"Vulgar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... communication with spirits of another world. For, be it observed, Smith possesses all the qualities and exercises all the tricks of the necromancers during the middle ages. His speech is ambiguous, solemn, and often incomprehensible—a great proof to the vulgar of ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... me to acquaint you that she declines answering your note, the vulgarity of which is beneath contempt; and although it may be the characteristic of the Sheridans to be vulgar, coarse, and witty, it is not that of a 'lady,' unless she happens to have been born in a garret and bred in a kitchen. Mary Stedman informs me that your ladyship does not keep either a cook or a housekeeper, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... City spires behind it now growing cold in the east, the other half seeing the spire of St. Martin's above the chimney-pots aloft in a sky of cream pink. Stalwart policemen urged along groups of slattern boys and girls; and after vulgar remonstrance these took the hint and disappeared down strange passages. Suddenly Esther came face to face with a woman whom she recognised ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... patroness. The intriguers of the Court no sooner saw the King without an avowed favourite than they sought to give him one who should further their own views and crush the Choiseul party, which had been sustained by Pompadour. The licentious Duc de Richelieu was the pander on this occasion. The low, vulgar Du Barry was by him introduced to the King, and Richelieu had the honour of enthroning a successor to Pompadour, and supplying Louis XV. with the last of his mistresses. Madame de Grammont, who had been the royal confidante during the interregnum, gave up to the rising star. The effect of a new power ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... is expected he should appear humble. Indeed, I know nothing so abject as the behaviour of a man canvassing for a seat in parliament — This mean prostration (to borough-electors, especially) has, I imagine, contributed in a great measure to raise that spirit of insolence among the vulgar; which, like the devil, will be found very difficult to lay. Be that as it may, I was in some confusion at the effrontery of Fitzowen; but I soon recollected myself, and told him, I had not yet determined for whom I should give ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the mind's eye will still see what he wrote clear before it, though twenty years may lie between it and the actual sight of the printed page. At his worst he is like an advertisement hoarding, crude, violent, vulgar, but impossible to escape. The essay on Croker's Boswell is one of those unfortunate moments. It is, unhappily, far better known than its author's article on Johnson written for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and its violence still takes the ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... dared!" he exclaimed, when his hat was knocked off by a well-aimed orange from a neighbouring orange-tree, and a vulgar voice squeaked: ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... contrast between the lovely entourage of this notorious place and the triviality and vulgar nature of its commerce. The one long, winding street may be described as a vast bazaar, more suited to Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims than to holders of railway tickets and contemporaries of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... opinion the conclusive, declaration—" The Protestant constitution in church and state must be maintained at all hazards, and by any means; the maintenance of it is a question of principle, and every concession or compromise is the sacrifice of principle to a low and vulgar expediency." This is easily said; but how was Ireland to be governed? How was the Protestant constitution in church and state to be maintained in that part of the empire? Again I can anticipate the reply—"By the overwhelming sense of the people of Great Britain; by the application, if necessary, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... certainly the chief scholar of his age in the new learning, and no less certainly one of its truest poets in the vulgar language, lived as tutor to Lorenzo's children in the palace of the Medici at Florence. Benozzo Gozzoli introduced his portrait, together with the portraits of his noble pupils, in a fresco of the Pisan Campo Santo. This prince of humanists recommended Michelangelo to treat in bas-relief ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... those of a cat; but, unless there is some pressing necessity for nimbleness, Jack regards it as the correct thing and a duty he owes to his own dignity to be deliberate of action. And, above all, whatever the circumstances, there must be no exhibition of vulgar curiosity, no eagerness, no enthusiasm, no astonishment while one of ocean's countless mysteries is unfolding itself before his eyes; he must exhibit an air of semi-contemptuous indifference, as who should say, "I am a seasoned hand—a shell-back, and none of your beach-combers. ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... 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
... 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 has probably only honestly given expression ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... flaw, so that there was a division in the town between their admirers and visiters; some maintaining, as I was told, that Mrs Beaufort, if she would keep herself sober, was not only a finer woman, but more of a lady, and a better actress, than Miss Scarborough, while others considered her as a vulgar regimental virago. ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... hills of Twin Islands; 'twas not a thing to which the doors of the workaday world might be opened, lest the ribaldry to which it come offend and wound it: 'twas a thing to conceal, far and deep, from the common gaze and comment, from the vulgar chances, the laugh and cynical exhaustion and bleared wit of the life we live. I loved Judith—her eyes and tawny hair and slender finger-tips, her whimsical way, her religious, loving soul. I loved her; and I would not have you think 'twas ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... he who was captain, or the sogmo, [Footnote: Sogmo, sagamore, a chief; the word corrupted into sachem.] said, "Peradventure thou wilt encamp with us this night, for it is ill for a gentleman to be alone, where he might encounter vulgar fellows." And Lox thanked him as if he were doing him a favor, and accepted the best of their dried meat, and took the highest place by their fire, and smoked the chief's choicest tomawe out of his best pipe, and all that with such vast ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... among Romans the religious instinct, though it might be hypnotised, could never be entirely destroyed. When it awoke from time to time in the minds of thinking men it was apt to express itself in Pythagorean tones. With the ignorant and vulgar it might find a baser expression in superstition pure and simple,—in the finding of portents, in astrology, in Dionysiac orgies; but with these Pythagoreanism must not be reckoned. These, as they appeared on the soil of Italy, were the bastard children of quasi-religious thought. But ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... his back to the frog that acted as precentor. The sucker, though very homely, and bloated with fat, kept on in the chorus, and pretended not to notice the waiter and her tray and cups. Indeed, Madame Sucker thought it quite vulgar in the tortoise to be so eager after the ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... with the subject, perhaps, else he might have added, that when occasions do offer to bestow on these gentlemen the preferment they have so hardly and patiently earned, they are too often neglected, in order to extend the circle of vulgar political patronage. He did not know that when a new regiment of dragoons was raised, one permanent in its character, and intended to be identified with the army in all future time, that, instead of giving its commissions to those who had fairly earned ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... alter my resolution, but she saw fit to tell Aunt Helen of my escapade at Mr. Barr's studio, who came to me in horror. Her predictions were about to be realized, she said. Notwithstanding all her warnings, my name was associated with a vulgar adventurer. "A handsome wretch as I remember him," she added, "but—even on your aunt's admission, who is none too nice in her estimate of people—unprincipled, and ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... To maintain that character with dignity and propriety, it is necessary she should entertain the most elevated ideas of disproportionate alliances, and disinterested love; and consider fortune, rank, and reputation, as mere chimerical distinctions and vulgar prejudices. ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... very means you have, must make ye so, Low breeding, vulgar birth, and impudence, These, these must make ye, what you're ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... even an allusion to this infirmity by others, when he could perceive that it was not offensively intended, was borne by him with the most perfect good humour. "I was once present," says the friend I have just mentioned, "in a large and mixed company, when a vulgar person asked him aloud—'Pray, my Lord, how is that foot of yours?'—'Thank you, sir,' answered Lord Byron, with the utmost ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... or mother wit, as it is called, about the Spaniards, which renders them intellectual and agreeable companions, whatever may be their condition in life, and however imperfect may have been their education: add to this they are never vulgar, nature has endowed them with an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... inclined to think that this cold blood rising upwards to the heart was the cause of the fainting that often occurs after blood-letting: fainting frequently supervenes even in robust subjects, and mostly at the moment of undoing the fillet, as the vulgar say, from the turning ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... Vulgar curiosity is always in search of its victims, and Jennings' boast that he had such a ladylike and beautiful woman in his possession brought numbers to the prison who begged of the jailer the privilege ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... able to guide him through the Burlington Arcade, were such as to fall upon a sensitive ear as a challenge to just imputations. Miss Gostrey was such a woman of fashion as could make without a symptom of vulgar blinking an appointment for the Burlington Arcade. Mere discriminations about a pair of gloves could thus at any rate represent—always for such sensitive ears as were in question—possibilities of something that Strether could make a mark against only as the peril of apparent wantonness. He ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... city's meannesses, its vulgar apings of Americanisms, its crude advertisements. On the other hand, the true native architecture asserts itself, and becomes more than ever attractive. The white purity seems to gather all this miniature perfection, these irregular roofs, these chalet balconies, these broad walls ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... more to tell,' she returned triumphantly. 'Giles silenced her so completely that she did not dare to open her lips again. Oh, she is properly frightened of Giles when he is in one of his moods. He told her that he disliked observations of this sort, that in his opinion they were both undignified and vulgar, especially when they related to a person whom he so much respected as Miss Garston. "And allow me to remark," he continued, looking at poor little me rather fiercely, as though I were in fault too, "that I shall consider it an honour if Miss Garston ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... statement he wrote the "Orfeo" at the request of the Cardinal of Mantua in the space of two days, "among continual disturbances, and in the vulgar tongue, that it might be the better comprehended by the spectators." It was his opinion that this creation would bring him more shame than honor. There are only 434 lines in the "Orfeo" and therefore ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... round. Sweet Infancy! whom all the world forsook, Thou hast put on again thy cherub look: Guilt, shrinking at the sight, in deep dismay Flies cowering, and resigns his wonted prey. But who is she, in garb of misery clad, Yet of less vulgar mien? A look so sad The mourning maniac wears, so wild, yet meek; A beam of joy now wanders o'er her cheek, 150 The pale eye visiting; it leaves it soon, As fade the dewy glances of the moon Upon some wandering cloud, while slow the ray Retires, and leaves more dark the heaven's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... afterwards expressed it, "things loosened up," and Mr. Watling was responsible for the loosening. Taking command of the Kyme dinner table appeared to me to be no mean achievement, but this is just what he did, without being vulgar or noisy or assertive. Suavitar in modo, forbiter in re. If, as I watched him there with a newborn pride and loyalty, I had paused to reconstruct the idea that the mention of his name would formerly ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Oh, yes!" The prone body became semi-upright, leaned on an elbow. "Yes! What I want to know is, why—why, in the name of all the jumping angels, everybody seems to think there's a lot of mystery connected with this brutal, vulgar, dastardly crime! It passes my comprehension, utterly!—Jarvis, stop clicking your finger-nails together!" This with a note of exaggerated pleading. "You know I'm a nervous wreck, a total loss physically, and yet you stand there in the corner and indulge yourself wickedly, wickedly, in that ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... high position can show such a want of taste and nice feeling in first wasting so much money, and then making a public show of what is a purely personal matter. It's beautiful and poetic to prepare new garments for the new home, but it's vulgar and prosaic to make a show of them to satisfy public curiosity. If I could afford it a hundred times over, I would not condescend to such folly. Would you, Peggy? Whom do you agree ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... snobbish. He irritated our friend by the tone of his allusions to their native country, and Newman was at a loss to understand why the United States were not good enough for Mr. Tristram. He had never been a very conscious patriot, but it vexed him to see them treated as little better than a vulgar smell in his friend's nostrils, and he finally broke out and swore that they were the greatest country in the world, that they could put all Europe into their breeches' pockets, and that an American who spoke ill of them ought to be carried home in irons and compelled to live in Boston. ...
— The American • Henry James
... by impassioned hearts alone Thy genuine charms are felt. The vulgar mind Sees but the shadow of a power unknown; Thy loftier beauties beam not to the blind And sensual throng, to grovelling hopes resigned: But they whom high and holy thoughts inspire Adore thee, in celestial ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... civic, is perpetually guilty of the greatest mischief in the matter. Nothing is done to retard or prevent marriage; everything to accelerate and promote it. Marriage is universally treated as a virtue which of itself consecrates the lives of the mostly vulgar and entirely selfish young creatures who enter into it. The blind and witless passion in which it oftenest originates, at least with us, is flattered out of all semblance to its sister emotions, and revered as if it were a celestial inspiration, a spiritual impulse. But ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... personal beauty of Helen, when, twenty years subsequently to the departure of the expedition to Troy, the Ithacan prince found her reigning again at Sparta. But of the influence which Diana possessed over Henry there could be no doubt. By the vulgar it was attributed to the use of charms and love-potions. The infatuation of the monarch knew no bounds. He loaded her with gifts; he entrusted her with the crown jewels;[525] he conferred upon her ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... in the most startling suppositions, and just those which are most commonly entertained by vulgar minds,—as, for instance, the supposition of some one, himself or some unfortunate hearer, dropping down dead in his chamber. And, in general, he makes abundant use of that apprehension of death, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ten million a-year, as Epictetus saw full well, cannot mend that vulgar discontent with circumstances, which he had felt—and who with more right?—and conquered, and despised. For that is the discontent of children, wanting always more holidays and more sweets. But I wish ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... to thinking ... slowly, listlessly, wrathfully. He thought of the vanity, the uselessness, the vulgar falsity of all things human. All the stages of man's life passed in order before his mental gaze (he had himself lately reached his fifty-second year), and not one found grace in his eyes. Everywhere the same ever-lasting pouring of ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... accounted for, that the Malays have so bad a character with the public, and yet that the few who have had opportunities of knowing them well speak of them as a simple and not unamiable people? With the vulgar, the idea of a Malay—and by the Malay they mean the entire Polynesian race, with the exception of the Javanese—is that of a treacherous, blood-thirsty villain; and I believe the reason to be, that ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... education. It has been that of the lowest, the most 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 ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... are liable to be welcomed—or unwelcomed. She knows that the edge of a broken teacup may be sharper, very possibly, than that of a philosopher's jackknife. A mind a little off its balance, one which has a slightly squinting brain as its organ; will often prove fertile in suggestions. Vulgar, cynical, contemptuous listeners fly at all its weaknesses, and please themselves with making light of its often futile ingenuities, when a wiser audience would gladly accept a hint which perhaps could ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in the city, and came hither alone. He and the young Lord Rochester, who is the most audacious infidel this town can show, have been bidding defiance to the pestilence, deeming their nobility safe from a sickness which has for the most part chosen its victims among the vulgar." ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Lord he loved has ministered comfort. To how many tempted souls, and souls that have yielded to temptation, and souls that, having yielded, are beginning to grope their way back again out of its vulgar delights and surfeiting sweetnesses, and find that there is a desert to be traversed before they can again reach the place where they stood before, has that story ministered hope, as it will minister to the very end! The bone that is broken ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... few superstitions: her spiritually informed intelligence rose superior to vulgar signs and dreams, and saw through the little warnings and wonders of darker and less pure minds with a science of its own, which she called Gospel light. Still, there was here a sign and there a legend that she clung to for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... about as vulgar as blue ruin and old tom at home; but sherry cobbler is an affair of consideration—only never pound your ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... more was heard of 'Marilda' except the wishes and wonderings of the children. Alda decided that she was one of the heartless fine ladies one heard of in books—and no wonder, when her father was in trade, and she looked so vulgar; while Wilmet contended against her finery, and Cherry transferred the heartlessness to her cruel father and mother, and Robina never ceased to watch for her from the window, even when Felix and Edgar for very weariness had prohibited the subject from being ever mentioned, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... necessary provisions for human life, they are contented to do it for rings and bracelets. The great dealers in this world may be divided into the ambitious, the covetous, and the voluptuous; and that all these men sell themselves to be slaves— though to the vulgar it may seem a Stoical paradox—will appear to the wise so plain and obvious that they will scarce think it deserves the labour of argumentation. Let us first consider the ambitious; and those, both in their ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... really knows of him. In the drama he inclines to the "unities;" and of the English Theatre "Sheridan's School for Scandal," and Otway's "Venice Preserved," or Rowe's "Fair Penitent," are what he best likes in his heart. John Kemble is his favourite actor—Kean he thinks somewhat vulgar. In prose he thinks Dr. Johnson the greatest man that ever existed, and next to him he places Addison and Burke. His historian is Hume; and for morals and metaphysics he goes to Paley and Dr. Reid, or Dugald Stewart, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... once more into the calm of their accustomed atmosphere and routine. That he should suddenly reappear upon their dignified horizon as a probable melodramatic criminal was a fault of taste and a lack of consideration beyond expression. To be dragged-into vulgar detective work, to be referred to in news-papers in a connection which would lead to confusing the firm with the representatives of such branches of the profession as dealt with persons who had committed acts for which in vulgar parlance they might ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... shoulders impatiently. "Mon Dieu!" she said. "My servants have watched, my lord, already. The despatches would have been signed and Louis's army on the march against the Dutch but for this vulgar player-girl, whom I have never seen. The ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... houses, and at the sides of every dead wall; for which the disaffected party have assigned a very false and malicious cause. They would have it, that these heaps were laid there privately by British fundaments, to make the world believe, that our Irish vulgar do daily eat and drink; and, consequently, that the clamour of poverty among us, must be false, proceeding only from Jacobites and Papists. They would confirm this, by pretending to observe, that a British anus being more narrowly perforated ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... for a cab, and the pair of friends drove to Vernou's house on the second floor up an alley in the Rue Mandar. To Lucien's great astonishment, the harsh, fastidious, and severe critic's surroundings were vulgar to the last degree. A marbled paper, cheap and shabby, with a meaningless pattern repeated at regular intervals, covered the walls, and a series of aqua tints in gilt frames decorated the apartment, where Vernou sat at table with a woman so ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... said indulgently, "to screen my image from the vulgar sight; and if you had no statelier shrine wherein to instal it, the fault lies not with you. You ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... asserted our willingness to do anything, and that to get a free passage as idlers was our last wish and intention. To this, amid appreciating chuckles from the crew, the captain replied, that, so sneaks and stowaways always said; a taunt which was too vulgar as repartee to annoy me, though I saw Alister's thin hands clenching at his sides. I don't know if the captain did, but he called out—"Here! you lanky ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... weakness—for she was indeed a most estimable woman— was a tendency to allow rank and position to weigh too much in her esteem. She had also a sensitive abhorrence of everything "low and vulgar," which would have been, of course, a very proper feeling had she not fallen into the mistake of considering humble birth lowness, and want of polish vulgarity—a mistake which is often (sometimes even wilfully) made by persons who consider themselves ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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
... I was at her feet—sitting on the plank next lower than that which held her lovely form, with the dainty billows of lace and organdie rippling around me, and her little toes pressed into the small of my back. Was this a common, vulgar circus—with a menagerie attachment? To me it was the seventh heaven. The clown leaped lightly into the ring, cracked his whip, and began his witticisms. I heard him as one hears the murmur of the sea in his dreams. The ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... prepossesses them in his Favour. A handsome Motto has the same Effect. Besides that, it always gives a Supernumerary Beauty to a Paper, and is sometimes in a manner necessary when the Writer is engaged in what may appear a Paradox to vulgar Minds, as it shews that he is supported by good Authorities, and is not singular in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... assassins, known as the Mountain, and that known as the Girondists, now began destroying each other; every patriotic action of the Girondists was set forth as having been instigated by love of vulgar applause. After some days, the Jacobin Club petitioned for freer trials, ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... Cathcart rose, and followed her niece—out of the room, but no farther, I will venture to say. Fierce as the aunt was, there had been that in the niece's eyes, as she went, which I do not believe the vulgar courage of the aunt could ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... when they should behold one, elevated to the degree of a king, leveled within the space of a day to the condition of a private citizen. This form of government is termed, by the Romans, interregnum. Nor yet could they, by this plausible and modest way of rule, escape suspicion and clamor of the vulgar, as though they were changing the form of government to an oligarchy, and designing to keep the supreme power in a sort of wardship under themselves, without ever proceeding to choose a king. Both parties came at length ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... has surely felt, some time or other in life, the insufferable annoyance of having his thoughts and reflections interfered with, and broken in upon by the vulgar impertinence and egotism of some "bore," who, mistaking your abstraction for attention and your despair for delight, inflicts upon you his whole life and adventures, when your own immediate destinies are perhaps vacillating in ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... stout person, dressed rather extravagantly, but in a style of studied carelessness which he evidently regarded as stylish. The expression of his face, it must be owned, was rather vulgar, and exhibited a compound of cunning and good-nature tempered by indifference. But Gustave, his nephew, belonged to an entirely different class of persons. His tall figure was graceful and easy, his countenance frank and manly, and his whole demeanor denoted refined manners and high cultivation. ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... Democracy coincided seemingly with the spread of ugliness: dull towns, mean streets, paper-strewn parks, corrugated iron roofs, Christian chapels that would be an insult to a heathen idol; hideous factories (Why need they be hideous!); chimney- pot hats, baggy trousers, vulgar advertisements, stupid fashions for women that spoilt every line of their figure: dinginess, drabness, monotony everywhere. It was ugliness that was strangling the soul of the people; stealing from them all dignity, all self-respect, all honour for one another; ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... might have thought rather idiotic. The way in which he made a sort of happiness for himself out of his feeling for Dorothea was an example of this. It may seem strange, but it is the fact, that the ordinary vulgar vision of which Mr. Casaubon suspected him—namely, that Dorothea might become a widow, and that the interest he had established in her mind might turn into acceptance of him as a husband—had no tempting, arresting power over him; he did not live in the scenery of such an event, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... 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, ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... noticeable about her were her exquisite neck and arms, and the air of perfect breeding with which she moved, talking and laughing, through the distinguished, fashionable throng. Beside her strutted, nervously aggressive, a vulgar, fat, pimply, shapeless young woman, attracting universal attention by the incongruity of her presence in the room. On being greeted by the graceful lady of the neck and arms, the conviction forced itself ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... requires an investigation of divorce causes, is highly productive of evil. Many of the divorce cases in New York are simply food for a set of morbidly curious scandal-mongers. Even the Mohammedans consider our practice in this respect extremely vulgar: there is no more reason why a court should know why a husband and wife wish to separate than ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... or with the purpose of shocking them. These passages, they can easily avoid. This book, however, was written that it might be read: not only read by the Solon, Socrates, Plato, or Seneca of the laity or the profession, but even by the billy-goated dispositioned, vulgar plebeian, who could no more be made to read cold, scientific, ungarnished facts than you can make an unwilling horse drink at the watering-trough. Human weakness and perversity is silly, but it is sillier to ignore that it exists. So, for the sake of ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... into a clearing, he encountered a hare. The hare, which was suffering from extreme panic, owing to a terrifying noise behind it,—the blast of the newest and most vulgar motor horn, to be precise,—was bolting right across the clearing. After the manner of hares where objects directly in front of them are concerned, the fugitive entirely failed to perceive Excalibur and, indeed, ran ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... their humble toil, Their vulgar crimes and villainy obscure; Nor rich rogues hear with a disdainful smile, The low and petty ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... 395; St. Martin's Histoire de la Geographie, p. 369; Peschel, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, concluding chapters; and for an admirable summary, Draper, Hist. Int. Devel. of Europe, pp. 451-453; also an interesting passage in Sir Thomas Brown's Vulgar and Common Errors, Book I, chap. vi; also a striking passage in Acosta, chap. ii. For general statement as to supplementary proof by measurement of degrees and by pendulum, see Somerville, Phys. Geog., chap. i, par. 6, note; also Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. ii, p. 736, and vol. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... be remarked, that, in the manner of the true gentleman, we are always aware of a difference from the bearing of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in what such difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied in its full force to the outward demeanor of my acquaintance, I felt it, on that eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his moral temperament and character. Nor can ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... against all these vulgar terms of abuse, culled from the hustings. Call him a Pussyfoot as well; you cannot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... public gaze two or three more or less scandalous episodes of private life, and using them as the foundation of his romance. The fictitious name of Vaudrey has been held to cloak that of such and such a Minister of State. Those, however, who search for vulgar gossip in this book, or who look for private scandal are far astray. They are quite mistaken as regards the tendency and moral of Monsieur Claretie's book. The Vaudrey of the romance is no minister in particular, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... When the vulgar speak of their different motives, they are satisfied with ordinary names, which refer to known and obvious distinctions. Of this kind are the terms benevolence and selfishness, by the first of which they express their friendly affections, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... attached to the vulgar and more common modes in which the Scottish superstition displays itself, the author was induced to have recourse to the beautiful, though almost forgotten, theory of astral spirits, or creatures of the elements, surpassing human beings in knowledge and power, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... this summer, and I believe upon recollection nothing under ten-pence. Bread has sunk and is likely to sink more, which we hope may make meat sink too. But I have no occasion to think of the price of bread or of meat where I am now; let me shake off vulgar cares and conform to the happy indifference of East Kent wealth. I wonder whether you and the King of Sweden knew that I was come to Godmersham with my brother. Yes, I suppose you have received due notice of it by some means or other. I have not been here these four years, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... and Nye, whom the Parliament itself had sent into the Assembly. The demand for Toleration which these men addressed to the Parliament in their famous Apologetical Narration of January 1643-4 gave sudden dignity and precision to what till then had been vulgar and vague. It put the question in this form, "What amount of Nonconformity is to be allowed in the new Presbyterian Church which is to be the National Church of England?"; and it distinctly intimated that ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... any in any land. Ignorant of the banal word "aristocracy," here, uncounting wealth, unsearching of self and uncritical of others, simple and fine, folk live as the best ambition of America might make one long to live, so far above the vulgar northern scramble for money and display as might make angels weep for the ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... just as he had previously done on Wilhelm, giving them in fact turn and turn about, had the bad taste to make jokes continually about the book, at one time calling it the Holy Grail, another time comparing it to the diamond country of Sindbad's tale, and in a hundred ways making vulgar and sceptical jokes. On one of his outbreaks of dissipation he had disappeared far longer than usual, and on his return he looked more miserable than ever. Dorfling made some kindly inquiries, and learned that he was recovering from an attack of inflammation of the lungs, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... these words reached the King, he sent for that courier and said to him, "O thou that seeketh thine own ruin, art thou not the bearer of a letter from King to King, between whom are secrets, and how cometh it that thou goest forth among the folk and publishest Kings' secrets to the vulgar? Verily, thou meritest retribution from us, but this we will forbare, for the sake of returning an answer by thee to this fool of a King of thine; and it befitteth not that any return to him reply but the least of the boys of the school." Then he sent for the Wazir's ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the Members of that House believe that Oliver Cromwell, who had stood so long outside, had condescended to alight from his pedestal to shout vulgar abuse and brawling words at King Richard and King Charles, such as "Ha! ha!" and "Ho!"? He trusted not, he believed not; but if, indeed, such a thing could be possible, he trusted that Oliver Cromwell, if he could by special Providence be now actually alive, would verily ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... been named by a Boston experimental florist after Mrs. Lawson, that made Mr. Lawson's name known all over the world. Thirty thousand dollars for a pink! The news was spread broadcast, and printed in the newspapers of all countries as an illustration of the vulgar extravagance and ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... and Loire at the Convention, sat next to Duchatel. His vulgar physiognomy, the stoop of his shoulders, his large head and disordered attire contrasted with the beauty and stature of Duchatel Learned, confused, fanatic, declamatory, impetuous alike in attack or resistance, he had sided with the Gironde to combat ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... unchanging mask. Avdey Ivanovitch had at first forced himself to despise people, then he began to notice that it was not a difficult matter to intimidate them, and he began to despise them in reality. Lutchkov enjoyed cutting short by his very approach all but the most vulgar conversation. 'I know nothing, and have learned nothing, and I have no talents,' he said to himself; 'and so you too shall know nothing and not show off your talents before me....' Kister, perhaps, had made Lutchkov abandon the part he had taken up—just ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of the most ordinary kind. But Flaubert finds the romantic material which he loved, the materials of beauty, in precisely that temperament which he studies so patiently and so cruelly. Madame Bovary is a little woman, half vulgar and half hysterical, incapable of a fine passion; but her trivial desires, her futile aspirations after second-rate pleasures and second-hand ideals, give to Flaubert all that he wants: the opportunity to create beauty out of reality. What is common in the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Norman cavalier can not brook the vulgar familiarity of the Saxon Yankee, while the latter is continually devising some plan to bring down his aristocratic neighbor to his own detested level. Thus was the contest waged in the old United States. So long as Dickinson dough-faces were to be bought, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... this business was carried on and these claims for rebates submitted month after month and checks in payment of them drawn month after month. Such a violation of the law, in my opinion, in its essential nature, is a very much more heinous act than the ordinary common, vulgar crimes which come before criminal courts constantly for punishment and which arise from sudden passion or temptation. This crime in this case was committed by men of education and of large business experience, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a little coldly. It was very chilly with the window open, and there was something in all that enthusiasm that was almost a little vulgar. Of course, it was natural, after being away so long ... but still.... Also his father's clothes were really very old—the back of the coat ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... morning that succeeded their second night on the raft, Robin Wright awoke with a very commonplace, indeed a vulgar, snore; we might almost call it a snort. Such as it was, however, it proved to be a most important link in the chain of events which it ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... immense engines for the formation of public opinion which were at the disposal of the opposing forces were directed against me in the form of vulgar abuse. And that attack was very cleverly directed. It made no mention of my refusal to buy a certain mill for the combine at an excessive cost to the shareholding public. On the contrary, those who had failed to induce me to break faith with the investing public appealed ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... in his composition. The quarrels and recriminations of the three sectional organisations—the National Federation of the Dillonites, the National League of the Parnellites, and the People's Rights Association of the Healyites—continued unabated. But beyond the capacity for vulgar abuse they possessed none other. Parliamentarianism was dying on its legs and constitutionalism appeared to have received its death-blow. The country had lost all respect for its "Members," and young and old were sick unto death of a movement which offered no immediate ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... now the only site that can be recognised as eligible. No cottage must be seen, unless the cottage orne of the gardener. The village, if it cannot be abolished, must be got out of sight. The sound of the church bells is not desirable, and the road on which the profane vulgar travel by their own right must be at a distance. When some old Dale of Allington built his house, he thought differently. There stood the church and there the village, and, pleased with such vicinity, he sat himself down close to his God ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... this one complete Truth got into this poor cobbler's brain,—in among its vulgar facts of North and South, and patched shoes, and to-morrow's turkey,—a great poet-insight looked out of his eyes for the minute. Saint John looked thus as he wrote that primitive natal word, "God is love." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... universal suffrage. A favourite practice with the parties to these transactions was to assemble by torch-light in the open air—a practice which gave a mystery to the meetings well calculated to strike the imagination of the vulgar, and which gave those whose employment did not admit of their being present in the daytime, an opportunity of attending them. The speeches delivered at these meetings have been well characterized as "furious nonsense;" but at the same time they were calculated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of elegance. The polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides, and where this poet seems to have gathered his comick dialogue. He is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any other authour equally remote, and ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... elaborately painted and gilt. Mention, however, is made of pulpits at a much earlier period; for in the year 1187 one was set up in the abbey church, Bury St. Edmund's, from which, we are told, the abbot was accustomed to preach to the people in the vulgar tongue and provincial dialect[164-*]. The most ancient pulpit, perhaps, existing in this country, is that in the refectory of the abbey (now in ruins) of Beaulieu, Hampshire: it is of stone, and partly projects from the wall, and is ornamented with ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... family Lise alone found refuge, distraction, and excitement in the vulgar modern world by which they were surrounded, and of whose heedlessness and remorselessness they were the victims. Lise went out into it, became a part of it, returning only to sleep and eat,—a tendency Hannah found unaccountable, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... powers that raise the soul to flame, Catch every nerve, and vibrate 'through the frame. 220 Their level life is but a smould'ring fire, Unquenched by want, unfanned by strong desire; Unfit for raptures, or, if raptures cheer On some high festival of once a year, In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire, 225 Till, buried in debauch, ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... A vulgar man often scratches his head when perplexed in mind; and I believe that he acts thus from habit, as if he experienced a slightly uncomfortable bodily sensation, namely, the itching of his head, to which he is particularly liable, and which he thus relieves. ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... but when at the point of fervor pouring forth his soul in a fiery torrent of oratory, whose only restraint was the inability of the human voice to express all that the heart contained. In style impassioned, he yet often chose language bordering on the familiar, but was not vulgar. He is an instance of the fallacy of the saying that the preacher must stoop to his auditory if he would be popular. Father Bernard was ever true to himself, never appeared less than an educated priest and grave religious, and yet he was a most popular preacher. The great ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... of his alleged republicanism he was still a sort of believer in the principle of birth. It was not, in his view, a rational principle, but it was a natural and beneficial delusion. In the light of reason the vulgar esteem for rank and fortune above wisdom and virtue was utterly indefensible, but it had a certain advantage as a practical aid to good government. The maintenance of social order required the establishment of popular deference to some species of superiority, and the superiorities of birth ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... there'll be no tears shed on this occasion!" said Isabel Mainwaring; "unless," she added, with a glance of scorn towards Miss Carleton's escort, "Mr. Whitney should contribute a few. I detest such vulgar ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday. 'T is the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises. 'T is the vulgar great who come dizened with gold and jewels. Real kings hide away their crowns in their wardrobes, and affect a plain and poor exterior. In the Norse legend of our ancestors, Odin dwells in a fisher's hut, and patches a boat. In the Hindoo legends, Hari dwells a peasant ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... looking-glass, and gazed on herself with searching glances. "Yes," she said, "I am really ugly. My mouth is too large, my lips too full, my face is angular and by no means prepossessing, my nose is vulgar, my forehead too low and too wide, these bushy eyebrows become rather a grenadier than a young lady, and these large black eyes look like a couple of sentinels, which, with sharp glances, have to watch the rabble of nose, mouth, ear, and cheek, lest ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... gentleman. Sheppard, to be sure, had a sense of finery, but he was so unused to grandeur that vulgarity always spoiled his effects. When he hied him from the pawnshop, laden with booty, he must e'en cram what he could not wear into his pockets; and doubtless his vulgar lack of reticence made detection easier. Cartouche, on the other hand, had an unfailing sense of proportion, and was never more dressed than became the perfect dandy. He was elegant, he was polished, he was joyous. He drank wine, while the other soaked himself in beer; he despised ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... 