"Vulgar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his feats with a freedom which chewed her exemption from vulgar prejudice, she informed me that she wished her cousin to live in the same house, and had already obtained M. le Noir's permission, which was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... spot, that she might never be another's,—that neither man nor woman should ever triumph over him,—the proud ambitious man, defeated, humbled, scorned? No! that was a meanness of egotism which only the most vulgar souls could be capable of. Should he challenge her lover? It was not the way of the people and time, and ended in absurd complications, if anybody was foolish enough to try it. Shoot him? The idea floated through his mind, for he thought of everything; but he was a lawyer, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... there, already isolated, already damned, in such a torment of body and soul as haunts the spectator who has had the courage to reconsider the dictum of authorities who call him "a Jew of frightful vulgarity." Frightful he may be; but it is a strange judgment which can find him vulgar. Unfortunately, the painting is no longer in a condition to justify reproduction; but such as study this yellow-robed, emaciated, shivering, fever-consumed Judas will, I venture to assert, find food for thought in it even under all the injuries ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... deep into the night, murder has been done in its chambers. There Prince Charlie held his fantom levees, and in a very gallant manner represented a fallen dynasty for some hours. Now, all these things of clay are mingled with the dust, the king's crown itself is shown for sixpence to the vulgar; but the stone palace has outlived these changes. For fifty weeks together, it is no more than a show for tourists and a museum of old furniture; but on the fifty-first, behold the palace reawakened ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... various attributes ascribed to the Greek and Roman deities, were, by the early teachers of christianity, considered in the humble light of demoniacal delusions, yet, for many centuries they possessed great influence over the minds of the vulgar. The notion of every man being attended by an evil genius was abandoned much earlier than the far more agreeable part of the same doctrine which taught that, as an antidote to their influence, each individual was also accompanied by a benignant spirit. "The ministration ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... story go on? The editor of The Seaside Library asks quite frankly for a murder. His idea was that the Lady Beltravers should be found dead in the park next morning and that Gwendolen should be arrested. This seems to me both crude and vulgar. Besides, I want a murder for No. XCIX. of the series—The ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... "Isn't there something a little vulgar in that notion of ours that a woman always wishes first and most of all to ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... with the impression of it all stamped only upon the mind, not graven upon the heart. Political intrigue to-day, if quite as vulgar, is less sordid. Bigotry and ambition in those days allowed few of the finer feelings to come to the surface, except with regard to the luxuriance of surroundings. Of this last there can be no question, and Blois is as characteristically luxurious as any of the magnificient ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... qualities of mind. In her view, it appeared degrading in a woman to enter upon any kind of employment for money; and with the keeper of a boarding-house, particularly, she had always associated something low, vulgar, and ungenteel. At the thought of her mother's engaging in such an occupation, when the suggestion was made, her mind instantly revolted. It appeared to her as if disgrace ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... refer in these vulgar and insulting terms to the companion of my soul, the desire of my heart, the perfect lover whose lips have kindled my dull ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... chain that is made at Venice; then, having arranged the folds of his cloak by a single jerk of his left shoulder, draping it gracefully so as to show the velvet lining, he started again on parade, indifferent to the glances of the vulgar. ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... pow'rful Guinea last, he's wondrous pretty, And much the finest Gentlemen o' th' City, But when fob's empty, he's an odious Creature. Fough, how he stinks! h'as not one taking feature, Then such an Awkard mein, and vulgar sence, I vow, I wonder at his Impudence! 'Tis well Lejere appear'd, George owes the prize To the Gay Monsieur, Footmen and Disguise, Charms which few English Women can withstand, What can't a Man of Quality command? As to the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... magistrates, of our respect, bring us upon their stages, and make us ridiculous to the plebeians; they will play you or me, the wisest men they can come by still, only to bring us in contempt with the vulgar, and make us cheap. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... and partly because of the Rabelaisian character of the words to which they were sung aboard ship. We had very prim notions of propriety in those days, and were apt to overlook the beauty of the melodies, and to speak of shanties in bulk as 'low vulgar songs.' Be that as it may, it was not until the late eighties—when the shanty was beginning to die out with the sailing ship—that any attempt was ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... stood silently regarding the scene before him he was conscious of a growing regret, almost repentance, for the annoyance that he had felt at this second meeting. Yet he was right in harbouring the annoyance. He felt no vulgar pride in that at their first meeting he had unconsciously turned the girl's open hostility to admiration, or at least to tolerance of himself. But she belonged to the Blue Goose, and between the Blue Goose and the Rainbow Company there was open ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... sight, this crowd of poor women seeking work, and my spirits sank like lead. A set of mournful, depressed, broken-down women! There was not one I would have chosen to be a governess for my girls. Those who were not dispirited were vulgar and self-asserting; a class that wished to rise above the position they were fitted for by becoming teachers. These were laughing loudly among themselves at the cross-questioning going on so calmly within their hearing. I shrank away into a corner, until my turn to speak to the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... many were driving goats or a limping cow. Their heavy sticks bristled with brass points; cutlasses gleamed in their clothes, which were savagely dirty, and they opened their eyes with a look of menace and amazement. As they passed some sent them a vulgar benediction; others obscene jests, and Schahabarim's man replied to each in his own idiom. He told them that this was a sick youth going to be cured ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... pieces upon the spot. The narrator of this incident adds the remark, that "though the anecdote is of no great elevation, it expresses peculiarity of character; and certainly neither the composer nor the captain could have been easily classed among the common or the vulgar ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... shoemaker, and the brewer, and the tinman, and the glassman, and the brazier, &c., I immediately sent him all that he had required, and more; and the next day rode down to pay my respects to the new-married couple; being greeted, not with the common, and therefore vulgar, materials of cake and wine, but with that which ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... deadly encounter, and that after the fatal work was done the murderer or murderers had left the doors locked and barred and escaped through the window, leaving the desk rifled and carrying away what money there was, possibly to convey the idea that it was only a vulgar ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... applauded His generous care, and lauded Dobbs' Ferry to the skies. A shade came o'er his features, "We should be happy creatures, And this a paradise, But, ah! the deep disgrace is, This loveliest of places A vulgar name should blight! But, death to Dobbs! we'll change it, If money can arrange it, So, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... or so of daylight. I remembered that there used to be a humble restaurant and kitchen on wheels—to the vulgar, a dog-wagon—up toward York Street. This wagon, once upon a time, had appeased our appetites when we had been late for chapel and Commons. As an institution it was so trite that once we made of it a fraternity play. I ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... Olga, who distantly acknowledged his bow. As Karl appeared to succumb to this strange influence, she felt herself growing indignant. Millar seemed bent on provoking an outburst, and his astonishing remarks in another would have seemed vulgar insolence, but in him they possessed a singular meaning that made both ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... artistic, and civic, is perpetually guilty of the greatest mischief in the matter. Nothing is done to retard or prevent marriage; everything to accelerate and promote it. Marriage is universally treated as a virtue which of itself consecrates the lives of the mostly vulgar and entirely selfish young creatures who enter into it. The blind and witless passion in which it oftenest originates, at least with us, is flattered out of all semblance to its sister emotions, and revered as if it were a celestial inspiration, a spiritual impulse. ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... served, and the little party at once seated themselves. A dinner in such a vast chamber would have been rather dull had it not been enlivened by the amusing tales and witty anecdotes of the Count de Puymandour, which he narrated in a jovial but rather vulgar manner, seasoned with bursts of laughter. He ate with an excellent appetite, and praised the quality of the wine, which the Duke himself had chosen from the cellar, which he had filled with an immense stock for the benefit of his descendants. The Duke, who was ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... censorship, in order to silence the popular clamor for more news. Dimly and nervously they apprehended that in order to stimulate the recruiting of the New Army now being called to the colors by vulgar appeals to sentiment and passion, it might be well to "write up" the glorious side of war as it could be seen at the base and in the organization of transport, without, of course, any allusion to dead or dying men, to the ghastly failures of distinguished generals, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... tended to make our home in Missouri onpleasant. A disposition to smash furniture, and heave knives around; an inclination to howl when drunk, and that frequent; a habitooal use of vulgar language, and a tendency to cuss the casooal visitor,—seemed to pint," added Mr. McClosky with submissive hesitation "that—she—was—so to speak—quite onsuited to the marriage ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... very vulgar!" said Miss Clairville with a curling lip. "But I suppose it was a good thing—the Will of God—according to Father Rielle. Eleven! And Angeel's nine. ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... angry toss of her head; "I'm glad I'm not a boy if I couldn't be one without using such vulgar words." ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... poet in our own time; a poet, born like the men of Deucalion, from a stone on the Crau, a primitive poet in our decadent age; a Greek poet at Avignon; a poet who has created a language out of a dialect, as Petrarch created Italian; one who, out of a vulgar patois, has made a language full of imagery and harmony delighting the imagination and the ear.... We might say that, during the night, an island of the Archipelago, a floating Delos, has parted from its group of Greek or Ionian islands and ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... beautiful eyes, and the most exquisite pathetic expression in her smile; and she held out her velvet paw to me, and said, 'Dear little mousiekie- pousie, you're the loveliest creature I ever met, quite unappreciated in these parts. That horrid old cock is terribly vulgar and commonplace; and never you believe your mother if she tells you he is better worth cultivating than one who has such a deep genuine love and appreciation of all the excellences of all mice, and of you in particular with ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... me if I am wrong in an impression I have received. Vulgar Americans seem to me to get on ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... to the literary man, Ireland had one great grievance, and if that were remedied the Emerald Isle would grow greener than ever. "It is a splendid country," he said "for growing tobacco, and if the Irish were allowed to grow that fashionable weed they would be the most prosperous of peoples." A vulgar Scotchman suggested that Ireland would be all right if the Irish were "Scotched," and the Fenians all roasted on a gridiron. The irascible Irishman replied that a Scotchman was the incarnation of impudence—and hereupon a war of words ensued, until the officers' attention ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... contrast between the lovely entourage of this notorious place and the triviality and vulgar nature of its commerce. The one long, winding street may be described as a vast bazaar, more suited to Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims than to holders of railway tickets and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the other, merely because they were so represented in the pictures—but these illusions vanished when later years brought their disenchanting wisdom. They learned then that the stagecoach is but a poor, plodding, vulgar thing in the solitudes of the highway; and that the pirate is only a seedy, unfantastic "rough," when he ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Chris!" she said. "I've never told you the story, have I, Clay? Of course I know perfectly well I haven't. There was another woman. I think I could have understood it, perhaps, if she had been a different sort of a woman. But—I suppose it hurt my pride. I didn't love him. She was such a vulgar little thing. Not ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the opportunity of being alone in the courtyard to look at my coarse hands and my common boots. My opinion of those accessories was not favorable. They had never troubled me before, but they troubled me now, as vulgar appendages. I determined to ask Joe why he had ever taught me to call those picture-cards Jacks, which ought to be called knaves. I wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and then I should have been ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... who would rather perish than fail to keep faith with God and with their forefathers is a victory for mankind, and is everlasting. How poor and vain in comparison with this stern and sincere eloquence seem the supple time-service and euphemism of vulgar politicians of whose cunning and fruitless spiderwebs the latter years have been so prolific. It is worth while to do right from high motives, and to care for no gain that is not gained worthily. The men of Massachusetts who lived a hundred years before Jefferson were ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... she takes her course through the world like a cat-bird through an orchard; the thrushes and the robins are driven right and left before the advance of the noisy nuisance. A coarse-tongued man is bad enough, heaven knows, but when a woman descends to slangy speech, and vulgar jests, and harsh diatribes, there is no language strong enough with which to denounce her. On the principle that a strawberry is quicker to spoil than a pumpkin, it takes less to render a woman obnoxious than to make a man unfit for decent company. I am no lover ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... to First," "How Billy won the Game," with all of this class of subjects, at once put the writer into a trifling, careless attitude toward his work. The subjects themselves seem to call forth a cheap, slangy vocabulary and the vulgar phrases of sporting life. An equally common subject could be selected which would call forth serious, earnest effort. If a boy knew nothing except about ball games, it would be advisable for him to ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... expressed more truth "than falsehood, but now at least conveys more falsehood than truth, because of the changed conditions of those who teach and those who hear it; for, even where