#vulgarity

It is wrong to wear diamonds before luncheon, except on one’s marriage rings. Before, after, and during breakfast, luncheon and dinner, it is vulgar to wear a mixture of colored precious stones. It is always a comfort to know that so many things one can’t afford to do anyway are vulgar. ↗

— Judith Martin

#etiquette #vulgarity #marriage

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

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#cannot #century #death #explain #facts

Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#more #nothing #philistine #than #vulgarity

I think that what most surprises anybody who goes into politics from even a modestly cerebral background is the vulgarity of much of the cut and thrust of politics. ↗

— Chris Patten

#background #cerebral #cut #even #goes

And then I remember this morning and I wonder if it really happened or if I dreamed it. It was nice. And weird. And tender. I'm not used to tender. It's a fossil, that word. Conditions changed and it died out. Like the woolly mammoth. It just couldn't live in the same world as dick box. Ho dog. Or wiener cousins. ↗

— Jennifer Donnelly

#romance #tenderness #vulgarity #young-adult #young-love

All womankind, from the highest to the lowest love jokes; the difficulty is to know how they choose to have them cut; and there is no knowing that, but by trying, as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or letting down their breeches, till we hit the mark. ↗

— Laurence Sterne

#vulgarity #love

By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin, and pretend to be somebody else. ↗

— Solomon Schechter

#civilization #else #himself #his #i

There is a real vulgarity in the way women dress at the moment. They show off too much and try too hard. They don't understand where the line is between sexy and vulgar. I know where that line is. ↗

— Roberto Cavalli

#dress #hard #i #know #line

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