolyte at night, but with great reluctance we were now obliged to give up this round. From Morteau to St. Hippolyte is a day's journey, only to be made by starting at eight in the morning, and there are not even decent wayside inns. So we patiently waited till the storm was over, and as by that time it was past midday, there was nothing to do but drive leisurely back to Maiche. More fortunate travellers than ourselves, in the matter of weather, however, are particularly ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... after the embodying of a good dinner with ourselves, that doziness is most tempting. You have dined at four o'clock to-day. Well, that's a decent Sabbatical hour. After due potations of wine, coffee, &c. your gratitude is awakened; and, like a good Christian, you arrange your beaver, and walk off steadily to church. Now, remember, I give you full credit for your wish to exhibit your ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... working, even as he walked, and surrounded by messengers from every quarter. After the usual salutations, he inquired what paper I represented, and received the name of the Herald with satisfaction. 'It is a decent paper,' he said. 'It does not seek to obstruct a general in the exercise of his discretion.' He spoke hopefully of the west and east, and explained that the collapse of our centre was not so serious as might have been imagined. 'It is unfortunate,' he said, 'but if Green succeeds ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there are innumerable places where the careless step will be the last step; and a rock falling from the cliffs may crush without warning like lightning from the sky; but what then! Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... one thing that we're lovin' more than money, grub, or booze, Or even decent folks that speaks us fair; And that's the Grand Old Privilege to chuck our luck and choose, Any road at any ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... end to your capacity for wonder, Bunny. I took some sweet old rags with me on purpose, carefully packed inside a decent suit, and I had the luck to pick up a foul old German cap that some peasant had cast off in the woods. I only meant to leave it on them like a card; as it was—well, I was waiting for the best barber in the place to open his shop ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... beastly orderly sheets and say—'Haw, eh, well, Sergeant Morton, these men seem to have very good records; very good records, indeed. I can't be too hard on them; no, not too hard.'" Continued the sergeant: "I tell you, Flagler, the army is no place for a decent man." ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... severe winter of 1874 and '75, when the following autumn many of our orchards bore so profusely. The succeeding year the majority of the trees were as dead as smelts, and the balance never had vigor enough afterward to produce a decent crop. Once before," said he, "we had a similar experience in Illinois. Put your thumb down at this place and watch for results. Do not say anything about this in your Wayside Blusterings, at least as coming from me," and ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... darkness and dirtiness of the suite we had passed through. This total want of keeping, it may be mentioned, is quite in Oriental taste. They know tolerably well how to be magnificent on occasions; but they never learn how to be uniformly decent. The Asiatics, and even some other nations which might be named nearer home, can seldom afford to be taken by surprise. Indeed, I am not sure if more than one country can be alluded to, in which the people are at all hours ready to receive strangers, and have no occasion to make a fuss, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... failed of re-election in 1852, dropped into the American party in 1854, and supported Fillmore in 1856. Thurlow Weed thought he ought to have aided them in the formation of the Republican party, and Horace Greeley occasionally reminded him that a decent regard for consistency should impel him to act in accordance with his anti-slavery record; but when, in 1860, Hunt began the crusade that successfully fused the Douglas and Bell tickets in New York, thus seriously endangering the election ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... some stairs, across two rooms, into a gallery containing a switch-board, and in the room below saw the works, all very neat-looking, but, as I soon found, very dusty. I went down, and fixed upon a generating set—there were three—that would give a decent load, and then saw that the switch-gear belonging to this particular generator was in order. I then got some cloths and thoroughly cleaned the dust off the commutators; ran next—for I was in a strange fierce haste—and turned the water into the turbines, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... lax in "keeping his end up." Moreover, he employed a good tailor and was careful to keep up an appearance of sound financial standing. But his home, which he avoided as much as possible, had little share in his personal prosperity. Mary Hopkins's requests for new and decent gowns were more often refused than acceded to, and he constantly cautioned her to keep down expenses or she would drive them both to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... feathers would have been dull enough had not Mrs Forbes come to her aid with dresses of her own, which they remade between them; for it will easily be believed that no avoidable outlay remained unavoided by the Bruces. Indeed, but for the feeling that she must be decent on Sundays, they would have let her go yet shabbier than she was when Mrs Forbes thus partially adopted her. Now that she was warmly and neatly dressed, she began to feel and look more like the lady-child she really was. No doubt the contrast ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... his friend, after a pause, "it was very good of you, old boy, and I hope that I'll do credit to your recommendation. The old man seems a decent sort of chap, though ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... public demonstration of it, to the laws of the country: There shall be given, moreover, liberty, when any subjects or inhabitants of either party shall die in the territory of the other, to bury them in the usual burying-places, or in decent and convenient grounds to be appointed for that purpose, as occasion shall require; and the dead bodies of those who are buried shall not in any wise be molested. And the two contracting parties shall provide, each one in his jurisdiction, that their respective subjects and inhabitants ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... He steadied up when he got married and started on a small selection of his own; but within the year Clara was living in a back skillion of her father's house and Jack was up-country shearing. He was "ringer" of the shed at Piora Station one season and made a decent cheque; and within a fortnight after the shed "cut out" he turned up at home in a very bad state from drink and with about thirty shillings in his pockets. He had fallen from his horse in the creek near Southwick's, and altogether he was a nice sort of young husband ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... here. You know we have been uneasy ever since her husband died. Herbert's infatuation concerning her has been pitiable, and we have always believed it has been that alone which has caused him to refuse so obstinately to enter into our plans, or to pay even decent courtesy to the various excellent young women we have from time to time asked down here, and who were in every way suitable for the position of mistress of this house—women full of sense, and who, with right guidance, would have made him perfectly ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... this is true, the instinctive aversion with which this act of Nelson's has been regarded generally is well founded. It was not decent, for it was not necessary, that capture should be followed so rapidly by trial, and condemnation by execution. Neither time nor circumstances pressed. The insurrection was over. Except the siege of St. Elmo, hostilities near Naples were at an end. That Caracciolo's ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... "It ain't a half-decent outfit, either," complained Doc Tomlinson. "Hay wire ain't any good for croquet arches; and as for these here balls and mallets you bought sight-unseen by mail, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... where they are furnished with what is called a bed, in a garret, for one creutzer, (equal to about one-third of a penny,) a-night; and for two creutzers a-night they get a place in a tolerably good bed in a decent room in ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... colonel up to his apartment when a servant from Mrs. James knocked hastily at the door. The lady, not meeting with her husband at her return home, began to despair of him, and performed everything which was decent on the occasion. An apothecary was presently called with hartshorn and sal volatile, a doctor was sent for, and messengers were despatched every way; amongst the rest, one was sent to enquire at the lodgings of ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Gods and Columns, without weighing well the consequences of his experiment. He who publishes a book, attended with a moderate success, passes a mighty barrier. He will often look back with a sigh of regret at the land he has left for ever. The beautiful and decent obscurity of hearth and home is gone. He can no longer feel the just indignation of manly pride when he finds himself ridiculed or reviled. He has parted with the shadow of his life. His motives may be misrepresented, his character belied; his