"Vulgar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time to remind you of our little compact," said he. As she looked at him, he stood, smiling grossly, vulgar, sensual, mean. All the years of her debasement came to her memory with a new sting to her wounded pride, and ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... put up a wind-mill in my bedroom to-morrow morning, I could only take off my hat to them. When a man offers you five per cent. where you've only had four, he is instantly your lord and master. It doesn't signify how vulgar he is, or how insolent, or how exacting. Associations of the tenderest kind must all give way to trade. But the shooting which lies to the north and west of us is, I think, safe for the present. I suppose I must go and see what my father wants, or I shall be held to have neglected ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... immediately. For the most part, McTeague enjoyed the pleasure of these sittings with Trina with a certain strong calmness, blindly happy that she was there. This poor crude dentist of Polk Street, stupid, ignorant, vulgar, with his sham education and plebeian tastes, whose only relaxations were to eat, to drink steam beer, and to play upon his concertina, was living through his first romance, his first idyl. It was delightful. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... altogether undeserved, it must be allowed—of the Edinburgh upon Byron. "The poetry of this young lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit", and so on for two or three pages of rather vulgar and heartless merriment at the young lord's expense. [Footnote: Edinburgh Review, xi. 285. It is uncommonly hard to find any trace of poetic power, even of the imitative kind, in the Hours of Idleness. It is significant that ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... not even move from that one pleasant place during the entertainment, but have my supper brought to me and the two or three other girls who make up our set, for you know it is so disagreeable to crowd into the supper-room; it is a vulgar eagerness, that carries with it a low-born air of actual hunger, and it is so vulgar to be hungry; and our set is so well-born and so well-reared. But, O, my! my hair's all in a tangle; comes of trying to do it up in a ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... course the company wasn't short of ale, and wine, and spirits; and so long as there was a plentiful stock in the cellar, the squire didn't trouble himself to count bottles or barrels. He was not a man himself as drank to excess; he thought drunkenness a low, vulgar habit, and never encouraged it; but he spent his money freely, and those as lived in his family were never watched nor stinted. You may suppose, then, sir, as John Hollands had a fine time of it. He were cock of the walk in the servants' hall, and no mistake. Eh, to see ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... thoughts with which it inspired him; he took his friends there; he even took people whom he did not like. "Procul este, profani!" exclaimed a delighted aesthete on being introduced to it. But this was never to be the attitude of Rickie. He did not love the vulgar herd, but he knew that his own vulgarity would be greater if he forbade it ingress, and that it was not by preciosity that he would attain to the intimate spirit of the dell. Indeed, if he had agreed with the aesthete, he would possibly not have introduced him. If the dell was ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... alone. They were not the women to tease one another by flippant jests or allusions; and Mrs. Fred, of all others, had a dread of thrusting any vulgar face on this colorless, yet delicious, atmosphere. Love knew his own, and was sacredly ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... 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 be published ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... in this corner of the parish, we are a long way from church. In the village there, there is no place of worship except a little Methodist one. There isn't one of their—local preachers, I believe they call them—that don't preach a deal better than I could if I tried ever so much. It's vulgar enough sometimes, they tell me, but then they preach, and mean it. Now I might mean it, but I shouldn't preach;—for what is it to people at work all the week to have a man read a sermon to them? You might as well drive a nail by pushing ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... evidently possessed a very remarkable subtlety and pleasantry of understanding; that combination which alone produced true wit, or which, perhaps, would be the best definition of wit itself; for subtlety alone may excite uneasy sensations in the hearer, and pleasantry alone may often be vulgar. But the acuteness which detects the absurd of things, and the pleasantry which throws a good-humoured coloring over the acuteness, form all that delights us ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... house of Mango at the Pineries vie together in their desire to dominate over the neighborhood; and each votes the other a vulgar and purse-proud family. The fact is, both are City people. Bumpsher, in his mercantile capacity, is a wholesale stationer in Thames Street; and his wife was the daughter of an eminent bill-broking firm, not a thousand miles from ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... occasionally with success. Even youth, from whom sympathy might have been expected, appeared impelled, if anything happened to be at all handy, to take it up and throw it at him. My own social circle would, I knew, regard it as a vulgar accomplishment, and even Wakeham himself dared not perform it in the hearing of his own classmates. That any human being should have desired to acquire it seems incomprehensible. Yet for weeks in secret I had wrestled to produce the hideous sound. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... charm of diffidence. She was less finished in her manners than Eve, certainly; a circumstance, perhaps, that induced Sir George Templemore to fancy her a shade more simple, but she was never unfeminine or unladylike; and the term vulgar, in despite of all the capricious and arbitrary rules of fashion, under no circumstances, could ever be applied to Grace Van Cortlandt. In this respect, nature seemed to have aided her; for had not her ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... him who retails the secrets of his loves. The Sahara lays its impassable barrier about Antinea; that is why the most unreasonable requirements of this woman are, in reality, more modest and chaste than your marriage will be, with its vulgar public show, the bans, the invitations, the announcements telling an evil-minded and joking people that after such and such an hour, on such and such a day, you will have the right to violate your ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar: The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear 't that th' opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... Variations of Tempo, the ritardando, accelerando, and tempo rubato, are all legitimate aids demanded by Expression. But unless their use is determined by sound judgment and correct musicianly taste, the effect speedily becomes vulgar and monotonous. Knowledge, and a taste formed in good schools, must be the guide of the vocalist in the use ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... an outlet for revolutionary spirits. It was rather an attempt to get away from