his faith had been vital enough to burst the verbally rigid, formal, and indeed spiritually vulgar theology he had been taught, his intellect had not been strong enough to cast off the husks. His expressions, assertions, and arguments, tying up a bundle of mighty truth with cords taken from the lumber-room and the ash-pit, grazed severely ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... I am not sure that this fact did not increase secretly his father's exultation and pride in him. Mr. Copperhead was fond of costly and useless things; he liked them for their cost, with an additional zest in his sense of the huge vulgar use and profit of most things in his own life. This tendency, more than any appreciation of the beautiful, made him what is called a patron of art. It swelled his personal importance to think that he was able to hang up thousands of pounds, so to speak, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... liberties than were allowed to his elder brother, mimicked Ward's manner of eating and talking, so that Mrs. Mountain and even Madame Esmond were forced to laugh, and little Fanny Mountain would crow with delight. Madame Esmond would have found the fellow out for a vulgar quack but for her son's opposition, which she, on her part, opposed with ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... as profession. Think on the impotence and rashness and futility of the common judgments of men, how little they are regulated by reason on any subject, much more on philosophical subjects, which so far exceed the comprehension of the vulgar— ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... We may say that it had been a part of the bargain. Lord Buntingford had objected mildly, being a young man devoted to business, fond of his own order, rather shy, and not given to dancing. But he had allowed his mother to prevail. 'Of course they are vulgar,' the Duchess had said,—'so much so as to be no longer distasteful because of the absurdity of the thing. I dare say he hasn't been very honest. When men make so much money, I don't know how they can have been honest. Of course it's done for a purpose. It's all very ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... 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; ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... well for the poor missionary, at that moment, that he had learned the art of boxing when a boy. The knowledge so acquired had never induced him to engage in dishonorable and vulgar strife; but it had taught him how and where to deliver a straightforward blow with effect; and he now struck out with tremendous energy, knocking down an adversary at every blow; for the thought of Alice lent additional ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... not well at the hands of those who were unwilling that the Scriptures should be studied in the vulgar tongue by the lay-folk, and foremost among that brave band of self-sacrificing scholars stands William Tyndale. His life is well known, and needs no recapitulation; but it may be noted that his books, rather than his work of translating the Scriptures, brought about his destruction. His ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... lawyers call vulgar abuse. But I do appeal to practise. Here is a family over which you tell me a mental calamity hovers. Here is the boy who questions everything and a girl who can believe anything. Upon which ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... for the edification of mankind. But I am much concerned to say, that a careful perusal of the proceedings and of the evidence shows that upon this occasion he was not only under the influence of the most vulgar credulity, but that he violated the plainest rules of justice, and that he really was the murderer of two innocent women.... Had the miserable wretches, indicted for witchcraft before Sir Matthew ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... newspaper sort, but was known to connoisseurs, editors, financiers, statesmen and judges,—to those, in short, whose business it is to make themselves familiar with the instruments of power. He was the banker's chief legal adviser, the banker's rapier of tempered steel, sheathed from the vulgar view save when it flashed forth on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... every child hates Shylock, though his soul Still sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole. At half mankind when generous Manly raves, All know 'tis virtue, for he thinks them knaves: When universal homage Umbra pays, All see 'tis vice, and itch of vulgar praise. When flattery glares, all hate it in a queen, While one there is who charms us with his spleen. But these plain characters we rarely find; Though strong the bent, yet quick the turns of mind: Or puzzling contraries ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Parsons, who, though a vulgar bully, was no coward, supported the character of Mr. Evan Morgans well enough; and he would have really enjoyed himself, had he not been in agonies of fear lest those precious saddle-bags in front of him should break from their lashings, and rolling to the earth, expose to the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... better fitted to enjoy and retain the pleasure of making new visionary acquaintances. If this be so, what an argument it is in favour of reading the best books first and earliest in youth! Do the ladies who now find Scott slow, and Miss Austen dull, and Dickens vulgar, and Thackeray prosy, and Fielding and Richardson impossible, come to this belief because they began early with the volumes of the circulating library? Are their memories happily stored with the words and