manners, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... And that sober, honest, decent, Scot is going to take a wife. It was so good of him to tell me. We are all going to the wedding next week, and I'm sure I wish the dear ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... I begin to feel a little foggy. What was it we learned on the Trail, pardner?" But the Boy had turned away. "Wasn't it—didn't we learn how near a tolerable decent man is to bein' ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... without appearance of care. Of these tales there are only four. The Ladle; which is introduced by a preface, neither necessary nor pleasing, neither grave nor merry. Paulo Purganti; which has likewise a preface, but of more value than the tale. Hans Carvel, not over-decent; and Protogenes and Apelles, an old story, mingled, by an affectation not disagreeable, with modern images. The Young Gentleman in Love has hardly a just claim to the title of a tale. I know not whether he be the original author of any ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... their own fellow-citizens, Nicholas Upsall, and made him an exile from his home, for no greater crime than that of countenancing and befriending members of the Society of Friends. He kept the Dorchester hostelry, and was wont to entertain Quakers as he did any other decent people; but for this he was apprehended and tried by the court, and sentenced to pay a fine of L20 and be thrown into prison. Finally, finding it impossible to entirely prevent his friends from holding intercourse with him, he was banished from the settlement for the remainder of his life. That ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... note of curious pride crept into her voice. "So it's just like this, Beatrice—I can't live without position. I may not take poison, but I shall die all the same if I can't play a part in the world. All I ask is that you help me all you can. It's not much. I've been a pretty decent mother to you. You can't say that there was ever a time when I grudged you a pretty frock or a dance—" She stopped in her long speech, yielding to Beatrice's irrepressible ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... this suggestion, as indeed he did everything from her, in good part; and composed his visage into a decent gravity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... disguises above," he said to the count. "The decent one of an apprentice I have placed with my own clothes, and will take them with me to any lodging that I may get among the carpenters, but that beggar suit I will take to Simon Bouclier's the next time I come. I suppose you would not wish me to come ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... the immigrants appear to alter soon after they reach the colony. Some people object to the independence of their manner, but I do not; on the contrary, I like to see the upright gait, the well-fed, healthy look, the decent clothes (even if no one touches his hat to you), instead of the half-starved, depressed appearance, and too often cringing servility of the mass of our English population. Scotchmen do particularly well out here; ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... fifty-nine thousand," said I, heartily, "a stranger is bound to meet decent people if ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... the slight tracts of grass which had sprung up where a stream rising among the rocks was losing itself in the dry soil, but which looked brighter and greener as it was nearer to the kopje, which was fairly furnished with thorn-bush and decent-sized trees. ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... spring of 1830 that "Abe" Lincoln, "wearing a jean jacket, shrunken buckskin trousers, a coonskin cap, and driving an ox-team," became a citizen of Illinois. He was physically and mentally equipped for pioneer work. His first desire was to obtain a new and decent suit of clothes, but, as he had no money, he was glad to arrange with Nancy Miller to make him a pair of trousers, he to split four hundred fence rails for each yard of cloth—fourteen hundred rails in all. "Abe" got ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... lest there be those who think that deeds are not to follow upon words, may I state that I take up my ministry in this church afresh today with the conviction that I am committed to a program, and you committed to its decent and friendly consideration. Nay more, I am persuaded that we are ready for unanimous action on some points. At the regular annual meeting of this Society, on Monday, January 13, I hope, and have every reason to expect that a resolution will be ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes
... is no feud, and it doesn't seem so romantic when you're in it. The man my sister married I thought was frightfully boring except for his family place, and being in the army, which is rather decent. He talks," she smiled, "like a phonograph with ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... answer me!" Tom cried, white with wrath. "Ye young villain, ye're nothin' but a pauper, an' should be in the Poor House, instead of livin' with decent people. Ye don't know who yer father an' mother are, do ye? An' no one else does, fer that matter. Ye wouldn't own ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... rather more refined, rather less squat than the patriarchs and prophets supporting Saint Anne under the north porch, but their quality as works of art was less striking. They resembled the Christ, Whom they escorted with decent duty: it was honest work, phlegmatic ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... with hermit heart, Disdain'st the wealth of art, And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall; But com'st a decent maid, 10 In attic robe array'd, O chaste, unboastful Nymph, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... was not much inferior to the first. He had realized a very considerable property in Sussex, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, and the New River Company; and had acquired a spacious house, with gardens and lands, at Putney, in Surrey, where he resided in decent hospitality. He died in December 1736, at the age of seventy; and by his last will, at the expense of Edward, his only son, (with whose marriage he was not perfectly reconciled,) enriched his two daughters, Catherine and Hester. The former became the ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... you on as my protege. Make a decent gambler out of you. Set you up. We can go travelling together, see the world again. You've been to space; you can tell me what it's like ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... after mother died, and if there is a person in the whole world whom I loathed it was her. No, I won't go to her; I'll write and tell father I can't—I won't; it shan't be. Nothing would induce me to live with her. Oh, Mrs. Clavering, you don't know what she is, and she—why, she doesn't speak decent English, and she knows scarcely anything. How am I to be educated, Mrs. Clavering? I could not ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... had, it happily befell, A decent education; His views would have befitted well A far ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... the barn! He had been all wrong about the barn. It was a great little place, comfortable, airy, and cheerful. What could be more invigorating than that smell of hay? Even the rats, he felt, must be pretty decent rats, when ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... idea of his boxing up those weeds to send to anybody. Still the nurse had said how pleased Polly was. By George, it is strange what will please people. He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying horses, how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the sight of the first decent sized wheat field just went to his heart, when he was coming back. Someway he could not laugh at anything that morning, for Polly was dead. And Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed to see her yet, how she ran after ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... except the failure o' a company Glasgie wy; it's been rotten, a' wes hearin', for a while, an' noo it's fair stramash. They say it 'll no be lichtsome for weedows an' mony decent fouk ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... more than you'll get," grinned Herb. "But you may astonish us all by working up something really decent. Funny things like ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... "'Taint a decent night to put a dog out o' doors," returned the fisherman; "it's a good deal mor'n likely you'd get swamped in the marsh, if I let the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... he, "if only I had had decent men, instead of jail- birds and loafers!" and he pondered sadly ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... hillside, serene in the afterglow of its one hundred and eighty-four years. The spotless white walls, the green blinds, the graceful Colonial spire, are meetly set in an environment which strikes no note of dissonance. On either side are quaint, narrow streets, lined with decent door-yards and houses almost as old as the church. Within the cool interior the cottagers, and representatives of a native aristocracy—direct descendants of the English of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... a reformed character now," he admitted. "But he is far from orthodox; far from orthodox! At one time I am told that he was one of the wildest young fellows in the neighborhood, no decent person would speak to him, and though no doubt he means well, yet I could never have confidence in ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... done to you, but a time would come when you would find that your love for me