"Vulgar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... excellences of the two local hunts. "I.W.W." and "A.F. of L." fell from his lips as "M.F.H." and "J.P." used to from theirs. The contrast between the two worlds entertained her not a little. She thought all these young people looked clever, though singularly vulgar, and that her old friends would have appeared by comparison refreshingly clean and cultivated, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... of Loring dwelt, as a matter of course, at Uphill. Lowtown was vulgar, dirty, devoted to commercial and manufacturing purposes, and hardly owned a single genteel private house. There was the parsonage, indeed, which stood apart from its neighbours, inside great tall slate-coloured ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... and customs; for everybody desires to please those in whose house they are; and people are only to be pleased in their own way. Nothing is more engaging than a cheerful and easy conformity to people's particular manners, habits, and even weaknesses; nothing (to use a vulgar expression) should come amiss to a young fellow. He should be, for good purposes, what Alcibiades was commonly for bad ones, a Proteus, assuming with ease, and wearing with cheerfulness, any shape. Heat, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and brush of fancy he painted human life in everlasting colors, that will not fade or tarnish with age or wither with the winds of adversity. The celestial sunlight of his genius permeated every object he touched and lifted even the vulgar vices of earth into the realms ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the reverse. On this principle, the use of masks, which appears astonishing to us, was not only justifiable, but absolutely essential; far from considering them as a makeshift, the Greeks would certainly, and with justice too, have looked upon it as a makeshift to be obliged to allow a player with vulgar, ignoble, or strongly marked features, to represent an Apollo or a Hercules; nay, rather they would have deemed it downright profanation. How little is it in the power of the most finished actor to change the character of his features! How prejudicial ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of Nature, wrought or mechanical, I find some collections made of agriculture, and likewise of manual arts; but commonly with a rejection of experiments familiar and vulgar; for it is esteemed a kind of dishonour unto learning to descend to inquiry or meditation upon matters mechanical, except they be such as may be thought secrets, rarities, and special subtleties; ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... on publishing chiefly as business, or a lucrative and respectable employment, but as the means of mental and moral benefit to their countrymen. To one so wearied and disgusted as I have been by vulgar and base avowals on such subjects, it was very refreshing to hear this from the lips of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... sort for getting him out of his false and awkward position; one to his head clerk, to press upon him the necessity of prudence and caution in dealing with the impostor; notes to Bangle and Fishwick putting them off—they should not be outraged by an introduction to a vulgar pantomime clown under his roof; and lastly (this was an outburst he could not deny himself), a solemn impressive appeal to the common humanity, if not to the ordinary filial ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... like his cousin the red vole, for his face was blunted, his eyes small, and his tail ridiculously insignificant. Nor could he cover the ground with the easy swinging jump that makes one suspect relationship between the red vole and the wood-mouse. Still for a common, vulgar, agrarian vole, he was passable enough, and could hold his own, tooth and ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... merely the feminine of the overdressed young man. The manners of both seem to have a subtle connection with their clothes. They are loud, flashy, vulgar. Their style of dress bespeaks a type of character even more objectionable than that of the slovenly, untidily dressed person. The world accepts the truth announced by Shakespeare that "the apparel oft ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... bustling voice in the kitchen demanding to see Mr. Bronte. Somebody was shown into the parlour. Shortly after, wine was rung for. "Who is it, Martha?" I asked. "Some mak of a tradesman," said she. "He's not a gentleman, I'm sure." The personage stayed about an hour, talking in a loud vulgar key all the time. At tea-time I asked papa who it was. "Why," said he, "no other than the vicar of B—-!" {361} Papa had invited him to take some refreshment, but the creature had ordered his dinner at the Black Bull, and was quite urgent with papa to go down there and join him, offering ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... with providing a scrap, here and there, to the reader—despairing, as we utterly do, to gather from memory a full description of a performance so perfectly unique in its singular compound of lofty vein, with the patois and vulgar contractions of his native, and those common to ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... he delivered in senate and forum. You, however, are regarded as wise in a somewhat different sense not alone on account of natural ability and character, but also from your industry and learning; and not in the sense in which the vulgar, but that in which scholars, give that title. In this sense we do not read of any one being called wise in Greece except one man at Athens; and he, to be sure, had been declared by the oracle of Apollo also to be "the supremely wise man." For those ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... sovereignty. Once crowned, and feeling himself still compelled to speak incessantly of the good of his country, his views of good will become debased. He will invest France with military glory, and sink into ruin by becoming a conqueror;—a vulgar destiny, in this age—a destiny which Alexander himself would probably scorn, if now ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... excuses. Should he be one? He viewed the other side. What must he pay for success? Aye, face it boldly—what? Mechanically he searched for his mail and undid the latest number of the Colored American. He was sure the answer stood there in Teerswell's biting vulgar English. And there ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... guest, hastened to his sick-chamber with every possible assurance of their distress and sympathy. Charles expressed the utmost indignation at the murderous attempt, and declared, with those oaths which are common to vulgar minds, that he would take the most terrible vengeance upon the perpetrators as soon as he ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... books form return passports for Russians, though we surrendered ours at the frontier. As the hotel clerk or porter attends to all passport details, few foreigners see the inside of the office, or hear the catechisms which are conducted there, as I did. It is vulgar, it smacks of commercial life, to go one's self. Apathy and lack of interest can always be relied upon to brand one as aristocratic. In this case, however, as in many others, I considered myself repaid for following Poor Richard's advice: "If you want a thing ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Shih had really risen from the vulgar herd, so seeing that Ch'iu-fang possessed several traits of beauty and exceptional intellectual talents, Fu Shih arrived at the resolution of making his sister the means of joining relationship with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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
