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More "Impropriety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... emotions, spoke with such candor, judgment and authority that the men present whispered together, and seemed almost inclined to think that they had committed a shameful indiscretion in suspecting so gallant an officer and so perfect a gentleman of any impropriety, on the mere word of a strange woman, who was certainly ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... the bombardment reached the ears of widow Susanna at Windsor, fifty miles away, and Justice and Mrs. Jonathan "expostulated with Mary Almira upon the impropriety, as they called it, of her receiving the attentions of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... me, Florimel, what you mean by the impropriety of having secrets with another gentleman? Am I ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... firelight shone from the window, but nobody was visible in the room. She tapped nervously, and then thought it doubtful if it were right for a single woman to call upon a bachelor who lived alone, although he was her manager, and she might be supposed to call on business without any real impropriety. Gabriel opened the door, and the moon ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... as one who scents scandal and impropriety in facts that do not adapt themselves to every-day rules of life. A few other women, suffering from one or other of the fashionable complaints in vogue at this season, agreed with her, that "it certainly looked very odd." They did ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... the man whom she had so positively and sternly refused venture to continue his suit? Since the Emperor had loved her, she felt raised infinitely above the poor nobleman. Nay, she considered it a reprehensible impropriety that he still sought her. And, besides what consequences the visit of so stately a ladykiller, whose unusual height rendered him easily recognised, might now entail upon her! Suppose that he should meet a messenger from the Emperor on the stairs, or it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... at least done my best. I have endeavored to judge without prejudice, and to hear with honest ears and to see with honest eyes. The subject, moreover, on which I have written is one which, though great, is so universal in its bearings that it may be said to admit, without impropriety, of being handled by the unlearned as well as the learned; by those who have grown gray in the study of constitutional lore, and by those who have simply looked on at the government of men as we all look on at those matters which daily surround ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... somwhat better this morning since his medicine has opperated. I dispatched two men early this morning up the S. E. Fork to examine the river; and permitted sundry others to hunt in the neighbourhood of this place. Both Capt. C. and myself corrisponded in opinon with rispect to the impropriety of calling either of these streams the Missouri and accordingly agreed to name them after the President of the United States and the Secretaries of the Treasury and state having previously named one river in honour of the Secretaries of War and Navy. In pursuance of ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... is making a good deal of a slight matter, to tell the internal conflicts in the heart of a quiet person something more than juvenile and something less than senile, as to whether he should be guilty of an impropriety, and, if he were, whether he would get caught in his indiscretion. And yet the memory of the kiss that Margaret of Scotland gave to Alain Chartier has lasted four hundred years, and put it into the head ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the angle of the pyramidal portion of the temporal bone, and that they are folded on themselves, and finally lost above the middle and inferior eminence of the brain. He appears to have been aware that at this point they communicate with the exterior or convoluted surface. He recognized the impropriety of the term corpus callosum, seems to have known the communication called afterwards foramen Monroianum, and describes the hippocampus more minutely than ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... thimbleful of coffee, poured the mixture down their throats, and rushed out into the street again, as though there or elsewhere they had anything whatever to do. I enjoyed my coffee as much as one can enjoy good coffee, and did not commit the impropriety of ordering a second cup, but bought of the tobacconist in the establishment a package of those cigarettes—not so much good, as genuine, Brazilian—which are rolled in corn straw instead of in paper. Leaning against a door-post, I remained standing there, gazed across the street, unrolled one ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... voting and office-holding of women shows that whenever men's theories of the relation of property to the political franchise, or of the lineal succession of the government, require that women shall vote or hold office, the objection of impropriety and incapacity wholly disappears. If it be unwomanly for a woman to vote, or to hold office, it is unwomanly for Victoria to be Queen of England. Surely if our neighbors had thought they would be better represented in this convention by certain women, there is no good reason why ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... collect evidence criminating the Dutch and to collect no other evidence. And, with peculiar assurance, they saw no impropriety in requiring the authorities of New Netherland, in their own capital, to suspend their established rules of law in favor of ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... any one, not merely the impropriety, but the injustice of introducing private character into such discussions. There is, however, a maxim too well established to need any comment of mine. The public character of every public servant is legitimate subject of discussion, and ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... regarding my two treasures, even as if my eyes had made her uncomfortable, she suddenly opened hers, and started to her feet, with the words, "I beg your pardon, papa," looking almost guiltily round her, and putting up her hair hurriedly, as if she had committed an impropriety in being caught untidy. This was fresh sign of a condition of ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... himself for the practice of some particular branch of the healing art, the specialist sees no impropriety in acquainting the public with his ability to relieve certain forms of suffering. He believes that medical men should possess equal rights with other business men, and that any code of medical ethics which would deprive ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... not imagine that there was any impropriety in the Prince and Princess walking together in the palace garden, and because Giglio kissed Angelica's hand in a polite manner. In the first place they are cousins; next, the Queen is walking in the garden too ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... loud talking, far less swearing, amongst the lowest of those assembled in the ring; and it is this quiet and orderly behaviour which throws over all these incongruities a cloak of decency and decorum, that hides their impropriety so completely, that even foreigners who have lived here a few years, and who were at first struck with astonishment by these things, are ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... he should watch with more anxiety and carefulness than laymen do the relations that exist between pastors and the women of their flock. I do not understand this as a statement that there is any general looseness of conduct among the clergy at all; but as one which covers a kind of impropriety for which there is no name and no punishment. There are women whose affection for their husbands is uprooted through their intercourse with their pastors. There shall never be an improper word spoken; there shall never be a deed committed ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... his inner sense to a consciousness of forms and quantity; a third in addition to the image is conscious of the conception or notion of the thing; a fourth attains to a notion of his notions—he reflects on his own reflections; and thus we may say without impropriety, that the one possesses more or less inner sense, than the other. This more or less betrays already, that philosophy in its first principles must have a practical or moral, as well as a theoretical or speculative ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... potatoes, whose jackets hung by a thread. Around this feast the whole party soon collected, and none of them sighed for Russian soups or French ragouts; for the fact is that under the title of boiled beef there exist two things, one of which, without any great impropriety, might be called junk; but this was the powdered beef of our ancestors, a huge piece just slightly salted in the house itself, so that the generous juice remained in it, but the piquant slices, with the mealy potatoes, made a delightful combination. The glasses were filled with home-brewed ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... 'synonym' is defined thus, it will be at once perceived by any acquainted with its etymology, that, strictly speaking, it is a misnomer, and is given, with a certain inaccuracy and impropriety, to words which stand in such relations as I have just traced to one another; since in strictness of speech the terms, 'synonyms' and 'synonymous' applied to words, affirm of them that they cover not merely almost, but altogether, the same extent of meaning, that they are in their signification ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety; For your brain is on fire—the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you: First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you; Then the blanketing tickles—you feel like mixed pickles—so ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... impropriety of habitual concealment may be further illustrated. An individual who endeavors to conceal the business in which he is engaged, or the place and mode of carrying it on, exposes himself to the suspicion of his fellow-men. People lose confidence in him. They feel that he is ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... repression prevails in everything. In the print-shops one never sees a picture which even verges on impropriety. The few female portraits exhibited in their windows are robed with an amount of drapery which would satisfy the most prudish "sensibilities." All books, which have the slightest amorous tendency, are scrupulously interdicted without reference to their ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... at the storm he had invoked; but Richard was passive in his mother's hands, and listened complacently while in stronger, plainer language than he had used she repeated in substance all he had said about the impropriety of Ethelyn's mingling with the gay throng at Washington. Immodesty, Mrs. Markham called it, with sundry reflections upon the time when she was young, and what young married women did then. And while she talked poor Ethelyn lay upon the lounge writhing with ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... July 3 is at hand. I regret the necessity of informing you that it is an impropriety for an officer of the Army to address the President through a printed circular.[452] Under the ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... she sat on her doorstep, was engaged with the novelist in pleasant conversation, until he spied a ring that she was wearing upon the third finger of her left hand. This he made the text of a solemn declaration upon the impropriety of wearing falsely the symbol of a sacred relationship. The lesson intended was probably sensible and wholesome, but the effect produced upon the child was a terror of Fenimore Cooper which lasted as long as life. On the other hand, one who was a slip of a girl at the time ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... long-legged, long-nosed, raw-boned, melancholy-looking creature such as he, might have been an undertaker, or a mute, or a sexton, or a policeman, or a horse-guardsman, or even a lawyer; but it was the height of impropriety to have made him a toy-shopman, and whoever did it had no notion whatever of the fitness of things. One could not resist the idea that his clumsy legs would certainly upset the slender wooden toys with which the floor and counters were covered, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... activity wills the phenomenon or nature, and moral activity the noumenon or spirit. The spirit which desires itself, its true self, the universal which is in the empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which perhaps defines the essence of morality with the least impropriety. This will for the true ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... sense of the impropriety I had committed, and expected nothing less than instant exposure; while a vision of pistols upon the morrow floated rapidly and uncomfortably through my brain. I was greatly and immediately relieved, however, when I saw the lady merely hand the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... wore on their head, and as she adjusted the scarlet tartan screen or muffler made of plaid, which the Scottish women wore, much in the fashion of the black silk veils still a part of female dress in the Netherlands. A sense of impropriety as well as of danger pressed upon her, as she lifted the latch of her paternal mansion to leave it on so wild an expedition, and at so late an hour, unprotected, and without the knowledge ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Paul Veronese or Rubens, whose principles as ornamental painters would allow great latitude in introducing animals, or whatever they might think necessary to contrast or make the composition more picturesque—we can no longer wonder why the poet has thought it worth setting a guard against this impropriety, when we find that such men as Raffaelle and the Caracci, in their greatest and most serious works, have introduced on the foreground mean and frivolous circumstances. Such improprieties, to do justice to the more modern painters, are seldom found in their works. The only excuse ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... justice would induce me to touch upon. What law, or what precedent, can be cited to authorize a woman to appear as an advocate in a court of justice and usurp the offices and prerogatives of a man? I will not dwell upon the impropriety of such conduct; but on my honor, as a member of the bar, the behavior of Portia was outrageous. This young female, not content with 'cavorting' around the country in a loose and perspicuous style, actually practises a gross swindle on the court. She assumes to be a man when ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... said anything. We sat about that big round table as if assembled for a conference and looked at each other in a sort of fatuous consternation. I would have ended by laughing outright if I had not been saved from that impropriety ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... his harem? Is the interest of a Chinese the same with that of the woman whom he harnesses to his plough? Is the interest of an Italian the same with that of the daughter whom he devotes to God? The interest of a respectable Englishman may be said, without any impropriety, to be identical with that of his wife. But why is it so? Because human nature is NOT what Mr Mill conceives it to be; because civilised men, pursuing their own happiness in a social state, are not Yahoos fighting for carrion; because there is a pleasure in being ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Blaine were still numerous and active, and they wished to see their favorite in the executive chair. Perhaps Blaine felt that there would be some impropriety in his becoming an active candidate against his chief, while remaining at his post as Secretary of State; at any rate he notified the chairman of the National Republican Committee, early in 1892, that he was not a candidate for the nomination. The demand for him, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... dance, as he alleged himself unable to do anything else. Mr. Knaggs responded, and did pretty well considering the lateness of the hour, but insisted that he ought to have a better surface than the carpet. Amidon dimly resented as an impropriety Mr. Knaggs' brilliant proof of the correctness of his position regarding the carpet, by a tumultuously successful clog-dance on ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Adirondack section, contains more wild land than any other tract in the State. The mountains which traverse it, and impart to it its severe northern climate, belong properly to the Catskill range. On some maps of the State they are called the Pine Mountains, though with obvious local impropriety, as pine, so far as I have observed, is nowhere found upon them. "Birch Mountains" would be a more characteristic name, as on their summits birch is the prevailing tree. They are the natural home of the black and yellow birch, which grow here to unusual size. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... that he had, not seen the impropriety of those sittings to Marien? Oh, yes! No doubt he was an old friend of the family, but that did not prevent all these deceptions, all these disguises, and all the other follies which he had sanctioned—he—Jacqueline's ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... drowned in making the attempt. Aware that it would not be good for my health to return previously to the expiration of the seven years, I determined to learn a new profession—that of a sailor, for which I always had a predilection; besides, it quieted my conscience as to the impropriety of not submitting to the just punishment of the law, as you will acknowledge that seven years at sea, and seven years' transportation, are one and the same thing. From Batavia I went to Calcutta, and worked before the mast in the country vessels to Bombay and the Persian Gulf, for four ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... County, in their remonstrance, express their sense of the impropriety of the measure, and solicit the Congress of the United States not to act on the subject, so as to permit the introduction of slaves into the Territory; at least, until their population shall entitle them to form a constitution ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... his ears when he heard himself named by the governor, and considering this mention to be a sufficient introduction, he thought there would be no impropriety in his listening to the conversation. Accordingly, he approached the others, and noted with some satisfaction the troubled glances which ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... air, as it were preening himself, when the new moustachios had stuck; but as soon as he saw, or felt, his master's sorrow at their loss he immediately hung his head, showing nothing but shame for the loss he had caused his master, or for the impropriety of those delicate growths that so ill become his jowl. And now they took the road again, Rodriguez with the great frying-pan and cooking-pot; no longer together, but not too far apart for la Garda to take them both at once, and to make the doubly false ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... to complete the contract. Their talk, Ralegh admitted later, though commonly about private affairs, would sometimes turn upon questions of State. Before the Queen's death, it must be repeated, Ralegh would have committed no crime, or even impropriety, in listening, if he ever listened, without disapproval to Cobham's most intemperate assertions in favour of the title of Arabella, and against that of James. The evidence adduced of their talk on politics after the King's accession contains no reference to any ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... occurrences happened to Lord Byron which engaged both, and some of them cannot well be passed over unnoticed. One of these took place during the spring of this year, and having been a subject of newspaper remark, it may with less impropriety be mentioned than others which were more indecorously made the topics of general discussion. The incident alluded to was an extravagant scene enacted by a lady of high rank, at a rout given by Lady Heathcote; in which, in revenge, as it was reported, for having been rejected by Lord Byron, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... refuge. She thrust me in without a word; the bulk of the fowls were at the same time emitted; and I found myself the next moment locked in alone with half a dozen sitting hens. In the twilight of the place all fixed their eyes on me severely, and seemed to upbraid me with some crying impropriety. Doubtless the hen has always a puritanic appearance, although (in its own behaviour) I could never observe it to be more particular than its neighbours. But ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... far from thinking themselves vassals of the empire, they are not even willing to form a part of it. The aim of Charlemagne in his generosity towards the popes was the welfare of Christianity; and now they claim to ally themselves with Protestants and the enemies of Christianity. The least impropriety that results from these arrangements is to see the head of the Catholic religion negotiating with Protestants; whilst according to the laws of the Church he ought to shun them, and excommunicate them. (There is a prayer to ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... assembly at the pond. The women mingled freely with the crowd and appeared to take a peculiar interest in the punishment about to be inflicted. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety kept the wearers of petticoats and farthingales from elbowing their way through the densest throngs to witness the executions. Those wives and maidens of English birth and breeding were morally and materially ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... was beating high, and two little white lines marked the firm closing of her lips. Rose's brightly flung suggestion as to the impropriety of her going off for the day with Clifford, Teddy, and Ruth, was seething like a poison within her. But presently she was mechanically promising sandwiches, and Rose was so far encouraged that she could give Martie's arm a little squeeze ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... France with a stock of Oriental ideas impeding circulation in her mind, as her nargileh, her ostrich eggs and all the rest of her Tunisian trash impeded it in her apartments, protested against what she called impropriety, cowardice, and declared that she would never step foot inside "that creature's" doors. Immediately a slight retrograde movement took place among Mesdames Guggenheim, Caraiscaki, and other bales of ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... and let me by all means advise your wisdom to detect a mystery in 'Hamlet,' and to essay the solution of the same. Nobody else has done so, of course, and it will become your long head. I've met several very mild, quiet people, whom you would not suspect of the slightest impropriety; but mention the Dane, and, presto! off they go upon their hobbies, ('theories,' they call 'em,) and canter around Bedlam at a most generous pace. 'Semel insanivimus omnes,' I suppose, and Hamlet and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... since 531 by king Antiochus the Third, the great-great-grandson of the founder of the dynasty. He had, like Philip, begun to reign at nineteen years of age, and had displayed sufficient energy and enterprise, especially in his first campaigns in the east, to warrant his being without too ludicrous impropriety addressed in courtly style as "the Great." He had succeeded—more, however, through the negligence of his opponents and of the Egyptian Philopator in particular, than through any ability of his own—in restoring in some degree the integrity of the monarchy, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... talks of marriage now. A woman of fashion blushes to hear it mentioned before a third person." "Why, to say the truth, madam, I have been honoured with so great an intimacy by Damon, that I thought that might excuse the impropriety. And now, pray your ladyship, must I wait till we are alone, before I ask my friend whether his happy day be fixed?" "Since you will talk," said Miss Frampton, "of the odious subject, I believe I may tell you that it is not. We ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... governor of the district of Wu, in a memorial praying that the erection of cremation furnaces might thenceforth be prohibited, dwelt upon the impropriety of burning the remains of the deceased, for whose obsequies a multitude of observances were prescribed by the religious rites. He further exposed the fallacy of the excuse alleged for the practice, to wit, that burning the dead was a fulfilment of the precepts of Buddha, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... reason for you to fear that I shall impute any impropriety to you, if you attempt this refutation and proof; take ...
— Sophist • Plato
... the whole debate, which lasted several days, without uttering one uncharitable, scornful, or angry word, with the exception of a single phrase in his last speech; and even that he meekly and generously recalled, after I had satisfied him of its impropriety. I never forgot the conduct of that dear good man, and his Christian meekness and forbearance had a good effect ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... emotion agitated her mind, she involuntarily sprang to her feet prompted by the force of her passion, and had almost reached the door, when the senator's voice brought her to a pause, and recalled her to the consciousness of the impropriety of her behavior. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they "understood just as well, and even better than we do now"; and twenty-one of them—a clear majority of the whole "thirty-nine"—so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and wilful perjury, if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... given my opinion at some length upon the impropriety of Executive interference in the legislation of Congress—that the article in the Constitution making it the duty of the President to communicate information and authorizing him to recommend measures was not intended to make him the source in legislation, and, in particular, that he should never ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... conception required."[324] "The Infinite Whole," as thus defined, can not be thought, and therefore it is argued the Infinite God can not be known. Such a doctrine shocks our moral sense, and we shrink from the thought of an Infinite which includes evil. There is certainly a moral impropriety, if not a logical impossibility, in ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... myself, is perfectly loyal to England, and if as I understand it is the intention of the American Government to come out on the side of the Allies, would there be any impropriety in my going with her to the Embassy and taking my chances with ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... them;' which shows that they considered the instructions of October the 29th, 1783, as still in full force. I do not give you the trouble of this discussion, to save myself the trouble of the negotiation. I should have no objections to this part: but it is to avoid the impropriety of meddling in a matter wherein I am unauthorized to act, and where any thing I should pretend to conclude with the court of Denmark, might have the appearance of a deception on them. Should it be in my power to render any service in it, I shall do it with cheerfulness; but I repeat, that I think ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and that men do it for God's sake, and in hope to have the bliss in heaven. The fellows of abstinence be temperance, that holdeth the mean in all things; also shame, that escheweth all dishonesty [indecency, impropriety], sufficiency, that seeketh no rich meats nor drinks, nor doth no force of [sets no value on] no outrageous apparelling of meat; measure [moderation] also, that restraineth by reason the unmeasurable appetite of eating; soberness also, that restraineth ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... you have some intention of bringing two young ladies to town, whom I have some knowledge of, under the character of companions. As I would neither have simplicity imposed upon nor virtue contaminated, I must offer it as my opinion that the impropriety of such a step will be attended with dangerous consequences. Take therefore, the admonition of a friend, and seriously reflect on the consequences of introducing infamy and vice into retreats where peace and innocence ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... which my father, who was the high priest, appeared in vestments such as I believe the Jewish priests still wear in their solemn ceremonies, and which were so closely copied from the description of Aaron's sacred pontifical robes that I felt a sense of impropriety in such a representation (purely historical, as it was probably considered, and in no way differing from the costume accepted on the French stage in Racine's Jewish plays). And I think it extremely likely that the failure of the piece, which had been imminent all through, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... idle away. . . . What beautiful hair that girl had! It was like sunshine, the silk of corn, the yield of the harvest. And the marvelous abundance of it! It was true that she was an artist's model; it was equally true that she had committed a mild impropriety in addressing me as she had; but, for all I could see, she was a girl of delicate breeding, doubtless one of the many whose family fortunes, or misfortunes, force them to earn a living. And it is no disgrace these days to pose as an artist's ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... many borrowed plumes, I see no impropriety in making a tail to this brief paper by taking another handful of feathers from Mr. Darwin; endeavouring to point out in a few words, in fact, what, as I gather from the perusal of his book, his doctrines really are, and on what sort of basis they rest. And I do ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... the first moment at which I have felt it possible to ask your attention. I was then too ill to be able to express my contrition for all that has passed; in fact, I doubt whether it was even then so deep as at present, since every succeeding week has but added to my sense of the impropriety of my conduct, and my earnest desire for pardon. I can hardly venture at such a time to ask anything further, but I must add that my sentiments towards your daughter are unaltered, and can never ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whom I had tea in Kyoto, tells of tying his wife's shoes on the street, on one occasion, only to find the Japanese amazed that a man should so humble himself. His wife's taking his arm in walking was also regarded as the height of impropriety! ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... our power to have recourse to any established laws of speech; but we must remark how the writers of former ages have used the same word, and consider whether he can be acquitted of impropriety, upon the testimony of Davies, given in his favour ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... a very fine beginning, and would seem to savor strongly of the modern woman's rights doctrine; but, unfortunately, the author, with charming inconsistency, goes on to say,—"We shall strictly adhere to the principle of the impropriety of females ever trespassing on masculine grounds, as it is morally incorrect, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... present traces of ornament and stability of material evidently belonging to the remains of a prouder edifice. This is the case sometimes to such a degree as, in another country, would be disagreeable from its impropriety; but, in Italy, it corresponds with the general prominence of the features of a past age, and is always beautiful. Thus, the eye rests with delight on the broken moldings of the windows, and the sculptured capitals of the corner columns, contrasted, as they are, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... went in the trolley in good season, so's to git a sightly place, Lorinda protestin' all the time aginst the indelicacy and impropriety of wimmen's appearin' in outdoor meetin's, forgittin', I spose, the dense procession of wimmen that fills the avenues every day, follerin' Fashion and Display. As nigh as I could make out the impropriety consisted in wimmen's ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... yet hearken, for the whole truth must be revealed. I say that I have done all that man could do, and as the event proves, not in vain. As for Prudence, I will confess to one impropriety, if it be thy pleasure to call it so, though I meant it not, and whereof thou art in some sense the cause. Knowing thy regard for her, I did speak one day of my hopes for thee, whereat the tears did stand in her eyes, and I was so moved thereat, that I did salute her cheek, but ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... execute the orders of the Company for fear of doing some act that will make him odious in the eyes of God and man. We see how he appointed all officers for him, and forbade his interference in all affairs. When the Company see the impropriety and the guilt of these acts, and order him to rescind them, and appoint again Mahomed Reza Khan, he declares he will not, that he cannot do it in justice, but that he will consent to send him the order of the Company, but without backing it with any order of the board: which, supposing even ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in Scots law, the act of giving legal possession of feudal property, or, colloquially, the deed by which that possession is proved. Sclamber, to scramble. Sculduddery, impropriety, grossness. Session, the Court of Session, the supreme court of Scotland. Shauchling, shuffling, slipshod. Shoo, to chase gently. Siller, money. Sinsyne, since then. Skailing, dispersing. Skelp, slap. Skirling, screaming. Skriegh-o'day, daybreak. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... excited and imperious under the increasing influence of the wine, soon began to praise the beauty of these new guests in a coarse and free manner, which overwhelmed the ladies with confusion, and then to accost them familiarly and rudely, and to behave toward them, in other respects, with so much impropriety as to produce great alarm and indignation among all the king's household. The king himself was much distressed, but he was afraid to act decidedly. His son, a young man of great energy and spirit, approached his father with a countenance and manner ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... many people would say I've behaved with shocking impropriety—immodestly and all that. You don't, do you? I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things. Perhaps I've gone too straight this time—but ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... race list was a tempting one, Riddlesworth, Craven Stakes, Column Stakes, Oatlands, Port, Claret, Sherry, Madeira, and all other sorts. A good week's racing in fact, for the saintly sinners who frequent the Heath had not then discovered any greater impropriety in travelling on a Sunday, then in cheating each other on the Monday. The tea was good, as were the prawns and eggs, and George brought a second muffin, at the very moment that the Yorkshireman had finished the last piece of the first, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the recluse inhabitants of the place. Robert Stephenson used to tell a story of the clergyman of the parish waiting upon the foreman of one of the gangs to expostulate with him as to the shocking impropriety of his men working during Sunday. But the head navvy merely hitched up his trousers, and said, "Why, Soondays hain't cropt out here yet!" In short, the navvies were little better than heathens, and the village of Kilsby was not restored to its wonted quiet until the tunnel-works were finished, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... an ingenious argument the other day to prove that it is a gross impropriety to speak of England as the mother country; that the two countries were really in the relation of sisters, and that we ought to call them sister countries, and not speak of them as mother and daughter. I am not going to enter into any ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of St. Bennet] When in this play he mentioned the bed of Ware, he recollected that the scene was in Illyria, and added in England; but his sense of the same impropriety could not restrain him from the bells of ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... seem, it might almost deceive the parties to the deception themselves. "I may love him, for I'm his sister!" said Cornelia; but could she in reality have become his sister, she would, beyond all else, have shrunk from it. "Nothing I do is in itself an impropriety," she could say: but her secret sense and motive were enough to make the most innocent act criminal. She closed her ears to the inner voice, and her eyes, looking at her conduct only through the crimson glass of her desire, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... value of tea cultivation, providing three things, intimately connected with the success of the crop are strongly impressed upon their minds; viz., the unsuitableness of low wet lands for tea cultivation; the folly of irrigating tea as they would do rice, and the impropriety of commencing the plucking before the plants are strong, and of considerable size. I am happy to add, that amongst these hills there are no foolish prejudices in the minds of the natives against the cultivation ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... whom I held in so much contempt. My uncomfortable reflections were by no means soothed by meditating the necessity of an apology for my improper behaviour, and recollecting that Miss Vernon must be a witness of my submission. The impropriety and unkindness of my conduct to her personally, added not a little to these galling considerations, and for this I could not even plead the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... new such a scene, and, above all, her own emotions, might be, was highly endowed with that exquisite delicacy which is imprinted in the female heart, to give warning of the slightest approach to impropriety ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... consented. I love your niece, sir, with all my heart, most truly, most dearly! I will ask you to believe that it was not in my mind to speak to her to-day, or to speak at all without your knowledge. I confess the impropriety of my course. But we met unawares. It is not to be helped. In no ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... captain's wish now to leave altogether the subject on which he had thought it incumbent to acquaint his host with so much; but the worthy Bruce was not so easily satisfied; and not conceiving there was any peculiar impropriety in indulging curiosity in matters relating to his old major, however distasteful that curiosity might prove to his guest, he succeeded in drawing from the reluctant young man many more particulars of his story; which, as they have an important connection ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... choristers, and the copy of the litany from which the service was chanted, to see how far the little details at Westminster corresponded with those at Barchester, and whether he thought his own voice would fill the church well from the Westminster precentor's seat. There would, however, be impropriety in such meddling, and he sat perfectly still, looking up at the noble roof, and guarding against the coming fatigues of ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... reasons for this opinion, as it would be insulting to your conception to suppose you stood in need of them. A moment's reflection will convince every dispassionate mind of the physical impossibility of carrying either proposal into execution. There might, gentlemen, be an impropriety in my taking notice, in this address to you, of an anonymous production; but the manner in which that performance has been introduced to the army, the effect it was intended to have, together with some other circumstances, will amply justify my ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... is no better way, or at any rate no more thorough way, of throwing young people together. Middle-aged people, too. But the observer receives no impression of moral disorder. High spirits are the rule, and impropriety is the exception. Even in the auditorium at Steeplechase Park, where the cognoscenti assemble to witness the discomfiture of the uninitiated, there is nothing but harmless laughter as the skirts fly up before the unsuspected blast. ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... like that," he grumbled, recovering himself the moment he felt her close to him again, and struck by a sense of impropriety in her short skirt after the grown-up appearance she had presented in the long one. "You look ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... delivering their sentiments, by which they receive great advantage. You remember Sir R. Payne's way of describing you, which was still more odd; he said if anybody looked through the keyhole at any time to see how you behaved when you was alone, that he was sure there would be no more impropriety in it than if you had a hundred eyes upon you. I don't like commending you myself, but I like to hear others do so, and especially when they speak about what they think, and when what they think has the air ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... Constitution were so excessively liberal as to make even me feel as if I belonged to the straitest sect of strict constructionists. On one occasion he had a bill to appropriate money, with obvious impropriety, for the relief of some miscreant whom he styled "one of the honest yeomanry of the State." When I explained to him that it was clearly unconstitutional, he answered, "Me friend, the Constitution don't touch little things like ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of the doctrine of imputed righteousness (i.e. our Lord's active obedience)—the mistakes of the so-called Evangelical system, the independence of the Church; the genius of the Gospel as a Law of Liberty, and the impropriety of forming geological theories from Scripture. Of course every one changes in opinion between twenty and thirty; doubtless, I have changed; yet I am not conscious that I have so much changed, as ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... better to have postponed this (as perhaps I should have done) did I not know, that there are Scholars of so quick Parts, that in a few Years become most excellent Singers, and that there is no want of Masters qualified to instruct Disciples of the most promising Genius; besides, it appeared to me an Impropriety in this Chapter on Divisions (in which the Beats and Close Shake appear with greater Lustre than any other Grace) not to make Mention ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... some statements I have seen, but which I have not verified, other publishing bodies, such as the Christian Knowledge Society, have taken the same liberty with the names of the dead as the Religious Tract Society. If it be so, the impropriety is the work of the smaller spirits who have not been sufficiently overlooked. There must be an overwhelming majority in the higher councils to feel that, whenever altered works are published, the fact of alteration should be made as prominent ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... round; that romance was on every one's lips, and I recollect it as more or less thrust upon me in amends for the imposed sacrifice of a ranker actuality—that of the improper Mr. Robinson, I mean, as to whom there revives in me the main question of where his impropriety, in so general a platitude of the bourgeois, could possibly have dwelt. It was to be true indeed that Walt Whitman achieved an impropriety of the first magnitude; that success, however, but showed us the platitude returning ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... "mobilization." Mobilization plans are an important element in war plans, but the details of any mobilization plan are of such a confidential nature that it would not be proper to discuss them in public print. There can be no impropriety, however, in making the general statement that in all navies the endeavor is made to keep the mobilization plans continually up to date, and to have them prepared in such detail that every officer and enlisted ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... Baker that you were in Brighton last week, and, drawing the inference from the fact that she came to my studio to sit for her portrait, you accuse her of very grievous impropriety. I beg to assure you that this is not so. At my urgent request, Miss Baker, whom I had better say I have known for some years, consented to give me a sitting. My intentions were purely artistic; hers were confined to a wish to oblige an old friend, ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... divined the fact. "Under the circumstances," she said, "I think I should be justified in writing to Lady Caroline and asking her to remonstrate a little with you, my dear Margaret. Probably she would be better able to make you understand the impropriety of your behavior ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... first and foremost a solar plexus, dear reader; and the solar plexus is a great nerve center which lies behind your stomach. I can't be accused of impropriety or untruth, because any book of science or medicine which deals with the nerve-system of the human body will show it to you quite plainly. So don't wriggle or try to look spiritual. Because, willy-nilly, you've got a solar plexus, dear reader, among other ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... could not be admitted to participate in the Freemasonry of his father, which could only be conferred on free men born of free women." The ancient Greeks were of the same opinion; for they used the word [Greek: douloprepeia] or, "slave manners," to designate any very great impropriety ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Willy did realise the impropriety of the situation; and that very same evening he found an excellent place for her with ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... her work, feeling a little as if she had been swept off her feet; and she was not entirely without misgivings. The possible impropriety of going out alone with a man for the whole day did not rouble her, but the nature of the man, she was shrewd enough to perceive, was ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... exhortation and send their carriages away. The carriages were lined up in the street just as they would be outside a theatre. Some of their owners got in and drove away, making very pointed remarks on the impropriety of bringing such subjects as carriages and horses into sermons and the length that young curates would go now-a-days to obtain notoriety. Others dismissed theirs and went away trying to look unconcerned; while ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... conscious of the impropriety there was in the indulgence when so many poor devils were in such sore distress, but he was so knocked up with fatigue, so terribly hungry and thirsty! He said not a word, but suddenly making up his mind, gave one bound and landed in the room, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... well-informed Benedick of long experience may after supper advise the bachelor to find the way to woman's heart—vice versa, some deep-feeling wife or widow, by "pity moven," may, perhaps, after supper advise the spinster the other way, which, in public, is an impropriety manifestly to be avoided. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... to pay a visit to Cortes. Narvaez soon began to suspect the real object of Olmedo, and was much inclined to have made him a prisoner: but Duero, who had much influence over Narvaez, both on account of his situation and because they were in some degree related, represented the impropriety of such an outrage against a person of his holy functions, and dissuaded him from doing so. He also suggested to him the great probability of his being able to gain over the soldiers of Cortes to his party, by means of a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... centuries have witnessed.' The cowardice of doctors and others, who believed but were afraid to speak, stirred all the generous fire of youth. 'Here, of itself,' he cries out to his sister (September 4, 1829), 'is a bitter satire upon human nature, and a sufficient answer to all who moralise on the impropriety of flying in the face of received opinions and public prejudice. I assure you it is a knowledge of how often the ridicule and contempt of the world has crushed truth in the embryo or stifled it in the cradle, which makes me so eager to examine and support those opinions ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... Rachel had said to the men, there could be no impropriety in her making use of the privilege granted her, Helen felt oddly uncomfortable at first. But soon the fancy came, that she was listening at the door of the other world to catch news of her Leopold, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... at all astonished. Similar sudden transformations were comparatively of frequent occurrence at that time; and to call in question any act of the King of Castilla's daughter would have been in her eyes the most impossible impropriety. She merely noted mentally the extremely dirty state of Maude's frock, calculated how long it would take to make her three new ones, wondered if she would be very troublesome to teach, and finally asked her if she had any better dress. Maude owned that she possessed a ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... Mr. Lynville would die sooner than be guilty of that discourtesy. He is not presumptuous enough to ask an answer to this letter. His only object in writing it, is to inform Miss Minford that he will not venture again upon the impropriety of speaking to her first when they next meet. Miss Minford will therefore be free to drop his acquaintance, or continue it, as she thinks best. Whatever fate she may decide for him, her happiness will still ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... was the only dark shade that marked my father's character. He possessed a soul brave, liberal, enlightened, and ingenuous. He felt the impropriety of his conduct. Yet, though his mind was strongly organised, though his understanding was capacious, and his sense of honour delicate even to fastidiousness, he was still the dupe of his passions, the victim ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... got up and went down to the stream to wash, after which the morning meal was served. At breakfast one of the women, no longer quite young, advanced and publicly kissed Job. I think it was in its way the most delightful thing (putting its impropriety aside for a moment) that I ever saw. Never shall I forget the respectable Job's abject terror and disgust. Job, like myself, is a bit of a misogynist—I fancy chiefly owing to the fact of his having been one of a family of seventeen—and the feelings ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... presence. There was no treachery. He had been all along, he thought to himself, a man somewhat sinned against in the matter. To be sure it was wrong—according to all rules of morals, it was necessary to admit this; but not more wrong, not so much wrong, as most other men had been. And, granting the impropriety of that first step, he had nothing to reproach himself with afterwards. In that respect he knew he had behaved both liberally and honourably, though he had been deceived. But how—how—good heavens!—explain this ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... humble thankfulness for its privileges, in ever-increasing enthusiasm in the development of the great theory upon whose validity it had staked its life, its fortunes, and its sacred honor, if I may use such expressions without impropriety in connection with an episode ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... course of Mr. VOORHEES. For his part, he saw no impropriety in selling cadetships or any thing else. What do gentlemen suppose that cadetships exist for, if it is not for the emolument of congressmen? He considered his patronage as a part of his perquisites. This had been the guiding principle of his life, alike in his military and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... store of provisions and went home.[94] Lott Cary had no small influence and share in this seditious proceeding.[95] Toward evening, the Agent addressed a circular "to all the colonists" declaring that the impropriety of the morning's act would be communicated to the board. He further exhorted all to go to work and not to commit such an offence again for their sakes in this world or in the one to come. Lott Cary was not to perform any of his ministerial functions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... before, in a note, that profits may, without impropriety, be called a surplus. But, whether surplus or not, they are the most important source of wealth, as they are, beyond all question, the main source ...
— Nature and Progress of Rent • Thomas Malthus
... wrathful at having his beauty-sleep broken; he growled his rage. This is the only time recorded when Franz Liszt failed to respond to a hint for money. His head was too high in the clouds, no doubt. The servant, thus suddenly awakened to the impropriety of affairs, hastened the next morning to inform the comte that his daughter was studying the music of the spheres as well as that of the piano, and that her ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... sech things, Doctor; I mean fevers. Is there any ketchin' fevers—bilious, or nervous, or typus, or whatever you call 'em—now goin' round this village? That's what I want to ascertain, if there's no impropriety." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... noted, on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Central Australia, p. 581.) In the mysterious region of sex, this feeling easily takes root. In many parts of the world, men use among themselves, and women use among themselves, words and even languages which they may not use without impropriety in speaking to persons of the opposite sex, and it has been shown that exogamy, or the fact that the wife belongs to a different tribe, will not always account for this phenomenon. (Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 46.) A special ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... mentions an encounter in Rome with an 'Oxford don' who 'spoke Latin with a Wiltshire accent and manifest discomfort, wrote Greek letters with his tongue out, and seemed to think a Greek sentence a charm when it was a quotation and an impropriety when it wasn't.') ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... to go to parties in sage green, holding a daffodil, and the flippancy of her maturer years, which tended to high heels and Paris frocks, wore a new hat. It put her in high spirits. I had never heard her more malicious about our common friends. Mrs. Jay, aware that impropriety is the soul of wit, made observations in tones hardly above a whisper that might well have tinged the snowy tablecloth with a rosy hue. Richard Twining bubbled over with quaint absurdities, and George ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... Christian morality. In discipline, stress was laid on the propriety and duty of private admonition, in its successive scriptural steps, before public censure. On this point one brother said he had privately admonished a neighbor of the impropriety of taking articles to the camp on the Sabbath, and he had acknowledged his fault, and promised amendment. The duty of forgiving offenders, and undoing wrongs, was also insisted on. Several had been improperly excluded from church privileges through ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... Chard, and the white traders became very insulting to Mr. Carr, who, although he was so ill, kept his temper, until Mr. Chard called him a "missionary crawler." This expression made Mr. Carr lose control of himself, and he used very strong language to Captain Hendry and the supercargo upon the gross impropriety of their conduct. He certainly used expressions that he should not have employed, but under the circumstances, and bearing in mind the fact that the native crew were ready for mutiny, and that mutiny was only averted by Mr. Carr's influence over ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... exquisite. My heart beat tumultuously, my love returned in an instant. I put my arm round her, and regardless of the publicity of the place, gave a kiss. There was it is true scarcely anyone about, but she as well as me when I had done it, saw the impropriety. "Don't, for God's sake," said she, "what will people think?" "Let us walk," said I, and pulling her arm through mine, on we went; I looking into her face all the way, noticing how much the time which had passed had improved her, and overwhelming her with ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... women to the bar who have the proper learning, is shown by this document which I hold in my hand, signed by one hundred and fifty-five lawyers of the District of Columbia, embracing the most eminent men in the ranks of that profession. That there is no jealousy or consideration of impropriety on the part of the various States is shown by the fact that the legislatures of many of the States have recently admitted women to the bar; and my own State, California, has passed such a law within the last week or two; Illinois has ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Mokoro producing no impression on the transformed chief, one of the men, the most sedate of the party, who seldom spoke, took up the matter, and tried the lion in another strain. In his slow quiet way he expostulated with him on the impropriety of such conduct to strangers, who had never injured him. "We were travelling peaceably through the country back to our own chief. We never killed people, nor stole anything. The buffalo meat was ours, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... slightest impropriety in her doing so," said Sir Charles. "If our hospitality does not place Miss Lindsay above suspicion, the more shame for us. How would you feel if anyone else ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... a needle would cover, now wishest to abandon the whole earth? What fool is there that would, after having obtained such prosperity and ruled the entire earth, think of making a gift of that earth to his enemies? Stupefied by folly, thou seest not the impropriety of this! Although thou desirest to give away the earth, thou shalt not yet escape me with life! Either rule the earth after having vanquished us, or go to regions of blessedness after being slain by us! If both of us, that is, thyself and myself, be alive, then all creatures will remain in doubt ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... distinction which there is in nature, between the understandings and the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of their ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not a fool, but he makes himself so. His folly, whether in his actions or speeches, comes under the head of impropriety of intention. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... resolve, which I don't counsel, on marking, by way of foot-note, on the now existing pyramid, accurately how many yards off and in what direction the real battle ground lies from it, there is nothing visible to me which can without ridiculous impropriety be done. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... child. She had combed and brushed her thick brown hair, and, taken with its exceeding beauty, had ventured on a stroke of originality no one would have expected of her: she had left it hanging loose on her shoulders. Any one would think such an impropriety impossible to a Scotchwoman. But then she had been handling the hair, and contact with anything alters so much one's theories about it. If Mary had found it so, instead of making it so, she would have said it was "no dacent." ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... two men early this morning up the S. E. Fork to examine the river; and permitted sundry others to hunt in the neighbourhood of this place. Both Capt. C. and myself corrisponded in opinon with rispect to the impropriety of calling either of these streams the Missouri and accordingly agreed to name them after the President of the United States and the Secretaries of the Treasury and state having previously named one river in honour of the Secretaries of War and Navy. In pursuance ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... are only what I should expect from you, my love; but think twice before you go up-stairs yourself! It would be considered an outrageous impropriety, were it ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... carefulness than laymen do the relations that exist between pastors and the women of their flock. I do not understand this as a statement that there is any general looseness of conduct among the clergy at all; but as one which covers a kind of impropriety for which there is no name and no punishment. There are women whose affection for their husbands is uprooted through their intercourse with their pastors. There shall never be an improper word spoken; there shall never ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... in speaking of the "obituary method of appreciation," says that we feel a slight sense of impropriety and insecurity in contemporary plaudits. "Wait till he is well dead, and four or five decades of daisies have bloomed over him, says the world; then, if there is any virtue in his works, we will tag and label them and confer immortality upon him." But Mr. Burroughs has not had to wait ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... bickering, clashing, misunderstanding, wrangle. disparity, mismatch, disproportion; dissimilitude, inequality; disproportionateness &c. adj[obs3].; variance, divergence, repugnance. unfitness &c. adj.; inaptitude, impropriety; inapplicability &c. adj.; inconsistency, inconcinnity[obs3]; irrelevancy &c. (irrelation) 10[obs3]. misjoining[obs3], misjoinder[obs3]; syncretism[obs3], intrusion, interference; concordia discors[Lat]. fish out of water. V. disagree; clash, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... very unlike his trade. A grave, tall, long-legged, long-nosed, raw-boned, melancholy-looking creature such as he, might have been an undertaker, or a mute, or a sexton, or a policeman, or a horse-guardsman, or even a lawyer; but it was the height of impropriety to have made him a toy-shopman, and whoever did it had no notion whatever of the fitness of things. One could not resist the idea that his clumsy legs would certainly upset the slender wooden toys with which the floor and counters were covered, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... with him this year at Newmarket and Epsom, offered to relieve his necessities by a loan of French money. The prince appears to have been inclined to accept the offer; but his Whig friends discovered it, and convinced him of its impropriety, as it had a perilous tendency of placing the future sovereign of England in a state of dependence on the House of Bourbon. But the Whigs in thus advising the prince, had a care for their own honour as well as his future interests: ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... as I did then:—as the abolition of the Jewish Sabbath, the unscripturalness of the doctrine of imputed righteousness (i.e. our Lord's active obedience)—the mistakes of the so-called Evangelical system, the independence of the Church; the genius of the Gospel as a Law of Liberty, and the impropriety of forming geological theories from Scripture. Of course every one changes in opinion between twenty and thirty; doubtless, I have changed; yet I am not conscious that I have so much changed, as ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... delicacy, and which nothing but a conscientious devotion to abstract justice would induce me to touch upon. What law, or what precedent, can be cited to authorize a woman to appear as an advocate in a court of justice and usurp the offices and prerogatives of a man? I will not dwell upon the impropriety of such conduct; but on my honor, as a member of the bar, the behavior of Portia was outrageous. This young female, not content with 'cavorting' around the country in a loose and perspicuous style, actually practises a gross swindle on the court. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in, and came ploughing through it towards his headland. And he shrank still lower among the bracken, for though he had watched the distant little figure in white with a slight sense of sacrilege, and absolutely no sense of impropriety but only of enjoyment, he would not for all he was worth have had her know that he had watched at all, since he could imagine how ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... of demoniac hornpipe. But that sober article of furniture declined giving its support to such proceedings for a single moment, and fell with an awful crash to the floor. My uncle was dancing amidst its ruins like Nero in blazing Rome, when he was reduced to an awful sense of impropriety by the entrance of his landlady. I was sitting in open-mouthed astonishment at my uncle's extravagance, when he suddenly dropped into his chair, like a lark into its nest, leaving heaven silent. But ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... expressed, of those by whom he is employed. This, of course, confines him to what is generally common ground among his particular employers. In a republican country, where all his patrons are republican, he may, without impropriety, explain and commend to his pupils, as occasion may occur, the principles of free governments, and the blessings which may be expected to flow from them. But it would not be justifiable for him to do this under a monarchy, or in a community divided ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... coming up to me, and standing in a well-studied attitude before the picture I was looking at. "It is unpardonable vulgar and rude of you to take exception to any dances on the programme, as if Mrs. Hartmann would allow any impropriety where her own daughters are concerned." She went on fanning herself briskly, showing nothing of her indignation in ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... had come to a decision as to his title, and had told every one concerned that he meant to be as he always had been,—George Roden, a clerk in the Post Office. When spoken to, on this side and the other, as to the propriety,—or rather impropriety,—of his decision, he had smiled for the most part, and had said but little, but had been very confident in himself. To none of the arguments used against him would he yield in the least. As to his mother's ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... first century before Christ—first, eighth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, or even eighteenth century A.D.—it is still the same: no book whose subject-matter admits as possible of an impropriety according to current notions can be depended upon to fail of containing such impropriety,—can, if those notions are accepted as the canon, be placed with a sense of security in the hands of girls and youths, or read aloud to women; and this holds good just as much of severely moral or ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... years, my treasure, he has incurred one hundred and twenty thousand francs of debt. He has had the folly to get himself locked up in Saint-Pelagie, the debtor's prison; an impropriety which will always be, in these days, a discredit to him. A spendthrift who is willing to plunge his poor mother into poverty and distress might cause his wife, as your poor father did, to ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... acquaintance is purely professional. A fashionable and popular physician would be swamped with wedding-cards if that were the custom. If, however, one wishes to show gratitude and remembrance, there would be no impropriety in sending cards to ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... say I've behaved with shocking impropriety—immodestly and all that. You don't, do you? I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things. Perhaps I've gone too straight this time—but ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... doorbell at the McIntyre residence for the fifth time, and wondered what had become of the faithful Grimes; the butler was usually the soul of promptness, and to keep a caller waiting on the doorstep would, in his category, rank as the height of impropriety. As Kent again raised his hand toward the bell, the door swung open suddenly and Barbara beckoned ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... unsuspecting young man to go in his stead, in order, as he said, to give her the necessary explanations for his absence. Charles undertook this mission the more willingly, as it was his firm intention to remonstrate with the girl on the impropriety of her conduct, in continuing a secret and guilty intrigue, which must end only in her own shame and ruin. But when Harry deputed him upon such a message he anticipated the very event which had occurred, or, rather, a more fatal one still, for, despite his hopes of Alice Goodwin's ill state of health, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... heard the next morning, with secret distaste and displeasure, of Evelyn's intended visit to the Mertons. He could scarcely make any open objection to it; but he did not refrain from many insinuations as to its impropriety. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of this nature. When a writer begins by saying that he has "an ineradicable tendency to make things clear," we may infer that we are going to be puzzled; so when he shows that he is haunted by a sense of the impropriety of allowing humour to intrude into his work, we may hope to be amused as well as interested. As showing how far the objection to humour which he expressed upon his twenty-fifth page succeeded in carrying him safely over his twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh, I will quote ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... discussion, in which dogmatic assertion does duty for argument and loudness for force. In either case it rests and stimulates the tired men, while the drink refreshes their throats, and it has no more necessary impropriety than the drawing-room talk of the well-to-do. In this intercourse men who do not read the papers get an inkling of the news of the day, those who have no books come into contact with other minds, opinions are aired, the human craving for fun gets a little ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... character of the act to me. And in the next place, I see a great deal of difference between Miss Hale and Fanny. I can imagine that the one may have weighty reasons, which may and ought to make her overlook any seeming Impropriety in her conduct. I never knew Fanny have weighty reasons for anything. Other people must guard her. I believe Miss Hale is a guardian ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... pillow than in the noonday walk. Our vices, which are the pastime of the drawing-room, become the bugbears of the silent bedchamber. Margaret, when she would have slept, was haunted by reproaches, which waited until then to agitate and frighten her. A sense of impropriety and sinfulness started in her bosom, and convicted her of an offence—unpardonable in her sight—against the blessed memory of Mildred. She could not deny it, Michael Allcraft had created on her heart a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... serve its ends upon a poor mortal, that it might gull them of everlasting life, no marvel if the soul is so beguiled as to sell itself from God and all good for so poor a nothing as a momentary pleasure.'[202] When speaking of the impropriety of excluding a pious person from the Lord's table, because of a difference of opinion as to water baptism, he says, 'Do you more to the openly profane—yea, to all wizards and witches in the land?'[203] In quoting Isaiah 13, he, taught by the Puritan version, puts the key in the margin—'Wild ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... example, we now use the word (coltello), coulter, the instrument indicated by this phonetic sign immediately recurs to the mind and nothing else; the intelligence would see no impropriety in the use of some other sign if it were generally intelligible. But in the times of primitive speech, the inventors of this rude instrument were conscious of the material image which gave rise to it, and they were likewise conscious of all ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... had neglected to offer sacrifices to Chang-Chung, the deity interested in drugs and healing substances, nor had she wavered in her firm resolve to bring Ling back to an ordinary existence even when the attendants had protested that the person in question might without impropriety be sent to the Restoring Establishment of the Last Chance, so little did his hope of recovering rest upon ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... other towns in Southern California, and then returned to Los Angeles. On their return they were more than satisfied with the progress of the C.M. What helped the movement very much was the character which Penloe and Stella gave it. When some of the more conservative element suggested the impropriety or immodesty of the C.I., they were met with the answer: "Look at Penloe and Stella, who live the idea every day of their lives. Are there any purer-minded persons than they are? Do not the best people of the ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... properly checked, give birth to others? And may not these be so incorporated into the inner man in a course of time, that it may be as difficult for parents to eradicate them, as for the Ethiopian to change his colour, or the leopard his spots? But surely the Quakers ought to know the impropriety of undue indulgences in their families, as well as any other people? Is not the early subjugation of the will a doctrine more particularly adopted by them as a society? Without such a subjugation do they not conceive the mind to be in an unfit state to receive the admonitions of the pure principle, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... tempting one, Riddlesworth, Craven Stakes, Column Stakes, Oatlands, Port, Claret, Sherry, Madeira, and all other sorts. A good week's racing in fact, for the saintly sinners who frequent the Heath had not then discovered any greater impropriety in travelling on a Sunday, then in cheating each other on the Monday. The tea was good, as were the prawns and eggs, and George brought a second muffin, at the very moment that the Yorkshireman had finished the last ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... him without remembering in what manner the very title by which he was called had been acquired. This circumstance would have mattered little if he had been accredited to some dissolute court, such as that in which the Marchioness of Montespan had lately been dominant. But there was an obvious impropriety in sending him on an embassy rather of a spiritual than of a secular nature to a pontiff of primitive austerity. The Protestants all over Europe sneered; and Innocent, already unfavourably disposed to the English government, considered the compliment ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of which, if any one would demand an example, he may find a very familiar one in churches, where, if what is delivered from the pulpit be a grave, solid, rational discourse, all the congregation grow weary, and fall asleep, till their patience be released; whereas if the preacher (pardon the impropriety of the word, the prater I would have said) be zealous, in his thumps of the cushion, antic gestures, and spend his glass in the telling of pleasant stories, his beloved shall then stand up, tuck their hair behind their ears, and be very devoutly attentive. So among the saints, those are most resorted ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... was silly of me having Oliver to dinner here alone—" said Mrs. Severance with the air of one ready to apologize for a very minor impropriety. "Silly and wrong—but Louise was coming too until she telephoned about Jane Ellen's little upset—and I thought we could have such fun getting supper together with Elizabeth away. I get a little tired of always entertaining my friends in restaurants, Sargent, especially ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... speech the other day that you feel as I do in regard to such matters, I take the liberty of suggesting that it seems to me of very great importance that the management of this magnificent gift should be in proper hands. May I ask you without impropriety if you will protect Mr. Parsons so that captious or unenthusiastic persons, men or women, will be unable to control the policy of his hospital? He would wish it so, I am sure. I