Another factor is the morally censorious climate in which we live -- a climate that is intolerant of eccentricity, waywardness and general lack of perfection. —— Andrew Martin; Class conscious; New Statesman, Nov 6, 2000

The world seems to become more not less censorious towards those who do not conform to its norms. —— Allan Ramsay; Terrorism in America: Reflections from a French Field; Contemporary Review, Nov 2001

 
In Ms. MacMillan's view of things, the pitfalls included carving up non-European territories in ways that would prove unstable years later, cutting large German populations out of Germany and in the case of President Woodrow Wilson, in particular, believing that a better world would come about through moral order rather than, say, a re-established balance of power. And still Ms. MacMillan's vision of the actors in the complex Versailles drama is more charitable than censorious. Her assessment does not include the common notion that the greatest failure of the conference was that it imposed an unjust and Carthaginian peace on Germany and thereby inevitably gave rise to World War II. —— Richard Bernstein; Guide to How Not to Alter the World; The New York Times; Nov 27, 2002

No other artistic medium moves us the way sound waves do, and in that regard music's meaning is emotional, in the word's original sense. The languages of music and emotion are remarkably similar; indeed, the link between musical mode and emotional mood has been the subject of philosophical inquiry and censorious dogma for centuries. Certain modes of music were to be kept out of Plato's ideal State because they evoked sorrowful or ungraceful or indolent feelings (Socrates: "When modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them"). —— Toby Lester; Secondhand Music; The article covers how the chance harmonies of everyday sounds may mean more than we think; The Atlantic; April 1997

The other well-attended show was also tradition-bound, an exhibition at Tate Britain about Ruskin, the most censorious, biblically minded and nearly unreadable of art critics, which is saying something. Ruskin, to his misfortune, famously failed to grasp the value of the work of the American-born Whistler, regarding him as a dabbling provocateur. I recalled how British critics later missed the boat again when the Abstract Expressionists sailed into Europe. Considering that Britain's current condition seems like mania to an American visitor, maybe trans-Atlantic communication always breaks down both ways.  —— Michael Kimmelman; Th Weird Fascination of the New Is Packing Galleries and Museums; The New York Times; June 6, 2000
 

They question me, half censorious, half wistful: "And did you never want to get married yourself?" —— Nuala O'Faolain, Are You Somebody