... man had never been near her before; now she had one close to her. The horror she felt shook her so that her teeth chattered. Oh for shame, for shame, how disgusting, how vulgar! How degraded he seemed to her, and she felt degraded, too, through him. This was not her Wolfgang any more, the child whom she had adopted as her son. This was quite an ordinary, quite a common man from the street, with whom she ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... presented it to the governor, conjuring him, in the name of the emperor his master, to revenge the affront offered to him in the person of his wife during his absence. "And who is that insolent man," said the magistrate, "who durst insult such a gentleman's wife?" "It is," said he, "a vulgar pitiful fellow, one Serenus, a gardener." The governor ordered him to be immediately brought before him, and asked him his name. "It is Serenus," said he. The judge said: "Of what profession are you?" He answered: ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Italian. It is most nearly akin to the Sasak language spoken in Lombok and on the east coast of Bali. The literary language has embodied many of its ingredients from the Old Javanese, as spoken in Java at the time of the fall of Majapahit (15th century), while the vulgar dialect has kept free from such admixture. Javanese influence is also traceable in the use of three varieties of speech, as in the Javanese language, according to the rank of the people addressed. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... true," she went on bitterly. "I knew he had grown away from me, but I never suspected that—that he could be so vulgar!" That, of course, was the way in which it would ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... quietly into Buckin'am Pellis at this moment, an' 'ave a friendly word with 'Is Mejisty, do you kid yourselves 'e would igspress any what I may call cuzzen like feelin' for this—this perisite? Do you fan your ducks, in vulgar pawlence, that if the KING'S 'ands was free 'e would not 'asten to be the first to pluck the bauble from ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... them. Some mischief-loving servants, young lads and girls, tittered and laughed, and jeered the bridal couple, especially the ladies' maids, who thought themselves far handsomer, and saw themselves infinitely better clad, and wondered how people could be so vulgar. A shuddering came over Emilius; he looked round for Roderick, but the latter had already run away from him again. An impertinent coxcomb, with a head pilloried in his high starched neck-cloth, a servant to one of the visitors, eager to show his wit, pressed up to Emilius, giggling, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the subject was forced upon him; though that was certainly frequent enough for wholesome airing. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon his bear-skin, a maneless lion, wrapped in the solitude of his own originality. Aloof from the vulgar pack, he lived and moved and had his being but in the atmosphere of the Fighting Nigger, in whose society only could he hope to find a little congenial companionship, and to whom only he unbosomed the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... through that darksome avenue which gives access to the historic precincts of the Province House. In short, if any credit be due to the courteous assurances of Mr. Thomas Waite, we had brought his forgotten mansion almost as effectually into public view as if we had thrown down the vulgar range of shoe-shops and dry-good stores which hides its aristocratic front from Washington street. It may be unadvisable, however, to speak too loudly of the increased custom of the house, lest Mr. Waite should find it difficult to renew the lease ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... As to the vulgar rabble of trainers and toadies, illiterate, mean-souled creatures, born to obscurity, should we attempt to dissuade them from such pursuits, our labour would be wasted. Nor can we fairly blame them, for putting up any affront, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Your Greatness, Your Highness, Your Majesty, Your Beatitude, Your High Mightiness, are Salutations rather us'd by the Vulgar, than approv'd ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... characters of men. As a matter of fact we have the latter; suggesting to my mind that the common religion, professed and defended by these different people, is merely the accidental conduit through which they pour their own tempers, lofty or low, courteous or vulgar, mild or ferocious, as the case may be. Pure abuse, however, as serving no good end, I have, wherever possible, deliberately avoided reading, wishing, indeed, to keep, not only hatred, malice, and uncharitableness, but even every trace of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... suffer the just penalty of the sins man committed while occupying it. Is it not an absurdity to affirm that nerves and blood, flesh and bones, are responsible, guilty, must be punished? Tucker, in his "Light of Nature Pursued," says, "The vulgar notion of a resurrection in the same form and substance we carry about at present, because the body being partaker in the deed ought to share in the reward, as well requires a resurrection of the sword a man murders with, or the bank note he gives to charitable uses." ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... men greatly dreaded any conflict with the lords of the soil. He had, besides, interested in his cause him who had morally served him as lieutenant, and whom we have seen reply to the name of Menneville. The latter, not being a vulgar spirit, had more to risk than the others, because he had more conscience. He believed in a future in the service of D'Artagnan, and consequently would have allowed himself to be cut to pieces, rather than violate the order given by his leader. Thus it was that, once landed, it was to him D'Artagnan ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... polished, which is the more creditable to him when it is remembered how much his education has been neglected, how vitiated the Revolution made him, and that but lately his principal associates were, like himself, from among the vilest and most vulgar of the rabble. It is not necessary to be a keen observer to remark in Napoleon the upstart soldier, and in Joseph the former low member of the law; but I defy the most refined courtier to see in Lucien anything indicating a ci-devant sans-culotte. He ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... were arranging our stump so as to carry it to the best advantage, a vulgar-faced man, with fiery red hair, and wearing on his collar the yellow bars of a Lieutenant, approached. This was Lieutenant Barrett, commandant of the interior of the prison, and a more inhuman wretch even than Captain Wirz, because he had a little more brains than the commandant at ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... had one or two to amuse me, I used to give her the preference for the fuck, and she always had one of the gruellings, for she was very handsome, understood everything, was sensuousness itself, but not vulgar. When I had a fit of extra lewdness she got me other women. Of course she got profit out of all, a thing I knew nothing about then. Often I had no want but for her, and she used to strip herself, or dress just as I wished, put her body into some attitude, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... manifestation of Gautama Buddha. Despite, however, its elaborate ritual, the Shin-Jodo sect has been called the "Protestantism of Japan;" the reason being that it sanctions the marriage of its clergy, approves the reading of the scriptures in the "vulgar tongue," permits a wider freedom in respect to food and drink, and affords other indications of a "reforming spirit." The priesthood in this sect is, practically, a ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... the matter. And the hint that by-and-by the mystery might be unravelled, not only to him, but to the whole world, was far from giving him comfort. Rather than have Lucia's name dragged out for vulgar comment, he would have been content to let her secret remain for ever undiscovered; and besides, this unwelcome revelation promised to come too late, when the Cottage was empty and its dearly loved occupants were gone far away out of his ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the pearl for the same price she had paid for it Madly in love-that is to say silly and blind Method contrary to the laws of nature More absurd the reports, the more credence did they gain No vice which has not a counterfeit resemblance to some virtue Prejudices, which are sacred to the vulgar Put to the question ordinary and extraordinary So much a lover that love imposed silence on ambition The last thing I should desire would be to be as dead as he To draw back was to acknowledge one's guilt Too commonplace ever to arrive at a high position ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... would it not be to