"Vulgar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... progress of time, winter, ushered into existence by the howling of storms, and the rushing of impetuous torrents, and contemplating, with the satisfaction of a giant, the ruins of the year, still affords ample food for enjoyments, which the vulgar never dream of, if sympathy and association diffuse their attractive spells around us! In the bosom of retirement, how delightful is it to feel exempt from the mean intrigues, the endless difficulties ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... of the Burgesses, then shall it fail indeed. Had it been the speech of the King's great barons and the bishops 'twere different. But dost fancy that the great barons would allow that their weighty discourses be reduced to common speech so that even the vulgar may read it and haply here and there fathom their very thought itself,—and the bishops, the great prelates, to submit their ideas to the vulgar hand of a common printer, framing them into mere sentences! 'Tis unthinkable ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... and call on God as witness, priest, and wedding-guest—then all prudery will be destroyed; there will be espousals everywhere, and we shall rise the same as the birds to the grandeur of nature. My criticism on books of the sort of George Sand's has then no value except in the vulgar order of things past, and therefore I trust she will not be offended by it. The admiration I profess for her ought to make her excuse these remarks, which have their origin in the infelicity of my age. Once I should have been ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... ill-luck would have it, Miss Chapman chanced to let her eyes stray in their direction; and having fingered her chain indecisively for a little, said: "It seems a pity, doesn't it, Miss Day, that that nice little girl should get in with that vulgar set?" ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... suburbs of Elbury, and always had a girl or two under her. She had neither had the education, nor the good training in service, that had fallen to Mrs. King's lot; and her way of life did not lead to softening her tongue or temper. Ellen called her vulgar, and though that is not a nice word to use, she was coarse in her ways of talking and thinking, loud-voiced, and unmannerly, although ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Perhaps in all instances the phraseology we employ, like our manners, is derived from the society we frequent: that which is imbibed from persons of good education bears the stamp of superior discrimination and correctness, contrasted with the rude dialect of the vulgar: but it still remains unsolved, by what means these phantasms, or Ideas, accommodate themselves with the appropriate words to express ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... of the spectators to wait breathlessly the moment when Orestes shall be discovered. We now perceive why the poet at once, in the opening of the play, announced to us the existence and return of Orestes—why he disdained the vulgar source of interest, the gross suspense we should have felt, if we had shared the ignorance of Electra, and not been admitted to the secret we impatiently long to be communicated to her. In this scene, our superiority to Electra, in the knowledge we possess, refines ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... producing crime must be mentioned. Here comes in especially the lack of opportunity for wholesome social amusements among our poorer classes, particularly in our large cities. Lacking these, the masses resort to the saloon, gambling-houses, cheap music and dance halls, and vulgar theatrical entertainments. The influence of all of these institutions is undoubtedly to spread the contagion of vice and ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... not know a subject. I know the subject of arithmetic, for instance; that is, I am not good at it, but I know what it is. I am sufficiently familiar with its use to see the absurdity of anyone who says, "So vulgar a fraction cannot be mentioned before ladies," or "This unit is Unionist, I hope." Considering myself for one moment as an arithmetician, I may say that I know next to nothing about my subject: but I know my subject. I know it in the street. There ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... eyes—her thin fingers peeling an egg.... She had made them all look so "common." Ulrica was different. Was she? Yes, Ulrica was different... Ulrica peeling an egg and she, afterwards like a mad thing had gone into the saal and talked to Millie in a vulgar, ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... vulgar woman, one who does not piously regard her vulva as an orifice to be approached with Gregorian chants. I must be careful to avoid those veteran masturbators marching heroically under the gonfalons ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... founded on similar mistakes, plays which serve to improve, according to Andrew Borde's prescription, if not the morals, at least the health of the "Palais Royal" audiences of to-day. With Sidney, the comic is a vulgar style; he very rarely risks any jests, a portrait of a cowardly peasant, or of an injured husband.[246] One of his best attempts in this style is a character in his masque of the "Lady of May," the pedant Rombus, who gives quotations ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... universally believed. We have already observed that Rushbrook was a fine, tall man; and if there is any class of people who can be transplanted with success from low to high life, it will be those who have served in the army. The stoop is the evidence of a low-bred, vulgar man; the erect bearing equally so that of the gentleman. Now, the latter is gained in the army, by drilling and discipline, and being well-dressed will provide for all else that is required, as far as mere personal appearance is ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... month of May), Sophia Scott, the Duke of Buccleuch's "Little Jacobite," the most like her father of all his children. Every reader of the Life knows the delightful pictures, enough for interest and not enough for vulgar obtrusion, given by Lockhart of life at Chiefswood, the cottage