#vulgar

I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and reasonably applied, but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar. ↗

— Miguel de Cervantes

#applied #aptly #conversation #forever #hit

Manlius ... took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world, and his bubble of civility was becoming smaller and smaller. Caius Valerius, powerful member of a powerful family, had never even heard of Plato. A hundred, even fifty years before, such an absurdity would have been inconceivable. Now it was surprising if such a man did know anything of philosophy, and even if it was explained, he would not wish to understand. ↗

— Iain Pears

#civilization #crudeness #education #knowledge #like-mindedness

As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later. ↗

— Alistair Cooke

#american #british #embrace #enthusiasm #especially

Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#concealing #distinction #his #notable #revealing

Television is not vulgar because people are vulgar; it is vulgar because people are similar in their prurient interests and sharply differentiated in their civilized concerns. ↗

— George Gilder

#civilized #concerns #differentiated #interests #people

They say it figures MTV would do such a vulgar, awful, horrible show and they completely miss that it's satirizing the people who watch MTV. ↗

— Mike Judge

#completely #figures #horrible #miss #mtv

How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians. ↗

— Horace Walpole

#circumstances #exalt #historians #how #improve

I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money. ↗

— Orson Welles

#anything #i #i do #just #money

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#avoided #convincing #often #vulgar

[O]ne man's vulgarity is another's lyric. ↗

— John Marshall Harlan

#lyrics #vulgarity #censorship