A Quote by John Ruskin

Courage, so far as it is a sign of race, is peculiarly the mark of a gentleman or a lady; but it becomes vulgar if rude or insensitive, while timidity is not vulgar, if it be a characteristic of race or fineness of make. A fawn is not vulgar in being timid, nor a crocodile "gentle" because courageous.

John Ruskin

Quote Topics

Because Becomes Being Characteristic Courage Courageous Crocodile Far Gentle Gentleman Insensitive Lady Make Mark Nor Race Rude Sign Timid Timidity Vulgar While

Quote Author

John Ruskin
English - Writer
February 8, 1819 - January 20, 1900

Rather be frumpy than vulgar! Much. Frumps are often celebrities in disguise -- but a person of vulgar appearance is vulgar all through.

Emily Post

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

There is a fine line between being glamorous and vulgar. I am open to glam roles as long as they don't look vulgar on screen.

Aishwarya Rajesh

The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology, because among political parties, as elsewhere, the vulgar make the language, and the vulgar abandon more easily the ideas that have been instilled into it than the words that it has learnt.

Alexis de Tocqueville

They said that Etta James is still vulgar. I said, Oh, how dare them say I'm still vulgar. I'm vulgar because I dance in the chair. What would they want me to do? Want me to just be still or something like that? I've got to do something.

Etta James

The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.

Niccolo Machiavelli

So must the writer, whose productions should Take with the vulgar, be of vulgar mould.

Edmund Waller

Our vulgar perception is not concerned with other than vulgar phenomena.

Samuel Beckett

We have lost the old love of work, of work which kept itself company, which was fair weather and music in the heart, which found its reward in the doing, craving neither the flattery of vulgar eyes nor the gold of vulgar men.

John Lancaster Spalding

Moderate sorrow Fits vulgar love, and for a vulgar man: But I have lov'd with such transcendent passion, I soar'd, at first, quite out of reason's view, And now am lost above it.

John Dryden

Kirstie [Alley] saved me, in a way. [At the time], I had a terrible marriage, and I stayed at her house. She was wonderful - just a kind, big-hearted, filthy girl. Somehow she could be vulgar without being vulgar.

Bebe Neuwirth

Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar; in an antiquary's study, not; the black battle-stain on a soldier's face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is.

John Ruskin

Now in regard to trades and other means of livelihood, which ones are to be considered becoming to a gentleman and which ones are vulgar, we have been taught, in general, as follows. First, those means of livelihood are rejected as undesirable which incur people's ill-will, as those of tax-gatherers and usurers. Unbecoming to a gentleman, too, and vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

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.

Mary MacLane

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.