did not compensate for your life here. And marriage with me is unthinkable. You know what I am and what I have been. You know that I am not fit to live with, not fit to be near any decent woman. You know what sort of a damnable life I have led; the memory of it would always come between us—you would never forget, you would never trust me. And if you could, of your charity, both forgive and forget, you know that ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... will grant it is but decent you should be pale, and lean, and melancholick, to shew you are in love: And that I shall require of you ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Madison, with a grim smile; "you're not! It's going to be the hardest work any of you have ever done—you've got to lead decent lives ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... discovered its component parts. The man was mad, undoubtedly, and this may have been poison. But its effect is good. Poh! I will taste again, because of this weak, agued, miserable state of mine; though it is a shame in me, a man of decent skill in my way, to believe in a quack's nostrum. But it is a comfortable kind ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable, free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a "GAM," a thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat gamesome stuff about "spouters" ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... a rich, suburban Pickle family at Epsom for the Derby, and Di had been grumbling that it was exactly the sort of invitation they would get: for one night and the Derby, instead of Ascot. However, it was the time of the month for a moon, and quite decent young men had been enticed; so Di wasn't so very sorry for herself after all. Her nickname at home in Ireland, "Diana the Huntress," had been already imported, free of duty, to England, by a discarded flirtee; but I don't think she minded, it sounded so dashing, even if it was only grasping. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... investigations of evil are profoundly consistent with an indomitable optimism. Any one can say "All's right with the world," when he looks at the smiling face of things, at comfortable prosperity and a decent morality. But the test of optimism is its sight of evil. Browning has fathomed it, and he can still hope, for he sees the reflection of the sun in the depths of every foul puddle. This vivid hope and trust in man ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... over a month ago, when some of us first went up near to Pozieres village—on the day when the bombardment before our first attack was tearing branches from off the trees a hundred yards away—Pozieres had a fairly decent covering then. There was enough dead brushwood and twigs, at any rate, to hide the buildings of the place. A few pink walls could then be half seen behind the branches, or topping the ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... could, and did: the marvellous Czar Paul that was to be. Concerning whose exact paternity there are still calumnious assertions widely current; to this individual Editor much a matter of indifference, though on examining, his verdict is: 'Calumnies, to all appearance; mysteries which decent or decorous society refuses to speak of, and which indecent is pretty sure to make calumnies out of.' Czar Paul may be considered genealogically genuine, if that is much an object to him. Poor Paul, does not he father himself, were there nothing more? Only ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... It was just after he jumped the Reservation. But he was only a sulky schoolboy then, playing hookey. Besides, he had not harmed the child. He worked for Dad and was right decent, till he got in with Slade ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... human heart are evil from our youth upward. He saw at once that Colin designed this cup as a means of bringing misfortune upon Marietta: perhaps to give out, when it should be in her possession, that it was the present of some successful lover in the town, or the like, so that all decent people would thereafter keep aloof from Marietta. Therefore Monsieur Hautmartin resolved, in order to prevent any evil reports, to profess himself the giver. Moreover, he loved Marietta, and would gladly have seen her observe more strictly toward himself the sayings of the gray-headed priest ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... weekly expenditure amounted to about twenty-five dollars. Bargaining with him stood the negro-driver, a tattooed African, armed with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the hive,—the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. The beds are sometimes partitioned off ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... son. In these days even a quiet religious man, like myself, may meet with rough fellows by the way; and while that staff gives support to my feet, it is an aid to command decent behaviour from those I fall in with. I have not much to lose, having with me but sufficient to buy me victuals for my journey to Carlisle; where, as I have just told our host, I am journeying to see a brother, who is prior at a ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... tribunal. Despair was written all over it in characters impossible to be mistaken. I had fixed my resolution to go through the whole scene, if not with heroism, at least with that decent firmness which becomes a man; yet the sound of the words which consigned me to the scaffold struck me with a general chill. Momentary as the period was, the question passed through my mind, are those paralysed limbs the same which bore me so well through the hazards ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... inadequate for the wants of ordinary people. For instance, its drawing-rooms were large out of all proportion, whereas its dining-room, morning-room and library were ridiculously small. It had a spacious hall and wide landings, but its stairs were steep and narrow, and there was not even one decent-sized bedroom in the house. All the rooms had low ceilings and were small. Their only virtue was that there were ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... But Senor Belasdo, the government representative, claims that we will not be done in time, and therefore he is holding back money due us. I'm sure the rival contractors have set him up to this, because he was always decent to us before. ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... person's disposition. A mendacious umbrella is a sign of great moral degradation. Hypocrisy naturally shelters itself below a silk; while the fast youth goes to visit his religious friends armed with the decent and reputable gingham. May it not be said of the bearers of these inappropriate umbrellas that they go about the streets "with a lie in their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... success enough for any reasonable mortal? Wouldn't you say that, with a wife holding an honored and great position in the State, and his daughter by his side, he'd settle down out there and live a respectable, decent life? Not he! First of all he wants ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kind lessons and instructions, and Urad, with a decent solemnity, attended both her labours and her teacher, who was so pleased with the fruits which she saw spring forth from the seeds of virtue that she had sown in the breast of her pupil, that she now began to leave her more to herself, and exhorted her to set apart some portion of each ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... Of a certainty now I brought them—but the sight of that heathen Ojibway, when he gave me the tunic, was enough to make any decent woman faint! I shook like an aspen, if you will credit me, all the way across the drill-ground, and perhaps the scissors . . . no, indeed, I cannot find them . . . but if mademoiselle will excuse ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... makes, anyhow; and as for Barlow, he looks like an ass in that yellow- chrysanthemum wig. No man with yellow hair like that could track such a villain as Henderson makes Muddleton out to be. Fact is, Henderson is the only decent part ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... I let fall a remark on the subject of horse-racing among friends chatting together, I was voted "morose." Is it really morose to object to public gatherings which their own promoters declare to be dangerous for all decent folk? Every one knows that horse-racing is carried on mainly for the delight and profit of fools, ruffians, and thieves. That intelligent men allow themselves to take part in the affair, and defend their conduct by declaring ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... early forties "young females" were expected to be retiring, modest, and although they were as often not, by the grace of that human nature which has changed little in its progress down the centuries, they maintained a decent pretence. There were a number of belles in the room, with their attendant swains, and no doubt each thought herself a great beauty; but not one of them would have stood up alone in the central promenade of Bath House. Several of the men stared in disapproval; which emboldened ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... former trip around the Penobscot region the boys had had the good fortune to be chiefly instrumental in causing the arrest of a couple of fleeing yeggmen, who had broken into several banks, and for whose arrest quite a decent reward was offered. Not only that, but they had recovered valuable bonds and papers, that would undoubtedly cause the bank officials to back up the offer they had made, which was to the effect that two thousand dollars would be paid to the parties ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... several