deeds of modern fictitious romps, and passionate governesses, ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... the cross, and turning a wife out of doors, refers to a vulgar error, which had its influence to a late period in Bedfordshire. It was a speedy mode of divorce, similar to that practised in London, by leading a wife by a halter to Smithfield, and selling her. The crying at the market cross that a man would not be answerable for the debts that might ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... money for a picture, or a poem, or a statue. Most of all, the artist himself feels this. He puts on a bold front with the world, to be sure, and brazens it out as Business; but he knows very well that there is something false and vulgar in it; and that the work which cannot be truly priced in money cannot be truly paid in money. He can, of course, say that the priest takes money for reading the marriage service, for christening ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Balzac"; but it is doubtful whether the finish of one written in October, 1830, and ending with "Amitie d'ambition!!!"[*] is exactly flattering to the recipient—it savours rather strongly of what is termed in vulgar parlance "cupboard love." However, Girardin was the first to recognise the great writer's talents, and at the end of 1829, or the beginning of 1830, after having inserted an article by Balzac in La Mode, of which he was editor, he invited his collaboration, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... enough, with other sons of power, To gleam the lambent meteor of an hour; To swell some peerage page in feeble pride, With long-drawn names that grace no page beside; Then share with titled crowds the common lot— In life just gazed at, in the grave forgot; While naught divides thee from the vulgar dead, Except the dull cold stone that hides thy head, The mouldering 'scutcheon, or the herald's roll, That well-emblazon'd but neglected scroll, Where lords, unhonor'd, in the tomb may find One spot, to leave a worthless name behind. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... allowing for all this, I cannot but think these very musical, accomplished, and, in their place, appropriate verses, to have been written by a boy of twenty. Nor is it a common imagination, though busy in this vulgar field of horrors, that lifts the pallid bride to look upon the mirror ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... sick-chamber, as no place for a girl, but she soon abandoned that position, for Kitty was not the girl ever to think of impropriety. She was primitive and she had rather a before-the- flood nature, but she had not the faintest vulgar strain in her. Her mind was essentially pure; nothing material in her had been awakened. Her greatest joy was to do the many things for the patient which a nurse must do—prepare his food, give him drink, adjust his pillows, bathe ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and theatrical splendor, and speak to us with the directness, often with the bluntness, of nature herself. Hebbel was no naturalist, in the sense of one who seeks but to reproduce phenomena in all their details, sordid, trivial, or vulgar, if such they be. But through Ibsen, who esteemed him alone among his German predecessors, he became a factor in the recent naturalistic movement; and he might have saved it from many an aberration, if his example ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... which she clearly has in writing her stories and passes briskly on to the reader. There's a fine tang of the open-air about them, and a smell of saddle-leather, that many persons will consider well worth all the intricacies of your problem-novelists. I had the idea that her honest vulgar little legatee and his speculations as a horse-breeder might make a good subject for a character-comedian; but I suppose the late LORD GEORGE SANGER is the only man who could have produced ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... cloth'st Thyself complete With light as with a garment fair, Thou bor'st the cruel, vulgar ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... renewing a wheel on the coach. She had never dreamed that she might get along without a wig. She had begun wearing a wig many years ago, when her hair turned gray in spots. She had always considered dyed hair rather vulgar and so had resorted to a wig and, true to her character for keeping up a custom, she had never discarded the wig, although her hair had long since turned ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... Alida, her servant had many of the qualifications of an European domestic. Trained in all the ruses of his profession, he was of that school which believes civilization is to be measured by artifice; and success lost some of its value, when it had been effected by the vulgar machinery of truth and common sense. No wonder then the retainer entered into the views of the Alderman, with more than a usual relish for the duty. He heard the cracking of the dried twigs beneath the footstep of him who followed; ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... other evil, beside these sly beginnings of deceit, is taught in the nursery; a great deal of vulgar thought, of superstitious fear, of class coarseness. As, indeed, how must it not be when we think of the early habits and education of the women taken into the nursery to give the first strong indelible impressions ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... is an interesting phase of colonial existence. There are stations, of course, in these degenerate days, where a great deal of style and vulgar "side" is put on; where the house-servants are in