thought of mentioning ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... startling effect on the recluse inhabitants of the place. Robert Stephenson used to tell a story of the clergyman of the parish waiting upon the foreman of one of the gangs to expostulate with him as to the shocking impropriety of his men working during Sunday. But the head navvy merely hitched up his trousers, and said, "Why, Soondays hain't cropt out here yet!" In short, the navvies were little better than heathens, and the village ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they "understood just as well, and even better, than we do now"; and twenty-one of them—a clear majority of the whole "thirty-nine"—so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and willful perjury if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... may be communicated to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Should it appear irregular that an extra-official communication of this nature comes from a department not immediately under their lordships' cognizance, the impropriety on my part I trust will be indulgently forgiven, as it arises from an irresistible impulse of wishing to do justice to merit and exertions far indeed above my praise. As an officer honoured with a public and confidential situation, and having from shore been an eye-witness ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... Vandalia to Springfield in his own county. The map of Illinois suggests that Springfield was a better site for the purpose than Vandalia and at least as good as Jacksonville or Peoria or any of its other competitors. Of his few recorded speeches one concerns a proposed inquiry into some alleged impropriety in the allotment of shares in the State Bank. It is certainly the speech of a bold man; it argues with remarkable directness that whereas a committee of prominent citizens which had already inquired into this matter consisted of men of known honesty, the proposed committee ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... roused both to a realization of the utter impropriety of her overhearing all this, and the danger of detection, slipped from the dressing-room by the hall door, and so escaped to her ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... evening with a dozen others indulging themselves "moderately:" they will be sure to say things which to him will appear foolish, if not wicked; and which will appear so to themselves on reflection; though at the time they may not be conscious of any impropriety. And if this "moderate indulgence" be habitual, there must, of course, be an increased mental perversion; till conscience is "seared as with a hot iron," and the mind is lost to the power of being affected by truth, as well as to the capacity for usefulness. And ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... 'The impropriety and impolicy of manumitting slaves, in any case, in our country, one would suppose, must be apparent to all. It is not a little astonishing that individuals acquainted with the facts, and the evils brought upon society by the free ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... matter of fact is only to be perceived in making the following acknowledgment, That the origin of this earth is necessarily placed in the bottom of the sea. In supposing any other origin to this habitable earth, we would see the impropriety of having it covered with water, or drowned in the sea. But, being formed originally at the bottom of the sea, if we can explain the phenomena of this earth by natural causes, we will acknowledge the wisdom of those means, by which the earth, thus formed at the bottom of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... much too delicate to make and keep such appointments in the winter season. If you knew what a pain I had in my chest this morning, and how I went without breakfast, and was knocked down besides, you'd feel the impropriety of bringing me here in ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... whole circumstance, when her friends were allowed to depart, after being admonished by the worthy divine in regard to the proper use of the Sabbath. They could not but consider the dog as an instrument in the hand of Providence to point out the impropriety of spending this holy day in feasting rather than in ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... departure came. The attendant had just removed the tumbler of coffee, tossing the fragments of toast into the court-yard, an operation which appeared to have a magnetic effect on the bills of the poultry; and then, with his accustomed impropriety, placed the plate as a basis to my hookah, telling me that F——, a Bulgarian Christian, wished to ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... ago the discussion of the public propriety or impropriety of a plurality of wives would have been impossible. Polygamy had not obtained a foothold as an institution in any civilized land. Being well known as not uncommon among certain heathenish and barbarous tribes, it ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... security is the tomb of liberty; indulgence toward men in authority is the means of pushing them to despotism. These maxims as her motto or impulse, united with the spirit of push, energy, and at times rashness and impropriety, naturally led her to her ruin in those days of revolutionary ideas. She was a woman of powerful passion controlled by reason, and with frankness, devotion, courage, and fidelity as forces impelling ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... favor of the marriage in this debate, did so, almost avowedly, in compliance with the wishes of the queen, whose inclination to the alliance had become very evident since the visit of her youthful suitor; while such as opposed it were moved by strong and earnest convictions of the gross impropriety and thorough unsuitableness of the match, with respect to Elizabeth herself, and the dreadful evils which it was likely to entail on the nation. How entirely the real sentiments of this body were adverse to the step, became ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... declining, yet by those who best knew him the cause was not wholly unsurmised. In his official capacity he might be called upon to enter into friendly treaties with Indian tribes, a thing not to be thought of. And even did no such contingecy arise, yet he felt there would be an impropriety in the Governor of Illinois stealing out now and then, during a recess of the legislative bodies, for a few days' shooting at human beings, within the limits of his paternal chief-magistracy. If the governorship offered large honors, from Moredock it demanded larger sacrifices. These ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... such a good looking young man, is not evident. Doubtless it was true that at first her misery and unhappiness made her need the sympathetic caresses of any one within reach and that with the return of her equilibrium she continued to make this an excuse for enjoying without any reproach of impropriety a recreation which ordinarily the conventions of society would compel her to eschew. As for the rising light in the legal profession, he began to find the weight she leant upon him oppressive, and his occupation, delightful ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... spoke with such candor, judgment and authority that the men present whispered together, and seemed almost inclined to think that they had committed a shameful indiscretion in suspecting so gallant an officer and so perfect a gentleman of any impropriety, on the mere word of a strange woman, who was certainly ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... that offered the least resistance. Beginning with the pepsinized books, they must continue with them, and the dull appetite by-and-by must be stimulated with a spice of vulgarity or a little pepper of impropriety. And fortunately for their nourishment in this kind, the dullest writers can ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the Sabbath, the temperance cause, and other matters of Christian morality. In discipline, stress was laid on the propriety and duty of private admonition, in its successive scriptural steps, before public censure. On this point one brother said he had privately admonished a neighbor of the impropriety of taking articles to the camp on the Sabbath, and he had acknowledged his fault, and promised amendment. The duty of forgiving offenders, and undoing wrongs, was also insisted on. Several had been improperly excluded ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... French language, (says Mr. Steevens, in a note to the Tempest,) it appears to have been spelt according to the pronunciation, and therefore wrongly; but ever since it has been spelt right, it has been uttered with equal impropriety. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... merry laugh of girlhood; she was too young to be conscious of any impropriety in the situation, and indeed there was none. But her sense of humour told her that it was funny, and she became possessed with a not unnatural curiosity to see the ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... beheld them, Sarah was sitting in the cooling current of a gutter, with her heels upon the curb (alas! how much did she need a curb!) while Jack, having disposed of his basket, had obtained a post in a public situation, was holding forth on the impropriety of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... receive great advantage. You remember Sir R. Payne's way of describing you, which was still more odd; he said if anybody looked through the keyhole at any time to see how you behaved when you was alone, that he was sure there would be no more impropriety in it than if you had a hundred eyes upon you. I don't like commending you myself, but I like to hear others do so, and especially when they speak about what they think, and when what they think has the ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... laughed Herr von Goetz. "I have certainly had my own frightful experiences of that sickness. You think then, doctor, I may without impropriety return to ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... but the time of the tabus has passed. Then, too, in a sense having been initiated into hula matters, there can be no impropriety in my dealing with ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... look back at this enchanting scene, and charmed with the beauty of the night walked for a little while to and fro upon the terrace before retiring to their rooms. As they were in full sight of the windows, and it was not yet very late, the modest young girl felt that there could be no impropriety in this little indulgence; and besides, the baron's extreme timidity was very reassuring to her, and she knew that he would not presume upon the favour accorded to him. He had not made a formal avowal ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... part of the forenoon; and although Jack did not attempt to deny that he had seen the recall signal of Mr Sawbridge, yet, as his account went on, the captain became so interested, that at the end of it he quite forgot to point out to Jack the impropriety of not obeying orders. He gave Jack great credit for his conduct, and was also much pleased with that of Mesty. Jack took the opportunity of stating Mesty's aversion to his present employment, and his recommendation was graciously ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... was most barbarously murdered by a man named Joseph Little. Colonel Mitchell had a civil process against Little. He went to Little's house for the purpose of arresting him. He found Little armed with a rifle, pistols, &c. He commenced a conversation with Little upon the impropriety of his resisting, and stated his determination to take him, at the same time slowly advancing upon Little, who discharged his rifle at him without effect. Mitchell then attempted to jump in, to take hold of him when Little struck him over the head with the barrel of his ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... and two little white lines marked the firm closing of her lips. Rose's brightly flung suggestion as to the impropriety of her going off for the day with Clifford, Teddy, and Ruth, was seething like a poison within her. But presently she was mechanically promising sandwiches, and Rose was so far encouraged that she could give Martie's arm a little ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... advantages which I should enjoy, the restriction should be taken from the doctor's house; and I leave those who know me to guess the numbers of children who now flocked to the man of medicine. His gate was thronged, and nothing more was said respecting the impropriety of the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... have emigrated for the winter had there not been some slight domestic misunderstanding. Let this, however, be fully made clear—that such misunderstanding, if it existed, must have been simply an affair of temper. No impropriety of conduct has, I am very sure, ever been imputed to the lady. The general, as all the world knows, is hot; and Mrs. Talboys, when the sweet rivers of her enthusiasm are unfed by congenial waters, can, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... At this place Hakluyt observes in a note, the great inconvenience of staying late on the coast of Guinea. He ought rather to have said, the impropriety of sailing too late ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... stay, I was at once silenced by the remark that his mother was a woman of marked idiosyncracies, and when she so distinguished an individual as to make them a guest the decision was final, and I must not wound her by an expression of possible impropriety. It is needless to say I left this family with deep regret, carrying letters from Doctor Roseborough; and in my visits to the various places en route to Montreal I found these credentials of ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... in vestments such as I believe the Jewish priests still wear in their solemn ceremonies, and which were so closely copied from the description of Aaron's sacred pontifical robes that I felt a sense of impropriety in such a representation (purely historical, as it was probably considered, and in no way differing from the costume accepted on the French stage in Racine's Jewish plays). And I think it extremely likely that the failure of the piece, which had been imminent all through, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... ogre, this brigand, this scoundrel Macquart, whom Adelaide had chosen! In twenty months she had two children by him, first a boy and then a girl. There was no question of marriage between them. Never had the Faubourg beheld such audacious impropriety. The stupefaction was so great, the idea of Macquart having found a young and wealthy mistress so completely upset the gossips, that they even spoke gently of Adelaide. "Poor thing! She's gone quite mad," ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... motion was made, the question had been asked, what use was to be made of the papers, Gallatin did not and could not reply. Mr. Gallatin answered that whether the House had a discretionary power, or whether it was bound by the instrument, there was no impropriety in calling for the papers. He hoped to have avoided the constitutional question in the motion, but as the gentlemen had come forward on that ground, he had no objection to rest the decision of the constitutional power of Congress on the fate of the present question. He would therefore ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... Majesty, which was then lying in the bay. The fellow said he was aware of this, and intended to do so. His grim features, however, instantly relaxed in some degree, and he looked more humanely upon his captain. Mr. B. then, addressing himself to the latter, made some observations on the impropriety of using the word Greek to a British sailor; not forgetting, at the same time, to speak of the absolute necessity of obedience and discipline on board every ship. His words produced such an effect, that in a very little time the sailor held out his hand towards his captain, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... think so. The whole history of the voting and office-holding of women shows that whenever men's theories of the relation of property to the political franchise, or of the lineal succession of the government, require that women shall vote or hold office, the objection of impropriety and incapacity wholly disappears. If it be unwomanly for a woman to vote, or to hold office, it is unwomanly for Victoria to be Queen of England. Surely if our neighbors had thought they would be better represented in this convention by certain women, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... took to bringing fashionably dressed ladies to the flat so that they might see for themselves; and docile looking gentlemen in dark clothes and galoshes came to mutter over the extraordinary impropriety of allowing boys and girls to live in the same ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the impropriety of gazing at him wonderingly as he came forward, but Lady Throckmorton did not seem at ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Emperor, and of Queen Mary of Hungary, at the impropriety of his manners, had produced, however, some effect, so that on his wedding journey to England, he manifested much "gentleness and humanity, mingled with royal gravity." Upon this occasion, says another Venetian, accredited to him, "he ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... there, all over Scotland, in the large towns as well as in rural and remote parishes, the practice prevailed, and was occasionally discovered— generally by accident. The Board long ago expressed decided opinions on the impropriety of the practice. Now in Shetland, it so happens that almost the only persons who are practically the administrators of the Poor Law are more or less directly or indirectly interested in the local trade — in the fish-curing, ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... neighbors silenced him at once and not even any other ragamuffin lifted his voice. The audience were startled mute. They were quite ready to applaud the girl's daring, but the shocking impropriety of her breach of ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... sometimes could not avoid seeing that, even as Harry Peyton, he was regarded as compensating, by certain attractive qualities in the nature of amiability and sincerity, for occasional exhibitions of what the English rated as social impropriety and bad taste. Often, at the English lofty derision of colonials, at the English air of self-evident superiority, the English pretence of politely concealed shock or pain or offence at some infringement of a purely ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... with an air, as it were preening himself, when the new moustachios had stuck; but as soon as he saw, or felt, his master's sorrow at their loss he immediately hung his head, showing nothing but shame for the loss he had caused his master, or for the impropriety of those delicate growths that so ill become his jowl. And now they took the road again, Rodriguez with the great frying-pan and cooking-pot; no longer together, but not too far apart for la Garda to take them both ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... impressionism has been a misleading one. If Degas is an impressionist, pray what then is Monet? Pissarro, Sisley, Cezanne are impressionists, and in America there is no impropriety in attaching this handle to the works of Twachtmann, J. Alden Weir, W.L. Metcalf, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Robert Reid, Ernest Lawson, Paul Cornoyer, Colin Campbell Cooper, Prendergast, Luks, and Glackens. But Manet, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... books he read were, although he was unconscious of it, such as contributed to his spiritual adornment, to fit himself for his constant dwelling in his country of dreams. Certain people he avoided, certain he courted. One woman, who was innately coarse, although her life had hedged her in safely from impropriety, was calling upon his mother one afternoon about this time. She was the wife of the old Presbyterian clergyman, Dr. Gregg. She was a small, solidly built woman, in late middle life, tightly hooked up in black silk as to her body, and as ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Harriett's going away. She did not quite believe in the zeal for the children's music or for her comfort, which Miss Phillips professed, but she was tired of having the name of her society without the reality of it. As for the impropriety of her sister-in-law's travelling all that distance with a single gentleman, either riding or driving, Mrs. Phillips had never decided any question of the kind for herself or others since she had been married. She had always acted as her husband thought proper, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... passes through the circle without the liquor being tasted by any one, and is upon the point of being returned to the red-clothed Manitou, when one of the Indians, a brave man and a great warrior, suddenly jumps up and harangues the assembly, on the impropriety of returning the cup with its content: It was handed to them, said he, by the Manitou, that they should drink out of it as he had done: to follow his example would be pleasing to him, but to return what he had given to them, might provoke his wrath, and bring destruction on them; ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... ignorant; some covetous of money, some others eager for glory, many slaves to their lusts; so that their discourses and their actions are most strangely at variance; than which nothing in my opinion can be more unbecoming: for just as if one who professed to teach grammar, should speak with impropriety; or a master of music sing out of tune; such conduct has the worse appearance in these men, because they blunder in the very particular with which they profess that they are well acquainted: so a philosopher, who errs in the conduct ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... for the in-group, the other for the out-group. It had a theory of affection in the former case and of enmity in the latter. In the in-group it was so far from being an act of hostility, or veiled impropriety, that it was applied to the closest kin. Mothers ate their babies, if the latter died, in order to get back the strength which they had lost in bearing them. Herodotus says that the Massagetae sacrificed the old of their tribe, boiling the flesh of the men with ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the people around us will only preserve a polished, or at least inoffensive exterior, that is all we demand. Why should we look below the surface in their case, when we do no such thing in our own? We feel amiable, genteel, and refined; we detest the appearance of low impropriety, and would take a good deal of trouble to put it down; we look very kindly on the world in general, if the low people who are in it would only become as decorous as ourselves. In the old republics, the case was different. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... with some degree of humiliation. A rainy day may bring disappointment; needless failure in some enterprise brings chagrin. Shame involves the consciousness of fault, guilt, or impropriety; chagrin of failure of judgment, or harm to reputation. A consciousness that one has displayed his own ignorance will cause him mortification, however worthy his intent; if there was a design to deceive, the exposure will ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of affairs when Lord Cochrane entered the port. Only five days afterwards, on the 14th of November, 1823, he wrote a bold letter to the Emperor. "My sense of the impropriety of intruding myself on the attention of your Imperial Majesty on any subject unconnected with the official position with which your Majesty has been pleased to honour me," he said, "could only have been overcome by an irresistible desire, under existing circumstances, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... the hereditary quality of men will be no better than it is to-day. I hope that no reader who has followed me carefully will regard me as so ingenuous. Then as now there will be intrigues and disputes, hatred, envy, jealousy, idleness, impropriety, falsehood, negligence, temper, etc., but their power will be less. There will be less excuse for these bad qualities and those who possess them will be regarded as pathological individuals who should be eliminated as much as possible by means ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... combine as many as possible—or as many as are necessary—of the general characteristics of the Indian, both good and bad—so as to give a fair view of the character, according to the principle intimated above. And I may, perhaps without impropriety, here state, that this may be taken as the key to all the sketches which are to follow. It is quite probable that many examples of each class treated, might be found, who are exceptions to the rules stated, in almost every particular; and it is possible, that no one, of any ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Madame Jansoulet alone, newly landed in France with a stock of Oriental ideas impeding circulation in her mind, as her nargileh, her ostrich eggs and all the rest of her Tunisian trash impeded it in her apartments, protested against what she called impropriety, cowardice, and declared that she would never step foot inside "that creature's" doors. Immediately a slight retrograde movement took place among Mesdames Guggenheim, Caraiscaki, and other bales of finery, as always happens ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... inspector spoke soothing and encouraging words to them, and commended their good behavior. When the Board of Inspectors met, he proposed that the lads should be recommended to the governor for pardon. Not succeeding in this effort, he wrote an article on the impropriety of confining juvenile offenders with old hardened convicts. He published this in the daily papers, and it produced considerable effect. When the Board again met, Isaac T. Hopper and Thomas Dobson ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... the parliamentary device of interpellation. As in Great Britain, every member of the two chambers possesses the right at any time to put to an executive head a direct question concerning any affair of state which, without impropriety, may be made the subject of open discussion. A minister may not, however, be questioned without his consent, and the incident ordinarily passes without debate. In France, however, any member may direct at a minister an interpellation, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... entertain much, conveniently, but for the sake of a firmer place in society, I am always willing to strain a point. As to Pelby, he has so little spirit that he would as soon be at the bottom of the social ladder as at the top. I can speak of it without impropriety to you, as you are his relation, not mine. He has been a perpetual drag and drawback upon me, but, notwithstanding, I have accomplished a great deal. Five or six years ago we were merely on speaking terms with the Goldsboroughs, and the Pendletons, and the Longacres, and the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Emily's part rendered any advance impossible." Poor Emily shrank from transgressing what her parents represented as the limits due to delicacy and decorum, and she would have died rather than have been guilty of a real impropriety, or have appeared unfeminine in the eyes of Philip Hayforth; and yet it did often suggest itself to her mind—rather, however, in the shape of an undefined feeling than of a conscious thought—that the shortest, best, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... permission,—by the voluntary consent, whether tacit, or openly expressed, of those by whom he is employed. This of course confines him to what is, generally, common ground, among his particular employers. In a republican country, where all his patrons are republican, he may without impropriety, explain and commend to his pupils, as occasion may occur, the principles of free governments, and the blessings which may be expected to flow from them. But it would not be justifiable for him to do this, under a monarchy, or in a community divided in regard ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... that, whatever be your decision, no impropriety can attach to you. I might not, indeed, from various circumstances, and from the information I possess, I perhaps should not, have given you farther trouble on the occasion, had it not been from your own direction ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... peoples in the twelfth century; but it cannot be doubted that this turn of imagination first found literary expression among the Breton peoples. One of the most surprising features in the Mabinogion is the delicacy of the feminine feeling breathed in them; an impropriety or a gross word is never to be met with. It would be necessary to quote at length the two romances of Peredur and Geraint to demonstrate an innocence such as this; but the naive simplicity of these charming compositions forbids us to see in this innocence any underlying ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... alarmed for the boy: but when the disaster was related, Helen could not refrain from laughing at the comical figure John must have made when flying over Bob's head; and even Mr. Martin, though he tried to look grave, found it difficult to keep his countenance while he represented to him the impropriety and hazard of his late conduct. Little Marion, who had come out to the door to see the pony, was the only person that seemed to enter into John's feelings. She sidled up to him, and said, "never mind, John, Mr. Martin is not very angry, and you are not hurt; but," continued she in a whisper, ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... the right of public criticism| |of the courts on the theory that there | |can be no impropriety in investigating | |any act of a public official, Judge | |Kennesaw M. Landis last night addressed | |the students of Marquette College of Law | |and many members of the Milwaukee | |bar.—Milwaukee Free ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... of marrying, of her own disillusionment, and confidentially advised her to remain single. This letter, however, was not sent, for the Comtesse de Listomere-Landon, aunt of Julie d'Aiglemont by marriage, having found out about it, discouraged such an impropriety on the part of her niece. Unlike her friend, Madame de Wimphen married happily. She retained the confidence of Madame d'Aiglemont, and was present, indeed, at the important interview between Julie and Lord Grenville. After M. de Wimphen's arrival to accompany his wife home, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... almost irresistibly tempted to talk with Susan about her charge, but he felt the impropriety of such a proceeding, and refrained. Not so Gillie White. That sapient blue spider, sitting in his wonted chair, resplendent with brass buttons and brazen impudence, availed himself of every opportunity to perform an operation which he styled "pumping;" but Susan, although ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... length, several governors of provinces represented to the imperial court, the impropriety of such conduct. Hence many were respited from execution, but, though they were not put to death, as much as possible was done to render their lives miserable, many of them having their ears cut off, their noses slit, their right eyes put out, their limbs rendered useless by dreadful dislocations, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... except my mother, who—would you believe it?