you, or to me, Miss Betham, to meet a Milton in a future state, and with that reverence due to a superior, pour forth our deep thanks for the noble feelings he had aroused in us, for the impossibility of many mean and vulgar feelings and objects which ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... who had also worldly wisdom, although of a crude and vulgar sort, spoke. "Folks are goin' to talk like the old Harry if we stay in here all night," said she, "and besides, there's no knowin' what is a safe place ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... stamping along with the step of an athlete and the stride of a peasant on fresh plowed fields. It is the most hideous of walks imaginable. The Grecian bend, which you cannot remember, but may have heard of, was a lackadaisical, vulgar walking fad, but it was grace itself compared with the hideous stride which the New Woman has acquired on the golf ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... Corinthian columns, and spanned them with the roof of a pagoda. It was a surprise to us that he retained the ancient name of Hydra House. We had expected, even hoped, that he would change it to something ornate and vulgar, and so leave nothing to remind us of the old place of which we had all been so fond and proud. But one sunny morning a sign-painter began work on the Corinthian columns. Gaddingham and I did not, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... former admirers! How doubly hateful does lord Martin, the lover favoured by my father now appear! But ah! who is this Damon? What is his fortune, and what his pretensions? His dress surely bespoke him a man of rank. His elegant manners could have been learned in no vulgar circle. How sweet, methinks is suspence! How delightful the uncertainty that hangs about him! And yet, how glad should I be to have ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... or in seas. But although the 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
... discovery, let them give him his share, and leave them forever. It was the only thing to be done, strange that he had not thought of it at once. Yet it was hard, very hard and cruel, to be forced to meet them again. What had he done to suffer this mortification? For a moment he actually hated this vulgar treasure that had forever buried under its gross ponderability the light and careless past, and utterly crushed out the poetry of ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... and a subtle magnetism to her influence. Nowhere is there contradiction or incongruity. Her works bear the imprint of her character, and her character of her works; the same directness and honesty, the same limpid purity of tone, and the same atmosphere of things refined and beautiful. The vulgar, the false, and the ignoble,—she scarcely comprehended them, while on every side she was open and ready to take in and respond to whatever can adorn and enrich life. Literature was no mere "profession" for her, which shut out other possibilities; it was only a free, wide horizon ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Jewiston," remarked Miss Leveredge; "I always thought him very under-bred and vulgar. Why will Harry have any thing to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... but spots of barbarity impressed so deep in the English language, that criticism can never wash them away: these, therefore, must be permitted to remain untouched; but many words have likewise been altered by accident, or depraved by ignorance, as the pronunciation of the vulgar has been weakly followed; and some still continue to be variously written, as authours differ in their care or skill: of these it was proper to enquire the true orthography, which I have always considered ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... replied sullenly. She offered him money—before the landlord, unhappily —and his refusal was now unnecessarily bitter. She turned away sadly, but Madame Marie had been roused by the official's churlishness, and for once the placid little body spoke in that vulgar tongue which needs no interpretation. She asked the fellow if he knew to whom he had been impolite, to whom he had refused a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... morals and art?" said the captain, looking smilingly at her. "I should think so, judging from what my wife is; and surely, it is reasonable to expect a child to be, to some extent, a reflection of its surroundings; refined or vulgar, according to the style of faces—living or pictured—it is constantly gazing upon, etc. But, however that may be, we will try to keep upon the safe side, furnishing only what must have a good influence, so far as it ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... of the dance hall, with accompanying words, often indecent and full of vulgar, suggestive appeal, are permitted a vogue ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... man. The masculine vices were abhorrent to him. He was not profane. He was not vulgar. He was as far removed from suspicion as Caesar could have demanded of his wife. He was not given to drink. When a young man he could not be tricked into swallowing whisky. At the close of the war, a barrel of whisky was sent him from some ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... shocked the sensibilities of both even though throughout the progress of the change, each had remained passive in the hands of the elder Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick, who had to choose them a house, and attend to all the arrangements of moving and refitting the new home. For Charles to have engaged in the vulgar business of moving household furniture, would have been felt as a disgrace;—and as for Adelaide, she didn't know how to do any thing in regard to the matter, and even if she had, would have esteemed such an employment as entirely ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... creature, both in person and dress; her continuance not vulgar. And I am in hopes, as I hinted above, that her lady will accept of her for her bedfellow, in a strange house, for a week or so. But I saw she had a dislike to her at her very first appearance; yet I thought the girl behaved very modestly—over-did ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Leven, running up to a vast picture, a life-size family group, which covered the greater part of the farther wall of the room. "What a vulgar, insignificant chit one feels oneself without cap or powder!—without those ruffles, or those tippets, or those quilted petticoats! Mrs. Allison, may my maid come down to-morrow while we are at dinner and take the pattern of those ruffles? No—no! she sha'n't! Sacrilege! You pretty thing!" ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... December, 1858. The richness of her furs, the lustrous folds of her black costume, and the discreet originality of her hat, all told the story of a woman who owns her carriage, and who steps from her carpets to her coupe without the vulgar contact of the streets. Her head was small, which always lends height to a woman. Her pretty face had all the bloom of fresh fruit. Smiling and gay, additional vivacity was imparted by large, clear eyes and brilliant teeth, which were to be seen even when her face was in repose. ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... The mere memory of the speeches he had listened to, had left, as it were, an unpleasant aftertaste. How the crowds had cheered the hackneyed platitudes, the blatant patriotic appeals, the malevolent caricature of opponents! Something unspeakably trivial, vulgar, and evil in it all reminded him of tired children when the romping begins ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... you are joking then," said I; "this is a very passable skull,—indeed, I may say that it is a very excellent skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology—and your scarabaeus must be the queerest scarabaeus in the world if it resembles it. Why, we may get up a very thrilling bit of superstition upon this hint. I presume you will call ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... sixteenth century, that they were sports of nature. He also pretended that vegetable impressions were not those of real plants." ... "He would sometimes, in defiance of all consistency, shift his ground when addressing the vulgar; and, admitting the true nature of the shells collected in the Alps and other places, pretend that they were Eastern species, which had fallen from the hats of pilgrims coming from Syria. The numerous essays ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... is rather a disease of the liver and blood-forming functions than of the kidney, but as prominent symptoms are loss of control over the hind limbs and the passage of ropy and dark-colored urine, the vulgar idea is that it is a disorder of the urinary organs. It is a complex affection directly connected with a plethora in the blood of nitrogenized constituents, with extreme nervous and muscular disorder and the excretion of a dense ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... down a deep ravine, regardless of the limiting lines of the surveyor. The railway station at Manitou might pose for a porter's lodge in the prettiest park in England. Surely there is hope for America when she can so far curb her vulgar love of the merely practical as to do that sort of thing at the right time and in the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... figure in the transaction which implies proper marriage and settling down, and the next step which means a cradle and perambulator and—as it grows up—an engagement ring, marriage and children again. Much of this procedure is upset when a child like Soerine's little one is vulgar enough to allow itself to be ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... loosened one of the safest props of his character. We need not be afraid of the crude and short-sighted ideals of the young child. With the growth of his experience his ideals will expand. We should fear rather to infect him with the vulgar disrespect for all ideals. ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... the Theban eagle bear, 115 Sailing with supreme dominion Thro' the azure deep of air, Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun: 120 Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the Good how far—but ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... It seemed to him impossible when he remembered her majestic bearing. But Beletski spoke of it as if it were all perfectly simple. 'Is it possible that Beletski will treat Maryanka in the same way? That is interesting,' thought he. 'No, better not go. It's all so horrid, so vulgar, and above all—it leads to nothing!' But again he was worried by the question of what would take place; and besides he felt as if bound by a promise. He went out without having made up his mind ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... Twiss himself, Mrs. Arkwright, Miss Cooke, Dance, Miss Dance, Planche, Mrs. Blood, Mrs. Groom, Theodore Hook, Billy something, who imitated Cooper and Ward. I stayed till two, and they went on till three. It was sufficiently amusing altogether, though noisy and vulgar; company very miscellaneous, but everybody ready to amuse and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... of the Vedas (already referred to in respect of acts) are, in the opinion of the vulgar, contradictory. Whether this is authoritative or that is so, when there is this conflict, how can they be said to be scriptural?[993] I desire to hear this: how can both be regarded as authoritative? How, indeed, can Emancipation be obtained without violating ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... out of the house looking as white as any handkerchief; but her large dark eyes shone upon the vulgar crowd like blazing coals. The spectators' cries were redoubled, and became more exultant and triumphant every moment. The door of the carriage was open, and Keller had given his hand to the bride to help her in, when suddenly with a loud cry she ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Uncle Nathan knew that gratitude is too nice and delicate a plant to grow on common soil. Once, when he was twenty-two or three, he was engaged to a young woman of Boston, while he was a clerk in a commission store. But her father, a skipper from Beverly or Cape Cod, who continued vulgar while he became rich, did not like the match. "It won't do," said he, "for a poor young man to marry into one of our fust families; what is the use of aristocracy if no distinction is to be made, and our daughters are to marry Tom, Dick, and ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... an orator as an improvisatore, or a versifier, from a poet. Grey is great, but it is not oratory. Canning is sometimes very like one. Windham I did not admire, though all the world did; it seemed sad sophistry. Whitbread was the Demosthenes of bad taste and vulgar vehemence, but strong, and English. Holland is impressive from sense and sincerity. Lord Lansdowne good, but still a debater only. Grenville I like vastly, if he would prune his speeches down to an hour's delivery. Burdett ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... true the Church is defunct; what we fight are only its remains. The vulgar believe it still lives because they can see and touch it, forgetting that a religion counts centuries in its life as minutes, and that generation after generation pass between its death and burial. Centuries ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Very delicate, isn't it? I get it direct from Paris. But under this vulgar Republic everything has degenerated over there. "Cotelettes a l'imperiale" vanished, of course, with the Bourbon, and omelettes went out with the Orleanists. La belle France is entirely ruined, Prince, through bad morals and worse cookery. (Enter the MARQUIS DE POIVRARD.) Ah! Marquis. ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... hope to dip our hands up to the elbows in what are called adventures. But take note of this, that although thou seest me in the greatest dangers of the world, thou art not to set hand to thy sword in my defence, unless those who assault me be base or vulgar people. If they be knights thou ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... that Shakespeare does not mention the shamrock at all. No Irishman who knows the little oxalis or wood-sorrel could wish for a more beautiful floral emblem of the Emerald Isle, or dream of letting the vulgar Saxon intruder—the dwarf clover—take its place. Perhaps it is the Ulstermen who have set up the foreign "Dutch" clover to replace the true shamrock, the wood-sorrel. These changes are easily made. For instance, "green" ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... stranger. This was a small man, very pale and dark, with coal-black eyes. The cut of his features gave a promise of intellect and refinement which was but feebly realised in his manners, for he proved, upon a nearer acquaintance, coarse, vulgar, and stupid. He exercised, however, a very remarkable control over Macfarlane; issued orders like the Great Bashaw; became inflamed at the least discussion or delay, and commented rudely on the servility with which he was obeyed. This most offensive person took a fancy to Fettes ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sally Leadbitter was vulgar-minded to the last degree; never easy unless her talk was of love and lovers; in her eyes it was an honour to have had a long list of wooers. So constituted, it was a pity that Sally herself was but a plain, red-haired, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... taken out of the Commonwealth of Israel: "So Moses hearkened to the voice of Jethro, his father-in-law, and did all that he had said. And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people;" tribunes, as it is in the vulgar Latin; or phylarchs, that is, princes of the tribes, sitting upon twelve thrones, and judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and next to these he chose rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... shows no disposition to make room for them; even their coaches are already beginning to crumble into things that have been; and their bodies (we mean their coach bodies) are being seized upon by rural loving folks, for the vulgar purpose of summer-houses. But a few days and they ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward
... and conversation of those in attendance; and how Mrs. E. comported herself, and what she cooked for supper. She was shocked to learn the young wife wore a low-necked dress, and set her down at once as a low, vulgar woman, in whose company she should consider it a disgrace to be seen. Mrs. Pimble said another milk-sop had come among them to fawn and giggle in the face of the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... Anne Shakespeare was a coarse, low, vulgar creature, such as, the fascination of the honeymoon once worn off, the Poet could not choose but loath and detest; and that his betaking himself to London was partly to escape from her hated society. This, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... them Thoth, and were equal and in all respects the same: and the first year of Nabonassar began on the 26th day of February of the old Roman year, seven hundred forty and seven years before the Vulgar AEra of Christ, and thirty and three days and five hours before the Vernal Equinox, according to the Sun's mean motion; for it is not likely that the Equation of the Sun's motion should be known in the infancy of Astronomy. Now reckoning ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... The Spirit, In ecstasy of admiration, felt 245 All knowledge of the past revived; the events Of old and wondrous times, Which dim tradition interruptedly Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded In just perspective to the view; 250 Yet dim from their infinitude. The Spirit seemed to stand High on an isolated pinnacle; The flood of ages combating below, The depth of the unbounded universe 255 Above, and all around Nature's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... remark must be conditioned and qualified for the vulgar mind. The reader will of course understand the precise amount of seasoning which must be added to it before he adopts it as one of the axioms of his life. The speaker disclaims all responsibility for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... attendance, or address, below the point of perfection, will, whenever he enters the crowd of life, be harassed with innumerable distresses, from which those who have not in the same manner increased their sensations find no disturbance. His exotick softness will shrink at the coarseness of vulgar felicity, like a plant transplanted to northern nurseries, from the dews and sunshine of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the flight. He promised to accompany Ralegh into France. Ralegh, with all his wit and experience of men, his wife, with her love and her clearness of vision, the shrewd French diplomatists, and honest King, were dupes of a mere cormorant, like Stukely, and of vulgar knaves, like Cottrell and Hart. Without the least suspicion of foul play Ralegh on that Sunday night, after le Clerc and de Novion had left, went down ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... according to this young man's creed. He had dawdled through the party, waltzing with a languid grace that most girls considered the essence of high-breeding. It was all one to him. His "set" affected to think life something of a bore. Intense emotion of any kind was vulgar. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... And the boy saw her again as it were quite differently from before, still the robust woman-child, but rich, ripe, blooded at the plump inviting lip, warm at the throbbing neck. About her hung a searching odour that overcame the common and vulgar odours of the ship, its bilge, its tar, its oak-bark tan, its herring scale, an odour he knew of woods in the wet spring weather. It made him think of short grasses and the dewdrop glittering in the wet leaf; then the sky shone blue against a tremble ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... region. In this work good judgment in the choice of items of news, variety in the manner of stating them, and logical order in arranging and connecting them should be cultivated. The writing of good, plain English, rather than "smart" journalese should be the aim. Stale, vulgar and incorrect phrases, such as "Sundayed," and "in our midst," should be avoided. There are two tests in selecting a news item: (1) Will it interest readers? (2) Ought they to know it? When by these tests an item is proved to be real news that demands publication, it should ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... of a peascod instead of her." (Shakesp.)—The efficacy of peascods in the concerns of sweethearts is not yet forgotten among our rustic vulgar. The kitchen-maid, when she shells green peas, never omits, when she finds one having nine peas, to lay it on the lintel of the kitchen door; and the first clown who enters it is infallibly to be her husband, or ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... coadjutor and successor to the rustic bard in renovating the national minstrelsy. Possessing a fine musical ear, she adapted her lyrics with singular success to the precise sentiments of the older airs, and in this happy manner was enabled rapidly to supersede many ribald and vulgar ditties, which, associated with stirring and inspiring music, had long maintained a noxious popularity among the peasantry. Of Burns' immediate contemporaries, the more conspicuous were, John Skinner, Hector ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... account of this voyage is contained in a small volume by Mr. George Hamilton, the surgeon, who appears to have been a coarse, vulgar, and illiterate man, more disposed to relate licentious scenes and adventures, in which he and his companions were engaged, than to give any information of proceedings and occurrences connected with the main object of the voyage. From this book, therefore, much ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... departed. All recreation is more and more in the open and appeals at one and the same time to all youth. The standards have to be raised for all or they cannot be held firm for the favored few. Democracy, which aims to make all better, may work to make all cheaper in taste, more vulgar in language, less capable of fine expression of noble ideals, unless a social conscience and a social intelligence take command of the ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... more his affair than mine. I had a moral to inculcate, and the injuries he might receive in the course of it were inconsiderable details so that the lesson was borne in upon his soul. Two or three times he sought to close with me, but I eluded him; I had no mind to descend to a vulgar exchange of blows. My object was not to brawl, but to administer chastisement, and this object I may claim to have accomplished with a fair ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Lang (different as you are), and yet the only two who can keep a fellow smiling every page, and ever and again laughing out loud. I joke wi' deeficulty, I believe; I am not funny; and when I am, Mrs. Oliphant says I'm vulgar, and somebody else says (in Latin) that I'm a whore, which seems harsh and even uncalled for: I shall stick to weepers; a 5s. weeper, 2s. 6d. laugher, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Then, but at a modest distance, as regards the glory of the achievements related, each peasant told what he had done himself; two or three probably made out their little history together, and told of each other's valour: that homely and somewhat vulgar Scotch proverb, "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours," was certainly unknown to them, but nevertheless they fully recognized the wise principle of mutual ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... house what they will, it is the mistress of it who gives the rooms their soul. If hers is vulgar, so will the rooms be, even though Monsieur Nelson himself has but just designed them in purest Louis XVI. But the worst of all are those which look as though their owner constantly attended bazaars, and brought the superfluous horrors she ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... tankards to moisten those importunate throats. The ale-drinking, the rude good-fellowship, the heartiness, the laughter at discomforts, the craving to see the fight—all these may be set down as vulgar and trivial by those to whom they are distasteful; but to me, listening to the far-off and uncertain echoes of our distant past, they seem to have been the very bones upon which much that is most solid and virile in this ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Eighty per cent. more women spectators are likely to attend five years from now. To encourage their attendance every effort should be made to eliminate all disgraceful conversation on the field. Wherever it may be ascertained that an umpire has used profane or vulgar language on the field the editor of the GUIDE believes that he should be fined and punished as