Literary notes about decency (AI summary)
The term decency is portrayed in literature as a flexible yardstick of social and moral conduct. In some instances, it defines the bare minimum of civility—illustrating that even an icy response can conform to what is socially acceptable [1]—while in other contexts it becomes a deliberate state of comportment, a self-imposed standard of respectable behavior [2]. Authors utilize the word to highlight both the virtues of propriety and its occasional neglect, as when decency is invoked to commend a character’s restraint in the midst of chaos [3] or critiqued as a failing that allows vice to flourish [4]. It thus serves as a moral touchstone, a marker that both champions and questions the values by which characters and societies are judged [5, 6].
- Her replies were frosty, and as few as decency required.
— from Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery - I put myself in a state of decency, and then told them to take off their bandages.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - A poor widow struggling to maintain her orphans in decency and comfort, is a delicious picture of human goodness.—Put down your hat, Kit.’
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens - What was he, to be pretending to decency!
— from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - If there be a God, then out of sheer decency He ought only to show Himself on earth in the form of a man.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Nietzsche - No words have passed between us since, but such as outward decency or pure necessity demanded.
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