livery; the dinner is served on silver plates, in empty mimicry of a ducal mansion; where all travelling sprigs of nobility are welcomed by the proprietor ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... has been embarked which has been found to tend neither to profit nor edification; for there have been known, at the head of public libraries, men of the Cerberus kind, who loved the books so dearly as to be unable to endure the handling of them by the vulgar herd of readers and searchers—even by those for whose special aid and service they are employed. They who have this morbid terror of the profanation of the treasures committed to their charge suffer in themselves the direst torments—something ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... his hand without speaking in that cordial palm. So this was the man he had envied. No one had ever told him that "Nathan der Weise" was thus afflicted. It was as soul that he had appealed to the imagination of the world; even vulgar gossip had been silent about his body. But how this ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... streak of luck last year," he resumed. "I collaborated on a play that people were foolish enough to like. Ever since that, money has poured in on me in the most vulgar way. I clink when I walk. Dollars ooze from my pockets when I make a gesture. Last week, at the bank, the cashier begged me to take some of my money away and do something with it. He said it was burdening the institution. So, as your adopted brother, I'm going to start ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... known to my readers is a favourite one with young ladies here, but its general application would lead you to imagine it another term for laziness. It is quite fashionable to be delicate, but horribly vulgar to be considered capable of enjoying such a useless blessing as good health. I knew a lady, when I first came to the colony, who had her children daily washed in water almost hot enough to scald a pig. On being asked why she did so, as it was not only an unhealthy practice, ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... double life. Don't you know it's wrong, wicked, vile? I can't really believe it of you. Why, you're my own brother! The honor of our name rests upon you. The—the idea that you should fall a victim to the wiles of a low, vulgar—" ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... their ignorance and habits, had an inherent love of the marvellous, and a profound respect for all who possessed, in acting, more audacity, and, in believing, more credulity than themselves. The vulgar like an excess, even if it be of folly; for, in their eyes, the abundance of any particular quality is very apt to be taken as the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... contemptible might be the triumph gained over so vulgar a being as Bonacieux, did not the less enjoy it for an instant; then, almost immediately, as if a fresh thought has occurred, a smile played upon his lips, and he said, offering his hand to the mercer, "Rise, my friend, you ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... has lived in South Africa, and who has had natives working for and with him, tells me of this confusion of ideas among some of the more vulgar stamp of white colonists, who, my friend observes, amuse themselves by assuming a familiarity in intercourse with the natives, which works badly. It does not at all increase their respect for the white man, but quite the contrary, while it is as ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... this—I would much rather sit with a man like you and discuss the phases of life and literature of interest to both of us. But I would write almost anything. I have written a great deal. And I have managed money. There was a time—" A look of pain came into his eyes. This was being vulgar and not in line with the tradition that ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... character. The flaccid, 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, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... failed, all the immense engines for the formation of public opinion which were at the disposal of the opposing forces were directed against me in the form of vulgar abuse. And that attack was very cleverly directed. It made no mention of my refusal to buy a certain mill for the combine at an excessive cost to the shareholding public. On the contrary, those who had failed to induce me to break faith with the investing public appealed ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... Mrs. Mirvan. During the last scene I perceived, standing near the gallery door, Sir Clement Willoughby. I was extremely vexed, and would have given the world to have avoided being seen by him in company with a family so low bred and vulgar. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of county family, you are inexcusably vulgar, Jane. I don't know what I said; but she will never forgive me for profaning her pet book. I shall be expelled as certainly as I am ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... thought the pretence of injecting snake poison was a mere ruse to gain time. Robert and David intuitively agreed with the barrister. It was in their breed to know when eternity yawned for one of them. The very calmness of the criminal, his magnificent apathy, his dislike of vulgar ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... came to prefer it! We would not have our readers to begin forthwith to dispense with the art of cookery, and cast Soyer to the dogs; but we would have them henceforth refuse to accept that common opinion, and vulgar error, that Esquimaux eat their food raw because they are