sternly ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... It is exactly calculated to hit the notions of a vulgar, ignorant, lazy, greedy, and unprincipled bumpkin. Such a fellow would see just far enough into the millstone to be tickled at the idea of cheating those lottery fellows. And the knave ends his letter with one more touch most delicately adapted ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... ruled by me: depart in patience, And let us to the Tiger all to dinner; 95 And about evening come yourself alone To know the reason of this strange restraint. If by strong hand you offer to break in Now in the stirring passage of the day, A vulgar comment will be made of it, 100 And that supposed by the common rout Against your yet ungalled estimation, That may with foul intrusion enter in, And dwell upon your grave when you are dead; For slander lives upon succession, 105 For ever housed ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... pick out a single figure to stand for the finest quality of the Allies' war, I should I think choose the figure of General Joffre. He is something new in history. He is leadership without vulgar ambition. He is the extreme antithesis to the Imperial boomster of Berlin. He is as it were the ordinary common sense of men, incarnate. He is the antithesis of ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... voice called for silence. It was Boche who, standing up in an affected and vulgar way, was commencing to sing "The Volcano of ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... to build this manufactory?" inquired Mrs. Vansittart, to whom was vouch-safed that rare knowledge of the fine line that is to be drawn between a kindly interest and a vulgar curiosity. The two are nearer ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... weakning Liquor. And so out of the Rectify'd and Transparent Butter of Antimony, by the bare Mixture of fair Water, there will be plentifully Precipitated that Milk-white Substance, which by having its Looser Salts well wash'd off, is turn'd into that Medicine, which Vulgar Chymists are pleas'd ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... love is an involuntary passion, the most disinterested, the least calculating, of all the passions, except maternal love. This opinion carries with it a vulgar error. Though the majority of men may be ignorant of the causes of love, it is none the less true that all sympathy, moral or physical, is based upon calculations made either by the mind, or by sentiment ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Nuremberg magistrate, here interposed indignantly. "A Groland, who, moreover, is blessed with a loyal, lovely wife, succumb to the sparkling eyes of a vagabond wanton! The Pegnitz would flow up the castle cliff first. I should think we might have less vulgar subjects to discuss." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 'way, Quiggens—you're of the common natur', Quiggens—a vulgar fraction, Quiggens; and you can't understand an indiwidooal who has a mind inside of his hat, and a whole soul packed away under his jacket. You'll never rise, a flutterin' and a ringin' like a bald-headed eagle—men like you have got no wings, and can only go about nibblin' ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... leave it and to think how very few eyes can ever feast themselves on its beauty. We came back again into gladness and sunshine, and to the vulgar necessity of eating, which the natives ministered to by presenting us with a substantial meal of stewed fowls and sweet potatoes at the nearest shanty. There must have been something intoxicating in the air, for we rode wildly and recklessly, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... here was a nouveau riche, ever heedful of the fact that the big room and all the appurtenances thereof were the fruits of toil and perseverance. There was a distinct suggestion of self-manufacture about Mrs. Harrington—distinct, that is to say, to the more subtle-minded. For she was not vulgar, neither did she boast. But the expression of her keen and somewhat worldly countenance betokened the intention of ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... noticed by Oviedo, a contemporary of Columbus, in his history of the Indies, published in 1535. He mentions it as a rumor circulating among the vulgar, without foundation ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... it should reach Valmy in its last extremity, foam-flecked and caked with sweat, would appeal to the King's sick suspicions. It was a petty trick, mean and contemptible, but had the King not played a still more mean and contemptible trick on him? Commines knew with whom he had to deal; it was the vulgar cunning his master had taught him, and any apparent absence of anxious haste would be a point lost in the game: so their spurs were red, and their beasts utterly blown, utterly weary from their last climb ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... illiterate and profligate persons of the kingdom, without choice of rank or mind, and with whom the subjects of conversation are only horses, drinking-matches, bawdy houses, and in terms the most vulgar. The young nobility, who begin by associating with him, soon leave him, disgusted with the insupportable profligacy of his society; and Mr. Fox, who has been supposed his favorite, and not over nice in the choice of company, would never keep his company habitually. In fact, he never associated with ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... place, if it had been a Latin servant he would be not a subject but a sovereign, in nobility, in virtue, and in beauty; in nobility, because the Latin is perpetual and incorruptible; the language of the vulgar is unstable and corruptible. Hence we see in the ancient writings of the Latin Comedies and Tragedies that they cannot change, being the same Latin that we now have; this happens not with our native tongue, which, being home-made, changes at pleasure. ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... she be fair of hue, For her to use this vulgar compliment: But pretty toys and jests, and saws and smiles, As far beyond ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... broth in the basin slowly round and round, and spreading a peculiar vulgar odour which at first filled the invalid with annoyance; but as it pervaded the place it somehow began to have a decided effect upon the boy's olfactory nerves and excited within him a strange yearning which drove away ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... ten Maniolai which Ptolemy (vii.), confusing with the Nicobars, places on the Eastern side of the Bay of Bengal; and thence derives the Heraklian stone (magnet) which attracts the iron of ships (See Serapion, De Magnete, fol. 6, Edit. of 1479, and Brown's Vulgar Errors, p. 74, 6th Edit.). Mandeville finds his cannibals in Lamaray (Sumatra) and Barthema in the "Isle of Gyava" (Java). Ibn Al-Wardi and Al-Kazwini notice them in the Isle Saksar, in the Sea of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... I have the 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 up ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... He was man of inferior capacity, ignorant, and coarse. As I was looked upon as a sort of "black sheep" in the flock, and was in the second mate's watch, that officer imagined he could, with impunity, make me a target for his vulgar jokes, and practised on me a line of conduct which he dared not practice on others. A day or two after we left Liverpool, he took occasion, when several of the crew were standing by, to make my rather quaint NAME the subject of some offensive remarks. My indignation was roused at such ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... discourse about the art of fiction can forget the absolute seriousness of his professional devotion; it was as though a shy celebrant were to turn and explain, with mystical intensity and a mystic's involution and reversal of all the values of vulgar speech, the ceremonial of some strange, high altar. His own power as a creative artist was not always commensurate with his intellectual endowment or with his desire after beauty, and his frank contempt ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... was already overstocked, insomuch that almost every street was furnished with one of these charitable receptacles, which, instead of diminishing the taxes for the maintenance of the