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 Macneill, John Mayne, and Richard Gall. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... ray of the sun. She never walks, but bounds and dances along, and this motion, in her diminutive person, does not give the idea of violence. It is like a bird, hopping from twig to twig, and chirping merrily all the time. Sometimes she is rather vulgar, but even that works well enough into her character, and accords with it. On continued observation, one discovers that she is not a little girl, but really a little woman, with all the prerogatives and liabilities of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... else to say, but Colville could not think of anything except: "We wish to act in every way with your approval, Mrs. Bowen. And I know that you are very particular in some things"—the words, now that they were said, struck him as unfortunate, and even vulgar—"and I ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... My nerve is oozing out of me." Jill shook her head impatiently. "It's all so vulgar! I thought this sort of thing only happened in the comic papers and in music-hall songs. Why, it's just like that song somebody used to sing." She laughed. "Do you remember? I don't know how the verse went, but . ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... ma chere; Madame Grundy is an odd mixture of inconsistencies; should a vulgar parvenu pay society's tolls in shape of boastful charities, balls and dinners, he is one of the pets of the season, and is allowed any latitude as to his little weaknesses. Had Lionel made atonement by marriage, all would have been forgiven; but he has dared to please himself, and so they ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... for himself, "Hank" was also childishly vulgar. He gulped loudly as he ate, thinking it an evidence of hearty good-fellowship. And he deliberately broke wind at the table ... then would rap on wood ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... receives the falling rills; Where Trojan dames (ere yet alarm'd by Greece) Wash'd their fair garments in the days of peace.* By these they pass'd, one chasing, one in flight The mighty fled, pursued by stronger might: Swift was the course; no vulgar prize they play, No vulgar victim must reward the day: Such as in races crown the speedy strife: The prize contended was great ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... 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 was waiting on them one said to the other, "My mother said this morning that ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... the most exquisite of our New England wild-flowers, the arethusa, or swamp-pink, as it is often styled, to the great confusion of its delicate, high-born nature with the great, vulgar, flaunting azalea. When June comes,—when the clethra is heaped with its bee-beloved blossoms, and the grass is green and bright as never again in the year, then the arethusa is to be sought. A most unaccountable flower, of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... hurried down to Leicestershire, but found he was too late. The good man had died, after having learned from his daughter the secret of her engagement, and having refused his consent to it, not on the ground that he was too good a match for Alice—which would be almost as vulgar a reason as if he had been too poor—but on the ground that he was young, giddy, thoughtless, and the wasting health and wan cheek of his daughter had told him that he was fickle too. People in the country make so little allowance for young ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... sentence, and tried another in another vein. My desire to be straightforward did but topple me into excess of statement. My sorrow for the Adelphi came out as sentimentality, my anger against the authorities as vulgar abuse. Only the urgency of my cause upheld me. I would get my letter done somehow and post it. But there flitted through my mind that horrid doubt which has flitted through the minds of so many choleric old gentlemen in the course of the past hundred years and ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... and labored style; they will lay down minute literary rules for their exclusive use, which will insensibly lead them to deviate from common-sense, and finally to transgress the bounds of nature. By dint of striving after a mode of parlance different from the vulgar, they will arrive at a sort of aristocratic jargon, which is hardly less remote from pure language than is the coarse dialect of the people. Such are the natural perils of literature amongst aristocracies. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... vulgar, low-bred girl!" she exclaimed with passion, for in all the experiences of her short life Hester had never even imagined that personal remarks could be made of any one in their very presence. "I hope she'll get a lot of punishment—I hope you are not going ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... and subsequently to have continued in his own "Hellenica," he must have long foreseen the collapse of the Athenian empire, and then he and many other adventurous spirits found themselves in a society faded in prosperity, with no scope for energy or enterprise. Such was the somewhat tame and vulgar Athens which succeeded to that of Pericles and Aristophanes, and which could not tolerate the spiritual boldness of Socrates. He tells us himself, in the third book of his "Anabasis," how he was tempted to leave Athens for the East by his friend Proxenus, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... has closed the "door," for the future, against the vulgar crew of versifiers. A man must be original. He must write common-sense too—hard exactions I know, but it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... something in the idea so shocking to Cecilia, so revolting,—so vulgar in the mode of expression, that the feeling at once gave her the strength necessary to go on with her task. She would not condescend to answer the accusation, but at once told her story in plain language. "I think, Sir Francis Geraldine, ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... half-year. The vexatious and tyrannical influence of Mallett was now experienced in all directions, meeting and interfering with the comforts of the boys in every possible manner. His malice was accompanied, too, by a tact which could not have been expected from his vulgar mind, and which, at the same time, could not have been produced by the experience of one in his situation. It was quite evident to the whole community that his conduct was dictated by another mind, and that that mind was one versed in all ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... once assert for it its character as already known to me. Thus De Wette and I come to differ in the view we take of individual myths. To him they commonly appear as spontaneous free inventions of individual men for their own purposes; not in the ignoble sense in which the vulgar view speaks of the religious narratives of ancient peoples, but free inventions in which there is no intention to deceive. I, on the contrary, can allow no invention in these oldest portions of mythology. A true myth is never invented; it is handed ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... part of his compositions, Chopin was a very martinet with his pupils if too much license of tempo was taken. His