revolution, and to return to something of the feudal organisation. The settlement was to have a bishop, but he was to have nothing in common with the occupant of an ordinary "vulgar" colonial see. He was to be a scholarly and well-endowed prelate, with a small and compact diocese in which there should be no dissenters, but where an aristocratic gentry and a loyal peasantry should be ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... the 'refrain' I may say, is so vulgar," added Moriarty, returning to the charge. "The gentleman says, 'What would you do?' and the lady answers, 'That's what I'd do.' Do you ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... good many people would call it," the Duchess said. "And she does not even know that her tragedy would express itself in a mere vulgar colloquialism with a modern snigger in it. Presently, poor child, when she awakens a little more she will begin to go about looking like a little saint. Do you see that—as ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to associate with the poor, they never could betray him into companionship with the depraved. His relish for humour, and for the study of character, as we have before observed, brought him often into convivial company of a vulgar kind; but he discriminated between their vulgarity and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole store familiar features of life which form the staple of his most ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which need be mentioned has been very operative with the vulgar, for whom alone it could have been intended. It is said that England, however nearly allied, is still a foreign country; that her writers write for their own countrymen; that, so far as they are concerned, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... leave our key with the concierge or his wife, who live in a snug little apartment just inside the great gate, which opens into a well-paved court. We have determined not to engage a guide in Paris, because it is often annoying to have a coarse, vulgar mind disturbing you, when all you ask is silence and your own reflections. It is quite a mistake to suppose that you cannot get along without a valet de place—for in every hotel, and almost every large establishment, there are persons to be found who speak English. We paid our respects to ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... offered Ralph half a year's salary if he'd go at once. And Ralph went at once and wouldn't touch the salary. That made him come out top dog, and Horatio didn't like it. Not that he supposed he could score off Ralph with money. He isn't vulgar." ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... not to planetary influences but to a concatenation of natural causes. We choose our life that is free: but the choice once made, what awaits us is fixed and ordered. Good and evil are different from the vulgar opinion of them. Often those who seem to battle with adversity are to be accounted blessed; but the many, even in their prosperity, are miserable. It needs only to bear misfortune bravely, while the fool perishes ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... the masterpieces of the arts; yet some people cannot get rid of the uneasy consciousness that a subtle tyranny pervades the room and ties the tongue,—that philanthropy is impolite, that heroism is ungenteel, that truth, honor, freedom, humanity, strongly asserted, are marks of a vulgar mind; and many a person, daring enough to defend his opinions anywhere else, by speech or by the sword, quails in the parlor before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... a vulgar trick of wishing to touch everything. But the greatest caution is necessary, in beholding a statue or painting, not to draw too near; and it is thus with every other beautiful thing. Nature secretly writes, Hands off!—and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... apparent effect on him until he had buttoned his waistcoat and arranged his watch-chain. Then he glanced at a sheet of pink paper which lay on the mantelpiece. She snatched it at once; opened it; stared incredulously at it; and said, "Pink paper, and scalloped edges! How filthily vulgar! I thought she was not much of a Countess! Ahem! 'Music for the People. Parnassus Society. A concert will be given at the Town Hall, Wandsworth, on Tuesday, the 25th April, by the Countess of Carbury, assisted by the following ladies and gentlemen. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... the mere munition of war! mere feathers for the darts of Cupid! —that was how the once poetic man to himself expressed himself! He was laying in store of weapons, he said! For when a man will use things in which he does not believe, he cannot fail to be vulgar. But Lady Joan saw no vulgarity in the result—it was hid in the man himself. To her he seemed a profound lover of poetry, who knew much of which she had never even heard. Once he contrived to spend a whole ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... far from the Common. I rise betimes on these summer mornings, and, before I go to my work, shaking off the dust of my obscure street, I enter your sacred precincts, oh, F. F. B.'s! Bless you, it can do you no harm, for even your boudoirs do not look out at me; their eyes are shuttered to all such vulgar sights. It was impertinent, but this morning I pitied you (you!) that you could not see the wondrous beauty of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that the profession of atheism is ill-bred. De Foe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Johnson all attack infidelity. "Conform! Conform!" said in effect the most authoritative writers of the century. "Be sensible: go to church: pay your rates: don't be a vulgar deist—a fellow like Toland who is poor and has no social position. But, on the other hand, you need not be a fanatic or superstitious, or an enthusiast. Above all, pas ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... capricious power: I've known it hold Out through a fever caused by its own heat, But be much puzzled by a cough and cold, And find a quinsy very hard to treat; Against all noble maladies he's bold, But vulgar illnesses don't like to meet, Nor that a sneeze should interrupt his sigh, Nor ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... simplicity, would take such suggestions simply as jokes; and she was aware that she lacked the skill to bring the conversation round gradually to the point which she was bound to reach. She must make another dash, let it be ever so sudden. Her mode of doing so would be crude, ugly,—almost vulgar she feared; but she would attain her object and say what she had to say. When once she had warmed herself with the heat which argument would produce, then, she was pretty sure, she would find herself at least as strong as he. "I don't know that the thing ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... endeavour, victory, defeat or peacemaking, will, according to their dominant empathic suggestion, be lighthearted or languid, serious or futile, gentle or brutal; inexorable, forgiving, hopeful, despairing, plaintive or proud, vulgar or dignified; in fact patterns of visible lines will possess all the chief dynamic modes which determine the expressiveness of music. But on the other hand there will remain innumerable emphatic combinations whose poignant significance escapes verbal classification ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... he and I alone remain to complete the day's narration, I will tell my story first, and he shall have