poor, encouraged the vulgar to be idle and dissolute, by opening an asylum to them and their families, from the diseases of poverty and intemperance. For it remains to be proved, that the parish rates are decreased, the bills of mortality lessened, the people more numerous, or the streets less infested ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... concern. He would go back to San Francisco and work there, where he at least had friends who respected his station. Yet, he ought to have refused the girl's offer before she had repulsed him; his retreat now meant nothing, and might even tempt her, in her vulgar pique, to reveal her rebuff of him. He raised his eyes mechanically, and looked gloomily across the dark waste and distant bay to the opposite shore. But the fog had already hidden the glow of the city's lights, and, thickening around the horizon, seemed to be slowly hemming him in ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Curtis";—and, taking in all the details of the comfortable, vulgar little room, sat down, took a cigarette, and said it was a warm day for October; she said she hated heat, and he said he liked winter best.... Then he saw a bruise on her wrist and said: "Why, you gave yourself a dreadful knock, didn't you? Was it ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... comforting those they loved. Ah no! was it not rather a curse upon the house to which they came? The rooms were shut up, the houses abandoned, where they were supposed to appear. Those whom they had loved best feared and fled them. They were a vulgar wonder,—a thing that the poorest laughed at, yet feared. Poor, banished souls! it was because no one would listen to them that they had to linger and wait, and come and go. She shivered, and in spite of her longing and her repentance, a cold dread and horror ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... occupied by eager spectators. Over this vast assemblage, amid the impending thoughts which the incidents of the hour and the memory of the Past inspired, reigned a profound silence; no laugh or jest, such as bespeaks a holiday, no heartless curiosity, such as accompanies a mere public show, no vulgar excitement was evident; on many faces dwelt an expression of awe and pity,—on others an indignant frown,—on all painful and sympathetic expectancy. Every class was represented, from the swarthy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... moments, and of my parting advice to you, and never suffer yourself to be led away by such example. In the first place it is wrong—it is distinctly sinful to indulge in such language; and in the next place, to take much lower ground, it is vulgar, ungentlemanly, and altogether in the very worst possible taste. It is not even manly to do so, though many lads appear to think it so; there is nothing manly, or noble, or dignified in the utterance of words which inspire in the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... certainly could not have had the right to make him a General. Every movement he made and every movement made by any of his friends on the island was watched as jealously and as closely as if he had been some vulgar Jack Sheppard plotting with his pals for an escape through the windows or the cellars of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... heard the old lady Eastman say, that the next time she sees her minister, she is going to lecture him for getting that low-down, vulgar man in the pulpit. Why, his talk was awful. Mrs. Reamy and Mrs. Roberts said they would have both got up in church and walked out, only it would cause so much disturbance. Two girls came in to get a spool of thread. While I ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... these troubles is to keep our eyes on our object, instead of on our listener or ourselves; and for the second, to learn to rate the expressiveness of language more highly than its compeers. The opposite of this, the disposition to set correctness above expressiveness, produces that peculiarly vulgar diction, known as "school-ma'am English," in which for the sake of a dull accord with usage, all the picturesque, imaginative, and forceful employment of ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... a great general. But in Tso's Commentary no Sun Wu appears at all. It is true that Tso's Commentary need not contain absolutely everything that other histories contain. But Tso has not omitted to mention vulgar plebeians and hireling ruffians such as Ying K'ao-shu, [18] Ts'ao Kuei, [19], Chu Chih-wu and Chuan She-chu [20]. In the case of Sun Wu, whose fame and achievements were so brilliant, the omission is much more glaring. Again, details are given, in their ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... dear Curtade, my only hope below, In vain I love;—you colder, colder grow; While round no fair can boast so fine a face, And numbers wish they might supply thy place, Whilst thou with some gay page prefer'st a bet, Or game of dice with some low, vulgar set, To meeting me alone; and when just now To thee I sent, with rage thou knit'st thy brow, And Dorimene, with ev'ry curse abus'd Then played again, since better that amus'd, And left me here, as if not worth a thought, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... cutting voice, "that is a tone which I should not have believed you capable of taking. It is vulgar, my dear fellow, and uncalled for; and it is so unlike you that I am astonished. If you had been one of the ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... a beautiful old garden with some charming magnolias for neighbors: they rather overshadowed her, certainly, because they were so very great and grand; but then such shadow as that is preferable, as every one knows, to a mere vulgar enjoyment of common daylight, and then the beetles went most to the magnolia- blossoms, for being so great and grand of course they got very much preyed upon, and this was a vast gain for the rose that was near them. She herself leaned against the wall of an orange-house, in company ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... This day I first begun to go forth in my coate and sword, as the manner now among gentlemen is. To White Hall; where I staid to hear the trumpets and kettle drums, and then the other drums, which are much cried up, though I think it dull, vulgar musick. So to Mr. Fox's, unbidd; where I had a good dinner and special company. Among other discourse, I observed one story, how my Lord of Northwich, [George Lord Goring, created Earl of Norwich 1644; died 1682.] at a public ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... high-falutin' words 'Il respecta un seul homme: Napoleon'; and yet, as he wrote them, he must have remembered well enough that when he met Napoleon face to face his unabashed scrutiny had detected swiftly that the man was a play-actor, and a vulgar one at that. Such were the contradictions of his double nature, in which the elements, instead of being mixed, came together, as it were, in layers, like superimposed strata of ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... admitted. "I have painted rose-coloured pictures of an imaginary life, and publishers have bought them, and the public, I suppose, have read them. I have dressed up puppets of wood and stone, and set them moving like mechanical dolls—over-gilded, artificial, vulgar. And all the time the real thing knocks ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fanaticism subsided into hypocrisy, he carefully retained his folly as a cloak for his knavery. Of his success in deception, the present narrative exhibits abundant proofs. The number of his dupes was not confined to the vulgar and illiterate, but included individuals of real worth and learning, of hostile parties and sects, who courted his acquaintance and respected his predictions. His proceedings were deemed of sufficient importance to be twice made the subject of a parliamentary inquiry; ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... with careful ease, bowing a recognition here and there, and fearful lest an anxious-looking exploration in search of Deronda might be observed by her husband, and afterward rebuked as something "damnably vulgar." But all traveling, even that of a slow gradual glance round a room, brings a liability to undesired encounters, and amongst the eyes that met Gwendolen's, forcing her into a slight bow, were those of the "amateur too fond ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... slaves for ever bars them from a full share of the freeman's inheritance of equal rights, and equal consideration and respect. All hands are extended to thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues—the most vulgar, as well as the self-styled most refined—have learnt to turn the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach. How, in the name of all that is natural, probable, possible, should the spirit and energy ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... confessed that they 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 witnesses, foreboded ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... complaining that they do not sufficiently in their addresses stoop to mean capacities, he says—"Whatever may become of the higher orders of mankind, who are generally possessed of collateral motives to virtue, the vulgar should be particularly regarded, whose behaviour in civil life is totally hinged upon their hopes and fears. Those who constitute the basis of the great fabric of society should be particularly regarded; ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... never understand why. They could never be made to see that its most dangerous foes were the friends of its own household, who could not hold their tongues; that for their case all wisdom was epitomized in the vulgar caution "to lie low and keep dark;" that the exposure of the true character of slavery must needs be its destruction, and that nothing so exposed it as any attempt to defend it. Slavery was quite safe under the Constitution, as ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... thought, feeling, sympathy from others. The elementary stage of knowledge is to make self, and self alone, thy study and thy world. Thou hast decided thine own career; thou hast renounced love; thou hast rejected wealth, fame, and the vulgar pomps of power. What, then, are all mankind to thee? To perfect thy faculties, and concentrate thy emotions, is henceforth ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... permission to ascend to her room, saying that she was tired. On her way she passed Robert. He was standing in the door, the figure of vulgar comedy, with ruffled hair, reddened face and unpardonable confusion of attire—no trace there of the immaculate Robert Walmsley, the courted clubman and ornament of select circles. He was doing a conjuring trick with some household ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... and spread it out before him once more, quivering sensitively at the flippant and vulgar tone of the announcement. That "pretty maid" was just Lena to him, whom he had loved in secret, now haled before the tribunal of public opinion. His sensations could scarcely have been more keen, had he also been billed before the gaping crowd. The fact that he was ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... precedent in his enemies, no degree of youthful ardour in himself, are at all adequate to excuse these most blamable words. When, however, he was called upon to vindicate them, Lord Rawdon declared that many of his threats were meant only 'to act on the fears and prejudices of the vulgar,' and by no means to be carried ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... woman continued, unburdening herself, clearly, of the results of many days of thought, "look at those wonderful conversions in the slums! Look what this Salvation Army is doing! The Governor-General used to say they were vulgar and that it was all claptrap, but that never seemed to me quite fair. We must have left something undone, we and the Dissenters, Mr. Jerrolds, if this General B——h can reach people we have lost. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... pleased to find, when he went into the country, that even in remote villages his name was known. He was everywhere received as a sage, and some years passed before he discovered how much of this deference was a polite disguise for the vulgar curiosity that attends a sudden celebrity. Prosperity was a wholesome stimulus. He was "exalted in spirits," and became for a time (he tells us) "more of a talker than I was ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... 369; Peschel, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, concluding chapters; and for an admirable summary, Draper, Hist. Int. Devel. of Europe, pp. 451-453; also an interesting passage in Sir Thomas Brown's Vulgar and Common Errors, Book I, chap. vi; also a striking passage in Acosta, chap. ii. For general statement as to supplementary proof by measurement of degrees and by pendulum, see Somerville, Phys. Geog., chap. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... big and strong lad for my age, and my self-imposed tasks of long rowing trips and other athletic exercises, naturally made me powerful in the arms and chest. Of my brain power I shall say little, as my mind was ever bent on sporting topics when it should have been diving into English history or vulgar fractions. Some new device in fishing gear was always of more consequence to me than any inquiry as to the name of the executioner who gave Charles the I. "chops for breakfast," as we youngsters used to say, when we irreverently spoke of ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... the fact that they had acquaintances in common and could compare memories of the same places. The stout woman was a flattering, affected, fawning creature. She said: "My love" to everybody, talked in a piping voice, and played the child with the querulous languor of corpulent persons. She detested vulgar remarks and would blush and take alarm at trifles. She adored secrets, twisted everything into a confidential communication, invented stories and always whispered in your ear. Her life was passed in gossiping and groaning. She pitied others and ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... that we are to go to law never to revenge, but only to repayre, which I think a good distinction. So to White Hall; where I staid to hear the trumpets and kettle-drums, and then the other drums, which are much cried up, though I think it dull, vulgar musique. So to Mr. Fox's, unbid; where I had a good dinner and special company. Among other discourse, I observed one story, how my Lord of Northwich, at a public audience before the King of France, made the Duke of Anjou ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... broken by illness. But the chief effect of the sheltered life and advanced education to which he was subjected was to endow him with depth at the expense of breadth, and to deprive him of a possibly vulgar, but certainly healthy, contact with his kind, which, one must believe, would have checked a certain disposition in him to egotism, sentimentality, and dogmatic vehemence. "The bridle and blinkers were never ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... whose name has become synonymous with vice, a dissolute and fearless assassin of private character, of domestic comfort, and of social happiness; when he is known to be the bosom friend and supporter of the profligate and abandoned libertine, who, from the vulgar debauches of night, hastens again to the invasion of private property. Who, through the robbery of the public revenue, and the violation of private seals, hurries down the precipice ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Vulgar vernacular you'll please excuse, Camp-language is not that of a Committee. If folks conceive we muster to amuse Cheap-trippers, or ourselves, it is a pity. 'Tis not for Easter sport we toil—and pay, "Stone-broke to make a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various
... that struck me at that time was the difference between nudity and uniform—while bathing one could look at and study all these fine lads, and I would think of one, "Gee! there's an aristocrat. What a figure! What refinement!" and of another, "What a badly-bred, vulgar, common brute!" Later they would both come out of their bathing-boxes, and the "brute" would be a smartly dressed officer carrying himself with ease and distinction, and the "aristocrat" would be an untidy, uncouth "Tommy" shambling along. Truly on sight one should never ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... self in white arrayed, She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft waters murmuring by; Thus quietly thy summer goes,— Thy days ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various |