other stanzas. And about then Miss Cross dumped a bundle of damp clothes into Irma's box and said, "Iron these next and do them decent!" I peered suspiciously into the box. It was ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... was not so much at seeing that her friend had divined the gist of the arrangement that had been effected downstairs. It was that Vida should be at no pains to throw a decent veil over the fact of her realization that Lady John had come there in the character of scout. With an openness not wholly free from scorn, the younger woman had laid her own cards on the table. She made ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... dressed themselves afresh, and washed in the brook. One would have taken them for decent traders when that was done, for they were soberly clad in good blue cloth jerkins, with clean white hose, and red garterings not too new. Good cloaks they had also, and short seaxes in their belts. Only Evan had a short Welsh sword, and the peace strings ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... The lowest are dead as brute matter to such interests; the highest—the rich, the fashionable, the noble, from opposite causes just as dead; or if they are alive at all, it is with the rage of denunciation and opposition. They are supporters of the decent usages sanctioned by antiquity, and consecrated by the veneration of a long line of the great and noble. Whether they themselves believe in the system which they uphold or not, they are equally tenacious of it. They would preserve and perpetuate it, because it has satisfied, at any ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... half hour late from that bum suttler's canteen, I guess it was only the time it took me digestin' two quarts of the gut-wash they hand out there in the hope you won't know it from beer. No, sir, 'lazy son-of-a-bitch' from that guy is the talk no decent citizen with a bunch of guts ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... three (and I made those), and it will not cost you a paltry twenty or thirty thousand pounds. Why I know men who would give that for the precedence alone.—Here!" and he rose and took up some papers from a table: "Here is a case; a man you know, I dare say; an earl, and of a decent date as earls go: George the First. The first baron was a Dutch valet of William the Third. Well I am to terminate an abeyance in his favour through his mother, and give him one of the baronies of the Herberts. He buys off the other claimant who is already ennobled with ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... fellowship with a pleasant smile of preparation. The cats knew her better than I did. Their suspense was really shocking to witness. While she was rolling her sleeves up and tying on her apron—she was poor, evidently, but very neat and wholesome in her black dress and the decent cap which crowned her hair—while she unpacked the contents of the bag—two newspaper parcels full of rather distressing viands, scissors, and a pair of gloves which had done duty more than once,—while all these ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... unrighteous taunt at Eusebius of Caesarea. 'You and I were once in prison for the faith. I lost an eye: how did you escape?' Athanasius might perhaps have been crushed if his enemies had kept up a decent semblance of truth and fairness. But nothing was further from their thoughts than an impartial trial. Scandal succeeded scandal, till the iniquity culminated in the dispatch of an openly partizan commission ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... clean out," remarked Bainton then, in accents of deep disdain, as he stooped to gather up the refractory branches: "It beats me altogether, Passon, to know what you wants wi' a forcin' bed for weeds an' stuff in the middle of a decent garden. That old Wistaria Sinyens (Sinensis) is the only thing here that is worth keeping. Ah! Y'are a precious sight, y'are!" he continued, apostrophising the 'rambler' branches—"For all yer green buds ye ain't a-goin' to do much this year! All sham an' 'umbug, y'are!—all leaf an' shoot ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... being altered into Hawaii. No one who visits it in the present day need be afraid of sharing the fate of poor Captain Cook; for the descendants of the savages who, in his time, inhabited the island, have now, through the labours of Christian missionaries, become a very decent sort of ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... subjects within the realm, that what a man hath honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but cannot be taken from him without his consent. That the American subjects may, therefore, exclusive of any consideration of Charter rights, with a decent firmness adapted to the character of freemen and subjects, assert this natural ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... man. Ferry went to pieces, as you know, in 1885. Tonkin and the dead Courbet killed him. So they invented Boulanger. They made him War Minister. They put him on his black horse. They let him drive out the princes. Look at those five men seated there in front of that cafe. They are doubtless decent well-to-do shopkeepers, master mechanics—no matter what—I will wager you that of these five men, three believe Boulanger to be the first soldier of France, and that two of them believe the Government has driven him into exile ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... door to greet her guests, was obliged to wipe her face surreptitiously now and then, while the statues in the hall, with their burdens of ferns and lamps, showed their cool limbs beneath their scanty but still decent drapery. ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... Cincinnati, a letter informing me that he had been appointed Secretary of War, and should insist on my immediate return to Washington. I answered that I was ready to go to Washington, or anywhere, if assured of decent treatment. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... deserter.[656] "We cannot affect indifference at the treachery of Senator Douglas," said a Richmond paper. "He was a politician of considerable promise. Association with Southern gentlemen had smoothed down the rugged vulgarities of his early education, and he had come to be quite a decent and well-behaved person."[657] To political denunciation was now to be added the sting ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... now, tomorrow, I'll ruin John Ellery as sure as I'm a living man. He'll be ruined in Trumet, anyhow. He'll be thrown out by the parish committee. I'm not sure that his church people won't tar and feather him. Marrying a low-down Come-Outer hussy! As if there wa'n't decent girls of good families he might have had! But losing this church won't be the only thing that'll happen to him. The committee'll see that he doesn't get another one. I'll use my influence and have him thrown out of the Regular ministry. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Group masses of naked rock even in the wildest forms, and they may for a time afford a sublime spectacle, but they will soon grow monotonous. Paint them with bright and varied colours, as in Northern Chile, they will become fantastic; clothe them with vegetation, they must form a decent, if ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... terrible persicas, and finally discovered that they were neither more nor less than—cockroaches!—called Prossaki (Prussians) by the Russians, as they are sometimes called Schwaben (Suabians) by the Germans. Possibly they may be found in the huts of the serfs, but they are rare in decent houses. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... of all her late husband's creditors she was the worst used and the most to be pitied. And yet, she had loved him dearly for many years, and had no greater share of selfishness than is the usual lot of mortals. Such is the irritability of sudden poverty. A decent annuity would have restored her thoughts to their ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... his home, for no greater crime than that of countenancing and befriending members of the Society of Friends. He kept the Dorchester hostelry, and was wont to entertain Quakers as he did any other decent people; but for this he was apprehended and tried by the court, and sentenced to pay a fine of L20 and be thrown into prison. Finally, finding it impossible to entirely prevent his friends from holding intercourse with him, he was banished from the settlement ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... is to show that Darwinism will soon be a thing of the past, a matter of history; that we even now stand at its death-bed, while its friends are solicitous only to secure for it a decent burial. ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... in Rutland Square we found decent lodging, in a large chamber which was really the smoking room of the house. The city was crowded with tourists on account of an expected visit of the King and Queen; every other room in the hotel ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... do," said Helmar suddenly; "we are all a bit tired of the river. The next decent town we come to we'll get out and take the train on ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... it is," muttered the doctor; "but never mind that. Go on deck as soon as you're decent, and ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... of verandah, on to which opened the solitary door and window, both low and small. The floor was usually sunk below ground, and Maori builders knew of no such thing as a chimney. Though neither cooking nor eating was done in their dwelling-houses, and offal of all kinds was carefully kept at a decent distance, the atmosphere in their dim, stifling interiors was as a rule unendurable by White noses and lungs. Even their largest tribal or meeting halls had but the one door and window; the Maori mind seemed as incapable of adding thereto, as of constructing more ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... general use, it was provided for visiters, and for such of his own family as returned occasionally to his roof, and had been accustomed to this refreshment elsewhere; but neither he nor his wife ever partook of it. The raiment worn by his family was comely and decent, but as simple as their diet; the homespun materials were made up into apparel by their own hands. At the time of the decease of this thrifty pair, their cottage contained a large store of webs of woollen and linen cloth, woven from thread of their own ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... journey. Very particularly would I thank Senhor Penalosa and other officials of the Brazilian Government for the special arrangements by which we were helped upon our way, and Senhor Pereira of Para, to whose forethought we owe the complete outfit for a decent appearance in the civilized world which we found ready for us at that town. It seemed a poor return for all the courtesy which we encountered that we should deceive our hosts and benefactors, but under the circumstances we had really no alternative, and I hereby tell them that they ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "A decent competence we fully taste; It strikes our sense, and gives a constant feast: More we perceive by dint of thought alone; The rich must labour to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... as the conduct of the English missionaries may be thought, in withholding a decent reception to these persons, the latter were certainly to blame in needlessly placing themselves in so unpleasant a predicament. Under far better auspices, they might have settled upon some one ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Paris. He said he was obliged to go on business. He was away a month. And after a week had passed, Lady Anstruthers began to be restless and angry, and once she flew into a rage, and told me I was a fool, and that if I had been an Englishwoman, I should have had some decent control over my husband, because he would have respected me. In time I found out what I had done. It did ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... them would be worth their salt if they ever felt ashamed of you. What do you care what strangers think or say? You know. You've seen life. You've stepped off the stage and carried with you the recollection of decent living, of playing square, of doing the best you could. The worst scoundrels I ever met never made any mistake with their forks. Perhaps you don't know it, but my father became rich because he could judge a man's worth almost at sight. And he kept this fortune and added to it because ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... blow on the heart is not quite so serious as a blow on the head. Fortunately for Newton, the tomahawk had only glanced along the temple, not injuring the skull, although it stunned him, and detached a very decent portion of his scalp, which had to be replaced. A lancet brought him to his senses, and the surgeon pronounced his wound not to be dangerous, provided ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... a professional education. To become a doctor a man must study some three years and hear a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how much study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably not more than this. Now most decent people hear one hundred lectures or sermons (discourses) on theology every year,—and this, twenty, thirty, fifty years together. They read a great many religious books besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... milkman is notified that his milk will no longer be received. Experience has shown that a reasonable regard for cleanliness in the stable and dairy room, with a prompt cooling of the milk, will limit the bacterial growth to this standard, and the requirement, meaning, as it does, only a decent regard for such cleanliness as a self-respecting dairyman would recognize as essential, works no hardship on any one. New York City prints its dairy rules on linen and has them tacked up in every ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... the factor aboot pittin' up a meetin'-hoose and a decent dwallin', gin ye hae left kirk and manse!' That was a' that the auld laird ever said, as his son gaed ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great! As often as I say, I have escaped from one calamity, I fall into a worse. By Allah, this is an abominable death to die! Would Heaven I had died a decent death and been washed and shrouded like a man and a Moslem. Would I had been drowned at sea or perished in the mountains! It were better than to die this miserable death!" And on such wise I kept blaming my own folly and greed of gain in that black hole, knowing not night from day; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... courtship of some decent duration, and a legal marriage at the altar. I tried to view my position on all sides, and thus to find out that which was the most favourable for my mind's eye to rest upon.—It was but a disconsolate ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Mother, don't let your prejudices carry you that far. Money's money. Old Vavrika's a mighty decent sort of saloonkeeper. Nothing rowdy ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... whole doggrel is only calculated to bring ridicule and contempt upon the Scriptures; but there are, besides, passages such as refer to Job's "Curse God, and die;" to Jeshuram waxing fat; to Jonah in the whale's belly; and other parts, which utterly unfit the MS. for decent perusal. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... decided not to, do not allow yourselves to be in situations which make it unduly difficult to carry out your decision. Drink stimulates the sex urge; few decent people would enjoy remembering that their first sex experience came when they were stimulated by liquor. If you drink, avoid emotional situations in secret thereafter, until this stimulus has worn ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... pity, give me grudging and envy. I have been moderate in what I have written. I shall be more full if Caesar meets me graciously; and then those gentlemen who are so jealous that I should have a decent house to live in will make a wry face.... Enough of this. Since those who have no power will not be my friends, I must endeavor to make friends with those who have. You will say you wished this long ago. I know that you wished it, and that I have been a mere ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... soul when done with the body, she was disappointed because she couldn't carry the old body along with her. Don't let these things trouble you. Live one summer so you will be worthy to breathe the air of the next if you live to see it; take care of your body so it will make a decent weed if God chooses to make one out ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... going to stop squandering money for things I don't want. I'm going to stop accepting invitations, and meeting people I don't like and don't want to know. I've tried your game—I've tried it hard, and I don't like it; and I'm going to get out before it's too late. I'm going to find some decent and simple place to live in; and I'm going down town to find out if there isn't some way in New York for a man ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... the better, Violet,' said Arthur. 'You are all right, you know, and in great favour with John. He can do anything with my father, and I have written. We shall be at home before the end of another month, and set going with a decent income in London. A house—where shall it be? Let me see, he can't give me less than L1000 a year, perhaps L1600. I vow I don't see why it should not be L2000. John wants no more than he has got, and will never marry now, and there is only ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her a hand up?" Then he asked her about herself: Had she friends? Where did her family live? Could she do any work? He was rather diverted by his own philanthropy, but it seemed to him that it would be the decent thing to advise the girl, seriously. "I'll talk to her," he thought. "Come on!" he said; "let's hunt up some place and ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... matron kept her little school, Gentle of heart, yet knowing well to rule; Staid was the dame, and modest was her mien; Her garb was coarse, yet whole, and nicely clean; Her neatly border'd cap, as lily fair, Beneath her chin was pinn'd with decent care; And pendent ruffles, of the whitest lawn, Of ancient make, her elbows did adorn. Faint with old age, and dim were grown her eyes, A pair of spectacles their want supplies; These does she guard secure, in leathern case, From thoughtless ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... far as you'll get to-night," he said. "I'll see you safe to Shelby, and then make tracks for Port Vigor. I hope there's a decent inn at Shelby where you can ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... that it represents the reawakening of the desire for knowledge which had been in abeyance during the stormy centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, when men had little leisure for anything but the constant labour to secure a little decent order and peace. For a few years, indeed, in the ninth century the genius of Charlemagne had almost restored the order of civilization, and even in those few years the human mind reasserted itself, and for a moment the learning and culture which had been preserved mainly by the ...