the grace he craved, and be the last to speak. After which prelude she thus began her story:—'Tis a proverb current among the vulgar that the deceived has the better of the deceiver; a proverb which, were it not exemplified by events, might hardly in any manner be justified. Wherefore, while adhering to our theme, I am minded at the same time dearest ladies to shew you that there is truth in this proverb; ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... course, had not seen this, but, though not yet nineteen, she was notorious. Had she not said to Mrs. Soames—who was always so beautifully dressed—that feathers were vulgar? Mrs. Soames had actually given up wearing feathers, so dreadfully downright was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... involve a large element of ownership and a small element of usefulness. They grade high or low somewhat in proportion as they serve the higher or the lower needs; so that the business of retailing the vulgar necessaries of life descends to the level of the handicrafts and factory labor. Manual labor, or even the work of directing mechanical processes, is of course on a precarious footing as regards respectability. A qualification ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... But if debarred by his limitations from a resounding or popular success, he will remain exceptionally dear to the heart of the recluse, who thinks that the scholar does well to cherish a grievance against the vulgar world beyond the cloister; and dearer still, perhaps, to a certain number of enthusiasts who began reading George Gissing as a college night-course; who closed Thyrza and Demos as dawn was breaking through the elms in some Oxford quadrangle, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... an occasional sigh, feeling that you have gone far, perhaps as far as you can go. I trust that solution will not come quickly, however, because I cannot regard it as a brilliant ending to your evolution. For you have kept yourself sweet and clean from fads, and mean pushing, and the vulgar machinery of society. You never forced your way or intrigued. You have talked and smiled and bewitched yourself straight to the point where you now are. You were eager and curious about pleasures, and the world has dealt liberally ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... I have, you horrid man, you are so vulgar. We were married ages ago. I didn't invite you of course, because I knew you would make yourself disagreeable—forbid the banns, or something, and scare away all the ladies and gentlemen, for you are a most awful fright, with your red hair and freckles, so I thought ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... though, as vulgar men, could not counterfeit Kaleb's writing and Jurand's seal. Who could ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... education a rhetorician, by profession an itinerant lecturer and essayist. At a certain stage of his life he became acquainted with the Cynic philosophy and for some time felt much attracted to it. From that he evidently acquired a sincere contempt of the vulgar superstition which flourished in his time, even in circles of which one might have expected something better. In writings which for the greater part belong to his later period, he pilloried individuals who traded (or seemed to trade) in the religious ferment of the time, as ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... of a cat of condition. Remember the distinguished family from which you have sprung, and that you have the honor to belong to the household of the princess—so, pray, let me hear no more of making acquaintances among the vulgar cats of the village; you will be a disgrace to ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... wife, an American man and wife, of the social grade—for there are social grades, despite all our democracy—where, it seems to me, a family has come to be esteemed almost a disgrace, as something vulgar and annoying. And it seems to me this is something unnatural, and all wrong. Whatever nature indicates is best. To do what nature indicates is to secure the greatest happiness. Trials may come, new sorrows and incumbrances be risked, but nature brings her recompense. I want you ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... said to resemble, according to circumstances, a lion or a fox; I believe that the fox-nature predominates, that the lion is supplementary. I simply give you my impressions, which I am perfectly willing to be induced to change. I am inclined to fancy that M. Larinski passed his first youth amid vulgar surroundings, that later he came into contact with good society, and being intelligent soon shook off the force of early influences; but there still remain some traces of these. While he was in my salon his eyes twice took an inventory of its contents, and that with a rapidity which ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... But, as Messer Betto had never been able to gain him over, he and his comrades supposed that 'twas because Guido, being addicted to speculation, was thereby estranged from men. And, for that he was somewhat inclined to the opinion of the Epicureans, the vulgar averred that these speculations of his had no other scope than to prove that God did not exist. Now one day it so befell that, Guido being come, as was not seldom his wont, from Or San Michele by the Corso degli Adimari as far as San Giovanni, around which were then the great tombs of marble ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... would have been snobbish. If, having come, she refused the "glad hand" to one of her father's shop girls whom Raygan chose to greet as an equal—that, too, would be snobbish. And to be snobbish was, in Raygan's language, to be "beastly vulgar." ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... Captain Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue has been long and universally acknowledged. But its circulation was confined almost exclusively to the lower orders of society: he was not aware, at the time of its compilation, that our young men of fashion would at no very distant period be as distinguished ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... 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
... stocks and speak a form of Italian corrupted by the infusion of Arabic words.[871] In 1071 when the Normans laid siege to Palermo, five languages were spoken on the island,—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic and vulgar Sicilian, evidence enough that it was the meeting ground of the nations of Europe, Asia and North Africa.[872] Polyglot Malta to-day tells the same story of successive conquests, the same shuttlecock history.