near Abbotsford which he and his wife inhabited for ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... men of good taste who care for the best they know. Vulgarity is satisfaction with mean things. That is vulgar which is poor of its kind. There is a kind of music called rag-time,—vulgar music, with catchy tunes—catchy to those who do not know nor care for things better. There are men satisfied with rag-time music, with rag-time theatres, with rag-time politics, rag-time ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... not give her in reality the pleasures of which she dreamed, he tried at least to ensure that she should be happy in his company, tried not to contradict those vulgar ideas, that bad taste which she displayed on every possible occasion, which all the same he loved, as he could not help loving everything that came from her, which even fascinated him, for were they not ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... is also the most vulgar—price. The reply of the man of wealth to the statement that a recent purchase was an inferior example of an artist's work; "I paid ten thousand for it. Of course it's all right," was considered final to the critic. The man whose first judgment concerning an elaborate picture of roses was ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... Savior and the same gospel with the ignorant and debased working classes. Traces of a similar style of feeling are discernible in the letters of the polished correspondents of Hannah More. Robert Walpole gayly intimates himself somewhat shocked at the idea that the nobility and the vulgar should be equally subject to the restraints of the Sabbath and the law of God—equally exposed to the sanctions of endless retribution. And Young makes his ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is almost the only religion I know that can expose the mysteries of its ritual to the vulgar gaze and yet retain the devotion of its worshippers. There is nothing a British audience so loves as to be taken behind the scenes and shown how it is done—or not done; and then it will attend the next play and go on adoring with the blindest infatuation. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... hung upon every syllable that fell from his lips, but, to my indescribable chagrin, it was a mere voluble jargon of statements, which simply baffled and puzzled me and caused me pain. Our charge would stare at us stolidly, and then remark, in a vulgar Cockney voice, that he was quite sure we were going the wrong way. By this time, I should mention, we had re-clothed him in his trousers and shirt, for he had obviously suffered terribly from ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... Variations of Tempo, the ritardando, accelerando, and tempo rubato, are all legitimate aids demanded by Expression. But unless their use is determined by sound judgment and correct musicianly taste, the effect speedily becomes vulgar and monotonous. Knowledge, and a taste formed in good schools, must be the guide of the vocalist in the use ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... the representative of the proud Aylwins, the genteel Aylwins, the heir-presumptive Aylwins—the most respectable branch of a most respectable family, which, alas! has its ungenteel, its bohemian, its vulgar offshoots? Did I hear ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... smile seemed to pass over Seymour's features. "I'm afraid it is the vulgar test of trousers," he said. "When I saw daylight between the long legs I was sure it was ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... She would not hurry a step to overtake him. All in good time. She no more doubted him—she no more doubted that in due time he would ask her to be his wife—than she doubted what her answer would be when he did so. Between them there had been no vulgar philandering; no word of what might have been, what yet might be, had passed their lips. Yet, deep in their hearts was guarded an unspoken compact which—she would have staked her ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... lodging houses, tenements—these myriads were squirming in darkness and squalor, ignorant and never to be less ignorant, ill fed and never to be better fed, clothed in pitiful absurd rags or shoddy vulgar attempts at finery, and never to be better clothed. She would not be of those! She would struggle on, would sink only to mount. She would work; she would try to do as nearly right as she could. And in the end she must triumph. She would get at least a good part ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... beautiful looks. And distant women are so very excited... They have hundreds of red, round hands, Still, large, without end Placed around their high, motley bellies. Most people are drinking yellow beer. Grocers, their cigarettes burning, gape. A fine young woman sings vulgar songs. A young Jew plays the piano ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... wise with God's Wisdom'? How few of us order our lives on the footing of this old teacher's lesson, and act out the belief that Wisdom is more than wealth! The man who heaps millions together, and masses it, fails in life, however a vulgar world and a nominal church may admire and glorify him. The man who wins Wisdom succeeds, however bare may be his cupboard, and however people may pity him for having failed in life, because he has not drawn prizes in the Devil's lottery. His ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... while she was seated acquitting herself in chat with Sir Hugo, she glanced round her with careful ease, bowing a recognition here and there, and fearful lest an anxious-looking exploration in search of Deronda might be observed by her husband, and afterward rebuked as something "damnably vulgar." But all traveling, even that of a slow gradual glance round a room, brings a liability to undesired encounters, and amongst the eyes that met Gwendolen's, forcing her into a slight bow, were those of the "amateur too fond of Meyerbeer," Mr. Lush, whom Sir Hugo continued to ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... against your will? Look here, my man, you showed your hand immediately you came, and you've been playing your game without knowing the trump cards. It looked very innocent to be mesmerized last night, didn't it? Oh, mesmerism is a vulgar affair; but there was more than mesmerism realized last night. I played three trump cards last night, Mr. Justin Blake. The Egyptian story was one, the thought-reading was the second, the animal and mental magnetism was the third. ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... forgive thy hastiness; but it is more difficult to forgive rude gestures, vulgar shouts, and a voice reminding one of players at mora. I do not like that style, Marcus, and do thou guard against it. Know that Tigellinus is Caesar's pander; but know also that if I wanted the girl for myself now, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... with incessant striving to adapt herself to her environment, that she might search its farthest nook and angle; what with ceaseless efforts to check her almost momentary impulse to cry out against the vulgar display of modernity and the vicious inequity of privilege which she saw on every hand; what with her purity of thought; her rare ideals and selfless motives; her boundless love for humanity; and her passionate desire to so live her "message" that all the world might ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... nothing more to say, and she washed the cups, and watched the dark, sad man bending over the fire. A vulgar woman, a selfish woman, would have interrupted that solemn session at her hearth. She would have turned Inquisitor, and tortured him with questions. "What's the matter?" "Is there anything wrong?" "Are you sick?" etc., etc. But when Maggie ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... minds of these high-born ladies with less perplexity and awe than the vulgar souls without, were the portents and horrors of the heaven, without due effect. No mind in those days, however clear and enlightened, but held some lingering belief that such things were ominous of coming wrath, and sent by the Gods to inform their ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... a therd floar in Pump Cort, he lived as if he had the welth of Cresas. The tenpun notes floo abowt as common as haypince—clarrit and shampang was at his house as vulgar as gin; and verry glad I was, to be sure, to be a valley to ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... longer can I keep this up? Sooner or later I bust loose and smash little Jeff one in the snoot, and he takes the count, and I'm never allowed to see Claire again. Turn the roughneck out on his ear. I s'pose I'm vulgar. I s'pose that fellow Michael in Youth's Encounter wouldn't talk about snoots. I don't care, I'll—— If I poke Saxton one—— I'm not afraid of the kid-glove precinct any more. My brain's as good as theirs, give it a chance. But oh, they're all against me. And they bust the ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... "That's vulgar work," said the Darning-needle. "I shall never get through. I'm breaking! I'm breaking!" And she really broke. "Did I not say so?" said ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... Salvation? Who doth not commiserate this sort of Persons? Who can refuse to help them by all means which are possible? For my part, I, by the help of God's Grace, will not only help them, but will make publick and vulgar what is best to be done therein, yea, and have done so already, that they can understand others speaking, even with the softest Voice, ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... to school, but I looked at the master, and saw that he was a smooth, round ferule—or an improper noun—or a vulgar fraction, and refused to obey him. Or he was a piece of string, a rag, a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But one was a well of cool, deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I saw ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... in toilet which seems to have obtained much as yet among young girls is the very vague impulse to look 'stylish,'—a desire which must answer for more vulgar dressing than one would wish to see. If girls would rise above this, and desire to express by their dress the attributes of true ladyhood, nicety of eye, fastidious neatness, purity of taste, truthfulness, and sincerity of nature, they might form, each one for herself, a style having its own individual ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... called spoonwood, because the Indians made pretty white spoons from that wood to sell to the colonists. Horn was an appropriate and available material for spoons. Many Indian tribes excelled as they do to-day in the making of horn spoons. The vulgar affirmation, "By the great horn spoon," has ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... on me if I hadn't fooled them that way—' and again his eyes snapped and his face flushed as the humor of the situation rose in his mind. 'You'll forgive me, won't you? Don't tell Gretchen.' The light in his eyes was gone now. I'd rather she'd think me drunk than vulgar, and it was vulgar, and maybe cowardly, to hit him, but I couldn't help that either, and I'm not sorry I ...
— Fiddles - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... on this occasion, no less than on that of his other publications, Hume exhibits no small share of the craving after mere notoriety and vulgar success, as distinct from the pardonable, if not honourable, ambition for solid and enduring fame, which would have harmonised better with his philosophy. Indeed, it appears to be by no means improbable that this peculiarity of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... noted as a positive fact that whenever the public, in any country, have a free choice in matters of art, that choice generally turns out to be right, and is ultimately endorsed by the best critics. Most of the vulgar art to be found in advertisements and the illustrated papers is put there by ignorant and vulgar providers, who imagine that the whole public are as ignorant and vulgar as themselves; whereas whenever a better standard of taste is given an opportunity, it never fails to find ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... gave for its being obtainable on these terms—its remoteness from a station, its lack of electric light, hot-water pipes, and other vulgar necessities—were exactly those