— Progress and History • Various
... of his relations with Craive. They had begun at a club, over cards. The two had little in common—Craive was a stockbroker when world-wars did not happen to be in progress—but G.J. greatly liked him because, with all his crudity, he was such a decent, natural fellow, so kind-hearted, so fresh and unassuming. And Craive on his part had developed an admiration for G.J. which G.J. was quite at a loss to account for. The one clue to the origin of the mysterious attachment between them had been a naive phrase ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... what is the matter with him so I can cure him. We don't want our herd spoiling the feeding grounds and the water-holes and giving their diseases to all the flocks that graze after them. If we are let graze on the range the least we can do is to be decent about it—that's the ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... said: "When the money is found, please take charge of it, and see that every decent arrangement is made. I mean, spare nothing. I am a Protestant, but I believe in any man's prayers when they are not addressed to a heathen image. I promised Torrini to send his wife and children to Italy. This pitiful, miserable gold, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... own dinner she had too little time to do anything but go straight, though it must be added that for a real certainty she would joyously have omitted the repast. She had made up her mind as to there being on the whole no decent pretext to justify her flitting casually past at three o'clock in the morning. That was the hour at which, if the ha'penny novels were not all wrong, he probably came home for the night. She was therefore reduced to the ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... Jargon; nor is the offence to be excused by pleading, as I have heard it pleaded, that Mr Lloyd George was not using his own phraseology but quoting from a paper supplied him by some permanent official of the Treasury: since we select our civil servants among men of decent education and their salaries warrant our stipulating that they shall be able, at least, to speak ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... There arose the less cause why he should be, perhaps, since Mr. Harley was sure of being popular with himself in spite of any conduct that could be his. His ideals were not lofty, his moral senses not keen, and what original decent point the latter might have once possessed had long been dulled away. True, Mr. Harley was shaken of an ague of fear; but his tremblings were born of the practical. He was agitated by thoughts of what havoc, in his own and in Senator Hanway's affairs of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... as to the public demonstration of it, to the laws of the country: There shall be given, moreover, liberty, when any subjects or inhabitants of either party shall die in the territory of the other, to bury them in the usual burying-places, or in decent and convenient grounds to be appointed for that purpose, as occasion shall require; and the dead bodies of those who are buried shall not in any wise be molested. And the two contracting parties shall provide, each one in his jurisdiction, that their respective subjects and inhabitants ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... toilette, and to sit in a decent position. The cousin came up to us, and Don Diego, after making a few remarks, left us on the balcony, wishing us a good night. I might have begun over again, but I clung to my system of repression, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Grenville Leigh!" said Sally, quite carried away by that historic combination. "That's better than Amyas," she went on, reflectively. "Is he decent? But never mind. I'll marry ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... for a guide," began Shelby, as soon as decent greetings had been made. "He's just been let loose by Sir Somebody of Somewhere, and I nailed him. Name o' Joshua,—but we can stand that. He really knows it all,—without continually proclaiming ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... his enumeration of the works of Bordeaux; but its Roman origin, of whatever age, is undoubted. It stands in a state of squalid neglect and dirt, sharing the fate of most of the antiquities of Bordeaux. If the space were cleared, and the surrounding huts removed, a decent walk made, and the whole enclosed, this monument of former days might form an attractive object: as it is, the struggle to escape entanglement in every sort of dirt, while fighting one's way to the ruined amphitheatre, is almost too disheartening. When these circumstances accompany a visit ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the brethren eulogized were moving up the rift at his feet, he was able to observe them calmly. They were in long gowns of heavy gray woollen stuff, with sleeves widening from the shoulders; their cowls, besides covering head and visage, fell down like capes. Cleanly, decent-looking men, they marched slowly and in order, their hands united palm to palm below their chins. The precentor failed to inspire them with ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the four-room apartment for five years. Cora declared it was getting beyond her. "You can't get any decent help. The washwoman acts as if she was doing me a favour coming from eight to four, for four dollars and eighty-five cents. And yesterday she said she couldn't come to clean any more on Saturdays. I'm sick ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... blankets to keep it warm. Let none think this swathing of the infant is needless to set down, for it is necessary it should be thus swaddled, to give its little body a straight figure, which is most proper and decent for a man, and to accustom him to keep upon his feet, who otherwise would go upon all fours, as ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... nearly 100 pairs of dice were found, which had dropped, on different occasions, through the chinks or joints of the boards. They were very small, at least one-third less that those now in use. Certainly the benchers of those times did not keep the floor of their magnificent hall in a very decent condition. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Georges was actually trembling. At length the Mayor came in by a little door and appeared before us, awkward and podgy in his dress-coat, which was too large for him, and which his scarf caused to rise up. He was a very respectable man who had amassed a decent fortune from the sale of iron bedsteads; yet how could I bring myself to think that this embarrassed-looking, ill-dressed, timid little creature could, with a word hesitatingly uttered, unite me in eternal bonds? Moreover, he had a fatal ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... avoided Paulina since her return, and she had made no effort to see me. But after Trant's death I wrote her a few lines, to which she sent a friendly answer; and when a decent interval had elapsed, and I asked if I might call on her, she answered at once that ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... forward, but seemed to take just the proper interest and proper part in the flow of conversation, and not once during the meal was he offensive in the slightest degree. But for his first unpleasant impression of the fellow, Merry might have fancied him quite a decent chap. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... proof that attention is not drawn vainly to such scenes, that, upon Dickens going over them a dozen years later when he wrote a paper about them for his Household Words, he found important changes effected whereby these human dens, if not less dangerous, were become certainly more decent. On the night of our earlier visit, Maclise, who accompanied us, was struck with such sickness on entering the first of the Mint lodging-houses in the borough, that he had to remain, for the time we were in them, under guardianship of the police ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... plan of dress, down to the very material of their gloves, was an instance of this spirit. For, when we come to analyse it, what does it really signify to us how our servants dress, so long as they are clean and decent, and do not let their garments damage our goods? Fashion is almost always ridiculous, and women as a rule care more for dress than they care for anything else; and if the kitchen apes the parlor, and Phyllis gives as ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... you are decent, keep from drinking, and don't get me into trouble at the school, you may stay and take what ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... out of their mind with four-in- hand barouches. They do not understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other. They are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... he mused. "I DO love a chat with a man when he is a good sort. With a man of that kind I am always hail-fellow-well-met, and glad to drink a glass of tea with him, or to eat a biscuit. One CAN'T help respecting a decent fellow. For instance, this gentleman of mine—why, every one looks up to him, for he has been in the Government's service, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... full vigor of life; and that, while Henry could take and execute all his resolutions in person, he should now be reduced, both in counsel and in action, to rely on the talents and exertions of other men. Having thus grown old before his time, he wisely judged it more decent to conceal his infirmities in some solitude than to expose them any longer to the public eye, and prudently determined not to forfeit the fame or lose the acquisitions of his better years by struggling, with a vain obstinacy, to retain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the other servants then promptly told her the various reasons. "She's just bent," they proceeded, "upon finding a few weighty concerns in order to establish, at the expense of any decent person who might chance to present herself, a precedent of some kind or other so as to fix upon a mode of action, which might help to put down expenses to their proper level, and afford a lesson to the whole household; and why are you people the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... recovered himself; his tone became once more quick and incisive. "Ye're right; I'm gone daffy. We'll get this business over in a decorous and decent manner. And, Mr. O'Brien—lest I have nae time to speak of it later—should ye get ashore, and ever find yourself in the neighborhood o' Piccadilly, be so gude as to drop into the admiralty office and say Captain Macpherson sends ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... just before been taking a survey of his clothes, which, in spite of all sorts of contrivances, he had no small difficulty in keeping about him. He wished to look tolerably decent, though he had considerable misgivings on that score. He felt very thin, and not so strong as he used to be, which is not surprising, considering the small amount of sustenance he took. The little ones at home were certainly fatter than ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston
... God who giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord!" They were the last words. As the golden sun rose once more to light the towers and temples of the city, he sent one rich beam into that humble chamber. The Christian was alone with the dead now. He had composed the body in decent order with his own hands, and reverently covered it over. The face was still visible, but no distortion was there; the lips were gently closed, and the eyes, as if in slumber; the white locks fell quietly ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... trout. I found I had him fast on the hook, so I jested with his new proposal, and put him off. I told him he knew little of me, and bade him inquire about me; I let him also go home with me to my lodging, though I would not ask him to go in, for I told him it was not decent. ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... find, an' the Padre found it. Wal!" But as no reply was forthcoming he hurried on, turning his tongue loose in the best abuse he could command at the moment. "You're a rotten sort o' skunk anyway, an' you ain't got a decent thought in your diseased head. I'd like to say right here that you hate seein' a sixty-ounce lump o' gold in any other hands than your own dirty paws. That's your trouble, so jest shut right up while better folks handles a matter wot's a sight too delicate ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... regular and respectable branch of public industry which was carried on by the highwaymen of England, and all the parties to it moved upon decent motives and by considerate methods. In particular, the robbers themselves, as the leading parties, could not be other than first-rate men, as regarded courage, animal vigour, and perfect horsemanship. Starting from any lower standard than this, not only had they no chance of continued success—their ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Especially if we were very well off and successful, and thought ourselves of some consequence (as we now very often are, I beg to say), and showed it (as, I'm afraid, we sometimes do). He preferred the commonest artisan to M. Jourdain, the bourgeois gentilhomme, who was a very decent fellow, after all, and at least clean in his habits, and didn't use bad ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... all about it by tomorrow night, because the last knot will have been untied by then, and everybody notified to come out to the meeting. Then beginning on next Monday afternoon, hard practice for the lucky ones, to be continued every decent day during the week, with a game against a picked nine ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... cutting out my heart," said the poor Aunt. "But what can we do? I am not able to give the child proper food even, or decent clothes. If we keep her she must grow up in ignorance. These English strangers offer every thing; we have nothing to offer. If we could count on the bare necessaries of life,—no more than those,—I would never, never give up Annie. As ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... a bit too strict in his views of life, a bit narrow in many things. Nevertheless, he was changed. He was less harsh in his opinions of others since he had seen and heard how thousands who were not of his religious faith had gone forth to lay down their lives that the world might be made a decent place in which to live. He, Phares Eby, preacher, had formerly denounced all that pertained to actors and the theatre, yet tears had coursed down his cheeks as he had read the account of a famous comedian who had given his only son for ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... in a very, very small way in the East-End to people connected with the docks, stevedores, minor barge-owners, ship-chandlers, tally clerks, all sorts of very small fry. He made his living at it. He was a very decent man I believe. He had enough influence to place his only son as junior clerk in the account department of one of the Dock Companies. 'Now, my boy,' he said to him, 'I've given you a fine start.' But de Barral didn't start. He stuck. He ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... extended on the decent bier, Convey the corse in melancholy state, Through all the village spread the tender tear, While pitying maids ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... due regulation and domestic order of the Kingdom, whereby the inhabitants of a State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their general behavior to the rules of propriety, of neighborhood and good manners, and to be decent, industrious, and ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... never kept but just what clothes were comfortable for common days, and perhaps I would have a garment or two which I did not have on at all times, but as for superfluous finery I never thought it to be compared with a decent homespun dress, a good supply of money and prudence. Expensive gatherings of my mates I commonly shunned, and all kinds of luxuries I was perfectly a stranger to; and during the time I was employed in cutting the aforementioned quantity of ...