savages. They do it because nature teaches them that, under the ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... all that assembly cared two straws about him. Why wasn't he playing in the match? Why did the fellows, as they came near him, look straight in front of them, or go round to avoid him? Why did the Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles strut about and crack their vulgar jokes right under his very nose, as if he was nobody? Alas, Loman! something's been wrong with you for the last year or thereabouts; and if we don't all know the cause, we can see the effect. For it is a fact, you are nobody in the eyes of Saint ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... apparently differed from each other. Tavernier, in his Travels in 1677, speaks, as does Chardin in 1735, of the vast number of pigeon-houses in Persia; and the former remarks that, as Christians were not permitted to keep pigeons, some of the vulgar actually turned Mahometans for this sole purpose. The Emperor of Morocco had his favourite keeper of pigeons, as is mentioned in Moore's treatise, published 1737. In England, from the time of Willughby in 1678 to ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... where they sat down in conclave; the curate, who was a man stone blind, presiding, whilst the sacristan officiated as secretary. The surgeon having stated his accusation against the prisoner, namely, that he had detected him in the fact of selling a version of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, the curate proceeded to examine Victoriano, asking him his name and place of residence, to which he replied that his name was Victoriano Lopez, and that he was a native of Villa Seca, in the Sagra of Toledo. The curate then demanded what religion he ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... friendship as well as that of prejudice, my design would have been accomplished, perhaps the greatest, at least the most useful one to virtue, that mortal ever conceived; but whilst I despised the foolish judgments of the vulgar tribe called great and wise, I suffered myself to be influenced and led by persons who called themselves my friends. These, hurt at seeing me walk alone in a new path, while I seemed to take measures for my happiness, used all their endeavors to render ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... anger glistened in Annie's eyes as she said, "I'm sure you know very well that I wish to entertain no vulgar, pushing people. I knew nothing of their 'past.' They seemed pleasant when they called. They were said to have the means to be liberal if they wished, and I thought they would be an acquisition to our neighborhood, and that we might ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... alone found refuge, distraction, and excitement in the vulgar modern world by which they were surrounded, and of whose heedlessness and remorselessness they were the victims. Lise went out into it, became a part of it, returning only to sleep and eat,—a tendency Hannah ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... easy it is to shed human blood! How easy it is to persuade ourselves that it is our duty to do so, and that the decision has cost us a severe struggle! How much in all ages have wounds and shrieks and tears been the cheap and vulgar resources of the rulers of mankind! How difficult it is to govern in kindness, and to found an empire upon the everlasting basis ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... intermarried, about the time of the Solemn League and Covenant, with Anderson of Tushielaw, both of which houses are connected with the Halberts of Dinniewuddie and with the Bradwardines. But stemmata quid faciunt? Sir Hew, being a young man, and the maut, as the vulgar say, above the meal, after a funeral of one of our kin in the Cathedral Kirkyard of St. Andrews, we met at Glass's Inn, where, in the presence of many gentlemen, occurred ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... Picquers. Ladies who fancy a favorite Pitt may have it put in any Spot they please, and of any size: not the Slightest Fever or Pain attends the Eruption; much less any of those frightful Convulsions so usual in all the vulgar methods of Inoculation, even in the famous Peter Puffs. This amazing Needle more truly astonishing and not less useful than the Magnetic one, has this property in common with the latter, that by ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... school could attain, and would be free from the pretentiousness and charlatanism which he regarded as the bane of private education. The inspection and control of these Public Schools would be in the hands of competent officers of the State, whereas the private school is appraised only by the vulgar and uneducated class that ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... Bab, "I and PAPA are to dine and drink tea at The Abbey tomorrow. Who knows? I daresay, when they see that I'm not a vulgar person, and all that; and if I go cunningly to work with Miss Somers, as I shall, to be sure, I daresay, she'll take me to the ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... a most formidable sheet, without gilt or black edging, and consequently very vulgar and indecorous, particularly to one of your precision; but this being Sunday, I can procure no better, and will atone for its length by not filling it. Bland I have not seen since my last letter; but ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... "Empire Day," and reported a sermon stuffed with militarism. He poured cold water on the idea. "Ireland won't have it; Canada won't have it; South Africa loathes it; India has an Empire Day of its own. Only