—had gotten some prudish notions into her head about the impropriety of leaving you alone, and declared her intention of staying behind to keep you in countenance! We soon laughed her out of that, though, and now, to relieve you of her company, we are carrying her away with us—which will be lots of fun, for she's as fond of water as a cat and will ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... use of language is apt to occasion some obscurity and confusion, and create in us wrong ideas; for language being accommodated to the common notions and prejudices of men, it is scarce possible to deliver the naked and precise truth without great circumlocution, impropriety, and (to an unwary reader) seeming contradictions; I do therefore once for all desire whoever shall think it worth his while to understand what I have written concerning vision, that he would not stick ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... that the archbishop and himself should demand solemn audience of Edward, and gravely remonstrate with the king on the impropriety of receiving the brother of a rival suitor, while Warwick was negotiating the marriage of Margaret with a prince ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... go up, my dear," smiled kindly Mrs. Kilton. She was too wholesome to see the least impropriety ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... might without any impropriety be carried into animal life; for discerning bee-masters now find that their hives should not in the winter be exposed to the hot sun, because such unseasonable warmth awakens the inhabitants too early from ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... compass, but he lacked a knowledge of the world. Of the other passengers I can truly say I know nothing; I cannot think that Mr. Crosby's sense of humor led him into bad associations, or that he ever went beyond verbal impropriety. Certainly nothing in Miss Keene's character has led me to believe she could so far forget what was due to herself and to us as to address a lawless mob in the streets as she did just now; although her friend Mrs. Markham, as I just told ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... so. Indeed, among adherents of it who are friends of mine, there are those who speak of the Materialism of Buechner and his school, with a contempt certainly not less than that felt by Mr. Martineau. To show how anti-materialistic my own view is, I may, perhaps, without impropriety, quote some out of many passages which I have ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... themselves of any mistake, or apparent concession, in the examiner or reprover. What copious rhetoric in exaggeration of the cause which tempted to do wrong, or of the great good hoped to be effected by the little deviation from the right,—a good surely enough to excuse so trifling an impropriety. What facility of placing between themselves and the censure, the recollected example of some good man who has ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... subtile sophistry of desire, I have been persuaded to hope that this book may, without impropriety, be inscribed to your lordship; but am not certain, that my reasons will have the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... enlisted in her behalf, and I do not anticipate opposition; nevertheless, it would not deter me from the attempt to free her, at least temporarily from prison. As you have no connection with the trial, I can see no impropriety in your telling Judge Parkman, that the girl's health demands a change of air and scene, and that it is my desire to furnish any bond he may deem suitable, and then bring the prisoner under my own roof, until the day fixed for her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... greater weight than anything Mr. Hackett suggested, but the first is no reason at all;' and after reading another passage, he said, 'This is not withheld, and where it passes current there can be no reason for withholding the other.'... And, as if feeling the impropriety of preferring the player to the parson, [there was a clergyman in the room] he turned to the chaplain and said: 'From your calling it is probable that you do not know that the acting plays which people crowd to hear are not always those ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... so ill, kept his temper, until Mr. Chard called him a "missionary crawler." This expression made Mr. Carr lose control of himself, and he used very strong language to Captain Hendry and the supercargo upon the gross impropriety of their conduct. He certainly used expressions that he should not have employed, but under the circumstances, and bearing in mind the fact that the native crew were ready for mutiny, and that mutiny was only averted by Mr. Carr's influence over the native crew, I and my fellow ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... of the sexual appetite begins at first in a prudent and apparently innocent manner, so that the acting party does not risk being taxed with impropriety; but as soon as he who began the flirtation perceives that his slight invitations are welcome he grows bolder, a tacit mutual agreement is established, and the game continues without a single word betraying ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... like some, I know," she said, vaguely struggling with a sense of impropriety, though why, she did not know; for, on the surface, this was only dutiful hospitality to a distinguished guest. The impropriety probably lay in the sensations roused by this visit and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... statement thus presented implied a weakness in Mrs. Vanstone's character which Miss Garth, after many years of intimate experience, had never detected, she accepted the explanation as a matter of course; receiving it all the more readily inasmuch as it might, without impropriety, be communicated in substance to appease the irritated curiosity of the two young ladies. For this reason especially she perused the first half of the letter with an agreeable sense of relief. Far different was the impression produced on her when she ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Antiochus the Third, the great-great-grandson of the founder of the dynasty. He had, like Philip, begun to reign at nineteen years of age, and had displayed sufficient energy and enterprise, especially in his first campaigns in the east, to warrant his being without too ludicrous impropriety addressed in courtly style as "the Great." He had succeeded—more, however, through the negligence of his opponents and of the Egyptian Philopator in particular, than through any ability of his own—in restoring in some degree the integrity of the monarchy, and in reuniting with his crown first ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of impropriety had given way to curiosity, neither had eyes for anything but her. Neither had ever seen anything so beautiful, so fascinating, so impudently lovely. She was laughing at them; each knew it, ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... of Lunan, in Forfarshire, quite surprised people sometimes by his replies. The congregation of his parish church had for some time distressed the minister by their habit of sleeping in church. He had often endeavoured to impress them with a sense of the impropriety of such conduct, and one day Jamie was sitting in the front gallery, wide awake, when many were slumbering round him. The clergyman endeavoured to draw the attention of his hearers to his discourse by stating the fact, saying, "You see even Jamie Fraser, the idiot, does not fall asleep, as so many ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... fellow-writers, who might be abundantly quoted to a similar effect, succeeded in making their readers more sensible than they had been of the impropriety of all such conduct. During the latter half of the century, the careless and undevout could no longer have ventured, without fear of censure, on the irreverent familiarities in church which they could have freely indulged in for the first twenty ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... surprising that, in his new station, "Cobbler" Horn should have committed an occasional breach of etiquette. It was unlikely that he would ever be guilty of real impropriety; but it was inevitable that he should, now and again, set at nought the so-called "proprieties" of fashionable life. In the genuine sense of the word, "Cobbler" Horn was a Christian gentleman; and he would have sustained the character in any position ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... God and my Right is the word used by duke William in the Battle of Hastings, though it was first used by king RichardI. after the victory at Grizors; and hatchments and armorial bearings, which were first seen at the time of the Croisades, are introduced in other places with equal impropriety. ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... and at the same time so thoroughly courteous, about the old gentleman's address that Miss Stansfield could not be offended with him; while his age and bearing prevented her feeling that there was any impropriety in her permitting him to be her companion on the public road till she should reach the drive-gate leading up to her home. She therefore bowed her assent, and the ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... and some liquor into the vestry for his refreshment after the fatigue of confirmation. And this coming to Mr. Disney's ears, he forbad them being brought thither, and with a becoming spirit remonstrated with the Archbishop upon the impropriety of his conduct, at the same time telling his Grace that his vestry should not be converted into ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... possible, however much consideration we might entertain for her personally, that the Countess de Gramont and her family should allow it to be known that one of their kin is a dressmaker! Madeleine is too reasonable not to see the impropriety (to use a mild word) there would be even in such ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... kept secret, and that a general alarm then in the dead of winter, driving women and children into the country, would work great distress. "For these reasons," continue the committee, "we conceive that a just regard to the public cause, and our duty to take a prudent care of this city, dictate the impropriety of provoking hostilities at present, and the necessity of saving appearances with the ships of war till at least the month of March. Though we have been unfortunate in our disappointments with respect to some of our ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... you will consider it as a proof of my—my esteem that I am so. Though I live here in what was my father's house, I live here alone. I have, alas! no longer a parent—a parent, whose presence might sanction your visits. It is unnecessary for me to point out the impropriety of ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... rather," he said, reflectively. "But then Clarice and I could hardly have weathered scandal except by making ourselves particularly agreeable to everybody. And somehow I got into the habit of making people laugh. It isn't very difficult. I am rather an adept at telling stories which just graze impropriety, for instance. You know, they call me the social triumph of my generation. And people are glad to see me because I am 'so awfully funny' and 'simply killing' and so on. And I suppose it tells in the long run—like the dyer's hand, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... place—as you did this morning. Susan has the same fault, I'm sorry to say; but I condone it to some extent in her. She has the advantage of good looks, and naturally expects to better her condition by marriage; but surely, Mary, one glance at yourself in the glass ought to show you the impropriety of counting upon ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... ministerial remonstrances. When, in the beginning of the spring of 1869, he observed the fantastical changes the parents made in the girl's daily attire, he told them about the remarks made in the papers about this dressing and dwelt upon the impropriety of it. They replied, 'She had no other pleasure—they did not like denying it to her.' During the following summer, finding that the girl looked more plump in the face and that her general improvement was more conspicuous, he said, 'Sarah ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... thinking he could not take upon himself to allow the insertion of the article, went, accompanied by M. Forshmann, to wait upon M. Von Graffen, the directing Burgomaster. MM. Doorman and Von Graffen earnestly pointed out the impropriety of inserting the article; but M. Forshmann referred to his order, and added that the compliance of the Senate on this point was the only means of avoiding great mischief. The Burgomaster and the Syndic, finding themselves thus forced ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... offence to God and man.' Their petulancy, he continues, 'hath not only rapt me to present indignation, but made me studious heretofore;' for by them 'the filth of the time is uttered, and with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked metaphors, with brothelry able to violate the ear of a pagan, and blasphemy to turn the blood of a Christian ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... and French chroniclers term the Moslems Pagans, while the Saxon heathen are dignified by the title of Saracens; and the names of Mahmoud, Termagaunt, Apollo, could be confounded without any sense of impropriety. However, or in whatever degree, Saracenic or rabbinical superstition tended to influence Christian demonology, from about the end of the thirteenth century a considerable development in the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... make the attack one hour before day, and to effect a surprise, if possible. The impropriety, therefore, of sending the boats from Bristol to Dunk's Ferry, and marching the troops from the same place in open day, is evident, as such a movement must have been observed, and communicated to the enemy. And now, tell me the instance, ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... class of appropriations for what may be called, without impropriety, internal improvements, which have always been regarded as standing upon different grounds from those to which I have referred. I allude to such as have for their object the improvement of our harbors, the removal of partial ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... to make free with the Characters of particular Persons; for there are some Men in the World, who, tho' they are not asham'd of the Impropriety of their own ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
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