Vulgar people can't be still. [ O. W. Holmes ]
Whoever is ignorant is vulgar. [ Cervantes ]
Abuse is the weapon of the vulgar. [ Goodrich ]
Above the vulgar flight of common souls. [ Arthur Murphy ]
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. [ William Shakespeare ]
Prejudices are what rule the vulgar crowd. [ Voltaire ]
Pride scorns the vulgar yet lies at its mercy. [ Proverb ]
The absurd vulgar tastes all things by the ear. [ Proverb ]
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd unfledged comrade. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]
Her years
Were ripe, they might make six-and-twenty springs;
But there are forms which Time to touch forbears,
And turns aside his scythe to vulgar things. [ Byron ]
Write with the learned,, but speak with the vulgar. [ Proverb ]
He that gives customarily to the vulgar buys trouble. [ Proverb ]
The vulgar herd estimate friendship by Its advantages. [ Ovid ]
The vulgar and the many are fit only to be led or driven. [ South ]
Generosity is the part of the soul raised above the vulgar. [ Goldsmith ]
Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste. [ Emerson ]
The proportion of genius to the vulgar is like one to a million. [ Lavater ]
The vulgar will keep no account of your hits, but of your misses. [ Proverb ]
The boy who uses vulgar words will be shunned by all right-minded boys.
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
For it is certain to the vulgar eye, few things are wonderful that are not distant. [ Carlyle ]
The foolish and vulgar are always accustomed to value equally the good and the bad. [ Yriarte ]
The vulgar refuse or crouch beneath their load; the brave bear theirs without repining. [ Mallet ]
Vulgar minds refuse to crouch beneath their load; the brave bear theirs without repining. [ Thomson ]
The temperament of artists is such that they should be judged differently from the vulgar. [ De Finod ]
To endeavour to work upon the vulgar with fine sense is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor. [ Pope ]
Nature and truth, though never so low or vulgar, are yet pleasing when openly and artlessly represented. [ Pope ]
Many benefit by the caresses they have not inspired; many a vulgar reality serves as a pedestal to an ideal idol. [ T. Gautier ]
Bravery is a cheap and vulgar quality, of which the brightest instances are frequently found in the lowest savage. [ Chatfield ]
It is very vulgar to talk about one's own business. Only people like stock-brokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
Proverbs were anterior to books, and formed the wisdom of the vulgar, and in the earliest ages were the unwritten laws of morality. [ Disraeli ]
When pleasure, like the midnight flower that scorns the eye of vulgar light, begins to bloom for sons of night and maids who love the moon. [ Moore ]
A chine of honest bacon would please my appetite more than all the marrowpuddings, for I like them better plain, having a very vulgar stomach. [ Dryden ]
A careless and blasphemous use of the name of the Divine Being is not only sinful, but it is also prima facie evidence of vulgar associations. [ Hosea Ballou ]
A vulgar man, in any ill that happens to him, blames others; a novice in philosophy blames himself; and a philosopher blames neither the one nor the other. [ Epictetus ]
There is a greatness in being generous, and there is only simple justice in satisfying creditors. Generosity is the part of the soul raised above the vulgar. [ Goldsmith ]
A vulgar man is captious and jealous; eager and impetuous about trifles. He suspects himself to be slighted, and thinks everything that is said meant at him. [ Chesterfield ]
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise. [ Johnson ]
Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding. Vulgar persons can't sit still, or, at least, they must work their limbs or features. [ Holmes ]
The little mind who loves itself will write and think with the vulgar; but the great mind will be bravely eccentric, and scorn the beaten road, from universal benevolence. [ Goldsmith ]
I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and seasonably applied; but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar. [ Cervantes ]
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether. [ Coleridge ]
Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible. [ Colton ]
Irony is to the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it pointblank, he implies it in the politest terms he can invent. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
A poet of superior merit, whose vein is of no vulgar kind, who never winds off anything trite, nor coins a trivial poem at the public mint, I cannot describe, but only recognise as a man whose soul is free from all anxiety. [ Juv ]
One of the first principles of decorative art is that in all manufactures ornament must hold a place subordinate to that of utility; and when, by its exuberance, ornament interferes with utility, it is misplaced and vulgar. [ G. C. Mason ]
If a superior woman marry a vulgar or inferior man, he makes her miserable, but seldom governs her mind or vulgarizes her nature; and if there be love on his side, the chances are that in the end she will elevate and refine him. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
A simple garb is the proper costume of the vulgar; it is cut for them, and exactly suits their measure; but it is an ornament for those who have filled up their lives with great deeds. I liken them to beauty in dishabille, but more bewitching on that account. [ Bruyere ]
Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters. [ Chesterfield ]
The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Vulgar habit people have nowadays of asking one, after one has given them an idea, whether one is serious or not. Nothing is serious except passion. The intellect is an instrument on which one plays, that is all. The only serious form of intellect is the British intellect. And on the British form of intellect the illiterates play the drum. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending, by casual extrinsic splendour, the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. [ Carlyle ]
A newspaper, like a theatre, must mainly owe its continuance in life to the fact that it pleases many persons; and in order to please many persons it will, unconsciously perhaps, respond to their several tastes, reflect their various qualities, and reproduce their views. In a certain sense it is evolved out of the community that absorbs it, and, therefore, partaking of the character of the community, while it may retain many merits and virtues, it will display itself, as in some respects ignorant, trivial, narrow, and vulgar. [ William Winter ]