[873] Almost every language of Europe is spoken here; ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... free and half servile, and which the peculiar constitution of the Roman provinces so frequently exhibited. The power of the praetor was a reed beneath the whirlwind; still, at his word the guards had drawn themselves along the lower benches, on which the upper classes sat separate from the vulgar. They made but a feeble barrier; the waves of the human sea halted for a moment, to enable Arbaces to count the exact moment of his doom! In despair, and in a terror which beat down even pride, he glanced his eye over ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... from the crowd of fools, save only in their fate, were those who amid the mists of error saw the light of Truth, and strove to tell men of her graces and perfections. The vulgar crowd heeded not the message, and despised the messengers. They could see no difference between the philosopher's robe and the fool's motley, the Saint's glory and Satan's hoof. But with eager eyes and beating hearts the toilers after Truth ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... proselyte to the culture it grows from. Talk about it as much as you like,—one's breeding shows itself nowhere more than in his religion. A man should be a gentleman in his hymns and prayers; the fondness for "scenes," among vulgar saints, contrasts so meanly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... and other places, that they are always made captains and principal officers in the army. Their clothing is vile and poor. They wear linen shirts, and the great personages have a kind of upper garment called Beden. The vulgar people are almost quite naked. They eat bollemus and raw flesh; or if held to the fire, it is so little done that the blood runs from it. In the whole land there are no cities or towns, so that they live in the field under tents and pavilions like the Arabs[283]. They pride themselves ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... have you observe women's minds and avoid letting them influence your own," he told the boy. "They live in a world of unrealities. They like even vulgar people in books, but shrink from the simple, earthy folk about them. That school teacher is so. Is she like me? Does she, while loving books, love also the ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... to suppress the Revolution, and war had been declared by the Girondist ministry, of which Dumouriez was war-minister. At this crisis, Danton, of the club of the Cordeliers, who found the Jacobins too respectable, became a power,—a coarse, vulgar man, but of indefatigable energy and activity, who wished to do away with all order and responsibility. He attacked the Gironde as not ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... deliberately, "that I won't stand for, and that's any vulgar misconception on your part of my friendship for you. Do ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... stranger two hours since; outran what another stranger had said to her, one night in a summer-house. She looked back over a year, and seemed to see herself as truly one empty within, a poor little thing; common in her whole outlook, vulgar in her soul.... Yes, vulgar. Let her hug the hateful word to her bosom. How else could she have been made to feel so again and again, by an obscure youth who had no power over anybody but that he had kept his own face turned ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to the goats in public. There are no problem plays, for there are no problems; everything is plain and easy. Intimate relations between people not married to one another are beyond discussion, and it is vulgar to present ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... to me only by his works, were of great advantage in the formation and establishment of my taste and critical opinions. In my defence of the lines running into each other, instead of closing at each couplet; and of natural language, neither bookish, nor vulgar, neither redolent of the lamp, nor of the kennel, such as I will remember thee; instead of the same thought tricked up in ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... himse'f a gent thinks of keepin' tabs on a fellow gent, no matter how freequent he signs up to Black Jack. On gala o'casions, sech as them noted, the bridle is plumb off the hoss, an' even though you drinks to your capac'ty an' some beyond, no one's that vulgar as to go makin' remarks. But that ain't Monte; he's different a heap. It looks like every day is Fo'th of Jooly with him, he's that inveterate in his reemorseless hankerin' ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... less in their walk; they go 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 links or ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... must, however, in considering and judging them, remember that many words and even phrases which at present seem rather ludicrous or undignified had, in the sixteenth century, significations which have now become obsolete, and which were then neither vulgar nor unpoetical. I also have been forced to take my selections from a copy of Sternhold and Hopkins printed in 1599, and bound up with a "Breeches Bible;" for I have access to no earlier edition. Sternhold and Hopkins themselves may not be ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... meetings. He had rings and scarf-pins and rattled gold in his trousers pockets. He might have been an insufferable young man for a poverty-stricken teacher of French to have as a fellow-lodger; but he was not. Like all those born to high estate, he made no vulgar parade of his wealth, and to Aristide he showed the most affable hospitality. A friendship had arisen between them, which the years had idealized rather than impaired. So when they met that morning in the vestibule of the Hotel du Soleil et de l'Ecosse their ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... gloated over his misfortune. Everybody believed that, and it was commonly understood that General Arnold believed it, too. But would he overcome his enemies by retrieving the past and put to shame their vulgar enthusiasm by rising to heights of newer and greater glory? Or would he yield to the more natural propensities of retaliation or despair? A man is no greater than the least of his virtues; but he who has acquired self-control has ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... I think these bar rooms are horrid places. I would walk squares out of my way to keep from passing them." "And I object to intemperance not simply because I think it is vulgar but because I know it is wicked; and Jeanette I have a young brother for whose welfare I am constantly trembling; but I am not afraid that he will take his first glass of wine in a fashionable saloon, or flashy gin palace, ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... proud a presence doth she bear. Then is she like herself, fit to be seen Of none but grave and consecrated eyes: Nor is it any blemish to her fame, That such lean, ignorant, and blasted wits, Such brainless gulls, should utter their stol'n wares With such applauses in our vulgar ears: Or that their slubber'd lines have current pass From the fat judgments of the multitude, But that this barren and infected age Should set no difference 'twixt these empty spirits And a true poet: than which reverend name ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... his presidency, Mr. Lincoln had been constantly subject to the threats of his enemies. His mail was infested with brutal and vulgar menace, and warnings of all sorts came to him from zealous or nervous friends. Most of these communications received no notice. In cases where there seemed a ground for inquiry, it was made, as carefully as possible, by the President's private secretary, or by ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... rise early, and systematize and oversee the work of her family, so as to have it done thoroughly, neatly, and in the early part of the day; she will find no necessity for any such apprehensions. It is because such work has generally been done by vulgar people, and in a vulgar way, that we have such associations; and when ladies manage such things, as ladies should, then such associations will be removed. There are pursuits, deemed very refined and ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... speakers. Had he still any marks of the ignoble world from which he sprang? Any defect of pronunciation, any native awkwardness of utterance? Impossible to judge himself infallibly, but he was conscious of no vulgar mannerism. Though it was so long since he left Whitelaw, the accent of certain of the Professors still remained with him as an example: when endeavouring to be graceful, he was wont to hear the voice of Dr Nares, or of Professor Barber who lectured ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... me, while I tell The pleasures of that cell, Oh, little maid! What though its couch be rude, Homely the only food Within its shade? No thought of care Can enter there, No vulgar swain intrude! ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... office with thankfulness and pleasure.[589] Here their success ended. Soon afterwards many of the English Moravians fell for a time into a most unsatisfactory condition, becoming largely tainted with Antinomianism, and with a sort of vulgar lusciousness of religious sentiment, which was exceedingly revolting to ordinary English feeling.[590] After the death of Zinzendorf in 1760, the Society recovered for the most part a healthier condition,[591] but did not regain any prospect ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... worship 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 of unworthiness, no need of a Savior. ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... sight of any of my flock; for nothing detracts more from the dignity of the apostolical character than rapid motions—such as running, or jumping, or an unordered style of apparel, without hatband or cassock. When out of the village street, I put (as the vulgar phrase expresses it) my best foot foremost, and enacted the part of a running serving-man in the track of my noble conductor; and finally I arrived, in such state as may be conceived, at the entrance-hall of the noble mansion. In the ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... coolly, at the end of her speech, "you talk too much. You rave. You're growing vulgar, I believe. Now let me tell you something." And he fixed her with a hard, quieting eye. "I have no apologies to make. Think what you please. I know why you say what you do. But here is the point. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... NOT! The Holy Land, invested by touts, and overrun by tourists, would neither appeal to my imagination nor my sentiments—and in its present state of vulgar abuse and unchristian sacrilege, it is better left unseen by those who wish to revere its associations, . . ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... mouldings of the arch; a practice utterly barbarous, inasmuch as it evidently tends to dislocate the entire arch, if any real weight were laid on the extremity of the keystone; and it is also a very characteristic example of the vulgar and painful mode of filling spandrils by naked figures in alto-relievo, leaning against the arch on each side, and appearing as if they were continually in danger of slipping off. Many of these figures have, however, some merit in themselves; and the whole building ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... sung seemed to him familiar and puzzled him, for he was not fully awake. Drifting through the stillness of the northern twilight, at an hour when even the beasts of the forests held their breath because of God's nearness and His solemnity, there reached his ears the vulgar strutting tones of a music-hall ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... invariably be found to be proper etiquette. To be at ease is a great step towards enjoying your own dinner, and making yourself agreeable to the company. There is reason for everything in polite usage; thus the reason why one does not blow a thing to cool it, is not only that it is an inelegant and vulgar action intrinsically, but because it may be offensive to others—cannot help being so, indeed; and it, moreover implies, haste, which, whether from greediness or a desire to get away, is equally objectionable. ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... went on, leaning her elbows on the table and supporting her chin with her hands while she looked straight at him, "that when you came in here and took a seat without being invited, you imagined you were impressing some one with your importance. But you were not; you were merely acting the part of a vulgar boor. Or perhaps you had a vague idea that you were going to do as ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... that 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
... 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
... indeed, but was considered by the early Church to refer to the secret teachings. It should be remembered that the words had not the same harshness of sound in the ancient days as they have now; for the words "dogs"—like "the vulgar," "the profane"—was applied by those within a certain circle to all who were outside its pale, whether by a society or association, or by a nation—as by the Jews to all Gentiles.[46] It was sometimes used to designate those who were outside the circle of Initiates, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... to adapt herself to her environment, that she might search its farthest nook and angle; what with ceaseless efforts to check her almost momentary impulse to cry out against the vulgar display of modernity and the vicious inequity of privilege which she saw on every hand; what with her purity of thought; her rare ideals and selfless motives; her boundless love for humanity; and her passionate desire to so live her "message" that all the world might see and light ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... sordid mind, Avoided all the lion kind; Fond of applause, he sought the feasts Of vulgar and ignoble beasts; With asses all his time he spent, Their club's perpetual president. He caught their manners, looks, and airs; An ass in everything but ears! If e'er his Highness meant a joke, They grinn'd applause before he spoke; But at each word what ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... in favor of the match, but entirely upon selfish principles. When I went to ask his permission to marry Malinda, his answer was in the affirmative with but one condition which I consider to be too vulgar to be written in this book. Our marriage took place one night during the Christmas holydays; at which time we had quite a festival given us. All appeared to be wide awake, and we had quite a jolly time at my wedding party. ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... Mazes.} To beginne therefore with that which is most antient and at this day of most vse amongst the vulgar though least respected with great ones, who for the most part are wholy giuen ouer to nouelties: you shall vnderstand that Knots and Mazes were the first that were receiued into admiration, which Knots or Mazes ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... Central road; he enters the Senate of the United States and becomes one of its leading figures. The instinctive flush of sympathy and pride with which Americans listen to such a story is far more deeply based than any vulgar admiration for money-making abilities. No one cares whether such a man is rich or poor. He has vindicated anew the possibilities of manhood under American conditions of opportunity; the miracle of our faith has in him come true ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... upon the latter as the "greatest literary genius in America." The reception given by the public to the "long, dirty, straggling tales" of the novelist disgusted him. "I ask nothing," he wrote in April, 1823, "of a people who will lavish their patronage on such a vulgar book as "The Pioneers." They and I are well quit. They neglect me, and I despise them." In a later letter he returned to this work. "It might do," he said, "to amuse the select society of a barber's shop or a porter-house. But to have the author step forward on such stilts and claim to ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... much (interposed Simonides) as if the sole pleasure left you to explain the vulgar ambition to wear a crown, must be that named after Aphrodite. For in this field it is your privilege to consort with whatever fairest fair your eyes may ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of his tail. "As if I would talk on such a subject! Our family always hated cats: nasty, low, vulgar things! Don't let me hear the ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... sate chattering like restless apes On vulgar hands,... Some made a cradle of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... universally believed that there is more truth in science than in poetry—a vulgar error refuted both by reason and common sense. Poetry, being the expression of the necessary with the Absolute, must, in consequence, be nearer truth than science, which has, for the most part, its starting point in contingent, variable, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... a crutch, a pretty good crutch; but so long as men are men they will put crutches second and—something else first. Yes, I know I'm a little bit vulgar, but everybody in ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... fully recognize your cleverness in raising yourself to the position you now occupy. But I would remind you that that position carries with it certain obligations. It is hardly dignified for a princess to engage herself in a vulgar love intrigue in ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... speaking of her household to a friend, who was less richly endowed with worldly goods than herself, she referred to these three functionaries as 'my parlourmaid,' for fear of appearing to be conscious of her own superiority in this respect. Now this woman, though kind-hearted, was distinctly vulgar." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... one of those houses of which there are thousands in Paris, ignoble, vulgar, narrow, yellowish in tone, with four storeys and three windows on each floor. The outer blinds of the first floor were closed. Where was she going? The young man fancied he heard the tinkle of a bell on the second floor. ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... Napoleon. "You don't know what an epicure is? That's a vulgar remark when you don't know no meaning ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... writing a diary. We both agreed that when we went to the high school we would write a diary every day. Dora keeps a diary too, but she gets furious if I look at it. I call Helene "Hella," and she calls me "Rita;" Helene and Grete are so vulgar. Dora has taken to calling herself "Thea," but I go on calling her "Dora." She says that little children (she means me and Hella) ought not to keep a diary. She says they will write such a lot of nonsense. No more ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... his airy laugh, 'it's a new improvement on the ladder of Jacob, whereby, as you have read, sire, men pass from the earth to heaven. We thought it not meet that your Majesty should go, in case, sire, you must go, by the common route. So we have made you a pretty private passage where the vulgar cannot stare at you or incommode your passage. That, sire, is the meaning of that pipe.' And he laughed and bowed, and prayed the King's leave to replenish the King's glass—for the King was at supper. And the ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... somehow made St. George think of tan-coloured greyhounds with very gentle eyes, consulted each other, not with the suspicion of the vulgar but with the caution ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... out with the crowd. The January day was done, but it was bewildering for all that to come out into real life. There was no romance for the moment on the stained street, and in the passing traffic. The gold braid of the hall commissionaire looked tawdry, and the pictures of ballet-girls but vulgar. It is the common experience, but each time one feels it there is a new surprise. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... a crown on her envelopes; she thinks it's vulgar; besides, putting it only on the paper saves expense. This envelope had a great sprawly gold crest, but she didn't seem to disapprove of it. She read on and on, then suddenly glanced up as if she would have said something ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... ye for mintin' (hinting) at sic a thing, Mr. Cocker! Me tak' to coaton! I wad as sune spin the hair frae Sawtan's hurdies. Short fushionless dirt, that canna grow straucht oot o' the halesome yird, like the bonnie lint-bells, but maun stick itsel' upo' a buss!—set it up! Coorse vulgar stuff, 'at naebody wad weir but loup-coonter lads that wad fain luik like gentlemen by means o' the collars and ruffles—an' a' comin' frae the auld loom! They may weel affoord se'enteen hunner linen to ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... appointed and dismissed them as he pleased, without considering inheritance, or succession. From that time forward they were called Curacas, which is the proper name of the chiefs of this land, and not Caciques, which is the term used by the vulgar among the Spaniards. That name of Cacique belongs to the islands of Santo Domingo and Cuba. From this place we will drop the name of Sinchi and only use ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... Documentos ineditos, vol. X, p. 99: '...pero no obstante esto a algunos amigos mios, y a otros, les ha parecido tener inconveniente por andar en lengua vulgar; y a mi, por la misma razon, me ha pesado que ande, y si lo pudiera estorbar, lo hubiera estorbado. Y para remedio dello, el ano pasado comence a ponello en latin, para siendo examinado y aprobado, imprimillo, dando ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... Rosily blushed the youth: he paused: but, lifting at length His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered the rest of his strength Into the utterance—"Pan spoke thus: 'For what thou hast done Count on a worthy reward! Henceforth be allowed thee release From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... to do a thing or leave it undone, solely in order to please men, we call "ambition," especially when we so eagerly endeavour to please the vulgar, that we do or omit certain things to our own or another's hurt: in other cases it is generally called "kindliness." Furthermore I give the name of "praise" to the "pleasure, with which we conceive the action of another, whereby he has endeavoured to please us"; but of "blame" ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... 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
... superior style of things, such as was to be found at Alibi House—and a more lovely and attractive object for his best affections in Miss Quirk—Dora Quirk—the lustre of whose charms and accomplishments there could be no doubt, he thought, would instantly efface the image of that poor, feeble, vulgar creature, Miss Tag-rag; for such old Quirk knew her to be, though he had, in fact, never for a moment set eyes upon her. Mr. Tag-rag looked rather blank at hearing of the grand party there was to be at Alibi House, and that Titmouse was to be introduced to the only daughter ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... raising his voice, 'when, Sir, as we read, and have no reason to doubt—incredible as it may appear to the vulgar—of our time—the brother of Vitellius prepared for him a feast, in which were served, of fish, two ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... these concerns are making. There is first of all the famous old English firm of Levinstein—Messrs. Levinstein of Manchester—to be considered. This "all-British" concern has not done badly out of the terrible situation through which we are slowly toiling. While mere vulgar English Tommies have been dying in the trenches or have returned incapacitated to England—to find that their country cannot afford them a pension—Levinsteins have been pocketing several thousands of that country's cash. Levinsteins' are dye-makers, and in 1914-15 they made ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... purposes, as reconciliation)—I come, and bring Mrs. Finch with me—don't speak, Mrs. Finch!—to offer my heartfelt wishes, my fervent prayers, on this the most eventful day in my daughter's life. No vulgar curiosity has turned my steps this way. No hint shall escape my lips, touching any misgivings which I may still feel as to this purely worldly interference with the ways of an inscrutable Providence. I am here as parent and peacemaker. My wife accompanies me—don't speak, Mrs. Finch!—as ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... lad, that he himself was a savage—a vulgar, ignorant, savage bigot. I think it is your highest social duty to honour your Emperor, to obey his laws, and to be ready to give your blood whenever he may require it of you for the sake of Japan. I think it is your duty to respect the gods of your fathers, the religion of your country—even ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Valmont is almost inexpressible. And, once more, there is nothing to console one but the dull and obvious moral that to adopt love-making as an "occupation" (vide text, p. 367) is only too likely to result in the [Greek: techne] becoming, in vulgar hands, very [Greek: ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... my uncle, "this Fashion is just brand-new vulgarity. It is merely the regal side of the medal. The Highly Fashionable and the Absolutely Vulgar are but two faces of the common coin of humanity, struck millions at a time. Spin the thing in the light of wealth, and I defy you, as it whizzes from the illumination of riches to the shadow of poverty, to distinguish ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... him, and in a haughty, yet wounded, tone said: "You are becoming very vulgar—just as you have been several times lately." And turning quickly she appealed to an individual ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... usual pompous fashion. "Do put down that absurd tray and let people help themselves. Listen to me for a moment. How do you like this place? I am not asking out of vulgar curiosity; I am anxious to know the impressions of a person of your age and antecedents. You might collect them for me, will you? Not now. One day when you are in the mood. Somewhat terrestrial and palpitating, is it not, after the cloistered ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... a tidy little feed, And 'Enery Irving's gallery, To see old 'Amlick do a bleed, And Ellen Terry on the die, Or Franky's ghostes at hi-spy, And parties carried on a shutter [14] Them vulgar Coupeaus is my eye! In fact, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... of the race, because what he publishes he knows, lives, and is. We open the mind largely to take the sense of such a gospel: it will not appear in details of perception. Plato and Goethe see the same sun, and seem to the vulgar to follow each other; they have more in common than any man can have in privacy; yet if you enter to the entire habit of each, you will justify the making of these two. They are like and unlike, as apples on one and another tree. The great in any time hold in common the growing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... bias to judgment is also the most vulgar—price. The reply of the man of wealth to the statement that a recent purchase was an inferior example of an artist's work; "I paid ten thousand for it. Of course it's all right," was considered final to the critic. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... With her sharp tongue she mercilessly cut the luxurious beauty, who had intelligence enough to feel the sarcasms keenly, but had no ability to retort. A disgraceful quarrel ensued, in which the most vulgar epithets and the grossest witticisms were bandied between them. The king himself at length found it necessary to interpose. He applied to Madame de Maintenon for counsel and aid. She had quietly attended to her duties, ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... certain Forwardness in young Fellows, that a Boy of Fourteen shall pretend to practise before he understands the Rule of Three. But what you tell me is a thing of that weight, it requires mature Deliberation, a Conflict with one's self of a whole Age's debating: Marriage, 'mongst the vulgar sort, is a Joke, a meer May-Game; with People of Rank, a serious ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... misfortune, it appeared to her indecent, a wanton insult to all her past suffering, that such a proposition should be made to her. And, in a flash of cruelly vivid perception, she knew how the boy would look on a horse, the grotesque, to the vulgar, wholly absurd spectacle he must, notwithstanding his beauty, necessarily present. For a moment the completeness of love failed before pride ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... you are right, and I am glad to see that you do justice to the count at last. The count has a mind above vulgar desires and earthly passions. He is a proud soul—he is a man by himself! You are right—he is worth us all, and we avow it ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... formalist heresy encourages men to taste poetry as they would a fine wine, which has indeed an aesthetic value, but a small one. And then the natural man, finding an empty form, hurls into it the matter of cheap pathos, rancid sentiment, vulgar humour, bare lust, ravenous vanity—everything which, in Schiller's phrase[3], the form should extirpate, but which no mere form can extirpate. And the other heresy—which is indeed rather a practise than a creed—encourages ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... exist together in the work of the artist. The search for this inner truth is the search for beauty. People whose vision does not penetrate beyond the narrow limits of the commonplace, and to whom a cabbage is but a vulgar vegetable, are surprised if they see a beautiful picture painted of one, and say that the artist has idealised it, meaning that he has consciously altered its appearance on some idealistic formula; whereas he ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... first Point, I say, that Chocolate is a name of the Indians; which in our vulgar Castilian, we may call a certaine Confection, in which (among the Ingredients) the principall Basis, and Foundation, is the Cacao; of whose Nature and Quality it is necessary first to treat: And therefore I say, according to the common received opinion, that it is cold, and dry, a praedominio; ...
— Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke • Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma
... boy alive. Hereat their princely Highnesses marvelled greatly, and put some more questions to her in Latin, which she answered without any prompting from me. Whereupon my gracious lord Duke Philippus said in the vulgar tongue, "When thou art grown up and art one day to be married, tell it to me, and thou shalt then have another ring from me, and whatsoever else pertains to a bride, for thou hast this day done me good service, seeing that this ring is a precious jewel to me, as I had it from my wife." Hereupon I ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... delightful and enviable road to distinction, one founded upon the blessings and benefits conferred on our fellow-creatures; they do not supply the same sources of temporary popularity as successes in the senate or at the bar, but the glory resulting from them is permanent and independent of vulgar taste or caprice. In looking back to the history of the last five reigns in England, we find Boyles, Cavendishes, and Howards, who rendered those great names more illustrious by their scientific honours; but we may ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... joining them excitedly. "I've heard the whole story. It's a good joke. Banks has been bragging about us all, and saying that these ladies had husbands who were great merchants, and, as these chaps consider that all trade is vulgar, you know, they believe we are not fit to associate with their women, don't you see? All, except one—Miss Keene. She's considered all right. She's to be introduced to the Commander's women, and to the sister ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... that is not the way to pronounce that word," says Miss Priscilla, anxiously; "such a vulgar pronounciation—'bu-ut.' How you drawled it! How ugly it sounds—'bu-ut!' Now put your lips together like mine, so, and say 'but,' shortly. Now begin your story again, and ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... putting a pretty ring of gold, with a humorous affectation of gallantry, on the fat finger of Mistress Deborah Debbitch. Hers was a soul of a kind often to be met with, both among the lower and higher vulgar, who, without being, on a broad scale, accessible to bribes or corruption, are nevertheless much attached to perquisites, and considerably biassed in their line of duty, though perhaps insensibly, by the love of petty observances, petty presents, and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... and you have too much sense, too much knowledge of the originals, to sniff prudishly and out of character at the pictures of them. The greatest men, those of the first and most leading taste, will not scruple adorning their private closets with nudities, though, in compliance with vulgar prejudices, they may not think them decent decorations of the staircase, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... was bending over Mrs. Perguson's chair. He was a fellow I had seen before and never liked, a vulgar-featured man, too fat for his years, which may have been some twenty-eight. He played the best hand of all of them, and, as my aunt declared, that was quite enough; for the rest she could keep any man in order. I held ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... of swans, viz. that they never sing but in their expiring moments, and that then they warble very melodiously, is likewise grounded merely on a vulgar error; and yet it is used, not only by the poets, but also by the orators, and even the philosophers. O mutis quoque piscibus donatura cycni, si libeat, sonum,(306) says Horace to Melpomene. Cicero compares the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... cannot pretend by Word of Mouth to argue with her. She laughed out at your ending a Paper in Greek, and said twas a Hint to Women of Literature, and very civil not to translate it to expose them to the Vulgar. You see how ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... though they may be for a time set aside. Abraham Lincoln with all his lofty mind, acquiesced in the vulgar belief when he took his son Robert to have the benefit of a "madstone," at a distance from where the boy was dog-bitten. He made the pact with the Divine Power as to the Emancipation Act, with a sincerity which robbed worldly wisdom of its sting, and he ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... red in her face now, she was so mad about it. "I'm glad you mentioned that fence—I couldn't; but all my people said it was the meanest thing ever done. It was vulgar! It was low! That's what my mommah says. We were always sorry for you, but we didn't know how—— But, Honey, I'm glad you planted the ivy on ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... Bishop had been the vilest criminal, he could not have been more grossly insulted. For two years he had to share his cell with a vulgar German coiner; and the coiner, in facetious pastime, often smote him on ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Vaguener committed a most cold-blooded murder—this in a prologue. Then, when we get to the real story, we find Jane tapping out popular fiction at an amazing pace, and her brother, John-Andrew, living on the proceeds thereof. Jane is noisy, vulgar, and successful in her own line, and gets on John-Andrew's nerves; and when he discovers that she has for once turned aside from tawdry fiction and written a play that is really good he decides that he can stand it and her no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... (realized in our days by Zamenhof) of a regular universal grammar: words to be formed with fixed roots and affixes, and to be in every case immediately decipherable from the dictionary alone. He rejects this scheme as fit "for vulgar minds," and proceeds to sketch the outline of all subsequent "philosophic" languages. Thus the great thinker anticipates ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... the terrible events of the next few weeks sufficiently showed. Men were in high place whose antecedents would have shamed the better kind of brigand. The deficiencies of the army were made worse by the diversion of public funds to private necessities; the looseness, the vulgar splendour, the base standards of judgment of the Imperial Court infected each branch of the public services of France, and worked perhaps not least on those who were in military command. But the catastrophe of 1870 seemed to those who witnessed it ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... him in the infernal regions. Piccolo and other wild instruments depict the fury of the demons, a parody on the Dies Irae follows, and even the tender love-theme is not spared, but is turned into the most vulgar of waltzes. ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... 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
... a very different character. She was a rich vulgar widow, with a sharp but narrow mind, who cared for the prosperity of Sanditon only so far as it might increase the value of her own property. ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... degrade him personally. I recollect his reply to Lincoln well. After addressing the Speaker, he turned to the Sangamon delegation, who all sat in the same portion of the house, and said: 'Gentlemen, have you no other champion than this coarse and vulgar fellow to bring into the lists against me? Do you suppose that I will condescend to break a lance with your low and obscure colleague?' We were all very much alarmed for fear there would be a personal conflict ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... even to rational science, the great majority of the common people, and even of those of higher culture, still hold many ideas which are polytheistic and anthropomorphic, and some which really belong to the debased stage of fetishism and vulgar superstition. ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... tear himself away from the sheer humor of the situation: "What the devil you and her going to talk about? Foxtrot steps? Is the camel walk vulgar? Frat dance? Next week's basketball game? Sa-a-ay! David—I'd give my chances of Heaven to be hidden ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen |
