"Vulgarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fields were allowed to run waste, and forests sprung up and covered entire districts which before the war had been under full cultivation." Amid these scenes of misery and ruin, vices were more marked than calamities. They were carried to the utmost pitch of vulgarity. Both Austrian and Swedish generals were often so much intoxicated, for days together, as to be incapable of service. Never was a war attended by so many horrors. Never was crime more general and disgusting. So terrible were the desolations, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... "And by its great utility," said Lady Laura, bowing to the young member who was present, and forgetting that very useless old gentleman, her cousin, who had sat for the borough for many years. "In this country it doesn't do to go too fast," said Mr. Kennedy. "And then the mixture of vulgarity, falsehood, and pretence!" said Lady Laura, shuddering as her mind recurred to the fact that Mr. Quintus Slide had contaminated Loughton by his presence. "I am told that they hardly let him ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... not only lost a portion of their ferocity, but also much of their native simplicity of character, which, in all parts of the world, is so highly interesting a study for the traveller. Their constant intercourse with whalers, who are generally low, unpolished men, leaves behind it a tinge of vulgarity, of which the native women retain the largest portion. In many instances, they quite spoil their good looks, by half adopting the European costume. Those who are living in the retirement of their own villages have a natural ease and elegance of manner, which they soon lose after their introduction ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... not set before them; at others, a sort of fashion in the school to consider a good appetite as a proof of coarseness, greediness, and vulgarity, worked but too effectually upon these sensitive creatures. A girl at that age would rather be starved than ridiculed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... pleasant surprise you have prepared for us, dear Mr. Hamilton! quite unprepared, I assure you! but ah, how you artists idealise to be sure! who but genius itself could find anything picturesque under so much glitter and vulgarity?" and so on and so on, until Eily's blushing face grew paler ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... the heath with its monotony of tint stretches away into the distance; at every step the granite protrudes from a soil too scanty to cover it; a sea that is almost always sombre girdles the horizon with eternal moaning. The same contrast is manifest in the people: to Norman vulgarity, to a plump and prosperous population, happy to live, full of its own interests, egoistical as are all these who make a habit of enjoyment, succeeds a timid and reserved race living altogether within itself, heavy in appearance but capable ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... words whose use shows vulgarity or ignorance. Such words as the following are always ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... Kaffir. dog Latin, macaronics[obs3], gibberish; confusion of tongues, Babel; babu English[obs3], chi-chi. figure of speech &c. (metaphor) 521; byword. colloquialism, informal speech, informal language. substandard language, vernacular. vulgar language, obscene language, obscenity, vulgarity. jargon, technical terms, technicality, lingo, slang, cant, argot; St. Gile's Greek, thieves' Latin, peddler's French, flash tongue, Billingsgate, Wall Street slang. pseudology[obs3]. pseudonym &c. (misnomer) 565; Mr. So-and-so; wha d'ye call 'em[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... correctness was substituted for the fundamental qualities of original invention ind intrinsic beauty of composition. The innovation of colossal orders extending through several stories, while it gave to exterior designs a certain grandeur of scale, tended to coarseness and even vulgarity of detail. Sculpture and ornament began to lose their refinement; and while street-architecture gained in monumental scale, and public squares received a more stately adornment than ever before, the street-faades individually were too often ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... of blazing out in indignation over the false position in which his friend had been placed when Peter's warning voice rang in his ears. The vulgarity of the whole proceeding appalled him, yet ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was thronged with the crowd, pouring on, like an inundation, toward the deserted palace. The doors were forced open, and the interior of the palace was instantly filled with the swarming multitudes. The mob from the streets polluted the sanctuaries of royalty with every species of vulgarity and obscenity. An amazon market-woman took possession of the queen's bed, and, spreading her cherries upon it, she took her seat upon the royal couch, exclaiming, "To-day it is the nation's turn to take their ease." One of the caps of the queen ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... to set an example to the state in their own establishment of economy and reform in the public departments, hired Soyer, the best cook of the age, at a salary that would have pensioned half-a-dozen of the poor worn-out clerks in Downing Street. Vulgarity is always showy. It is a pretty word, "Reformers." The common herd of them I don't mind much, for rogues and fools always find employment for each other. But when I hear of a great reformer like some of the big bugs to England, that have been ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Thus the vulgarity which Garratt Skinner chose to assume, the unattractive figure of "red-hot" Barstow, and the obvious swindle which was being perpetrated on Walter Hine, had the opposite effect to that which Skinner expected. Chayne, instead of turning his back upon ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... hour he drove without thought of where he was going. Detail after detail of the affair presented itself to his mind in endless repetition. It had been a humiliating experience. The old woman's vulgarity; Macomber's stolid, iron hand clearing the air, like brushing trash from his doorstep; the consciousness of prying eyes at that upstairs window! "I've been a feeble cuckoo," he thought. "Mighta supposed two years in the army would have taught me ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... dislikes of Harold Bell Wright are quite pronounced. He is unpretending, cares not for the lime-light and avoids interviews for the public press. Loud, boisterous conversation is but little less offensive to him than vulgarity in speech or action. His friends are strong, clean-minded men who are doing things in the world and are as necessary to his being as the air to his existence, and his generosity to them is no less marked than his caring and providing for his family, which is almost a passion. He is extremely ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... lace, and Royal dinner parties with menus printed on white silk, Americans, Republicans in feeling, really "run" the government, and in state affairs there is a taint of that combination of obsequious and flippant vulgarity, which none deplore more deeply than the best among ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the Temple was to Lamb. His style is neat, pretty, and would be affected if it were not the man himself. As a literary journalist, a dramatic critic, and an essayist, he has a place in literature. His poetry is less successful; his affectations, innate vulgarity, and habit of pawing his subjects repel even those who are attracted by its sweetness. Yet his 'Story of Rimini' (1816), which he dedicated to Byron, was admired in its day. Byron, though he condemned its affected style, thought the poem a "devilish good one." Moore held the same opinion; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... "The vulgarity of the designation is indeed only equalled by that of your taste in selecting it," he said slowly. Then he turned away, intending to leave Keyork standing where ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... and the supernumerary guides, who came for backsheesh. Faith hath degenerated. Accordingly they can't build these mosques, or invent these perfect forms, any more. Witness the tawdry incompleteness and vulgarity of the Pasha's new temple, and the woful failures among the ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is a sight to behold, to see 'em together. To see them, as the poet says, 'To the manner born,' and them that wasn't born in the same manor, but tryin' to act as if they was. Wealth and display, natural courtesy and refinement, walkin' side by side with pretentius vulgarity, and mebby poverty bringin' up the rear. Genius and folly, honesty and affectation, gentleness and sweetness, and brazen impudence, and hatred and malice, and envy and uncharitableness. All languages and peoples under the ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... speeches he makes, of charging falsehood upon his adversaries, myself and others. I now ask whether he is able to find in anything that Judge Trumbull, for instance, has said, or in anything that I have said, a justification at all compared with what we have, in this instance, for that sort of vulgarity. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... course, the frequent recurrence of this vulgarity in my narrative is to be regretted. No one, indeed, is more sensible of the circumstance than I. My uncle held the word in affectionate regard, and usefully employed it: 'tis the only apology I have to offer. Would it not be possible for the more delicate readers of my otherwise ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... about 215,000 retail liquor houses in this nation. Allowing 20 feet to each, it gives us an unbroken liquor front of about 781 miles. Just think of it! Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of profanity and vulgarity. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of Sabbath-breaking. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of drunkard-making. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of filth, debauchery, anarchy, dynamite and bombs. [Applause]. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of political corruption; seven hundred and eighty-one ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... our endeavour should be to develop every true relation. He who is prejudiced against a relative because he is poor, is himself an ill-bred relative, and to be ill-bred is an excluding fault with the court of the high countries. There, poverty is welcome, vulgarity inadmissible. ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... away the two metaphors, and to come to the reality far greater than either of them, we can, whensoever we please, pass into the presence before which the splendours of an earthly monarch's court shrink into vulgarity, and attain to a real reception of the light that irradiates the true Holy Place, before which that which shone in the earthly shrine dwindles and darkens into a shadow. We may live with God, and in Him, and wrap a veil and 'privacy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... "I haven't had anybody speak to me like that for four years." Her voice betrayed excitement, and differed in tone, and she had cast off unconsciously the vulgarity of speech. At that moment she seemed reminiscent of what she must once have been; and he found himself going through an effort ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... doors, she caught glimpses of foul interiors, crowded with men and women released from their toil, taking their evening pleasure. From coloured posters outside the great theatres and music halls, vulgarity and lewdness leered at her, side by side with announcements that the house was full. From every roaring corner, scintillating lights flared forth the merits of this public benefactor's whisky, of ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... For business he had genius, and yet, curiously, no passion; he was unconsciously brilliant on the subject; it was hereditary. But in his innermost heart he believed that it was vulgar to be an American millionaire! And he had a childish horror of vulgarity, and an innocent belief that an Englishman who had been to Eton and Oxford and who was dans le mouvement, smart and good-looking, and had deserted diplomacy for art, must of necessity be refined, superior, cultured, everything that Van Buren ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... by the perusal of a higher, broader, deeper literature, to distinguish the good novel from the bad, the moral from the immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of art from the sham which hides its shallowness and vulgarity under a tangled plot and a melodramatic situation. They should learn—and that they can only learn by cultivation—to discern with joy and drink in with reverence, the good, the beautiful, and the true, and to turn with the fine scorn of a pure and strong womanhood from the bad, the ugly, ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... this: "Try the Jigamaree Bitters!" Very much like this is the sort of advertising I am speaking of. It is not likely that I shall be charged with squeamishness on this question. I can readily enough see the selfishness and vulgarity of this ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... many disillusions. Woman's influence will always remain the strongest lever that can be brought to bear in raising the tone of a family; it is impossible not to see about these young men a reflection of what we found so charming in their mothers. One despairs at times of humanity, seeing vulgarity and snobbishness riding triumphantly upward; but where the tone of the younger generation is as high as I have lately found it, there is still much hope for ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... follows easily, involves the corollary that as faith, to be of any value, must be based on reason, so reason, to be of any value, must be based on faith, and that neither can stand alone or dispense with the other, any more than culture or vulgarity can stand unalloyed with one another without ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... stretched about the square on which clothes were dangling to dry. Poor Goldsmith! What a time he must have had of it, with his quiet disposition and nervous habits, penned up in this den of noise and vulgarity." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... heavily. He seemed a little dazed. In Wrayson's sitting-room, he stood looking about him as though appraising the value of the curios, pictures, and engravings with which the apartment was crowded. Wrayson, while waiting for his call, watched him curiously. In his present state his vulgarity was perhaps less glaringly apparent, but his lack of attractiveness was accentuated. His ears seemed to have grown larger, his pinched, Semitic features more repulsive, and his complexion sallower. He was pitchforked into a world of which he knew nothing, and he ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... finest work of man, was in danger of eternal destruction. Venice rose from the green sea water like the city of enchantment that Turner so often painted. Venice was never so lovely, so wholly the palace of enchantment as she was then, stripped of all the tourist triviality and vulgarity that she usually endures at this season. It was Venice left to her ancient self in this hour of her danger. She was like a marvelous, fragile, still beautiful great lady, so delicate that the least violence might kill her! In this dying light of the day she was already something ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... York and took up his work with vigor and with fervor. The picture of the County Fair, which he exhibited at the American Artists', ran a gauntlet of criticism in which it was belabored at once for its unimaginative vulgarity and its fantastic unreality; then it returned to his studio and remained unsold, while the days, weeks, months and years went by and left each their fine trace on him. His purposes dropped away, mostly unfulfilled, ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... there arise a series of problems, in deciding which the wholesome desire for emphasis by means of shadow is too often exaggerated by the ambition of the sculptor to show his skill in undercutting. The extreme of vulgarity is usually reached when the entire bas-relief is cut hollow underneath, as in much Indian and Chinese work, so as to relieve its forms against an absolute darkness; but no formal law can ever be given; for exactly the same thing may be beautifully done for a wise purpose, by one person, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... they are doomed to failure, that personal life has disappointed them; instead of struggling they merely criticize, calling the world vulgar and forgetting that their criticism passes little by little into vulgarity. ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... gesticulating, so proud that he seemed almost handsome, as if, by dint of gazing long at his bust in artless admiration, he had caught a little of the splendid idealization with which the artist had softened the vulgarity of the type. The head at an elevation of three-fourths, free from the high rolling collar, gave rise to contradictory opinions from the spectators concerning the resemblance; and Jansoulet's name, which had been ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... republican union of comfort with elegance which reigns through the whole establishment. The master of the mansion, perhaps an old and valued schoolfellow:—his wife, a well-bred, accomplished, and still beautiful woman—cordial, without vulgarity—refined, without pretension—and informed, without a shade of blue! Their children!... But my reader will complete the picture, and imagine, better than I can describe, how one of my temperament must suffer at quitting such a scene. At six o'clock on the dreaded morning, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... for Saturday, May 8, 1852 (No. 280), occurs the very worst case of exaggerated and incredible mixed silliness and vulgarity connected with the use of assist for help at the dinner-table that I have met with. It occurs in the review of a book entitled 'The Illustrated London Cookery Book,' by Frederick Bishop. Mr. Bishop, it seems, had 'enjoyed the office of cuisinier at the Palace, and among some ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the opinion, and enforced it in his teaching. We are often in error when we blindly admire, or unhesitatingly adopt, the works of the ancients as perfection. In Athens and Rome in past time, as in Paris and London at present, we may meet with instances of bad taste; for vulgarity belongs to no age or station, and may be visible in the costly decoration of a rich mansion, whose owner is uneducated in art, and insists on having only ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... invaluable, as giving a deep insight into the meaning and proper mode of rendering his compositions. To those who know nothing of him, and who are still floundering amid the fade and flimsy productions that would fain hide their emptiness and vulgarity under the noble name of music, this life of a true musician will reveal a new world, a new purpose for the drudgery of daily practice, and the expenditure of time, patience, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... experience was with an American woman of awful vulgarity. I asked her if she was busy, like everyone else in this place, and ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... unfortunate habit—you now, I hope, feel its inconvenience—of not explaining yourself, I have had to discover this for myself. First, then, I have had to ask myself, what is a Don Juan? Vulgarly, a libertine. But your dislike of vulgarity is pushed to the length of a defect (universality of character is impossible without a share of vulgarity); and even if you could acquire the taste, you would find yourself overfed from ordinary sources ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... mephitic When Papist struggles with Dissenter, Impregnating its pristine clarity, —One, by his daily fare's vulgarity, Its gust of broken meat and garlic; —One, by his soul's too-much presuming To turn the frankincense's fuming An vapors of the candle starlike Into the cloud her wings she buoys on. Each that thus sets the pure air seething, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... the mouths of pedlars and rustics, were of the most edifying description; mostly on subjects moral or metaphysical, and couched in the most gentlemanly and unexceptionable language, without the slightest mixture of vulgarity, coarseness, or piebald grammar. Such appeared to me to be the contents of the book; but before I could form a very clear idea of them, I found myself nodding, and a surprising desire to sleep coming over me. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... our daughters are to marry Tom, Dick, and Harry?" But Amelia took the matter sorely to heart; she kept her love, yet fell into a consumption, and so wasted away; or, as one of the neighbors said, "she was executed on the scaffold of an upstart's vulgarity." Nathan loved no woman in like manner afterwards, but after her death went to India, and remained years long. When he returned and established his business in Boston, he looked after her relations, who had fallen into poverty. Nay, out of the mire of infamy he picked up ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... as we mopped our brows at each other, he told me that he had just cleared 100o, and I went home a beaten man. I had not felt the heat before, save as a beautiful exaggeration of sunshine; but now it oppressed me with the prosaic vulgarity of an oven. What had been poetic intensity became all at once rhetorical hyperbole. I might suspect his thermometer (as indeed I did, for we Harvard men are apt to think ill of any graduation but our own); but it was a poor consolation. The fact remained that his herald Mercury, standing a ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... misery of having our sense of a noble womanhood, which is the inspiration of a purifying shame, the promise of life—penetrating affection, stained and blotted out by images of repulsiveness. These things come—not of higher education, but—of dull ignorance fostered into pertness by the greedy vulgarity which reverses Peter's visionary lesson and learns to call all things common and unclean. It comes ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... relieved my mind by the performance of a good action, suppose I show you next (though I protest against the vulgarity of the expression) that I can see a little further than ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... forward, however, Mrs. Guthrie Brimston's influence was perceptibly upon the wane. Even Colonel Colquhoun wearied of her—to Evadne's great regret. For Mrs. Guthrie Brimston's vulgarity and coarseness of mind were always balanced by her undoubted propriety of conduct, and her faults were altogether preferable to the exceeding polish and refinement which covered the absolutely corrupt life of a new acquaintance Colonel Colquhoun had made at ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... purports to portray. And though there is nothing of an ideal character about its situations, though it seems to be all head, with a minimum of apparent heart, it none the less is universal in the sense that Restoration comedy is universal. It presents a type of vulgarity, of sporting spirit, that is common in every generation, whether in the time of Congreve and Wycherley, whether in the period of Sheridan or Oscar Wilde. Its wit is not dependent on local colour, though ostensibly it is written about ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... as Westover had posted his letter he began to blame himself for it. He saw that the right and manly thing would have been to write to Mrs. Vostrand, and tell her frankly what he thought of Durgin. Her folly, her insincerity, her vulgarity, had nothing to do with the affair, so far as he was concerned. If she had once been so kind to him as to bind him to her in grateful friendship, she certainly had a claim upon his best offices. His duty was to her, and not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Cruikshank's strength is far in excess of his weakness. It is not to his melodramatic heroes or wasp-waisted heroines that we must look for his triumphs; it is to his delineations, from the moralist's point of view, of vulgarity and vice,—of the "rank life of towns," with all its squalid tragedy and comedy. Here he finds his strongest ground, and possibly, notwithstanding his powers as a comic artist and caricaturist, his loftiest claim ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... in wielding the lance that he had acquired the vigor and agility to handle the javelin with consummate address. Contrasted as are his earlier and later styles, they have some essential qualities in common;—an exquisite fitness of expression; a total exemption from harshness, vulgarity, and all the vices that have grown so common; a method, a sequence, which is at once the closest and the least obtrusive to be found in any prose of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... "I wonder. You yourself," she continued, "have always held that there is a certain vulgarity, a certain loss of fine feeling in the consummation of any attachment. The very barrier between us makes our intercourse seem sweeter ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said, that he knew of, or that occurred to his memory, with which Pepys's Diary could fairly be compared, except the journal of L'Estoile, who had the same anxious curiosity and the same commonness, not to say vulgarity of interest, and the book was certainly unique in one respect, and that was the absolute sincerity of the author with himself. Montaigne is conscious that we are looking over his shoulder, and Rousseau secretive in comparison with him. The very fact of that sincerity of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... on one question: Was I to consider myself as engaged to be married to Lalage? The phrase, with its flavour of vulgarity, set my teeth on edge; but no other way of expression occurred to me and I was too deeply anxious to spend time in pursuit of elegancies. It was absurd that I could not answer my question. A man ought to ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... latest Pontifical Princess smilingly swallows the insolence of the descendant (a la main gauche) of the Great Henri, happy to have been noticed, even though to be noticed meant inevitably to be snubbed. There was a freedom about the water, an honest vulgarity, a quality as of Rabelais, refreshingly in contrast with the hot-house manners and morals of the haute noblesse. Madame need not hesitate to cross her legs, if she found that attitude comfortable; monsieur could at once remove coat, waist-coat, ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... said, published a written defence of the mob. The article was headed "The Mary Rescue."—and a most remarkable document it was—remarkable, however, only for its intense vulgarity, its absurd contradictions, and its ridiculous attempts at piety ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... hoped that one may say without offense that in the course of time the personnel has apparently worked down to the level of vulgarity defined by the ways and means of this modern warfare; which means the level on which runs a familiar acquaintance with large and complex mechanical apparatus, railway and highway transport and power, reenforced concrete, excavations and mud, more particularly mud, concealment ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... best a cheap picture, but, ah me! I fear even the deft graciousness of the highest art could not have softened the rigid angularities of that youthful figure, its self-complacent vulgarity, its cheap finery, its expressionless ill-favor. York did not look at it a second time. He turned to the ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... into execution, but was some time delayed by the difficulty of finding a proper object for his purpose: it was easy to meet with beauty in distress, and ignorance in poverty; but it was difficult to find simplicity without vulgarity, ingenuity without cunning, or even ignorance without prejudice; it was difficult to meet with an understanding totally uncultivated, yet likely to reward the labour of late instruction; a heart wholly unpractised, yet full of sensibility, capable of all the enthusiasm of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... in domestic science and the precepts of religion, which, lacking definite direction perhaps by reason of the fact that there was no church in San Pasqual, served, nevertheless, as a bulwark against the assaults of vice and vulgarity which, in a frontier town, are very thinly veiled. As a child she was neither precocious nor shy. From a rather homely, long-legged gangling girl of fourteen she emerged apparently by a series of ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... left him. In silence they went down-stairs, and through the piazza with its flowering orange-trees, out into the gardens, where, on the stone balustrade, the peacocks were attitudinizing and conversing in the high key in which they always proclaim a change of weather and their innate vulgarity to the world. Charles led the way towards a little rushing brook which divided the gardens ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... (METHUEN) Mrs. DOROTHEA CONYERS gives us once more all that we have learned to expect of her novels: the friendly, witty, blundering servants; the hunting society in which wealth and poverty, breeding and vulgarity, cheerfully rub shoulders; the descriptions of the wistful beautiful West of Ireland in autumn and winter; and above all the horses. Added to all this there are Sinn Fein raids, real and imaginary, to bring things up to date. A rather unconvincing plot, with a dash of Great ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... her disposal. She took it with the points of her fingers delicately, and divested the crime of half its uncleanness and vulgarity—more an angel couldn't. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... but she was so wild with jealousy that I suppose vulgarity ought to be forgiven her. I hardly know myself how I managed it, but, somehow, I got the poor thing out of the room and the house and into the cool night air, and then I talked to her, and fairly ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... positive good from fears of its contrary consequences. "Do not," said he, "forbear to marry a beautiful woman if you can find such, out of a fancy that she will be less constant than an ugly one; or condemn yourself to the society of coarseness and vulgarity for fear of the expenses or other dangers of elegance and personal charms, which have been always acknowledged as a positive good, and for the want of which there should be always given some weighty compensation. I have, however," continued Mr. Johnson, "seen some prudent fellows who forbore ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the window with a shrug of protest against the vulgarity of prejudice. He did not notice four men in the garb of pilgrims who stood in the dark of a ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... several remarkable attempts to recompose the Bible; Dr. Geddes's version is aridly literal, and often ludicrous by its vulgarity; as when he translates the Passover as the Skipover, and introduces Constables among the ancient Israelites; but the following attempts are of a very different kind. Sebastian Castillon—who ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... trying to outdo the other in cynical, sardonic thrusts, clothed in the most meticulously ceremonious courtesy. As a matter of fact, my captor, by this crude reference to the origin of his ruler, was merely proving himself a crude fellow, guilty of a vulgarity rather than of a treasonable or disrespectful remark. An officer of higher rank and better breeding, would have managed a clever innuendo, less ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... bestowing upon his pupils an affected or mincing utterance, all the more ludicrous and objectionable, it may be, in that a certain set of words are pronounced with over-nicety, while almost all others are left in a state of neglected vulgarity. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... good fortune and bad taste which permitted her to wear dresses of silk or velvet to school every day in the week, and caused her to be as much admired as a little figure in a fashion-plate by those of her companions who were too unsophisticated to know that vain display is a mark of vulgarity. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... eminently wise, this old lady who had made one huge mistake long ago; and she knew that the danger, the harm, the low vulgarity lay in the little fact that Millicent Chyne loved Jack Meredith, according to ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... life. His attention was caught by the ever repeated phenomena of the squalid street. Block after block, mile after mile, it was the same thing. No other city on the globe could present quite this combination of tawdriness, slackness, dirt, vulgarity, which was Cottage Grove Avenue. India, the Spanish-American countries, might show something fouler as far as mere filth, but nothing so incomparably mean and long. The brick blocks, of many shades of grimy red and fawn ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... our collective activities intelligent and efficient, and for a flow of bold, unhampered thought through every department of the national life, a King liberal without laxity and patriotic without pettiness or vulgarity. Such, it seems to us who wait at present almost inexpressively outside the immediate clamours of a mere artificial loyalty, are the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... his throat as best he might, and spoke a few kind words to the boys nearest to him, and felt as if every bone in his body was broken as the wooden and iron cage shook him from side to side. The train stopped finally in that area of bricks and mortar and vulgarity and confusion where once stood the Baths of Diocletian. It was late in the night when he ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... mother who dropped her h's, or called Maria Marire! How are you to introduce her into society? My dear Mrs. Pendennis, I will name no names, but in the very best circles of London society I have seen men suffering the most excruciating agony, I have known them to be cut, to be lost utterly, from the vulgarity of their wives' connections. What did Lady Snapperton do last year at her dejeune dansant after the Bohemian Ball? She told Lord Brouncker that he might bring his daughters or send them with a proper chaperon, but that she would not receive Lady Brouncker ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have forgiven Adderley his vulgarity," said Dr. Matheson, quietly, "if the man's heart had ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... it is unfortunately the one to which those who strive to express themselves correctly are peculiarly liable. Its effect is bad, for though it is not like slang, vulgar in itself, it betrays an effort to conceal vulgarity. It may generally be remedied by avoiding any word or phrase which you may suspect yourself of using for the purpose of creating an effect. Whenever you imagine that the employment of any mere word or sentence will convey the impression that you are well informed, substitute for it some simple ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... popular; and, we have no hesitation in saying, deservedly popular; for in spite of their occasional vulgarity, affectation, and silliness, they were undoubtedly characterised by a strong spirit of originality, of pathos, and natural feeling; and recommended to all good minds by the clear impression which they bore of the amiable dispositions and virtuous ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... never-to-be-forgotten Falls of the Aar,' and so forth. So that my illusion of being alone in the roots of the world dropped off me very quickly, and I wondered how people could be so helpless and foolish as to travel about in Switzerland as tourists and meet with all this vulgarity and beastliness. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... unfortunates like myself, who, unlike me, viewed the situation in a most prosaic light. There were river excursions, and so on, after office-hours; but I dislike the river at any time for its noisy vulgarity, and most of all at this season. So I dropped out of the fresh air brigade and declined H—'s offer to share a riverside cottage and run up to town in the mornings. I did spend one or two week-ends with the Catesbys in Kent; but I was not inconsolable when they let their house and went ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... that we have so few comedies from women. Dr. Doran mentions five Englishwomen who wrote successful comedies. Of these, three are now forgotten; one, Aphra Behn, is remembered only to be despised for her vulgarity. She was an undoubted wit, and was never dull, but so wicked and coarse that she forfeited all right ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... house in Portman Square. The late venerable Sir William Pepys was one of their last survivors.] had declared her resolution to make a new translation of Werter. Lady Dundas expressed many objections against the vulgarity of various teachers whom the young ladies proposed, and ended with saying that unless some German gentleman could be found, they must remain ignorant of the language. Your image instantly shot ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... most opposed to Palmerston. So, of Palmerston it could be said that he was conservative at home and revolutionist abroad. If such a word can ever be applied to such a thing, his patriotism was sometimes not without a tinge of vulgarity, but it ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... world, as they would to the skirts of any other world, in default of the sporting one—form an integral and significant, and, it may be, an honourable and useful part, of the English literature of this day; and, therefore, all shallowness, vulgarity, stupidity, or bookmaking in that class, must be as severely attacked as in novels and poems. We English owe too much to our field sports to allow people to ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Russell. Lord John spoke then, and so did Sir David Dundas, then Solicitor-General, Lord Charles, and my father. "His," said Lord Charles, "was the finest speech, and Sir David Dundas remarked to me, as Mr. White concluded, 'Why that is old Cobbett again MINUS his vulgarity.'" He became acquainted with a good many members during his stay at the House. New members sought his advice and initiation into its ways. Some of his friends were also mine. Amongst these were Sir John Trelawney and his gifted wife. Sir John belonged to the scholarly ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... teeth, "is that I am perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and I felt beforehand that I should tell myself so after killing her. Can anything be compared with the horror of that? The vulgarity! The abjectness! I understand the 'prophet' with his sabre, on his steed: Allah commands and 'trembling' creation must obey! The 'prophet' is right, he is right when he sets a battery across the street and blows up the innocent and the guilty without deigning to explain! ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... did not understand, and could not understand, though she was thinking about it all day and all night. . . . He held her round the waist, talked so affectionately, so modestly, was so happy, walking about this house of his; while she saw nothing in it all but vulgarity, stupid, naive, unbearable vulgarity, and his arm round her waist felt as hard and cold as an iron hoop. And every minute she was on the point of running away, bursting into sobs, throwing herself out of a window. Andrey ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... mighty politician! Catherine de' Medici, too, what justice of sight, what readiness of means, what elasticity against defeat! But alas! madam, her Featherheads were her own children; and she had that one touch of vulgarity, that one trait of the good-wife, that she suffered family ties and affections to ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Tales from Shakespear. You will forgive the plates, when I tell you they were left to the direction of Godwin, who left the choice of subjects to the bad baby, who from mischief (I suppose) has chosen one from damn'd beastly vulgarity (vide 'Merch. Venice'), where no atom of authority was in the tale to justify it—to another has given a name which exists not in the tale, Nic Bottom, and which she thought would be funny, though in this I suspect his hand, for I guess her ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Charles Dudley Warner. As for Poe, though he was by nature a far more original and penetrating critic than either Emerson or Lowell, he was enormously ignorant of good books, and moreover, he could never quite throw off a congenital vulgarity of taste, so painfully visible in the strutting of his style. The man, for all his grand dreams, had a shoddy soul; he belonged authentically to the era of cuspidors, "females" and Sons of Temperance. His occasional affectation of scholarship has deceived ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... is felt as indefensibly vulgar. That the paper should misrepresent him is nothing; that he should represent himself is bad taste. The whole error in both cases lies in the fact that the refined persons are attacking politics and journalism on the ground of vulgarity. Of course, politics and journalism are, as it happens, very vulgar. But their vulgarity is not the worst thing about them. Things are so bad with both that by this time their vulgarity is the best thing about them. Their vulgarity is at least a noisy ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... strong impression on my fancy in the course of our short acquaintance. There was a strong and vivid remnant of mind in him surviving the contest with ninety and odd years of existence; his manner was quaint and rustic without a tinge of vulgarity; he is fastened to my memory by a certain wreath of flowers and sunset light upon the brook that ran in front of his cottage, and the smell of some sweet roses that grew over it, and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... parts seem to drop into their places, so that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full effect of diligence, under the appearance of chance and heavy negligence." The heavy negligence happily describes the fault of the manner. It is horribly manifest in that magnitude of vulgarity for landscape, the "Market Cart" in our National Gallery, and purchased at we know not what vast sum, and presented by the governors of the institution to the nation. We have a very high opinion of the genius of Gainsborough; but we do not see it in his landscapes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... from that of Billingsgate. The vowels were not pronounced much broader than in the Italian language, and there was none of the disagreeable drawl which is so offensive to southern ears. In short, it seemed to be the Scottish as spoken by the ancient Court of Scotland, to which no idea of vulgarity could be attached; and the lively manners and gestures with which it was accompanied were so completely in accord with the sound of the voice and the style of talking, that I cannot assign them a different origin. In long derivation, perhaps ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... occasion for the cause, the means for the motive. Your alphabet is in fault. Such a set of vain, frivolous, dishonest, mean, hypocritical, and insufferably vulgar letters would be turned out of any respectable, well-bred spelling-book. Vanity, frivolity, dishonesty, meanness, hypocrisy, and vulgarity can be exhibited in all the affairs of life, not excepting those whose proper office is to sweeten and to beautify it; but it does not need all your logical faculty to discover that there is not, therefore, any connection between a pretty bonnet, or an elegantly furnished house, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... a man of five-and-forty, dressed in a new suit of ready-made tweeds, the folding crease strongly marked down the front of the trousers and the coat sleeves rather too long. His face bore a strong impress of vulgarity, but at the same time had a certain ingenuousness, a self-absorbed energy and simplicity, which saved it from being wholly repellent; the brow was narrow, the eyes small and bright, and the coarse lips half hid themselves under a struggling reddish ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... regarded either as the origin or as a subdivision of this latter. Nor did the rustic compositions exercise any permanent influence on the pastoral drama; the most that can be said is that an occasional text shows signs of being affected by the low vulgarity of the kind. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... who had never much toleration for anything like impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of taste from herself, soon checked every endeavour at intimacy on their side by the coldness of her behaviour towards them; but Elinor, from politeness, submitted to the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... such tests are personal and relative. They are not to be foisted on one's readers as anything "ex cathedra." One such test is the test of what has been called "the grand style"—that grand style against which, as Arnold says, the peculiar vulgarity of our race beats in vain! I do not suppose I shall be accused of perverting my devotion to the "grand style" into an academic "narrow way," through which I would force every writer I approach. Some most winning and irresistible artists never come ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... replenishing before luncheon. She was putting on her bonnet to go to order them, when a doubt seized her whether she was transgressing the dignities of the Honourable Mrs. Martindale. Matilda had lectured against vulgarity when Arthur had warned her against ultra-gentility, and she wavered, till finding there was no one to send, her good sense settled the question. She walked along, feeling the cares and troubles of life ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... however, Bridgenorth's remarks were plain and sensible; and as he aimed at no graces of language, any ornament which they received arose out of the interest with which they were impressed on his hearers. For example, when Deborah, in the pride and vulgarity of her heart, called Julian's attention to the plate from which they had been eating, Bridgenorth seemed to think an apology necessary for ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... his pronunciation carries the mark of vulgarity along with it; he calls the earth yearth; finan' ces, fin' ances, he goes to wards, and not towards such a place. He affects to use hard words, to give him the appearance of a man of learning, but frequently ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... party and had otherwise betrayed his country to the ridicule of the intelligent. "But really," said the fat young man, turning plaintiff in conclusion, "imagine what such things make the English and the French think of US!" And it finally went by consent that the trouble with America was the vulgarity of our tourists. ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... the stage, where she was certain he would succeed. This last suggestion was made timidly, as if she feared to hurt the pride of the scapegrace by proposing such a plan. There was not a word or an accent of reproach in all she said, and I heartily forgave the little coquetry, affectation, and vulgarity I had formerly remarked in her, in consideration of the intuitive delicacy and good feeling she now displayed. Truly, thought I, it is humbling to us, the bearded and baser moiety of humankind, to contrast our vile egotism with the beautiful self-devotion of woman, as exhibited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... of theft, while she sat powerless before him, incapable of speech. Once, as the horror of his suspicion rose before her, she felt a wild impulse to cry out, even to throw herself on his mercy—telling him her story and Martha's suspicions. Then the recollection of the cunning of the man, his vulgarity, his insincerity, slowly steadied her. Her secret must be kept, and she ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... doubt, carry with them to my ear the idea of great vulgarity: but which might have a very different effect on that of an unprejudiced hearer, when dignified by an Anglo-Saxon pedigree. The Scotch dialect, now become quite classical with us, might, perhaps, labour under the same disadvantage ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... morality, that needs protection: it is morality, not immorality, that needs restraint; for morality, with all the dead weight of human inertia and superstition to hang on the back of the pioneer, and all the malice of vulgarity and prejudice to threaten him, is responsible for many ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... friend. Although, like my father, he considered commercial transactions the most important objects of human life, he was not wedded to them so as to undervalue more general knowledge. On the contrary, with much oddity and vulgarity of manner,—with a vanity which he made much more ridiculous by disguising it now and then under a thin veil of humility, and devoid as he was of all the advantages of a learned education, Mr. Jarvie's conversation showed tokens of a shrewd, observing, liberal, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... richer the offender, the more keen and eager Mr. Attorney to prosecute the suit, however needy his own client; for he is then sure of his costs, if he succeed! Again, I cheerfully admit the extreme vulgarity of the motive; but its effect in protecting the legal rights of the humble is not, I contend, lessened because the reward of exertion and success is counted out in good, honest sovereigns, or notes of the Governor and Company of ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... answered Gabrielle, mournfully. "Listen, wise Ruth, I shall be a mother soon; and to my child, if it is spared, and to you, I devote myself. You have seen the Misses Erminstoun—you have seen vulgarity, insolence, and absurd pretension; they have taunted me with my ignorance, and I will not change it now. The blood of the De Courcys and O'Briens has made me a lady; and all the wealth of the Indies can not make them so. No, Ruth, I will remain in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... is the plain, dull tale of an American family returning home after a long sojourn in Europe so high-bred that you want to kill them, and so superior to their home-keeping countrymen that, vulgarity for vulgarity, you much prefer the vulgarity of the Americans who have not been away. The author's unconsciousness of the vulgarity of his exemplary people is not the only amusing thing in the book. They arrive for a short stay in New York ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... young flesh. Peals of laughter. A breathless pianola. The tripping of dancing-feet. Voices husked with drink and voices soft with love. The shrill accents of vulgarity. Hustling waiters. Shop-girls. Bourgeois couples. Tired families of four and upward. Sleeping children. A boy selling candy. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... genius but also a keen, sympathetic observer, whose eyes see every significant detail. So with the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, whose endless gossip and vulgarity cannot quite hide a kind heart. She is simply the reflection of some forgotten nurse with whom Shakespeare had talked ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... assemble about half past ten o'clock, after the opera is concluded. No admission money is required, but singular as it may seem, no improper intruder has yet appeared, a circumstance which may be accounted for by the awe which well bred society ever maintains over vulgarity. Frescati is situated in the Italian Boulevard; was formerly the residence of a nobleman of large fortune, and has also undergone the usual transition of revolutionary confiscation. The streets leading to it were filled with carriages. After ascending ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... if its influence is not exerted to promote the cause of truth." He was true to his promise. The free soul of a free, strong man spoke out in his paper. How refreshing was it, after listening to the inanities, the dull, witless vulgarity, the wearisome commonplace of journalists, who had no higher aim than to echo, with parrot-like exactness, current prejudices and falsehoods, to turn to the great and generous thoughts, the chaste ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... a man, through the very posture of his body as he stands or moves, a glimpse of his nobility and freedom, or again of something in him low and grovelling—the calm of self-restraint, and wisdom, or the swagger of insolence and vulgarity? ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... to differ. To me the eye tells everything, and I have never yet looked directly into a person's eyes without being able to satisfy myself as to their disposition. Cruelty, vanity, deceit, temper, sensuality, and all the other vices display themselves at once; and so with vulgarity—the glitter of the vulgar, of the ignorant, petty, mean, sordid mind, the mind that estimates all things and all people by money and clothes, cannot be hidden; "vulgarity" will out, and in no way more effectually ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... he returned, shaking his head, which he could do to a very limited extent in his cravat. "A levelling age is not favourable to deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop, or that his Royal Highness the Prince Regent did me the honour to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... restoration of their house had cost them thirty thousand francs, the brother and sister possessed between them at least ten thousand francs a year. This they considered wealth, and with it they endeavored to impress society, which immediately took the measure of their vulgarity, crass ignorance, and foolish envy. On the evening when they were presented to the beautiful Madame Tiphaine, who had already eyed them at Madame Garceland's and at Madame Julliard the elder's, the queen of the town remarked to Julliard junior, who stayed ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... still however wearing his uniform. Had he consulted his own inclinations, he would not have come to see this triumphant entrance, as he took very little pleasure in the noisy enthusiasm of crowds. A great deal of actual vulgarity is always exhibited on these occasions, mingled with some real nobility of feeling. Counter-jumpers and work-girls secure comfortable positions from which to see the processions, groups of calculating shopkeepers with advertisements of pictures and medals of hateful ugliness speculate on the generosity ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... revised these visions violently; was, in truth, very cross; was losing her complexion, as Margery Jackson told her, bringing the whole thing down (as she laced her stout boots) to a level of mother-wit, vulgarity, and sentiment, for she had loved too; ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... narratives, the finest flower of religious poetry, was thus turned into the meanest and most trivial incident without any religious significance whatsoever. The obtuseness of the procedure was exceeded only by its vulgarity. ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... has a family, chuck him out at once. I'm sure you are a man of good taste and judgment. Look over the furniture in the house and telegraph me what condition it is in. Everything about the place must be made cozy and comfortable, but I wish to avoid an appearance of vulgarity or extravagance." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... chief figures of "Mansfield Park." But you timidly decline to tackle Passion. "Let other pens," you write, "dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can." Ah, THERE is the secret of your failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and narrowness of the social circles you describe impair your popularity? I scarce remember more than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and these unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... me to commit such a vulgarity as to run away with any one, you, certainly, would not be that one. You are the very last man on earth I should choose for so mistaken an adventure. Let me also add," says she, turning upon him with flashing eyes, though still her voice is determinately low and calm, "that ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... the mere sight of which at one time stirred me to passion, had from sitting so long with her head bent c ome loose from the comb and was untidy, but, to my eyes, that only made it look more rich and luxuriant. All this, though is banal to the point of vulgarity. Before me stood an ordinary woman, perhaps neither beautiful nor elegant, but this was my wife with whom I had once lived, and with whom I should have been living to this day if it had not been for her unfortunate character; ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... excused in the son of such a father; some wild oats were surely to be sown in the soil of a childhood so dully and so sourly cultivated. But no severity of early surroundings will explain or palliate the unlovely mixture of folly and of falseness, of debauchery, vulgarity, profligacy, and baseness, which were the most conspicuous {242} characteristics of the Prince's nature. The malignant enemy of his unhappy father, the treacherous lover, the perjured friend, a heartless fop, a soulless sot, the most ungentlemanly First Gentleman of Europe, his memory baffles the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in love, just as, according to a beautiful story, a thoughtless and reluctant world had to believe the Athanasian Creed. It is painful to say that persons on whom it is impossible to retort the charge, have sometimes insinuated a touch of vulgarity in Di. For these one can but pray; and, after all, they are usually of her sex, which in such judgments of itself counts not. All men, who are men and gentlemen, must delight in her. And here, as always, to all but the very last, even in the twilight of ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... generally do, not that which is, but that which he had made up his mind to see before he left his own threshold. There are those attracted by nothing except brilliant color, and others who have heard so much of the vulgarity of 'high lights' and gaudy hues, that they will tolerate nothing but brown trees, russet grass, gray skies, slate rocks, drab gowns, copper skins, and shadows so deep that the discovery of the objects represented becomes a real game of 'hide and go seek.' There are also ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... close to the cage at the end, and, in that repetition of her taunt about "furnishing" supplies for the wedding, she had at length betrayed something which her skill and the intricate enamel of her experience had hitherto, and with entire success, concealed—namely, the latent vulgarity of the woman. She was wearing, for the sake of Kings Port, her best behavior, her most knowing form, and, indeed it was a well-done imitation of the real thing; it would last through most occasions, and it would deceive most people. But here was the trouble: she was wearing it; while, through the ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... long after this loathsome convulsion! While tears lie and cheat by aping heavenly feelings, laughter is awkwardly trying to let the craziness of evil demons skulk behind it, hides itself from vulgarity for the sake of being seen, feigns terrour when our unsubdued struggling feelings are detected, and saunters about in the midst of whatever is disgusting and impure, perpetually clapperclawing with some outcast among the rabble or other: one moment our intelligent, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... certainly do not mean homely, which marks a wholly different quality. No writer can be more homely than Mr. Carlyle, alike in his choice of particulars to dwell upon, and in the terms or images in which he describes or illustrates them, but there is also no writer further removed from vulgarity. Nor do we mean that Macaulay too copiously enriches the tongue with infusion from any Doric dialect. For such raciness he had little taste. What we find in him is that quality which the French call brutal. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... his family circle. And surely this is an honour to Borrow; for the gipsies, notwithstanding certain undeniable obliquities in matters of morals and cusine, are the only people left in the island who are still free from British vulgarity (perhaps because they are not British). It is no less an honour to them, for while he lived the island did not contain a nobler English gentleman than him they called ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... with all the desperation of servants working for a tip. The yelping after spies, the heaping of adjectives on every trifling achievement of British arms, the ill-timed talk of snatching the enemy's trade in a war theoretically fought for a high principle, all that journalistic vulgarity—which might be as characteristic of our own papers under similar ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... so bad looking as I thought for," Maria continued, flashing a wicked glance at me, with her large eyes, that stirred my blood, in defiance of her forwardness and vulgarity. "We shall be cronies, I know. Only let me have my own way, and make love to me, and we shall ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... words with a palpable emotion; and it was more striking on account of the evident coarseness and hardened vulgarity of his nature. In a moment more he had mounted Walter's horse, and turning ere he sped on, inquired at what place at Knaresborough the horse should be sent. Walter directed him to the principal inn; and Houseman, waving his hand, and striking his spurs into the animal, wearied ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and holier, and happier; and yet this blackhearted scoundrel degrades his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of their school-rooms even. She regarded her own conscience as her Lord, but had not therefore any respect for that of another man where it differed from her in the direction of what she counted vulgarity. So she was scarcely in the kingdom of heaven yet, any more than thousands who regard themselves as choice Christians. I do not say these feelings were very active in her, for little occurred to call them out; but she did not love her dissenting neighbor, and felt ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... were displeased at his stealing from the "Road to Ruin;" and those who might have home a gentlemanly coxcomb with his "That's your sort," "Go it,"—such as Lewis is,—did not relish the intolerable vulgarity and inanity of the idea stripped of his manner. De Camp was hooted, more than hissed,—hooted and bellowed off the stage before the second act was finished; so that the remainder of his part was forced to be, with some ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... socially and mentally but spiritually as well, for it taught them that sincerity and honest kindliness of heart and manner are the best passports everywhere, and that pretence of any kind is a vulgarity not to be tolerated. This took time, of course. The Reed girls could not discard their snobbishness all at once. But in the end it was pretty well taken ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... shape, which the editors deemed necessary to suit the far from Attic culture of their audience. It is true that several even of the new Attic poets probably needed no accession to their coarseness; pieces like the -Asinaria- of Plautus cannot owe their unsurpassed dulness and vulgarity solely to the translator. Nevertheless coarse incidents so prevail in the Roman comedy, that the translators must either have interpolated them or at least have made a very one-sided selection. In the endless abundance of cudgelling and in the lash ever ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the uniformity of the older streets. The front door opened into a square hall, from the left side of which opened the dining-room, from the right the study, both of these rooms having bow windows, built with that broad sweep of curve which makes for beauty instead of vulgarity. The house, Rendel had told his wife with a smile when they came to it, he had furnished for her, with the exception of one room in it; the study he had arranged for himself. And it certainly was a room in which, to judge by appearances, a worker need never be stopped ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... so afraid his exuberance of spirit may annoy Vivian," said she, with a rare smile. "She detests vulgarity." ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... something more than going to school for a few weeks each year, is more than knowing how to read and write. It has to do with character, with industry, and with patriotism. Education tends to do away with vulgarity, pauperism, and crime, tends to prevent disease and disgrace, and helps to manliness, success ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... vulgar comes from vulgus, as though native traits must be simple, and commonness must be vulgar. Both these derivative meanings were strange to the eleventh century. Naivete was simply natural and vulgarity was merely coarse. Norman naivete was not different in kind from the naivete of Burgundy or Gascony or Lombardy, but it was slightly different in expression, as you will see when you travel south. Here at Mont-Saint-Michel we have only a mutilated trunk ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... me the best letters of all ... wait a minute ... I'll read a little here and there to you." And, gloating and triumphant, and either not seeing or, in her vulgarity, not caring what effect the reading of my father's love letters would have on me, she began reading ardent passages aloud. "See!" She showed me a page to prove that it was in his handwriting. The letters told a tale easy to understand. She ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... its meaning is instantly clear to any one who speaks English. But these expressions, not being used by well-informed and careful speakers, produce in the mind of a well-informed bearer an impression of vulgarity like that which we get from seeing a person eat with his knife. In language, as in manners and fashions, the law is found in the custom of the best people; and persons who wish to be classed as cultivated ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... archiepiscopal nose, others that he threatened his life with a drawn dagger. Nothing could well have been more indecent or more cowardly than the conduct of these nobles upon this occasion. Their intoxication, together with the character of the victim, explained, but certainly could not palliate the vulgarity of the exhibition. It was natural enough that men like Brederode should find sport in this remarkable badgering of a bishop, but we see with regret the part played by Hoogstraaten in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and the social hour of the day is spent in yarning. The stories told may run from the sublime to the ridiculous, from a true incident to a base fabrication, or from a touching bit of pathos to the most vulgar vulgarity. ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... her return as an interruption; he had shivered at the thought that their relations would become what was so terribly called an "intrigue" or "affair." There would be all the threadbare and common stratagems, the vulgarity of secret assignations, and an atmosphere suggesting the period of Mr. Thomas Moore and Lord Byron an "segars." Lucian had been afraid of all this; he had feared lest love itself ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the gentleman lighted up like a candle the vulgarity of the clerk; and Herrick instinctively, as one shields himself from pain, made haste ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... his head high and his eye beaming with confidence, now, unstrung by perplexity, shrank from meeting Claparon; he began to realize that a banker's heart is mere viscera. Claparon had seemed to him so brutal in his coarse jollity, and he had felt the man's vulgarity so keenly, that he shuddered at the necessity of ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... [Note 7: "Vulgarity, dulness, or impiety will indeed always express themselves through art, in brown and gray, as in Rembrandt."—Prof. JOHN RUSKIN: ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... up, and who may have inherited some of his father's sinister talents. They have lived for many years in Paris. Sir Richard Wallace was the very type of a gentleman of the highest breeding—rather stern, melancholy, not at all humorous, and incapable of vulgarity or pretence. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Athenaeum, discussing modern songs, observes that in the happy days of the eighteenth century "even the vulgar could not achieve vulgarity; to-day vulgarity is in the air, and only the strongest and most fastidious escape its taint." The accompanying lines are submitted as a modest protest against this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... nearly a hundred years in Britain for the mastery; and although the devotees of Luther's Reformation had cracked the creed of popes and princes, there was a general demand for a new version and translation of the Bible, cutting out the Catholicism of the old book and expurgating the vulgarity and superstition engrafted on the "Word of God" by the apostles and bishops of the first, second and third centuries, after Christ had been crucified for the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... good-nature and simplicity, which he cannot or will not exchange for the dignity of his new situation and the trammels of etiquette; but he ought to be made to understand that his simplicity degenerates into vulgarity, and that without departing from his natural urbanity he may conduct himself so as not to lower the character with which he is invested, and which belongs not to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... the increase in the consciousness and the obligation of the 'common weal', that conception of which Government, increasingly better organized, is the most striking practical realization. It has its drawback in the spread of what we feel as a debasing 'vulgarity', but the general balance is overwhelmingly on the side of good. And in all such discussions we are apt to allow far too little weight to the change which the New World, and especially the United States, has brought about. In matters of personal prosperity and a high general ...
— Progress and History • Various
... of his face, the self-sufficiency of his looks, his systematically powdered and dressed hair, his showy dress, his counted and short bows, and his presumptuous conversation, teeming with ignorance, vulgarity, and obscenity, he cannot escape even ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of contribution to natural history is in White's Letters from Selborne. You know I have always spoken of Bewick as pre-eminently a vulgar or boorish person, though of splendid honor and genius; his vulgarity shows in nothing so much as in the poverty of the details he has collected, with the best intentions, and the shrewdest sense, for English ornithology. His imagination is not cultivated enough to enable him ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... the strange northern blend of boorishness with etiquette. If Bolingbroke's ideas had been applied by a spirited person, by a Stuart, for example, or even by Queen Elizabeth (who had real spirit along with her extraordinary vulgarity), the national soul might have broken free from its new northern chains. But it was the irony of the situation that the King to whom Tories appealed as a refuge from Germanism was himself ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... adapting the style to the subject. It is in such passages, accordingly, that we are most frequently offended with low and inelegant expressions; and that the language, which was intended to be simple and natural, is found oftenest to degenerate into mere slovenliness and vulgarity. It is in vain, too, to expect that the meanness of those parts may be redeemed by the excellence of others. A poet, who aims at all at sublimity or pathos, is like an actor in a high tragic character, and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... to perplex and irritate them excessively. Mr. Pole had received a curious short epistle from Mrs. Chump, informing him of the atrocious treatment she had met with at the hands of his daughter; and instead of reviewing the orthography, incoherence, and deliberate vulgarity of the said piece of writing with the contempt it deserved, he had taken the unwonted course of telling Arabella that she had done a thing she must necessarily repent of, or in any case make apology for. An Eastern Queen, thus addressed by her Minister of the treasury, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