pleading in its favor with two romantic Americans perversely in search of the economic drawbacks which were associated, in their tradition, with unusual ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... was the first gift he communicated to his disciples. These aped very sincerely their master's several grimaces, and shook in every limb the instant the fit of inspiration came upon them, whence they were called Quakers. The vulgar attempted to mimic them; they trembled, they spake through the nose, they quaked and fancied themselves inspired by the Holy Ghost. The only thing now wanting was a few miracles, and accordingly ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... port called San Pedro, and as we were to lie there a week or two, and the California was to sail in a few days, we lost the opportunity. Just before sailing, the captain took on board a short, red-haired, round-shouldered, vulgar-looking fellow, who had lost one eye, and squinted with the other, and introducing him as Mr. Russell, told us that he was an officer on board. This was too bad. We had lost overboard, on the passage, one of the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... vulgar Death too harsh appears, The ill we feel is only in our fears; To die is landing on some silent shore Where billows never break, nor tempests roar; Ere well we feel th' friendly stroke 'tis o'er. The wise through thought th' insults of death defy, The ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... one among the anxious crowd of spectators, however, had carefully studied the small, thin countenance of the child perched up on the tall stone cross, he would have discovered that its expression was by no means that of vulgar curiosity. It was not simply the fierce attractions of an execution that had drawn thither this wild, weird-looking young creature, with his sun-burned complexion, great, flashing, dark eyes, brilliant ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... than the clear. It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration, and chiefly excites our passions. Knowledge and acquaintance make the most striking causes affect but little. It is thus with the vulgar; and all men are as the vulgar in what they do not understand. The ideas of eternity and infinity, are among the most affecting we have: and yet perhaps there is nothing of which we really understand so little, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... on the pyre Of her dead husband, half consumed, As well might there be false, as I To those abhorred embraces doomed, 510 Far worse than fire's brief agony As to the Christian creed, if true Or false, I never questioned it: I took it as the vulgar do: Nor my vexed soul had leisure yet 515 To doubt the things men say, or deem That they are other than ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to Mr. Yatman for the last month; yesterday evening he came home excited by liquor, and last week he was seen talking to a prizefighter; in short, though Mr. Jay does call himself a journalist, in virtue of his penny-a-line contributions to the newspapers, he is a young man of low taste, vulgar manners, and bad habits. Nothing has yet been discovered in relation to him which redounds to his credit in the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... He would go back to San Francisco and work there, where he at least had friends who respected his station. Yet, he ought to have refused the girl's offer before she had repulsed him; his retreat now meant nothing, and might even tempt her, in her vulgar pique, to reveal her rebuff of him. He raised his eyes mechanically, and looked gloomily across the dark waste and distant bay to the opposite shore. But the fog had already hidden the glow of the city's ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... employed by wives against their husbands. There are some coarse and violent men who have been taught the tricks of women by their mistresses, in the happy hours of their celibacy, and so flatter themselves that they are never to be caught by this vulgar trap. But all their efforts, all their arguments end by being vanquished before the magic of these words: "I have a headache." If a husband complains, or ventures on a reproach, if he tries to resist the power of this Il buondo cani ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... she would refuse. Shuddering disgustfully, the thought of a new family scandal shot through his mind: a breach-of-promise case begun by Margot against him, if he tried to escape. It was the sort of thing she would do, he could not help recognizing. Another cause celebre, more vulgar than the fight for his brother's title! How Victoria would turn in shocked revulsion from the hero of such a coarse tragi-comedy. But he would never be that hero. He would keep his word and stick to Margot. When he should come to the desert telegraph station between Toudja and Touggourt, he would ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... knowledge, and observation, above others, he is a kind of reproach to them for the debasement into which they allow themselves to fall, and they endeavour to remove him from their sight. This is my history: I knew more than the vulgar, and therefore was separated ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... doubted and the spell of which none cared to escape, it occurred to me that here was the solution of all the pother we have recently got into about the realistic and the ideal schools in fiction. In "Posson Jone," an awkward camp-meeting country preacher is the victim of a vulgar confidence game; the scenes are the street, a drinking-place, a gambling-saloon, a bull-ring, and a calaboose; there is not a "respectable" character in it. Where shall we look for a more faithful picture of low life? Where shall we find another so vividly set forth in all its sordid details? ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... to the weak lungs of many consumptive patients, who came to drink the water. The Doctor overhearing this remark, made up to him, and assured him he was mistaken. He said, people in general were so misled by vulgar prejudices that philosophy was hardly sufficient to undeceive them. Then humming thrice, he assumed a most ridiculous solemnity of aspect, and entered into a learned investigation of the nature of stink. He observed, that stink, or stench, meant no more ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... which has tended to render Christianity less acceptable to men of taste and culture, is the peculiar language adopted in the discourses and writings of its Teachers. The style of some religious teachers is low, vulgar. The style of a still greater number is barbarous. Men soon feel the language of the Law to be barbarous. They would feel the language of theology to be as barbarous, if they were not accustomed to hear it or read it so constantly. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... some fundamentals of the Christian religion, and great mysteries of faith, are handled with the greatest gospel simplicity and most dexterous plainness and are brought down to the meanest capacity and vulgar understanding, with abundant evidence of a great height and reach of useful knowledge in the author, who, had he lived to have perfected the explication of the grounds of religion in this manner—as he intended, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... resolve had had time to mature—constituted in strictness, singularly enough, the first reference to Milly, or to what Milly might or might not have done, that had passed between our pair since they had stood together watching the destruction, in the little vulgar grate at Chelsea, of the undisclosed work of her hand. They had at the time, and in due deference now, on his part, to Kate's mention of her responsibility for his call, immediately separated, and when they met again the subject was made present to them—at all events till some ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... to me to test my wife's fidelity in a vulgar, commonplace way familiar to everyone who has acquaintance with the literature of fact and fiction. I went to the city, telling my wife that I should be absent until the following afternoon. But I returned ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... amuse the vulgar," said the baron. "I do not mind admitting to you that I contemplate residing on this spot, and perhaps contracting ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... mean by revolution. But this revolution is Russian and not French, and its art, if all goes well, should inevitably bear the popular Russian stamp. It is would-be primitive and popular art that is vulgar. Such at least is the reflection engendered by an inspection of Russian peasant work as compared with the spirit of ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... to God, not suffering evil from God, for the Divinity does only what is good. It is the man himself who causes his evils by his false beliefs in regard to God. The impious is not so much he who does not honor the statues of the gods as he who mixes up with the idea of God the superstitions of the vulgar. As for thyself, do not hold any unworthy idea of God, of his blessedness or of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... ignore her pearls, they want to be better than anybody else's—and so it is with everything else. You know what I mean—you know it's only the showy things that are cheap. Well, I should want my wife to be able to take the earth for granted if she wanted to. I know there's one thing vulgar about money, and that's the thinking about it; and my wife would never have to demean herself in that way." He paused, and then added, with an unfortunate lapse to an earlier manner: "I guess you know the lady I've got ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... simplest phrase of tenderest fall, No liken'd excellence can reach Her, thee most excellent of all, The best half of creation's best, Its heart to feel, its eye to see, The crown and complex of the rest, Its aim and its epitome. Nay, might I utter my conceit, 'Twere after all a vulgar song, For she's so simply, subtly sweet, My deepest rapture does her wrong. Yet is it now my chosen task To sing her worth as Maid and Wife; Nor happier post than this I ask, To live her laureate all ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... establish such a principle of disqualification against themselves and their posterity, and, for the sake of gratifying the schemes of a transitory administration of the cockpit or the castle, or in compliance with the lightest part of the most vulgar and transient popularity, fix so irreparable an injury on the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was displayed in the powerful delineation of character, and the dramatic evolution of human passions. His personages seem to be real—living and breathing before us. So, too, with Cervantes, whose Sancho Panza, though homely and vulgar, is intensely human. The characters in Le Sage's "Gil Bias," in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," and in Scott's marvelous muster-roll, seem to us almost as real as persons whom we have actually known; and De Foe's greatest works are but so ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... the dog's speciality as a subtle sense of smell. That is certainly what I mean, if you will understand by that that the nasal passages of the animal are the seat of the perceptive organ; but is the thing perceived always a simple smell in the vulgar acceptation of the term—an effluvium such as our own senses perceive? I have certain reasons for doubting this, which I ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... darling prize, and, above all, that worst sign of all, the almost perfect indifference with which the most enormous frauds are received by the public; these and similar things show the bitter consequences of this vulgar passion. I rejoice that our venerable friend, when in the prime of his extraordinary powers, and at a period of life when the flame of ambition glows wildest, turned his back upon the gilded phantoms which have lured so many to destruction, and sought ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... feelings, but an occasional visit would probably injure none but very weak minds. Your guardian is, I daresay, a prudent judicious man, and would be careful in selecting plays that could offend neither morality nor delicacy. There are many things upon the stage which are sinful, vicious, and vulgar, but there are hundreds of books quite as bad and dangerous. As we choose only the best volumes to read, so be sure to select only pure plays and operas. 'Lear' would teach you the awful results of filial disobedience; 'Merchant of Venice,' the sin of avarice; 'Julius ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... gamekeeper's or farmer's journal as "even worse than the rook." Even the ornithologists who are interested in birds as birds haven't a good word to say of the daw. According to them he alone is responsible for the disappearance of his distinguished relation, the chough. (The vulgar daw is of course devoid of any distinction at all, unless it be his grey pate and ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... and the cold was bitter. Eldris stumbled on toward the end of the street, her eyes searching the houses on either hand. When but three remained between her and the open strip of beach on the marsh side, she paused irresolute. One was a low and vulgar place, its door fast closed, no light to be seen about it. The second was a half burnt ruin, where cattle had been stalled. The third seemed of somewhat better class. It presented a blank wall to the street, broken only by a low and narrow door with a wicket, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... souls to one another he loves to display upon a background of political life. Then we follow him from the cloudy North into sunny Italy. Shakspeare is one of the intellectual powers of nature; he takes away the veil by which the inward springs of action are hidden from the vulgar eye. The extension of the range of human vision over the mysterious being of things which his works offer constitutes them a great ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... It is thrown out, in part at least, under the epidermis, and there it remains to the patient's dying day. This is a striking illustration of the difficulty which the system finds in dealing with non-assimilable elements, and justifies in some measure the vulgar prejudice ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Nature's self in white arrayed, She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft waters murmuring by; Thus quietly thy summer goes,— Thy days declining ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... Exili was no vulgar poisoner: he was a great artist in poisons, comparable with the Medici or the Borgias. For him murder was a fine art, and he had reduced it to fixed and rigid rules: he had arrived at a point when he was guided not by his personal interest but by a taste for experiment. God has reserved the act ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... lance in rest; but I do, in truth, believe that this knightly sensitiveness of honourable feeling is the best antidote to the petty soul-degrading transactions of every day life, and that the total want of it, is one reason why this free-born race care so very little for the vulgar virtue ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... by a very large majority. Here the hoarse voice of a boy strikes in,—"Buy the account of the grand conspiracy of Citoyen Thiers against the Republic!" Then another chimes in with wares of a less political and more vulgar nature. The movement to and fro and the excitement is extraordinary. While the populace basks in the sun the destiny of the city is being decided.—"M. Desmarest is elected for the 9th Arrondissement," says some one close to me.—"Lesueur ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... exhibit their ingenuity in pilfering. We have seen instances of this sort before. Mr G.F. relates one of some interest, as presented in the king's own sister, a woman about twenty-seven years old, and who possessed great authority over her sex. Her high rank did not elevate her above some very vulgar propensities, of which, covetousness, though abundantly conspicuous, was not the most considerable. The only apology Mr G.F. makes for her, has little specific excellence to commend it. "In a country," says he, "where the impulses of nature are followed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to his character. It is the grace, undoubtedly, of a virtuous, firm mind often to despise common, vulgar calumny; but if ever there is an occasion in which it does become such a mind to disprove it, it is the case of being charged in high office with pecuniary malversation, pecuniary corruption. There is no case in which it becomes an honest man, much less a great man, to leave upon record ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a good deal of feeling, sir, for the unlettered and the vulgar. They have their station, but they have also—though doubtless in smaller capacity ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... are going to do it, if I can't get the thousand by telegram, as I asked Cousin Gilmore to send it by Monday morning—which they don't know about yet. I hate to write the sacrifice down—it seems a desecration! They are going to sell one of the foundation stones of the Byrd family pride for this vulgar money they need for the doctor from Cincinnati. I can't bear to think about it, though I have never seen the ancestral stone, and it is only a few musty papers, kept in the vault at the Byrdsville County Bank. They are ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... should I trouble my head to do so?" mused Lucian as he went to bed. "The man and his mysteries are nothing to me. Bah! I have been infected by the vulgar curiosity of the Square. Henceforth I'll neither see nor think of this drunken lunatic," and with such resolve he dismissed all thoughts of his strange acquaintance from his mind, which, under the circumstances, was perhaps the wisest thing he ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Madam Gregorig,—The undersigned desires an invitation to the next soda-squirt.' Comment by Dr. Lueger: 'Neither the rest of the card nor the signature can I venture to read to the House, so vulgar are they.' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with all his dandyism and effeminacy of manner, was of a high and resolute spirit. "Do either of you fancy that I want courage to face a positive danger, because I may not happen to have any particular vulgar predilection for ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the generous creatures, whom I envy," said Mr. Skimpole, addressing us, his new friends, in an impersonal manner. "I envy you your power of doing what you do. It is what I should revel in myself. I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as if YOU ought to be grateful to ME for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. I know you like it. For anything I can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... is remarkable," stated the hunchback. "But—please—do not look so shocked. I assure you I do not commonly pick young gentlemen's pockets. It is a vulgar pastime, and I am an accomplished villain. Why, once upon a time, I wrote an epic poem. What mere larceny can compare with that fell deed! Besides, this particular outrage upon the sanctity of your overcoat ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... was afraid. But he was a peace-loving boy and he thought fighting brutal and vulgar. His books were such a delight. He liked to go in and talk to Mr. Theodore, as they all called the eldest Whitney son. Mr. Theodore in his newspaper capacity had found out so many queer things about old New York, they really called New York that in early 1800. He had such wonderful ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... The vulgar error expressed in these lines is not extinct, even at the present day. The only explanation I have seen of its origin is given in Barrington's Observations on the more Ancient Statutes, p. 474., on 3 Hen. VIII., where, after referring in the text to a statute by which surgeons ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... bad," she went on, "that the world-wide appreciation of your artistic devotion should not take some tangible form. Dollars may be vulgar and sordid, as you say, but still, in our primitive era, they are our only expression of value. I have even heard it said," she went on, rapidly, "that the amount of wealth honestly acquired by any individual was, after all, only the measure of his ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... right people; but unfortunately for us the right people are not the people of vivacity and intellectual zest, but the possessors of industrial wealth or the inheritors of scrupulous traditions and historical names. The sad fact, the melancholy truth, is that we have become vulgar; and until we can purge ourselves of vulgarity, till we can realise the ineffable ugliness of pomposity and pretension and ostentation, we shall effect nothing. Even our puritan forefathers, with their hatred of art, were in love with ideas. They sipped theology with the air ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rather fleshy features were those of the sensual, prodigal young American, who haunts hotels. Clean shaven and well dressed, the fellow would be indistinguishable from the thousands of overfed and overdrunk young business men, to be seen every day in the vulgar luxury of Pullman cars, hotel ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... A more potential draught of guilt than this With more of wormwood in it! ... ... Courage, Firmilian! for the hour has come When thou canst know atrocity indeed, By smiting him that was thy dearest friend. And think not that he dies a vulgar death— ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... [Footnote: Compare Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais, xii., where Newton is acclaimed as the greatest man who ever lived.] He was superficial in his knowledge both of history and of science, and his conception of utility was narrow and a little vulgar. Great theoretical discoverers like Newton and Leibnitz he sets in a lower rank than ingenious persons who used their scientific skill to fashion some small convenience of life. Monuments of art, like Notre Dame, possessed little value ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... watch-chain. Then he glanced at a sheet of pink paper which lay on the mantelpiece. She snatched it at once; opened it; stared incredulously at it; and said, "Pink paper, and scalloped edges! How filthily vulgar! I thought she was not much of a Countess! Ahem! 'Music for the People. Parnassus Society. A concert will be given at the Town Hall, Wandsworth, on Tuesday, the 25th April, by the Countess of Carbury, assisted by the following ladies and gentlemen. Miss Elinor ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... through into the Pacific. I have passed that cape three times, and have been working to windward off them some weeks, but although we always kept a bright look-out for ice islands and strange vessels, we never, to use a vulgar expression, saw "hide or ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Histoire de la Geographie, p. 369; Peschel, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, concluding chapters; and for an admirable summary, Draper, Hist. Int. Devel. of Europe, pp. 451-453; also an interesting passage in Sir Thomas Brown's Vulgar and Common Errors, Book I, chap. vi; also a striking passage in Acosta, chap. ii. For general statement as to supplementary proof by measurement of degrees and by pendulum, see Somerville, Phys. Geog., chap. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... ignominiously to the contempt of the people; which usage, as she did not deserve it, she bore with a patient resignation that excited the admiration as well as compassion of those who judged of things better than the vulgar. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... the meanwhile seemed to take but little notice of the vulgar insults put upon him by his guardian. He stood, a quaint, impassive little figure, more interested apparently in de Batz, who was a stranger to him, than in the three others whom he knew. De Batz noted that the child looked well nourished, ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... Misunderstandings in some high Affairs wherein he was concern'd: his Name was De Pais, a Man of great Birth, but of no Fortune; or at least one not suitable to the Grandeur of his Original. And as it is most natural for great Souls to be most proud (if I may call a handsome Disdain by that vulgar Name) when they are most depress'd; so De Pais was more retir'd, more estrang'd from his Neighbours, and kept a greater Distance, than if he had enjoy'd all he had lost at Court; and took more Solemnity and State upon him, because he would not be subject to the Reproaches ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... proportions, and at the same time permitting the utmost freedom and grace of movement. Jewellery was clearly only used as a medium for adding to the brilliancy of the general effect, and I saw no one with any lavish or vulgar display of jewels. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... upon a British stage. Distress, which turns upon the involutions of unnatural or incestuous passion, carries with it something too disgusting for the sympathy of a refined age; whereas, in a simple state of society, the feelings require a more powerful stimulus; as we see the vulgar crowd round an object of real horror, with the same pleasure we reap from seeing it represented on a theatre. Besides, in ancient times, in those of the Roman empire at least, such abominations really occurred, as sanctioned the story of OEdipus. But the change of manners has introduced not ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... then, brother, the faces of the beaux are of such a lily-white hue! None of that horrid robustness of constitution, that vulgar corn-fed glow of health, which can only serve to alarm an unmarried lady with apprehensions, and prove a melancholy memento to a married one, that she can never hope for the happiness of being a widow. ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... of this genus flower about Michaelmas, hence their vulgar name of Michaelmas-Daisy; a name exceptionable not only on account of its length, but from its being a compound word. Aster, though a Latin term, is now so generally received, that we shall make no apology for ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... the body of the device, must be exactly fitted to the motto, which he terms its soul; and though it should not be so obscure as to require a sibyl to explain it, yet the motto ought to be in a foreign or dead language, so that it may not be comprehended by the vulgar—'such dainties not being intended for vulgar appetites.' The human figure, also, should never be introduced into the emblem, and the motto ought not to contain more than three or four words. These rules, however, were not strictly adhered to, even by Jovius himself. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... this work good judgment in the choice of items of news, variety in the manner of stating them, and logical order in arranging and connecting them should be cultivated. The writing of good, plain English, rather than "smart" journalese should be the aim. Stale, vulgar and incorrect phrases, such as "Sundayed," and "in our midst," should be avoided. There are two tests in selecting a news item: (1) Will it interest readers? (2) Ought they to know it? When by these tests an item is proved to be real ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... memory, a lively imagination, and a pleasant style, this 'Old Colleger' might have given us something far more amusing than he has done. Of course Anybody's Anecdotes of our Grand Old School will probably be interesting up to a certain point: and they might be made 'funny, without being vulgar.' But this worthy Octogenarian, be he who he may, has produced only a very matter-of-fact book, containing historic information likely to arrest the attention of an old or young Etonian, but only now and again does the author give us anything sufficiently amusing to evoke ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... and gain a loving heart; with these longings he descended from his blissful, lonely heights, when he heard the cry of this heart for help in the midst of mankind. The halo of his higher nature, however, betrays him. He can not but appear as miraculous. The staring of the vulgar and the rancor of the envious cloud the heart of the loving Elsa. Doubts and jealousy show that he has not been understood but simply adored, and this draws from him the confession of his divinity, ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... lineage, more, to obey; So would have built you, in a few short years, A just, therefore a safe, supremacy. For well he knew, what you, his chiefs, did not— How of all human rules the over-tense Are apt to snap; the easy-stretch'd endure. O gentle wisdom, little understood! O arts above the vulgar tyrant's reach! O policy too subtle far for sense Of heady, masterful, injurious men! This good he meant you, and for this he died! Yet not for this—else might thy crime in part Be error deem'd—but that pretence is vain. For, if ye slew him ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... THE WORLD. Young man, if this were a performance, you would be dealt with by our aesthetic policewoman. Vulgar comments made in public upon works of art are now an ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... one of these!... A woman appears over there: she is tall and fair-haired. She stoops over a well; I cannot make out her features. She draws herself up again. Oh, no, her figure is clumsy, her hair looks dull and colourless and her clothes vulgar. Rose would never dress like that, in two colours that clash! Rose ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... should have been remanded to duty; and failing to know my regiment, I should have been apprehended as a deserter. At the best, even if other people had recognized the nature of my trouble, I should have been subjected then and always to the vulgar curiosity which I so greatly dreaded. Here in Company H nobody would know me except as an ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... as a fair; and the idle young people sat under the oaks, or walked slowly in the shadow of the hedges, pulling poppies and wild flowers, and realizing all the poetry of a pastoral life, without any of its hard labor or its vulgar cares. Mrs. Sandal had given them a basket with berries and cake and cream in it. They were all young enough to get pleasantly hungry in the open air, all young enough to look upon berries and cake and cream as a distinct addition to happiness. They set out a little feast under the trees, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr |
