"Vulgar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say if she could hear you?" exclaimed Folly, who had been struggling to get in a word, much talking being very characteristic of Folly; "she—Lady Fashion I mean—is always for the ornamental; the useful she leaves to the vulgar. As for your sister there" (Folly only condescended to speak to Matty), "she knows nothing, I see, of flounces, furbelows, fringes, and flowers; she'd put on a bonnet back part forward, or a shawl wrong side ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... Pinkey." Her eyes were sparkling, for Wallie's tone implied that the expression was slang and also rather vulgar. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... autobiography.' The matter-of-fact Saxon would hardly know how to set about calculating a poetical idiosyncrasy by epochs, but our Celtic heroine was equal to the task; at any rate, she abstained so carefully throughout her career from all unnecessary allusion to what she called 'vulgar eras,' that the date of her birth remained a secret, even from her bitterest enemies. Her untiring persecutor, John Wilson Croker, declared that Sydney Owenson was born in 1775, while the Dictionary of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... vandalisms out to the old gateway. There he erected two Corinthian columns, and spanned them with the roof of a pagoda. It was a surprise to us that he retained the ancient name of Hydra House. We had expected, even hoped, that he would change it to something ornate and vulgar, and so leave nothing to remind us of the old place of which we had all been so fond and proud. But one sunny morning a sign-painter began work on the Corinthian columns. Gaddingham and I did not, of course, stand to watch him; but, having occasion to pass the pagoda ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... up a vulgar woman, one who does not piously regard her vulva as an orifice to be approached with Gregorian chants. I must be careful to avoid those veteran masturbators marching heroically under the gonfalons of virginity. It is a difficult business, finding a woman. A modest one will offend my ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... man had never been near her before; now she had one close to her. The horror she felt shook her so that her teeth chattered. Oh for shame, for shame, how disgusting, how vulgar! How degraded he seemed to her, and she felt degraded, too, through him. This was not her Wolfgang any more, the child whom she had adopted as her son. This was quite an ordinary, quite a common man from the ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... receiving of them that be newly baptized into the number of Christ's Church; as also because in the Baptism of Infants every man present may be put in remembrance of his own profession made to God in his Baptism. For which cause also it is expedient that Baptism be ministered in the vulgar tongue. Nevertheless, (if necessity so require,) children may be baptized upon any ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... her father, by vulgar abbreviation, as "Zo") took Mr. Gallilee's stumpy red hand, and held hard by it as if that was the one way in which a dull child could rouse herself, with a prospect ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... mistake to place themselves in positions perhaps that they are not always exactly qualified to fill. Of all social usurpations, that of mere money is the least tolerable—as one may have a very full purse with empty brains and vulgar tastes and habits. The wisdom of thus throwing the control of a feature of society, that is of much more moment than is commonly supposed, into the chapter of commercial ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... "buffoons," our lovers are "frankly ridiculous," and the Italian actors are superior in "temperament"—whatever that may mean. Ours, it appears, are better than the Italians in some humble ways: "They dress their parts better and wear their clothes better," and they even know their parts—a vulgar quality which apparently is rare on the Italian stage—also they are more cultured, and "possess to a greater degree the dramatic ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... unmeasured terms those young men of the race who do not work, but loaf; who do nothing to elevate, but everything to degrade, the race; who choose the sunny side of the street corners in winter and the shady side in summer; who use all kinds of vulgar and indecent language, insulting ladies as they pass. It is this loafing, nomadic young class that drifts to crime, caused by idleness, evil associations, and the fact that this class does not know the value of a dollar or the enormity ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... his abuse and blackguardism, heaped upon the American party. He was successful; and Johnson, of Tennessee, whose ambition was to gain a more infamous notoriety, profiting by the example of Wise, plunged into the lowest depths of Billingsgate, and piled his vulgar epithets upon the party indiscriminately. Wise, then, like all inventors and originators, has had numerous imitators, and among the most successful of these are Johnson, of Tennessee; Stephens, of Georgia; and Clingman, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... Poland, he whom the vulgar call Glorious John, did rescue and enlarge it from its slavery to the Grand Vizier of Turkey at the great battle of Vienna. There is no other ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition 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 ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... and vulgar details? Suffice that when the artful Scraggs, pretending to be overcome by his potations and very ill into the bargain, begged to be delivered back aboard the Maggie, Messrs. McGuffey and Gibney loaded him into a taxicab and sent him there, while they continued their search for excitement. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... fond of having lots of company; and of 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 ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... are so far removed from the vulgar herd that they forget that others ever stand in need of the bare necessaries of life. They are like the inhabitant of the African mountain, who gazing from the verdant table land, refreshed by the rills of melted snow, cannot comprehend that the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... camps, one in which they held a docile Tennysonian place, as chaste adorners of the sacred home, mothers of children, man's property, insipid angel housekeepers of his demure middle age; the other where they were depicted as cheap, vulgar temptresses, on a level with the wine ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... anniversary of the "Societe Biblique Protestante;" commenced with prayer and singing. The Count de Gasparin spoke extemporaneously, and with great elegance and ease. A number spoke with energy and force; the last speaker selected passages to show that the Gospel is not incomprehensible to the vulgar, as Romanists assert; also attended the annual meeting of the "Societe Evangelique de France;" Chairman read a very short address; several spoke; M. de ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... refer in these vulgar and insulting terms to the companion of my soul, the desire of my heart, the perfect lover whose lips have kindled my dull ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... would go back to San Francisco and work there, where he at least had friends who respected his station. Yet, he ought to have refused the girl's offer before she had repulsed him; his retreat now meant nothing, and might even tempt her, in her vulgar pique, to reveal her rebuff of him. He raised his eyes mechanically, and looked gloomily across the dark waste and distant bay to the opposite shore. But the fog had already hidden the glow of the city's lights, and, thickening around the horizon, seemed to be slowly hemming him in with the ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... be sprinting with him down station platforms and addressing him out of railway-carriage windows as Ginger? Bruce Carmyle was aware that most members of that sub-species of humanity, his cousin's personal friends, called him by that familiar—and, so Carmyle held, vulgar—nickname: but how had this girl ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... It is the feminine equivalent of intellect. It "magnetises our poor vertebrae," in Verlaine's phrase, because it is sex and yet not instinct. It is sex civilised, under direction, playing a part, as we say of others than those on the stage. It calculates, and is unerring. It has none of the vulgar warmth of mere passion, none of its health or simplicity. It leaves a little red sting where it has kissed. And it intoxicates us by its appeal to so many sides of our nature at once. We are thrilled, and we admire, and are almost ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... papers, which had been folded into it. One was a broad printed thing, with names and dates written into blank spaces, and was about the size of a quarter of a yard of very broad ribbon. The others were mere scraps, with 'Dudley Ruthyn' penned in my cousin's vulgar round-hand at the foot. While I folded and replaced these, I really don't know what caused me to fancy that something was moving behind me, as I stood with my back toward the bed. I do not recollect any sound whatever; but instinctively I glanced into the mirror, and my eyes ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... "To the eye of vulgar Logic," says he, "what is man? An omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious ME, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... should be forgiven Miss Violet Hawtry, who, as half-starved Maggie Murphy, had darted out of the gutter into the back stage-door at the age of fifteen, snapped her huge violet eyes with their fringes of black, trilled a vulgar, Irish street song in accompaniment to sundry provocative swayings of her lissome, maturing young body, and thus had made enough impression on her world to hang on by the tips of her fingers until she dropped into the outstretched ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Correctness in Grammar, for there is an evident false Concord in admitting the latter. Pray let me know whether the News Papers have not done him Injustice in announcing that he made his Entrance into Boston on Sunday. I should think they had; for a well bred Man will carefully avoid counteracting the vulgar Prejudices or injuring the Feelings of the People where ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... a vulgar bully, was no coward, supported the character of Mr. Evan Morgans well enough; and he would have really enjoyed himself, had he not been in agonies of fear lest those precious saddle-bags in front of him should break from their lashings, and rolling to the earth, expose ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... of the girl Billy read a deeper hurt than he had dreamed of. He had thought that it would not be difficult for her to turn back from the vulgar mucker to the polished gentleman. And when he saw that she was suffering, and guessed that it was because he had tried to crush her love by brute force he could carry ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... her dark eyes were full of animation, and her lips were apart with a smile as she listened to Leonard's eager narration; and Ethel glanced towards Harry to see whether he were admiring. No; Harry was bringing in a hall arm-chair in the background, for a vary large, heavy, vulgar-looking old man, who seemed too ponderous and infirm for a place on the benches. Richard made one of a black mass of clergy, and Aubrey and Gertrude had asserted their independence by perching themselves on a window-seat, as far as possible from all ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was, it's hardly strange I pine for those old days— I cannot get acclimated or used to German ways; The victuals that they give me here may all be very fine For vulgar, common palates, but they will not do for mine! The 'coon that's been used to stanch democratic cheer Will not put up with onion tarts and sausage steeped in beer! No; let the rest, for meat and drink, accede to slavish ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... Hapsburger, upon whom disease and death have already laid a shadowy finger, how artificial appear the divine assumptions of an Alexander, how theatrical the Olympian airs of an Augustus, how merely vulgar and ill-worn the imperial poses of ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... There remains still a vulgar and well-known plant, which, as it contributes more effectually to their subsistence, than all the rest put together, must not be passed over in silence. This is the nettle, which, as the country produces neither, hemp nor flax, supplies the materials of which are made their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... and he replied, "Shall it not be first demonstrated whether there be such a thing as religion, and whether what is called religion be anything? if there be such a thing, it must be also for the wise; if there be no such thing, it must he only for the vulgar. It is well known that religion is called a bond; but it is asked, for whom? if it be only for the vulgar, it is not anything in itself; if it be likewise for the wise, it is something." On hearing these arguments, I said to them, "There is no character you deserve ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... sensual delirium is conceived an elysium of carnal bliss, where half-nude nymphs display their charms and invite to sensual enjoyments. Thus we see how this habit makes the spiritual faculties subservient to morbid passion, and by what means elevating influences are prostituted to vulgar and base-born creations. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... been watching Mr. Carpenter out of the corner of her eye ever since he came into the room—trying to figure out whether he's a lion, or only an actor. If his skin were a bit dark, she would be sure he was an Eastern potentate; as it, she's afraid he's of domestic origin, in which case he's vulgar. The company he keeps is against him; but still—Mrs. Stebbins has had my eye three times, hoping I would give her a signal, I haven't given it, so she's about ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... of anger shook her—anger with her benefactors, that they could not have introduced her to this mundane paradise as her simple self, Miss Manvers—Sarah with the vulgar h—by her own merits and defects to stand or ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... canvases and tapestries. Nancy had what amounted to a genius for interior effects, and she was the first to introduce among us the luxury that was to grow more and more prevalent as our wealth increased by leaps and bounds. Only Nancy's luxury, though lavish, was never vulgar, and her house when completed had rather marvellously the fine distinction of some old London mansion filled with the best that generations could contribute. It left Mrs. Frederick Grierson—whose residence on the Heights had hitherto been ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the sculpture, and was interested in a long series of busts of the emperors and the members of their families, and some of the great men of Rome. There is a bust of Pompey the Great, bearing not the slightest resemblance to that vulgar and unintellectual one in the gallery of the Capitol, altogether a different cast of countenance. I could not judge whether it resembled the face of the statue, having seen the latter so imperfectly in the duskiness of the hall of the Spada Palace. These, I presume, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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, whose standing in the community ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... such Actions Duties, as were before indifferent, and by that means renders Religion more burdensome and difficult than it is in its own Nature, betrays many into Sins of Omission which they could not otherwise be guilty of, and fixes the Minds of the Vulgar to the shadowy unessential Points, instead of the more weighty and more ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... body, here in the cafe, moves brightly in and out. Green satin, and a dance, white wine and gleaming laughter, with two nodding earrings—these are Lotus. And in the painted eyes cold steel, and on the lips a vulgar jest; Hands that fly ever to the coat lapels, familiar to the wrists and to the hair of men. These too are Lotus. ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... life is seen in them; on which account this picture gave him, in addition to the fame that he had already, an even greater name. Wherefore many verses were written in his honour, both Latin and in the vulgar tongue, of which, in order not to make my story longer than I have set out to do, I will cite ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... had time to think, Gaston knew pretty well what had occurred. The vulgar details did not matter. The one important and hideous fact was, that for some reason, Jude, with the crazy brutality that had long been gathering, had flung his young wife from his protection ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... her eyes on her plate, determined to pay no attention to the vulgar pleasantries of this unkempt monster. It was hard enough to eat with a steel fork, without being further tormented. But the farmer seemed determined to drag ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... think we were vulgar adventuresses. We are not. He respects me, this dear young man, and it is right that he should. I deserve to be respected. You know the fable about the dog who dropped his meat in the water, trying to snap at its reflection? Well, I don't ask strangers ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... the other lions receive company and compliments in a sullen, moody, not to say snarling manner, these appear flattered by the attentions that are paid them; while those conceal themselves to the utmost of their power from the vulgar gaze, these court the popular eye, and, unlike their brethren, whom nothing short of compulsion will move to exertion, are ever ready to display their acquirements to the wondering throng. We have known bears of undoubted ability who, when the expectations ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... ambition mock their humble toil, Their vulgar crimes and villainy obscure; Nor rich rogues hear with a disdainful smile, The low and petty knaveries of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... objected to that passage, though he made no objection to the relations themselves. The Lord Chamberlain dare not, in short, attempt to exclude from the stage the tragedies of murder and lust, or the farces of mendacity, adultery, and dissolute gaiety in which vulgar people delight. But when these same vulgar people are threatened with an unpopular play in which dissoluteness is shown to be no laughing matter, it is prohibited at once amid the vulgar applause, the net ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... think?" she asked of Joan. "But racing men are vulgar. Oh, Joan! have you thought out your book to-day? Can you now begin to write it? Will you write it in the window, with the South Downs in front of your eyes? Oh, it'll ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... to type. From the time he was a mere youngster the ash-man life did not appeal to him. In school he liked the highbrow crowd; he "took to" Latin and literature. He has a feeling of vague disgust when he sees a vulgar picture, a shudder when the street-organ grinds. There is something in Jim different. He isn't in tune with either his immediate heredity or his environment. The contribution from some remote ancestor has overbalanced the rest, and Jim becomes ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... Meadow, Gravel Root: Root used in decoction with a somewhat similar plant called [)A]m[)a]dit[/a][']t[)i] [^u][']tanu, or "large water dipper" (not identified) for difficult urination. Dispensatory: "Said to operate as a diuretic. Its vulgar name of gravel root indicates the popular estimation of its virtues." The genus is described as tonic, diaphoretic, and in large doses emetic ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... Roman annalists. Even, however, in our fragmentary and confused accounts (the most important are those of Fabius, in Polyb. iii. 8; Appian. Hisp. 4; and Diodorus, xxv. p. 567) the relations of the parties appear dearly enough. Of the vulgar gossip by which its opponents sought to blacken the "revolutionary combination" (—etaireia ton ponerotaton anthropon—) specimens may be had in Nepos (Ham. 3), to which it will be difficult perhaps to find ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... haut monde—come in for a large share of good-natured satire. To be cleverly caricatured is an honor, and should evince no ill-feeling, especially from these clever singing comedians, who are the best of fellows at heart; whose songs are clever but never vulgar; who sing because they love to sing; and whose versatility enables them to create the broadest of satires, and, again, a little song with words so pure, so human, and so pathetic, that the applause that follows from the silent room of listeners ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... miscalculating the power of His supply of them. But not a few of us put that same question in various tones of incredulity, scorn or indifference. Sense makes many mistakes when it takes to trying to weigh Christ in its vulgar balances, and to settling whether He looks like a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 with ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... self-confounding tendency of the common form ascribed to ξεοπνευστια, or divine inspiration. When translated from its true and lofty sense of an inspiration—brooding, with outstretched wings, over the mighty abyss of secret truth—to the vulgar sense of an inspiration, burrowing, like a rabbit or a worm, in grammatical quillets and syllables, mark how it comes down to nothing at all; mark how a stream, pretending to derive itself from a heavenly fountain, is finally ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... charlatans of this sort, assumed a theatrical magnificence, and an air of science calculated to deceive the vulgar. His best instrument of deception was the phantasmagoria; and as, by means of this abuse of the science of optics, he called up shades which were asked for, and almost always recognised, his correspondence with the other world was a thing proved ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of the sixteenth century. For some reason or other, the greatest impression had been made by Theophrastus in England, where there appeared a large number of successive imitations or paraphrases of his "Characters." In France, on the other hand, Theophrastus was still unknown to the vulgar, when La Bruyere took him up. It seems likely that his own collection of portraits and maxims was practically finished, when, as M. Paul Morillot has put it, he determined to hoist the Greek flag as a safeguard. He made a French translation of the sketches of Theophrastus, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... at whose disposal honours lie, Who give at will, and take away renown; The vulgar herd; and from the vulgar I, Except the prudent man, distinguished none; Nor emperor, pope, nor king, is raised more high Than these by sceptre, mitre, or by crown, Nor save by prudence; save by judgement, given But to the favoured few ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... was standing at the foot of the stairs with a lamp in one hand and a year-old baby clinging to the other. She was a big shapeless woman with a round good-natured face—cheerful and vulgar as a sunflower was Aunt Jane at all times ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... which so sickened Mrs. Morel. As she heard him sousing heartily in cold water, heard the eager scratch of the steel comb on the side of the bowl, as he wetted his hair, she closed her eyes in disgust. As he bent over, lacing his boots, there was a certain vulgar gusto in his movement that divided him from the reserved, watchful rest of the family. He always ran away from the battle with himself. Even in his own heart's privacy, he excused himself, saying, "If she hadn't said so-and-so, it would ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... experiment and deduction. Boyle's masterly exposition of this method is his most important contribution to scientific progress. At the same time he clarified the conception of elements and compounds, rejecting the older notions, the four elements of the "vulgar Peripateticks" and the three principles of the "vulgar Stagyrists," and defining an element as a substance incapable of decomposition, and a compound as composed of two or more elements. He explained chemical combination on the hypotheses ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... plunged into her natural element at once; Mr. Rhodes was a rich widower, vulgar and pompous as could well be imagined; but that made no difference, the lady spread her flimsy net in that direction and put on all her fascinations at once, leaving the younger men to their fate. This was splendid sport to Elsie, for Miss Jemima, the daughter, a gaunt, peaked-nosed ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... ambition, affecting indeed the greatest disinterestedness, he nevertheless harboured the most ferocious appetites. Sagnier had written that he was a thief and a murderer, having strangled two of his aunts in order to inherit their property. But even if he were a murderer, he was certainly not a vulgar one. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... have seen him walking sometimes with Lila, and mamma has him at her parties and dinners; but Hattie and I never see the company unless we peep, and, above all things, I hate peeping! It is ungenteel and vulgar; only poor people peep. Mr. Manning is an old bachelor, and very crabbed, so my uncle Grey says. He is the editor of the— Magazine, that mamma declares she can't live without. Look! look, Hattie! There goes mamma this minute! ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... interested and have them visit the houses and see the Chicago Smiths. With all the Smiths in session that night he ought to have no difficulty in finding out which was the son of old man Smith. He could be lowdown and vulgar enough to ask right out if he wished. If he found out he was to cut out that Smith and bring him to our house—if he had to bind and gag him. If he didn't he was to bring all three—if ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... room was exceedingly pretty. It would have been vulgar if in England; but it was beautifully clean, and it shortly became the wonder of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... entirely different functions to perform in the socialist movement. Marx's part was to be the prophet of socialism, not a prophet in the vulgar sense of a mere prognosticator, but in the old Hebrew sense of an inspired voice crying in a wilderness of unbelief. Lassalle was no prophet. His function was to reduce principles to action, to engage the forces of the times in the spirit of the times, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... begun to go wrong, by the weight of opinion, he rushed into all excesses when abroad upon business, till at length the vessel of his fortune went to pieces, and he was a waif on the waters of the world. But in feeling he had never been vulgar, however much so in action. There was a feeble good in him that had in part been protected by its very feebleness. He could not sin so much against it as if it had been strong. For many years he had fits of shame, and of grief without repentance; for repentance ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... not speak of this now; yet I have spoken, for the subject makes me feel too much. I could give instances that would startle the most vulgar and callous; but I will not, for the public opinion of their own sex is already against such men, and where cases of extreme tyranny are made known, there is private action in the wife's favor. But she ought not to need this, nor, I think, can she long. Men must soon see that as, on their own ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... that Lysevitch and even Krylin were nearer to her than Pimenov and all the workpeople taken together. She thought that if the long day she had just spent could have been represented in a picture, all that had been bad and vulgar—as, for instance, the dinner, the lawyer's talk, the game of "kings" —would have been true, while her dreams and talk about Pimenov would have stood out from the whole as something false, as out of drawing; and she thought, too, that it was too late to dream of happiness, ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... (l. iii. c. 19) relates the ceremony, which has possibly been adorned in the Greek reports to each other, and to the Latins. The fact is confirmed by Emanuel Malaxus, who wrote, in vulgar Greek, the History of the Patriarchs after the taking of Constantinople, inserted in the Turco-Graecia of Crusius, (l. v. p. 106—184.) But the most patient reader will not believe that Mahomet adopted the Catholic ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... if truth must be told, had been neglecting his inner man during the last five minutes in order to peep through the crack of the door, and overhear the conference in the hall between his mother and the stranger, was a vulgar-looking youth of about Jeffrey's age, with a slight cast in his eye, but otherwise not bad-looking. He eyed the new usher as he entered with a mingled expression of suspicion and contempt; and Jeffreys, slow of apprehension ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... press gave very satisfactory reports of this meeting, but the Springfield Republic was vulgar and abusive, called the ladies "withered beldames," "cats on the back roof," and advised them to "go home and attend to their children, if they had any, and if not, to engage in that same occupation as soon as they could regularly ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the connection between Lakes Huron and Michigan. The meaning of the Indian word Michillimackinack is Great Turtle. The island is crowned with a cap 300 feet above the surrounding waters, on the top of which is a fortification. If Quebec is the Gibraltar of North America, Mackinaw (the vulgar appellation for this fort) is only second in its physical character, and in its susceptibilities of improvement as a military post. It is also a must important position for the facilities it affords in the fur trade between New York and the Northwest."—Mr. Colton's American Lakes, vol. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Even before my heart was touched with the love of Christ, I used to say, "Oh that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest;" for I felt that there could be no rest for me in the midst of such outrages and pollutions. And yet I saw nothing of slavery in its most vulgar and repulsive forms. I saw it in the city, among the fashionable and the honorable, where it was garnished by refinement, and decked out for show. A few facts will unfold the state of society in the circle with which I was familiar far better ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... In spite of the relation between Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, no story of love was surely ever less of a "love story." To Hawthorne's imagination the fact that these two persons had loved each other too well was of an interest comparatively vulgar; what appealed to him was the idea of their moral situation in the long years that were to follow. The story indeed is in a secondary degree that of Hester Prynne; she becomes, really, after the first scene, an accessory figure; it is not upon ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... quickened the intellectual life of Europe, we imported thousands of Greek and Latin words direct from the ancient world, learned words, many of them, suitable for philosophers, or for writers who pride themselves on shooting a little above the vulgar apprehension. Yet many of these, too, have found their way into daily speech, so that we can say most things in three ways, according as we draw on one or another of the three main sources of our speech. Thus, you can Begin, or Commence, or Initiate an undertaking, with Boldness, ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... rain began to fall and continued in the morning. She still felt singularly numb toward the world and life in general. Her own room was bad enough, but outside it was the bare landscape, the desolate house, and its vulgar host. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... that, instead of imagining, I have seen—that I am firm in the belief that if I had followed the plan which I had marked out for myself, instead of being now under the Equator, I should be in my own country. Of what importance to me are those vulgar ones which call me insensate because I have not succeeded, and which would have exaggerated my merit had I triumphed? I take upon myself all the responsibility of the movement, for I have acted from conviction, and not from ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... one who is superior to mean motives and vulgar curiosity—you are welcome to my poor home. Pray, walk in, sir. Pet, give ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... strength—HER resolution—against the pressing solicitations of parents whom she had never been accustomed to withstand. But she quieted me with that singular earnestness of look and manner which had once before impressed me previous to our mutual explanation. Like vulgar thinkers generally, I was apt to confound weakness of frame and delicacy of organization with a want of courage and moral resources of ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... life is over, it is extinct. Jehu, Wagner speaks of us as rebelliously breaking taboos that were formed by our forefathers, but that is not true. In the present more is known than was known in the past, they had outdated views and opinions, and their ideologies were vulgar and unsophisticated. At present we are