music needs the greatest lucidity in presentation, and naturally a certain elasticity of phrasing. Rhythms need not be distorted, nor need there be absurd and vulgar haltings, silly and explosive dynamics. Chopin sentimentalized is Chopin butchered. He loathed false sentiment, and a man whose taste was formed by Bach and Mozart, who was nurtured by the music of these two giants, could never have indulged ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... the senator. "Those august bodies are secret, that their majesty may not be tarnished by communication with vulgar interests. They rule like the unseen influence of mind over matter, and form, as it were, the soul of the state, whose seat, like that of reason, remains a ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... derivation nothing can be ascertained, Modern lexicography of the best repute does not acknowledge it, and for a long time it remained unnoticed, even by the compilers of glossaries of strange and cant terms. Thus, it is not to be found in "Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," published in 1796. This is a coarse, but certainly a comprehensive work, and from its omitting to register "gag," we may assume that the word had no ascertained existence in Grose's time. In the "Slang Dictionary; or, The Vulgar Words, Street Phrases, and 'Fast' ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... sistren, to declare in the vulgar tongue unto you that have not the tongues, this passage of God's Word as sueth." ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... this 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 reddish or brownish urine. It is directly connected ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... — N. language; phraseology &c 569; speech &c 582; tongue, lingo, vernacular; mother tongue, vulgar tongue, native tongue; household words; King's English, Queen's English; dialect &c 563. confusion of tongues, Babel, pasigraphie^; pantomime &c (signs) 550; onomatopoeia; betacism^, mimmation, myatism^, nunnation^; pasigraphy^. lexicology, philology, glossology^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... so prevailed over habit but that they wondered to see themselves pass undistinguished along the streets, and met by the lowest of the people without reverence or notice. The Princess could not at first bear the thought of being levelled with the vulgar, and for some time continued in her chamber, where she was served by her favourite Pekuah, as in the palace of ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... taught by Shakespear's Tempest first to roar. That innocence and beauty which did smile In Fletcher, grew on this Enchanted Isle. But Shakespear's Magick could not copied be, Within that Circle none durst walk but he. I must confess 'twas bold, nor would you now That liberty to vulgar Wits allow, Which works by Magick supernatural things: But Shakespear's Pow'r is Sacred as ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... Clelie with contempt, "she amazes one by her imbecility—this woman. Truly, one would imagine that her vulgar sharpness would teach her that his object is to use her as a tool, and that having gained Mademoiselle's fortune, he will treat them ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to answer. There was Simeon Harp, of course, who would do anything for Carmen. But Nick could not, would not, play into Wisler's hands by mentioning the name of Harp, or telling of the old man's doglike devotion to his mistress. It was a detestable and vulgar suggestion which connected Mrs. Gaylor with this affair—detestable for every one concerned; for Carmen, for ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... without attachment, attaineth to the Supreme. By work alone, Janaka and others, attained the accomplishment of their objects. Having regard also to the observance by men of their duties, it behoveth thee to work. Whatever a great man doth, is also done by vulgar people. Ordinary men follow the ideal set by them (the great).[159] There is nothing whatever for me, O Partha, to do in the three worlds, (since I have) nothing for me which hath not been acquired; still I engage in action.[160] ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... whether Lionel and that odious wife of his could possibly expect to be forgiven, Mrs. Ogilvie raised her eyebrows and said simply, 'I do not know what forgiveness means.' She paid no attention to the vulgar gossip which her sister-in-law tried to attach to her name, and Greville Monsen had either got over his disappointment, or was sufficiently attached to his former fiancee to forgive her her treatment of him. He came to the house on terms of intimate friendship, ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... windows. And just where the crowd was busiest young Antony was found, hoisted into one of those empty niches of the old Hotel de Ville, sketching the scene to the life, but with a kind of grace—a marvellous tact of omission, as my father pointed out to us, in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's own window—which has made trite old Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine, seem like people in some fairyland; or like infinitely clever tragic actors, who, for the humour of the thing, have put on motley for once, and are able to throw a world of serious innuendo into their ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... dirt has accumulated for years, and slow neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, the mouldiness of time, which has something to recommend it. But there is nothing attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union of smartness and filth. A dirty modern house, just built, a house smelling of poor whiskey and vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, its floors unclean, is ever so much worse than an old inn that never pretended to be anything but a rookery. I say ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... lovey,' replied Mother Jael, relapsing also into the vulgar tongue; 'shot, dearie, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... thing the least vulgar about her was her soul—if she had one—and it is not the business of society to look into such things. Scrutiny of the sort is left for creatures like the Professor, Cheiron, who have nothing else to do—but his impressions upon this ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... calculation. The moth flies into the candle because he doesn't happen to know that the game is not worth the candle. The wasp gets into the jam in hearty and hopeful efforts to get the jam into him. IN the same way the vulgar people want to enjoy life just as they want to enjoy gin—because they are too stupid to see that they are paying too big a price for it. That they never find happiness—that they don't even know how to look for it—is proved by the paralyzing clumsiness and ugliness of everything they do. Their ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... fellow-men up to his point of vantage, to their eternal gain and to his eternal praise. Even let it be that he must have self-criticism, the sense of fitness you speak of, that very sense may transcend the vulgar judgment of his fellows. His judgment may be saner than theirs; and as his intellectual creations are great and unique, so may his sense of their truth be full and unique. Wagner led the musical world by his single-minded devotion to the ideas of ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... to a vulgar notion, that in Greenland words were frozen in their utterance; and that upon a thaw, a very mixed conversation was heard in the air, of all those words set at liberty. This conversation was, I presume, too various and extensive to be much attended to: and may not that be the case of half ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield |
