C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Decency
The laws of decency enforce themselves.
Decency renders all things tolerable.
Delicacy is the parent of decency.
Decency is not defined by statute, but the laws of instinct are stronger.
Too great a display of delicacy can and does sometimes infringe upon decency.
Caprice in women often infringes upon the rules of decency.
A woman without a degree of decency and delicacy is unsexed.
No law reaches it, but all right-minded people observe it.
Decency is the least of all laws, yet the law which is most strictly observed.
If once a woman breaks through the barriers of decency, her case is desperate; and if she goes greater lengths than the men, and leaves the pale of propriety farther behind her, it is because she is aware that all return is prohibited, and by none so strongly as by her own sex.
Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.
As beauty of body, with an agreeable carriage, pleases the eye, and that pleasure consists in that we observe all the parts with a certain elegance are proportioned to each other; so does decency of behavior which appears in our lives obtain the approbation of all with whom we converse, from the order, consistency, and moderation of our words and actions.