more knowledgeable, more refined than what has gone before. The people of the past waged unjust wars. They had superstition and prejudices that clouded their visions of morality, and the product ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... days. The sun which flushed the mountain tops with warmth in setting finds them hardly cold when it rises. What happy chance has given me such a destiny? My mother had roused a host of fears in me; her forecast, which, though free from the alloy of vulgar pettiness, seemed to me redolent of jealousy, has been falsified by the event. Your fears and hers, my own—all have vanished ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... at Indra's abode, from Dwaipayana, that foremost of Rishis, spake unto Sanjaya, saying, 'O charioteer, dost thou know in detail the acts of the intelligent Arjuna, of which I have heard from beginning to end? O charioteer, my wretched and sinful son is even now engaged in a policy of the most vulgar kind. Of wicked soul, he will certainly depopulate the earth. The illustrious person whose words even in jest are true, and who hath Dhananjaya to fight for him, is sure to win the three worlds. Who that is even beyond the influence of Death and Decay will ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... enforcement,—so judicial and conservative in always maintaining in his arguments the balance and relation of interdependent principles, and so often in details marring the most exquisite poetry with the wildest extravagancies of style,—so free from mere vulgar tricks of effect, and so full of imaginative tricksiness and surprises,—so mischievous, subtle, mysterious, elusive, Protean,—that it is no wonder he has been more admired and more misunderstood than any eminent American of his time. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... ship, and frequently the whole form of the monster could be discerned as it glided by; and when I saw its keen cruel eyes glancing up towards me, I felt a shudder pass through my frame, such as, according to the vulgar notion, a person feels when it is said that some one is walking over his grave. Occasionally, when anything was thrown overboard, a white flash was seen rising out of the deep, and a large pair of jaws, armed with sharp teeth, opening, gulped it down, and ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... shadow of war. Could it be possible that England was about to be crushed under the heel of a foreign tyrant? If (p. 035) such were to be her fate, death on the battlefield would be easy to bear. What Briton could endure to live under the yoke or by the permission of a vulgar German autocrat? ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... it is on such an occasion that men of prudence and experience have remarked that it behooves us to guard against the wrath and fury of kings, whose noble thoughts are chiefly occupied with important affairs of state, and cannot endure the importunate clamors of the vulgar.—The bounty of the sovereign is forbid to him who does not watch a proper opportunity. Till thou canst perceive a convenient time for obtruding an opinion, undermine not thy consequence by idle talk.—The ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... no vulgar poisoner: he was a great artist in poisons, comparable with the Medici or the Borgias. For him murder was a fine art, and he had reduced it to fixed and rigid rules: he had arrived at a point when he was guided not by his personal interest but by a taste for experiment. God has reserved the act of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... my door, not thinking I could hear, Vulgar, naked truth, ungarnished for a royal ear; Fit for cooping in the background, not ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... principal performer. Neither of the two observed that in the course of these walks, they attracted the attention of a working man who was standing near the engine, and who touched his hat every time they passed; for Mr Dombey habitually looked over the vulgar herd, not at them; and the Major was looking, at the time, into the core of one of his stories. At length, however, this man stepped before them as they turned round, and pulling his hat off, and keeping it off, ducked his ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... on this occasion. The churches are filled with people, who are far from conducting themselves with that decorum and moderation belonging to the place. The jovial dispositions then manifested are encouraged by the organ, on which are played waltzes, polkas, and even the vulgar songs heard at dances of the lower classes; and these performances are distinctly heard whilst the priest is saying the mass. In general, the believers, after having taken a part in the service, give themselves up to all the disorders of excessive eating and drinking. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... to do it; for, if you neglect your food, that terrible fiend, Delirium Tremens, will have you in his savage grasp before you know it. Every morning after a spree, take a good stiff horn of brandy, and soon afterwards a glass of plain soda, which will cool you off. Never drink gin—it is vulgar stuff, not fit to be used by gentlemen.—When you desire to reform from drinking, never break off abruptly, which is dangerous; but taper off gradually—three glasses to-day, two to-morrow, and one the next day. Never drink with low people, ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... Fenwick was not, as the vulgar imagined and still imagine, objectionable because it was retrospective. It is always to be remembered that retrospective legislation is bad in principle only when it affects the substantive law. Statutes creating new crimes or increasing the punishment ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shop-girls, ballet-girls, and washerwomen, but the qualities that endow them with immortality are precisely those which eternalise the virgins and saints of Leonardo da Vinci in the minds of men. You see the fat, vulgar woman in the long cloak trying on a hat in front of the pier-glass. So marvellously well are the lines of her face observed and rendered that you can tell exactly what her position in life is; you know what the furniture of her rooms is like; you ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... effectually contributed as did the trial of Sacheverel, who was used as an instrument and tool to wind and turn the passions of the vulgar. Having been presented to a benefice in North Wales, he went in procession to that country with all the pomp and magnificence of a sovereign prince. He was sumptuously entertained by the university of Oxford, and different noblemen, who, while they worshipped him as the idol of their faction, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Notion of an abstract antecedent Fitness of Things." The following estrays are perhaps worth the capture; they profess to date back to the reign of Queen Mary, and are styled, "Some Forms of Prayer used by the vulgar Papists." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... prodigal young American, who haunts hotels. Clean shaven and well dressed, the fellow would be indistinguishable from the thousands of overfed and overdrunk young business men, to be seen every day in the vulgar luxury of Pullman cars, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... calamities, but the remembrance is advantageous to himself and his family; while with me, the past did but increase, did but agonise, the present and the future. He was not like me, obliged to crouch in presence of those vulgar, those incapable minds, that do but consider the bent back as the footstool of pride. Every man is too busy to act in behalf of others; pity me therefore, but advise me not to hope assistance, by petitioning princes at second hand. I know your good wishes, and, for these, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... all this and grew more than ever afraid of her. He tried to understand, to make out things a little in the darkness, but she was right after all; he took these things too seriously in his way. With all her vulgar depravity, Barbro was not worth a single earnest thought. Infanticide meant nothing to her, there was nothing extraordinary in the killing of a child; she thought of it only with the looseness and moral nastiness that was to be expected ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Opal," she was saying. (Of course she didn't, thought the Boy—how could she?) "I am sure that I live. And yet I have never felt that way—thank goodness! It's vulgar to feel too deeply, Mamma used to say, and as I have grown older, I can see that she was right. The best people never show any excess of emotion. That is for tragedy queens, operatic stars, and—the women we do not talk about! Ladies ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... vivid consciousness which is all to the good in the pulsations of the national life. But there is another side to it that is not so good. What is the expansion sought for? Trade? Yes! necessarily; and no man who lives in Lancashire will speak lightly of that necessity. Vulgar greed, and earth-hunger? that is evil. Glory? that is cruel, blood-stained, empty. My text tells us why expansion should be sought, and what are the obligations it brings with it. 'The remnant of Jacob shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... hunting season brought together a large, noisy, vulgar party at the chateau. There were long dinners at which the wealthy bourgeois lingered slothfully and wearily, prone to fall asleep like peasants. They went in carriages to meet the returning hunters in the cool air of the ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... sacred. And there stood the monarch, a man no longer young, gazing at his performance and never weary of the amusement it afforded him. It pained Pontius keenly, for like all noble natures, he could not bear to discover anything mean or vulgar in a man to whom he had always looked up as to a strong exceptional character. As an artist Hadrian ought not to have vilified beauty, as a man he ought not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Shall I singe you with my torch? That's vulgar! O I couldn't do it ... yet If it would gratify the audience, ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... of general application, and in the present case of construing the judgment as to Caesar into a judgment as to what is called Caesarism. It is true that the history of past centuries ought to be the instructress of the present; but not in the vulgar sense, as if one could simply by turning over the leaves discover the conjunctures of the present in the records of the past, and collect from these the symptoms for a political diagnosis and the specifics for a prescription; it is instructive only ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to this:—that the Lord Mayor, just mounting into greatness, could by no means make that greatness impressive by any knowledge of philosophy he possessed; so, to be sure that his importance had its force upon all vulgar minds, he suffered himself made to play the part of a monkey in a cake-shop. To this his Worship added the greater gratification of having given amusement to nine-tenths of the city costermongers, made idle seven-tenths of the working people, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the silent sadness that had brought quick response from Wood. Red Pearce was even quicker. He did not seem to regard her proximity as that of a feminine thing which roused the devil in him. Pearce could not be other than coarse and vulgar, but there was pity in him. Joan sensed pity and some other quality still beyond her. This lieutenant of the bandit Kells was just as mysterious as Wood. Joan mended a great jagged rent in his buckskin shirt. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... The first was the jealous Queen, whose unbridled rage and vulgar clamor had made the Louvre a hell. The second was Henriette d'Entragues, Marquise de Vernenil, the crafty and capricious siren who had awakened these conjugal tempests. To this singular coalition were joined many other ladies of the court; for the pious flame, fanned by the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Down in a narrow cabin, in a little bed which has the appearance of a drawer in a commode, something formless and desolate rolls about, moaning, on the pillow. It is the chechia, the heroic chechia, now reduced to the vulgar status of a night-cap, and jammed down to the ears of ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... meanness, sickness, heat, cold, toil—that I might make myself an artist. The indignities, the degradations—I could not tell them, if I spent all the time I have in writing a journal. I have lived in garrets—among dirty people—vulgar people—vile people; I have worn rags and unclean things; I have lived upon bread and water and things that I have cooked myself; I have seen my time and my strength wasted by a thousand hateful ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... who 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 of ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... but those which must be drawn from the very testimony itself of the reporters: and these, though always sufficient with the judicious and knowing, are commonly too fine to fall under the comprehension of the vulgar. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... groan to think of the number of Elzevirs that are lost in the libraries of rich parvenus who know nothing of and care no thing for the treasures about them further than a certain vulgar vanity which is involved. When Catherine of Russia wearied of Koritz she took to her affection one Kimsky Kossakof, a sergeant in the guards. Kimsky was elated by this sudden acquisition of favor and riches. One of his first orders was to his bookseller. Said he to that worthy: "Fit me up a handsome ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... McGuire noticed that Nickie, whose speech was usually excellent, adopted the vulgar tongue in addressing the man he called Billy, or any of his friends ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... spirit of purity rebelled against the liberties taken by the dancing-master, and the men he introduced to her. She became indignant at the indecent attitudes she was called upon to assume, but noticing a score of young women, many of them from the best homes in the town, all yielding to the vulgar embrace, she cast aside that spirit of modesty which had been the development of years of home-training, and setting her face against nature's protective warnings, gave herself, as did the others, to this prolonged embrace set to music. Having ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... something besides that, Mary. I can't listen to it. It's only a vulgar class of women who ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... louis-d'ors. Their consternation was excessive; and I diverted my misfortunes by jesting at such blundering, short-sighted keepers. It was soon rumoured through Magdeburg, especially among the simple and vulgar, that I was a magician to whom the devil ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... experienced by the warthog and the mandrill. And even the nobler animals—the lions and bears—are not allowed to escape without prejudicial comment, especially at feeding-time. Not the slightest deference is paid to the private opinions and sentiments of these carnivores by the vulgar crowd of sight-seers. The parrots alone can ease their harassed souls and have the last word ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... increasing rage against the battery. I felt that if it was to cease I might observe, be interested, feel excitement—as it was, it kept everything from me. It kept everything from me because it insistently demanded my attention, like a vulgar garrulous neighbour who persists in his tiresome story. Its perpetual hammering had soon its physical effect. A sick headache crept upon me, seized me, held me. I might look at the soldiers, sleeping now like dead men in the trench, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... away from him, bridling, striking an attitude of outraged dignity beside her husband, who had stood behind her in a slouching abstracted silence during the whole scene—so far as her dwarf stature and vulgar little moon-face permitted. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not hearing, "I should have liked perhaps to be called Ernest, yet I am forced to bear the vulgar name Ignat—why is that do you suppose? I should have liked to be called Prince de Monbart, yet I am only Lebyadkin, derived from a swan.* Why is that? I am a poet, madam, a poet in soul, and might be getting a thousand roubles at a time from a ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... apprised. Certainly the Buchers were nowadays cutting a high figure—they to whom such costly festivities had been unknown. No one had ever associated Villa Elsa with the wand of prodigality, and its vulgar Americans were dumfounding. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... she said earnestly enough now, and her eyes took on a more grave and serious look. "It isn't that. It's only—well, I might as well tell you, though it may be rather mean after your kindness. But my father thinks the movies are so—so vulgar! There—I've said it." ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... Low Heath is to behave and dress like gentlemen, not like vulgar, public-house potmen," said she, with an access of indignation which surprised me. "To think that you, with a nice mother like yours, should come up here a fright like that! There, put the shoes and hat in the trunk with the speckled waistcoat and shirts, and get yourself up ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... artistic lot to put us in the back row. It isnt a fact that we're inferior to them: it's a put-up job; and it's they that have put the job up. It's we that run the country for them; and all the thanks we get is to be told we're Philistines and vulgar tradesmen and sordid city men and so forth, and that theyre all angels of light and leading. The time has come to assert ourselves and put a stop to their stuck-up nonsense. Perhaps if we had nothing better to do than talking ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... and his language more polished, which is the more creditable to him when it is remembered how much his education has been neglected, how vitiated the Revolution made him, and that but lately his principal associates were, like himself, from among the vilest and most vulgar of the rabble. It is not necessary to be a keen observer to remark in Napoleon the upstart soldier, and in Joseph the former low member of the law; but I defy the most refined courtier to see in Lucien anything ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... travelling in damp weather, a spectacle-case, a brandy-flask, and a bon-bon-box, which broke and scattered cloves and peppermint lozenges. (I hope he guessed Aunt Celia is a dyspeptic, and not intemperate!) All this was hopelessly vulgar, but I wouldn't have minded anything if there had not been a Duchess novel. Of course he thought that it belonged to me. He couldn't have known Aunt Celia was carrying it for that accidental Mrs. Benedict, with whom she ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... him spoken of as a living existence, by one who had known him. Still, I have always had a quarrel with Sidney, for the wicked use to which he put his wit, in abusing good old Dr. Carey, and the missionaries in India; nay, in some places he even stooped to be spiteful and vulgar. I could not help, therefore, saying, when Macaulay observed that he had the most agreeable wit of any literary man of his acquaintance, "Well, it was very agreeable, but it could not have been very agreeable to the people who came under the edge of it," ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the town was now divided between the danger of the government and the new preacher who electrified the world at St. Rosicrucius. The Rev. Nigel Penruddock was not at all a popular preacher according to the vulgar acceptation of the term. He disdained all cant and clap-trap. He preached Church principles with commanding eloquence, and he practised them with unceasing devotion. His church was always open, yet his schools were ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... enough to try and be polite, but I've given it up. My style of talk is quite good enough for my company. What on earth does it matter whether I'm vulgar or not. I can feed calves and milk and grind out my days here just as well vulgar as ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Zotenlieder. The spirit of roguery and joviality, which prevails in them all, proves that they are more the overflowings of wild and unrestrained youth, than the fruits of dissoluteness of manners. They are often coarse, but never vulgar; they are indelicate, but they are not impudent. At any rate, we never meet in them that confounding of virtuous and vicious feelings, which has so often struck us painfully even in the best Scotch and German ballads. We refer the reader ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... you, in my last, I have had a smart fever. There is an epidemic in the place; but I suspect, from the symptoms, that mine was a fever of my own, and had nothing in common with the low, vulgar typhus, which is at this moment decimating Venice, and which has half unpeopled Milan, if the accounts be true. This malady has sorely discomfited my serving men, who want sadly to be gone away, and get me to remove. But, besides ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... smuggled up the back stairs by Duret; and here the king and the locksmith hammered away for hours together; while all about the room might be seen common locks, finished in the most perfect manner, secret locks, and locks of copper splendidly gilt. Gamin was a vulgar-minded man; and he treated the king ill, both at this time, and after adversity had overtaken the royal family. In these early days, he felt that the king was in his power, so afraid was his majesty of the queen and court knowing about his lock-making, ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... child dead! his poor little flower withered, and her death robbed him of L20,000, and indeed of ten times that sum, for he had now bought experience in trade and speculation, and had learned to make money out of money, a heap out of a handful. Stung by this vulgar torment in its turn, he started suddenly up, and dashed his wife's will down upon the floor in a fury, and paced the room excitedly. Hope still stood aghast, and hesitated to ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... differences every day. Some children are naturally, and from their very infancy, false and cruel, mean and greedy; while their brothers and sisters are open and frank and generous. One son in a house is born a vulgar snob, and one daughter a shallow-hearted and shameless little flirt; while another brother is a born gentleman, and another sister a born saint. Some children are tender-hearted, easily melted, and easily moulded; while others in the same family are hard ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... would call up smiles in deserts, fair one. Let us escape these rustics: close at hand There is a cot, where I have bid prepare Our evening lodgment—a rude, homely roof, But honest, where our welcome will not be Made torture by the vulgar eyes and tongues That are as death to Love! A heavenly night! The wooing air and the soft moon invite us. Wilt walk? I pray thee, now,—I know the path, Ay, every inch ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... be broken for this night's affair, Mr. Prescott, and you and the rest will continue to believe that I was absent merely on some vulgar escapade! I go, now, to my arrest, which is doubtless the last military service I shall be called upon to render. Mr. Prescott, I congratulate you, sir, upon your ability to spy upon other men and to serve your highest ideas ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... in the neighborhood. There are tradesmen who like those of their customers who pay badly when they see them often, while they hate others, and very good ones, who hold themselves on too high a level to allow of any familiarity as CHUMS, a vulgar but expressive word. Men are made so; in almost every class they will allow to a gossip, or a vulgar soul that flatters them, facilities and favors they refuse to the superiority they resent, in whatever form it may show ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... together; he, tall, dark, with long whiskers, and the rather vulgar manners of a good-looking man, who is very well satisfied with himself; she, small, fair and pink, a little Parisian, half shopkeeper, half one of those of easy virtue, born behind a shop, brought up at its door to entice customers by her looks, and married, accidentally, in consequence to a simple, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... spread a carpet of brush, upon which the men sit while conversing. At such meetings one never hears two Indians talk at once—a fine example for white people to heed—nor do they openly contradict one another as the vulgar white man does, for such an offence would be considered, by the savage, rude—and the offender would be regarded as no better than a white man; for they believe themselves to be not only the wisest and the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... Let those Yankee fools spin, Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their skin; Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel, Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to feel! ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... it is like drawing an angel with spread wings with a bit of charcoal. I understate everything. Yet I labor day by day travestying it, caricaturing the beautiful thoughts that come into my mind. I make everything commonplace and vulgar by putting it into words. I go alone into the woods and sit for hours quite still with the trees. And gradually I understand and know. And I listen, and Nature speaks, really speaks—not a facon de parler, as some people think who explain to you that you mean this or that by ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... in her confidence, I am clearly her friend; and being a friend would it be friendly to use her dear name so; and all for sake of practicing a vulgar ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Quakers will be seen in a vulgar expression, which should have had no place in this book, if it had not been a saying in almost every body's mouth. The expression, is, "Though they will ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... theatre was jammed full of people, mostly with shawls, and cloaks, and bonnets on. Cousin E. E. was right. What is genteel in one place is vulgar ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... in vulgar squabbles, more and more stormy, a connection so romantically begun. Lauzun, disappointed in his hope of a magnificent alliance, considered himself despoiled by the Princess's donation, and, finding himself after ten years' captivity the husband of a woman of fifty-four, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... o'clock, there was not one at the table who was not drunk enough to be foolish. The rational and intelligent conversation that had been introduced early in the evening, had long since given place to the obscene jest—the vulgar story—or the bacchanalian song. Gayest of the gay were our young men, who had already, one would think, received sufficient lessons ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... home very quietly, as I say, thinking about the strange elements that not only combine to make life, but must be combined in our idea of life, before we can form a true theory about it. Now-a-days, the vulgar notion of what is life-like in any annals is to be realised by sternly excluding everything but the commonplace; and the means, at least, are often attained, with this much of the end as well—that the appearance life ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... will o'erhear us. But who's that stranger? By his warlike port, His fierce demeanour, and erected look, He's of no vulgar note. ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... caller herrin'? Oh, ye may ca' them vulgar farin'! Wives and mithers, maist despairin', Ca' them lives o' men. Wha 'll ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... they may be compared to good breeding in men; it is what every body perceives, and is captivated with, but what few can define. That it has an irresistible beauty which delights men of sense, and which charms the eyes of the vulgar, I think must be admitted; for no other possible reason can be assigned why this building alone, standing in the very centre of a city, wherein every excess which religious fury could inspire, or barbarous manners could suggest, has stood so many ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... how to value my tenderness. Alas! alas! that this, the only hope, joy, or comfort I ever had, should turn to a mockery, and hang like an ugly film over the remainder of my days!—I was at Roslin Castle yesterday. It lies low in a rude, but sheltered valley, hid from the vulgar gaze, and powerfully reminds one of the old song. The straggling fragments of the russet ruins, suspended smiling and graceful in the air as if they would linger out another century to please the curious beholder, the green larch-trees trembling between ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... leather jerkin, and instead of having his hair powdered, and tied in a long queue, according to the fashion of the day, he wore his own short grey locks; his address was plain, frank, and hearty, but by no means coarse or vulgar. He was of an ancient family, but of a moderate fortune.' Here Edgeworth adds a long description of the grotto and its stalactites. They returned to dine with the ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... it is that all sort of justice passes in the world for a low-spirited and vulgar virtue, far below the dignity of royal greatness—or at least there are set up two sorts of justice; the one is mean and creeps on the ground, and, therefore, becomes none but the lower part of mankind, and so must ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... age most greatly want. With Locke, with Smith, with Hegel and with Marx, the ultimate hypothesis is always the summary of some special experience universalized. That does not mean that the past is worthless. Politics, as Seeley said, are vulgar unless they are liberalized by history; and a state which failed to see itself as a mosaic of ancestral institutions would build its novelties upon foundations of sand. Suspicions of collective effort in the eighteenth century ought not to mean suspicion in the twentieth; to think in such fashion ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... Replace him to-morrow by an Academy of Letters and an Academy of Dramatic Poetry, and the new and enlarged filter will still exclude original and epoch-making work, whilst passing conventional, old-fashioned, and vulgar work without question. The conclave which compiles the index of the Roman Catholic Church is the most august, ancient, learned, famous, and authoritative censorship in Europe. Is it more enlightened, more liberal, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... of the exploits of Iermak we shall at first say that, like everything that is extraordinary, they have made a strong impression upon the imagination of the vulgar, and have given birth to many fables, which are confused in the traditions with the real facts. Under the title of "annals" they have led the historians themselves into error. It is thus, for instance, that some hundreds of warriors, led by Iermak, have been metamorphosed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... very big and strong lad for my age, and my self-imposed tasks of long rowing trips and other athletic exercises, naturally made me powerful in the arms and chest. Of my brain power I shall say little, as my mind was ever bent on sporting topics when it should have been diving into English history or vulgar fractions. Some new device in fishing gear was always of more consequence to me than any inquiry as to the name of the executioner who gave Charles the I. "chops for breakfast," as we youngsters used to say, when we irreverently spoke ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... flies that you're pursuing—I hardly felt their little teasing feet through my thick fur. The merest touch, like a caress, now and then thrilled along the silky sloping hairs which clothe me.... But then you never act with any discretion. Your vulgar gayety is a nuisance, and when sad you howl like a ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... simple ring with a single stone, To the vulgar eye no stone of price: Whisper the right word, that alone— Forth starts a sprite, like fire from ice. And lo, you are lord (says an Eastern scroll) Of heaven and earth, lord whole and sole Through the power in ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... "I've never told you the story, have I, Clay? Of course I know perfectly well I haven't. There was another woman. I think I could have understood it, perhaps, if she had been a different sort of a woman. But—I suppose it hurt my pride. I didn't love him. She was such a vulgar little ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is in consequence of this incident that I have hitherto shown thee grace. O worst of trees, it is for this that thou standest unharmed, and not in consequence of thy own might. Thou regardest me lightly as if I were a vulgar thing. I shall show myself unto thee in such a way that thou mayst not ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... because he did not rise absolutely above his time. That is to say, he was a man; that is to say, he was imperfect. If anybody claimed now that Shakespeare was actually inspired, that claim would be answered by pointing to certain weak or bad or vulgar passages in his works. But every Christian will say that it is a certain kind of blasphemy to impute vulgarity or weakness to God, as they are all obliged to defend the weak, the bad and the vulgar, so long ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... 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 |