Australia cares for it. It is a vulgar piece of Tory bluff, and a device for ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... amount handy, your Excellency!" he remarked amiably. "May I trouble you to invite you to produce the money for your own side of the bet? We have a vulgar custom among us in America, of requesting the other man to either 'put ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... the gentle reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the like particulars, which, however insignificant they may appear to grovelling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of public as well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this and other accounts of my travels to the world; wherein ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... prove to itself its superiority over that of the vulgar. I make a parenthesis in my ill-temper in favor of my vanity, and I bring together all the evidence which ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... him, with fly or bait. I jerked suddenly, and two of the hooks fastened into him near the tail. That trout was astonished, as were half a dozen or more of his fellows, when they came out of the water tail foremost, struggling with all their might against so vulgar and undignified a manner of leaving their native element. We got as beautiful a string in this way as one would wish to see, albeit they laughed at our best skill with fly and bait; and the cream of the matter was, that we had our pick ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... is a strange habit of wise humanity to speak in enigmas only, so that the highest truths and usefullest laws must be hunted for through whole picture-galleries of dreams, which to the vulgar seem dreams only. Thus Homer, the Greek tragedians, Plato, Dante, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Goethe, have hidden all that is chiefly serviceable in their work, and in all the various literature they absorbed and re-embodied, under ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... thirty-nine poems which had been presented for examination, it was found that two had been written in the Gascon dialect. The committee were at first of opinion that they could not award the prize to the author of any poem written in the vulgar tongue. At the same time they reported that one of the poems written in Gascon possessed such real merit, that the committee decided by a unanimous vote that a prize should be awarded to the author of the best poem written in the Gascon dialect. Many ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... bowing and bobbing at every step, with the extravagant politeness which differentiates the vulgar man ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... photograph. The man was well-dressed, and had the bearing of a gentleman. Looking back upon the scene long after, when I had learned once more what words and things meant, I could feel instinctively this was no common burglar, no vulgar murderer. Whatever might have been the man's object in shooting my father, I was certain from the very first it was not mere robbery. But at the time, I'm confident, I never reasoned about his motives or his actions in any way. I merely took in the scene, as it were, ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... glad I've not! Titles are so ostentatious! Vulgar, I call them! The very best families will have nothing to do with them. My father's people were all at the Crusades, and the Wars of the Roses, and the Field of the Cloth of Gold. There is no older family in England, and they are called 'Fighting Savilles,' because they are always in the ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... or movie cut-up that does the funny falls is a vulgar lunatic who ought to be in jail, and their idea of the height of humor is the way a iceman pronounces decollete, or somethin' ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... shuddering spasms of suppressed sobs. Some of them, in which the black keys are exclusively taken, are acute and subtle, and remind us of the character of his own gaiety, lover of atticism as he was, subject only to the higher emotions, recoiling from all vulgar mirth, from coarse laughter, and from low enjoyments, as we do from those animals more abject than venomous, whose very sight causes the most nauseating repulsion ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... the querist supposes, a military cant term, and a sufficiently vulgar one too. It originated at the great slang-manufactory for the army, the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. You may depend upon the following account of it, which I had many years ago from the late Thomas Leybourne, F.R.S., Senior Professor of ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... of the Deity was blended with all that was ennobling and beautiful. Moved by these glowing fancies, her susceptible spirit, in these tender years, turned away from atheism, from infidelity, from irreligion, as from that which was unrefined, revolting, vulgar. The consciousness of the presence of God, the adoration of his being, became a passion of her soul. This state of mind was poetry, not religion. It involved no sense of the spirituality of the Divine Law, no consciousness ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... brooding face That stands on the stair, (you know the place,) Saying, "Click, cluck," like an ancient hen, A-gathering the minutes home again, To the kitchen knave with its wooden stutter, Doing equal work with double splutter, Yelping, "Click, clack," with a vulgar jerk, As much as to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various |