— A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of • Venture Smith
... drawing-rooms with prize upholstery, and writing accounts of our handsome warehouses to the country papers. Don't think I use my words vaguely or generally: I speak of literal facts. Giotto's frescoes at Assisi are perishing at this moment for want of decent care; Tintoret's pictures in San Sebastian, at Venice, are at this instant rotting piecemeal into grey rags; St. Louis's chapel, at Carcassonne, is at this moment lying in shattered fragments in the market-place. And ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... isn't a comfortable or decent room in it, from the garret to the cellar. Not one. It's a horrid place to live in; and such a neighbourhood to bring ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... Florence by the year and the week.[7] We are even told that in the month of July 1280, 40,000 loads of melons entered the gate of San Friano and were sold in the city. Nor are the manners and the costume of the Florentines neglected: the severe and decent dress of the citizens in the good old times (about 1260) is contrasted with the new-fangled fashions introduced by the French in 1342.[8] In addition to all this miscellaneous information may be mentioned what we learn from Matteo ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... poor little Nell in rags, All her good, decent clothes she sold; She scarcely gave her daily bread, And kept her shivering in ...
— My Dog Tray • Unknown
... three times before the court of session and won each time. I knew your father, who was a decent shoemaker in Cupar, and when he sent you to learn to be a lawyer he little thought he was making a tool for those he despised. Pick a man from the plow, clap on his back a black coat, send him to college, and in five years he is a Conservative, and puckers his mouth at anything so vulgar ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... cringing servility, but with an open, decent freedom in his manner, which expressed that he had been obliged, but that he knew his young benefactor was not thinking of the obligation. He made as little distinction as possible between his ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... proof of any sort, and must be interpreted by the commonsense consideration that a neutral Belgium was a defensive bulwark for France and England. To have tampered with her neutrality would have been motiveless folly. How much more decent and moral than Prof. Burgess's meticulous weighing of national reincorporation as a means of evading national obligations is Chancellor Hollweg's robust plea of national necessity! Prof. Burgess's whole moral and mental attitude in this case seems to be that of a corporation ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... not obscured, but exalted, by experience and age; and with humble reverence, I feel it my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of the people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me, in any degree, to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two houses shall not ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... my own mind," he answered. "These other awfully decent fellows don't, that's all—if you except Mahommed Gunga. That chap's a wonder. 'Pon my soul, it seems he knew this was coming and picked me from the start to take charge over here. Seems, owing to my dad's reputation, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... halfbreeds, and all used to the moving picture work, down to the very toddlers clinging to their mothers' blankets. The Osage princess was inclined to look scornfully at this hybrid crew at first. Finally, however, she found them to be very decent sort of folk, although none of ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... clergy and laity by replacing the altars in their proper positions again. He asks, therefore, Bishop Brian Duppa (1638-1641), in the questions put during the first visitation of parish churches, "Is your communion-table, or altar, strong, fair and decent? Is it set according to the practice of the ancient Church,—upon an ascent at the east end of the chancel, with the ends of it north and south? Is it compassed in with a handsome rail to keep it from profanation according to an order made in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... one meal a day. I accepted. The next day being Sunday, I commenced the arduous duties of a bar-maid in a low drinking house. My pourboires amounted sometimes to five or ten francs; I had my board and lodging free; and at the end of three months I had been able to provide myself with some decent clothing, and was commencing to accumulate a little reserve, when the lodging-house keeper, whose business had unexpectedly developed itself to a considerable extent, concluded to engage a man-waiter, and urged ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... own abundance. I once heard a young girl, about to take her summer outing, when asked by her grandmother if she had all the dresses she needed, reply, "Oh, yes! I was oppressed with a constant sense of guilt, when packing, to see how much I had, while so many girls have nothing decent to wear." ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... prayer; Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam, Writing a cheque for a million, driveling feebly of home; Lost like a louse in the burning... or else in the tented town Seeking a drunkard's solace, sinking and sinking down; Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world, Lost 'mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled; In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare, Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare; Crimped with ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... obeying, and called again without obedience; what troops sent out to quell resistance, and, on meeting that resistance, recalled; what shiftings, and changes, and jumblings of all kinds of men at home, which left no possibility of order, consistency, vigor, or even so much as a decent unity of color, in anyone public measure—It is a tedious, irksome task. My duty may call me to open it out some other time; on a former occasion[12] I tried your temper on a part of it; for the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... incredible. Even his sons, as they grew up to man's estate, advised him to ask for an increase, but he would not. Seven shillings a week he had always had; and that small sum, with something his wife earned by making highly finished smock-frocks, had been sufficient to keep them all in a decent way; and his sons were now all earning their own living. But Caleb got married, and resolved to leave the old farm at Bishop to take a better place at a distance from home, at Warminster, which had been offered him. He would ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... rancorous grievance. He did not apprehend Truesdale's attitude towards the town at large, and the young man's manner in his own house (regardless of his insolent utterance) seemed to have carried a half-contemptuous curiosity beyond all decent bounds. "That young cockerel—I'll soon find a way to quiet his crowing. What does all his singing and painting and fencing amount to, after all? He couldn't post an item into a ledger; he couldn't even tie up a pound of tea. He ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... clear frosty morning in March, that one of the watchful guardians of the peace and quiet of the city, connected with the police establishment, did me the unexpected honor of a visit. He stated that a poor but very decent sort of a man had fallen into the hands of the watch during the preceding night, and had been committed to Bridewell by the sitting magistrate, on a charge of assault and battery. According to the report of Dogberry, the man was "quite down-in-the-mouth about it, and," (he added,) "he contests ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... nothing of the kind? If one half of this country claims the right to disown the Union, the claim in the eyes of every true guardian among us must be a cause for war, unless we hold the Union to be a false thing instead of the public consent to decent principles of life that it is. If we withdraw from Fort Sumter, we do nothing to destroy that cause. We can only destroy it by convincing them that secession is a betrayal of their trust. Please God ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... might be made to take the place of the drivellings and botcheries of Tennyson and Browning; of Dickens and Thackeray; of Ruskin and Carlyle. To these persons Bel-Ami was a sweet content, a really "shady boon." The hero never does a decent thing and never says a good one; but he has good looks and insinuating manners of the kind that please some women, whence his name, originally given to him by an innocent little girl, and taken up by her by no means innocent mamma and other quasi-ladies.[485] ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
Copyright © 2026 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
