A Quote by Henry Watson Fowler

Those who are addicted to the phrase "to use a vulgarism" expect to achieve the feat of being at once vulgar and superior to vulgarity.

Henry Watson Fowler

Quote Topics

Achieve Addicted Being Expect Feat Once Phrase Superior Those Use Vulgar Vulgarity

Quote Author

Henry Watson Fowler
English - Scientist
March 10, 1858 - December 26, 1933

The worst vulgarity is to avoid vulgarity solely on the grounds that it is vulgar.

Tanith Lee

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

John Ruskin

The burden of being black is that you have to be superior just to be equal. But the glory of it is that, once you achieve, you have achieved, indeed.

Jesse Jackson

I hate vulgarity. I hate vulgarity even though it attracts me - and it attracts me very much. I love all that is transgressive or vulgar. But in my opinion, it has to reach a limit that is always a little surreal and never becomes in your face.

Riccardo Tisci

We cannot at once catch the applauses of the vulgar and expect the approbation of the wise.

Walter Savage Landor

Political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the occurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the simplification of human life implied in even the best of it purposes.

Michael Joseph Oakeshott

A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Vulgarism in language is the distinguishing characteristic of bad company, and a bad education. A man of fashion avoids nothing with more care than that. Proverbial expressions, and trite sayings, are the flowers of the rhetoric of vulgar man.

Lord Chesterfield

By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or memorable phrase of the mind itself. He believed it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care (saving them for later use, that is), seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments.

James Joyce

Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion. The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the wilful; not the graceful, but the fantastic; not the superior in the abstract, but the superior in the worst of all concretes,-the vulgar.

Leigh Hunt

To anyone who has followed the practice of using profanity or vulgarity and would like to correct the habit, could I offer this suggestion? First, make the commitment to erase such words from your vocabulary. Next, if you slip and say a swear word or a substitute word, mentally reconstruct the sentence without the vulgarity or substitute word and repeat the new sentence aloud. Eventually you will develop a non-vulgar speech habit.

L. Tom Perry

A conservative, I take it, is a man who despises vulgarity; but the argument which is concerned exclusively with calculations of success, and is based on blindness to the nobility of the effort, is vulgar.

Leo Strauss

Sir, I have seen your film and it is vulgar! Madame, my film rises below vulgarity.

Mel Brooks

One is born with good taste. It's very hard to acquire. You can acquire the patina of taste. But what Elsie Mendl had was something else that's particularly American––an appreciation of vulgarity. Vulgarity is a very important ingredient in life. I'm a great believer in vulgarity––if it's got vitality. A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste––it's hearty, it's healthy, it's physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I'm against.

Diana Vreeland

The case for exploiting animals for food, clothing and entertainment often relies on our superior intelligence, language and self-awareness: the rights of the superior being trump those of the inferior.