The vulgar only laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh.
What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.
The good opinion of the vulgar is injurious.
How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.
Nothing has tended more to retard the advancement of science than the disposition in vulgar minds to vilify what they cannot comprehend.
I think politics have gotten vulgar and we comedically portray that.
The artist has some internal experience that produces a poem, a painting, a piece of music. Spectators submit themselves to the work, which generates an inner experience for them. But historically it's a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator's experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist's. That idea comes from an over-industrialized society which has learned to distrust magic.
It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.
The wretched beings depicted by Millet touch us profoundly because he loved them profoundly. They have nothing in common with vulgar ugliness. Beauty will always remain the highest aim of art.
There is a vulgar persuasion, that the ignorance of women, by favoring their subordination, ensures their utility. 'Tis the same argument employed by the ruling few against the subject many in aristocracies; by the rich against the poor in democracies; by the learned professions against the people in all countries.
When you know you are of worth, you don't have to raise your voice, you don't have to become rude, you don't have to become vulgar; you just are. And you are like the sky is, as the air is, the same way water is wet. It doesn't have to protest.
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people.
Well, if I am not vulgar, neither is my book. I wrote myself. Suggestiveness is always vulgar. But truth never. My book is not even remotely suggestive. I call things by their names. That is all.
Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.
Being vulgar is fine, but oh please just don't be boring.
He whom common, gross, or stale objects allure, and when obtained, content, is a vulgar being, incapable of greatness in thought or action.
A man is crazy who writes a secret in any other way than one which will conceal it from the vulgar.
Some children I have met are very beautiful. Some children are imbeciles, vulgar, terrible.
I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.
The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds - success.
