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More "Unrefined" Quotes from Famous Books



... and though he hated all impure suggestiveness, he could be amused by what may be called broad humour. I always felt him to be totally free from prudishness, and it seemed to me that he drew the line in exactly the right place between things that might be funny and unrefined, and things which were merely coarse and gross. The fact was that he had a perfectly simple manliness about him, and an infallible tact, which was wholly unaffected, as to the limits of decorum. The result was that one could talk to him with the utmost plainness and ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... though even here the extent to which they were indebted to the Parthians, which cannot be exactly determined, must lessen our estimation of them; but their mimetic art, while not wanting in spirit, is remarkably coarse and unrefined. As a later chapter will be devoted to this subject, no more need be said upon it here. It is sufficient for our present purpose to note that the impression which we obtain from the monumental remains of the Sassanian Persians accords ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... (as, for instance, to amuse the children), it is obviously an act of very beautiful self-sacrifice, the destruction and surrender of the symbol of personal dignity upon the shrine of public festivity. Now it will not do to attack the modern editor merely for being unrefined, like the great mass of mankind. We must be able to say that he is immoral, not that he is undignified or ridiculous. I do not mind the Yellow Press editor sitting on his hat. My only objection to him begins to dawn when he attempts to ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... how the rough seamen gazed at us for a while in astonishment, and then, with a delicacy of feeling which even such unrefined natures can sometimes exhibit, moved quietly off and left us unobserved; but I forgot for a while that there was any one else on the ship besides my new-found brother and myself. It was full five minutes before either of us could utter a word, and then, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... Somewhat unrefined, in comparison with his lofty and simple claim to be believed on a suggestion, is the commoner painter's production of his credentials, his appeal to the sanctions of ordinary experience, his self- defence against the suspicion ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... be laid on the importance of hearing good music. When it falls on listening ears it removes all desire for anything coarse or unrefined. Constant companionship with it prepares the ear to hear, the inner being to receive, and cannot fail to bring forth fruit. The creations of noble minds form practical working-forces in shaping character, purifying taste and elevating standards. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... Harrington, having previously sent to the bishop many letters and petitions for liberty without effect, had the courage to address to him a "Sonnet," which his son has cited as "no ill verse for those unrefined times;" a modest commendation of lines so spirited, which the taste of the more modern reader, however fastidious, need not hesitate ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... I noticed were "dirty" eggs, 2 cents cheaper. I look next for "small dirty eggs." Why should they sound so unrefined? More so some way than "small dirty boys." But an artist must paint life as he sees it and I saw these "dirty" eggs on that bazaar—and ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... upon visiting cards says: "To the unrefined or underbred, the visiting card is but a trifling and insignificant bit of paper; but to the cultured disciple of social law, it conveys a subtle and unmistakable intelligence. Its texture, style of engraving, and even the hour of leaving it combine to place the stranger, ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... day; Or yet, while day permits those joys to reign, The village vices drive them from the plain. See the stout churl, in drunken fury great, Strike the bare bosom of his teeming mate! His naked vices, rude and unrefined, Exert their open empire o'er the mind; But can we less the senseless rage despise, Because the savage acts without disguise? Yet here Disguise, the city's vice, is seen, And Slander steals along and taints the Green: At her approach ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe

... although the son was brought up to assist his father on the friezes which he executed on Burton's Arch at Hyde Park Corner, and on the Athenaeum Club-house. His drawing was loose and undistinguished; his sense of humour, such as it was, unrefined; and his fun exaggerated and false. He was a Bohemian, but not of the type of his brother-in-law Kenny Meadows, preferring a class of entertainment less exalted than those who so warmly welcomed his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... presumptuous in pushing herself into his presence. Of course he was safe. Of course nothing could hurt him. The poor Honourable Charles, the erstwhile draper's assistant, with his common, thick-set figure, his hoarse voice, his unrefined accent—it was an offence even to think of him in the same breath with this elegant gentleman. How could this one on his high eminence of aloofness and security be endangered by such an ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... stooping to all sorts of illustrative work, whose execution we fancy must have been often a severe trial to him. Any youth aiming at "high art," and feeling, though poor, too proud to bend in order to feed the taste, (grotesque and unrefined enough, it must be allowed,) of the good public, which artists somewhat naturally estimate rather contemptuously, might get a lesson of patience by looking over an endless series of the most variedly hideous costumes or caricatures of costume ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... dramatic entertainments were crude, coarse, popular plays, done by strolling players. A mediaeval crowd at fair time was entertained by mountebanks, tumblers, and similar rough makers of unrefined mirth. ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... politeness which is necessary in the intercourse among gentlemen, it makes them comprehend badinage, and it keeps them from using and employing certain figures of speech, too rude and unrefined, which are often used thoughtlessly when we hold to our ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld

... quick, repellent movement of the shoulder. But Purdy, some vagrom fancy quickened in him, either by the voice, which was not unrefined, or by the stealthiness of the approach, Purdy ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... various offices of the Army staff. Although these agencies have abandoned the system of classifying all documents by a decimal-subject system, the system persisted in many offices well into the 1960's, thereby enabling the researcher to accomplish a speedy, if unrefined, screening of pertinent materials. Even with this crutch, the researcher must still comb through thousands of documents created by the Secretary of War (later Secretary of the Army), his assistant secretary, the Chief of Staff, and the various ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... we have a seeming flash of comprehension of, the Kanaka's reason for exiling himself: he goes away to acquire civilization. Yes, he was naked and not ashamed, now he is clothed and knows how to be ashamed; he was unenlightened; now he has a Waterbury watch; he was unrefined, now he has jewelry, and something to make him smell good; he was a nobody, a provincial, now he has been to far countries ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Australian Wagner could be born we might hope for a musical adaptation of corroborees. Wagner was essentially the exponent of folk-lore music, wherein must be expressed the fundamentals of human passion unrefined. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... as you remember seeing her, but she was a quiet, retiring, well-educated, rosy-cheeked English girl—impressed you right away as being the pure, unrefined article, about twenty-two karat. She "chinned" me about an hour, that evening, and just cut a cameo of her pretty face ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... had hoped it might be: Mrs. Raymond came in person, and I had at last the opportunity I had long desired of seeing her alone. If thoughtless, if unrefined according to my views of good breeding, she was still young, and vivacious, and perhaps kind-hearted; besides this, sufficiently well pleased with herself to be generous to one who could ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... slang, my child, and a young lady should never use slang. Don't use it in private and you will not be apt to use it in public. However humble or poor a person may be, there is no use in being coarse and unrefined." ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... devotion to woman is proverbial. With few opportunities to mingle in female society, he can, nevertheless, truly estimate its value, and appreciate its advantages. Indeed, I have known old sailors, whose rough and wrinkled visages, blunt and repulsive manners, coarse and unrefined language, were enough to banish gentle Cupid to an iceberg, exhibit the kindest and tenderest feelings when speaking of WOMAN, whom in the abstract they regarded as a being not merely to be protected, cherished, and loved, but ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... recommended as being the least filthy in the place. They crossed a square covered with goods of all kinds. There were long rows of great jars filled with native spirit, bales of cinchona bark, piles of wheat from Chili, white and rose-coloured blocks of salt, pyramids of unrefined sugar, and a block of great bars of silver; among these again were bales and boxes landed from foreign countries, logs of timber, and old anchors and chains. Numbers of people who appeared to have nothing to do sauntered about or sat on logs. In ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... she, "for there was need enough of improvement. She was so unrefined, always preferring the kitchen to the parlor, that we ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes

... subacid fruits. Prunes, prunus domestica. Cassia sistula. Tamarinds, crystals of tartar, unrefined sugar. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... presence—the man who thinks of the homage due to him, and not of the homage owing by him, is essentially rude. Mammon is slowly stifling and desiccating Rank; both are miserable deities, but the one is yet meaner than the other. Unrefined families with money are received with open arms and honours paid, in circles where a better breeding than theirs has hitherto prevailed: this, working along with the natural law of corruption where is no aspiration, has gradually caused ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... of living, are not those which I have been used to," she said; "but how does that affect me? I am myself whatever happens; even if poor dear grandmamma's habits are not refined, which I suppose is what you mean, mamma, that does not make me unrefined. A lady must always be a lady wherever she is—Una," she continued, using strangely enough the same argument which has occurred to her historian, "is not less a princess when she is living among the satyrs. Of course, I am not like ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... self-culture, by assimilation, digestion, meditation. The busy bee is a favorite simile with us, and we are apt to overlook the fact that the least important part of his example is buzzing around. If the hive simply got together and buzzed, or even brought unrefined treacle from some cyclopaedia, let us say, of treacle, there would be no honey added to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... scared her governess nearly to death: "My lamb! You'll get overheated, and take cold. When I was a young lady, it was thought unrefined to speak so—emphatically. And your dear uncle didn't ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... sharp points of which was poised a king, on the other a fat bishop in his lawn. The two perpetual mischief-makers, and desolators thus poised, he came with a hideous roar, threatening to drown them in the river of unrefined common sense. And then there was written in broad letters of fire across the shoulders of this sturdy devil—'Kingcraft and Churchcraft have cursed the nations of the earth, and turned to blight the blessings of the True God!' Again this significant ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... that man's defence seemed to be instinct with an eloquent and imposing serenity, which aroused astonishment at first, coming from that clown, that upstart, unread, uneducated, with his Rhone boatman's voice and his street porter's bearing, and afterward moved his auditors strangely by its unrefined, uncivilized character, utterly at variance with all parliamentary traditions. Already tokens of approval had manifested themselves among the benches, accustomed to submit to the colorless, monotonous downpour of administrative ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... belief in a hostile principle and its imaginations was become general in the Roman empire, the ignorance of its conquerors, those wild nations, Franks, Goths, Vandals, Huns, and similar classes of unrefined humanity, made them prone to an error which there were few judicious preachers to warn them against; and we ought rather to wonder and admire the Divine clemency, which imparted to so rude nations the light of the Gospel, and disposed ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... except with their men friends. And one or two are the real thing—good-hearted, fond of a joke, without any meanness. I tell you, New York is a mighty fine place if you get 'in right.' Of course, if you don't, it's h-e-l-l." (Mrs. Belloc took off its unrefined edge by spelling it.) "But what ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... knuckles, and so he held his tongue. Bouldon had, meantime, recognised Blackall's handwriting, and having a considerable amount of contempt for those whose signatures were attached, he exhibited it in an unmistakable, though certainly an unrefined manner, by holding up the paper, and spitting into the middle of it. Then he folded it up, and crammed it into Dawson's pocket. Dawson and he had had a set-to fight a little time before, and though Dawson was ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... opportunity and will to advance the Evangelical clergy; and among others, he had the honour of promoting John Newton to the rectory of S. Mary Woolnoth.[832] He himself was a standing witness that 'Methodism' was not a religion merely for the coarse and unrefined, for he was himself so polished a gentleman that Richardson is reputed to have said that 'he would have realised his own idea of Sir Charles Grandison, if he had not been a Methodist.' It was Lord Dartmouth of whom Cowper wrote, 'he wears a coronet and prays:' an implied reflection ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... the tulip was an act of adoration rendered by an entire nation, unlettered and unrefined, to the refinement and culture of its illustrious and devout leaders, whose blood had stained the foul pavement of the Buytenhof, reserving the right at a future day to inscribe the names of its victims upon the highest stone ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... combined pressure of his wife and daughter. He had an immense voice which could be gruff or pleasing, as he willed; in all, a big, strong, wholesome personality, unconventional, but in no sense unrefined. He was in striking contrast to his dapper crony, Robert Marie, who accompanied him from the yacht, a man whose distinction lay in his family, his courtly manners of the old school, and ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... of copper halberds, it will be seen that the tin varies from .18 to .31 per cent. We may therefore conclude that the copper halberds are simply coarse or unrefined copper from similar ores to the copper celts; and that the copper implements found in Ireland may contain up to about .5 per cent. of tin. An increasing percentage of tin was not found in any of the copper celts, or, contrary to expectation, in the copper halberds; but, judging from the ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey

... foolish pranks. But since in respect to his handiwork he followed in his father's footsteps, and no fault could ever be found with his industry or with the neatness of his work, Master Wacht ascribed his at times too outrageous tricks to the unrefined untamed fire of youth, and he forgave the young fellow, observing that he would be sure to sow his wild ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... turned, and beheld Lord Dartmore, of Rocher de Cancale memory. I returned his greeting with the same cordiality with which it was given: and I was forthwith saddled with Dartmore's arm, and dragged up Bond-street, into that borough of all noisy, riotous, unrefined, good ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... his chest, glanced across at Fong Ling, and gave his social circle a rather poor version of the usual white-toothed smile. "Jokes can wait—especially busted ones. On with the dance; let joy be unrefined!" ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... intersection. Two men got down and picked their way through the vile street, searching out the house numbers as they progressed. They passed the all-night dives and brothels, whence came the sounds of unrestrained and unrefined revelry, and came at last to a spot beneath a huge wooden boot that hung suspended above the door of the most unholy structure in the narrow street. A man in his shirt sleeves sat back in the shadow of the tumbledown stoop, smoking a pipe. At his left a narrow, black passage led down ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... the birth Most richly wrought, the favorite child of earth; But frail at first his frame, with nerves ill strung, Unform'd his footsteps, long untoned his tongue, Unhappy, unassociate, unrefined, Unfledged the pinions of his lofty mind, He wander'd wild, to every beast a prey, More prest with wrants, and feebler far than they; For countless ages forced from place to place, Just reproduced but scarce preserved his race. At last, a soil more fixt and streams more ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... house. But what astonished Julien quite as much was that she seemed to have received a degree of education superior to that of people of her condition, and he wondered at the amount of will-power by which a nature highly cultivated, relatively speaking, could conform to the unrefined, rough surroundings in which she ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... something of demonstration; the first Impressionist simply asked that his word should be accepted. To those who would not take his word he offers no bond. To those who will, he grants the distinction of a share in his responsibility. Somewhat unrefined, in comparison to his lofty and simple claim to be believed on a suggestion, is the commoner painter's production of his credentials, his appeal to the sanctions of ordinary experience, his self-defence against the suspicion of making irresponsible mysteries in art. 'You can see for yourself,' ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because he lived in the best society. If this assertion be true, the reader of his plays will decide that the best society of those days was unrefined and immoral, and that genteel comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's dramas are coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or professes to write, with a moral purpose, his method may justly offend a rigid moralist. Moreover ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... had danced the tango and the trot In days of old, there is no doubt we'd find The poet would have written—would he not?— "On with the dance, let joy be unrefined!" ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... king changed with the Duchess of Buckingham for one of His Majesty's Mantua pieces." It may well have suggested to Rubens, who must have seen it among the King's possessions on the occasion of his visit to London, his superb, yet singularly unrefined, Helene Fourment in a Fur Mantle, now also in the ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... know more than half a dozen of 'em," retorted Robin, somewhat sharply, "in what unrefined people call the haristocracy ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... obscenity and admiration for their beauties. But could we be pardoned for putting these works into the hands of 'sweet seventeen,' or making Christmas presents of them to our boys? Ignorance of evil is, to a certain extent, virtue: let boys be boys in purity of mind as long as they can: let the unrefined 'great unwashed' be treated also much in the same way as young people. I maintain that to a coarse mind all improper ideas, however beautifully clothed, suggest only sensual thoughts—nay, the very modesty of the garments makes them the more insidious—the more dangerous. I would rather ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... are not hankering after dog-fighting again, a sport which none but the gross and unrefined care anything for? No, one's thoughts should be occupied by something higher and more rational than dog-fighting; and what better than love—divine love? ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... part, these are persons of inferior mental calibre, of somewhat unrefined instincts; but, on the other hand, I have known mighty intellects lose themselves in this maze, where no firm clue can be seized by which to go forward safely, to advance at all, while the return journey ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett to Subsequent Fiction.—Although the modern reader frequently complains that these older novelists often seem heavy, slow in movement, unrefined, and too ready to draw a moral or preach a sermon, yet these four men hold an important place in the history of fiction. With varying degrees of excellence, Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne all have the rare power of portraying character from within, of interpreting real life. Some ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... very few isolated cases, as yet, of the unrefined habits so usually ascribed to them; and those cases decidedly were not among the higher orders of people; for there seems just as much difference in America as any where else in some respects. The superior ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... enchantment. He steals us so insensibly along with him, that we sympathize even in his excesses. In his amatory odes there is a delicacy of compliment not to be found in any other ancient poet. Love at that period was rather an unrefined emotion; and the intercourse of the sexes was animated more by passion than by sentiment. They knew not those little tendernesses which form the spiritual part of affection; their expression of feeling was therefore rude and unvaried, and the poetry of love deprived it of its most captivating ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... takes care of the rich, the strong, the governing class, and neglects the poor, and ignorant, and the unrefined, as the ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... example those two miniatures you were looking at last night, Mrs. Evelyn," the young man went on;—"Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette—what would you have more unrefined, more heavy, more animal, than the face of that descendant of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... of wild and cultivated fruits, vegetables, and tubers preserved in formaldehyde was a very interesting one, and undoubtedly the first collection of its kind seen in America. Samples of unrefined sugar of different grades, together with the preserved cane, were also displayed, with the crude native machinery used in ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... love to her, real love, kisses, claspings, and what not. For Elsie Goldmore had presumed upon their schoolgirl friendship and been quite explicate in these last days, and in any case Amaryllis was not a miss of the Victorian era. The feminine world has grown too unrefined in the expression of its private affairs and too indiscreet for any maiden to ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... from the children; of course he could and did often exchange words with her in the presence of the twins, but he felt himself held at a distance by a tact which was perfect; without undue reserve, without a shadow of unrefined manoeuvring, Emily limited their intercourse in precisely the way that Mr. Athel or Mrs. Rossall would have deemed becoming. Then there were almost always guests at the house. With prudent regard to the character of these visitors, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... that right which startled her in spite of her new conservatism, while, as the daughter of a business man, her instincts revolted against Mrs. Randolph's unbusiness-like action with the telegram, however vulgar and unrefined she may have begun to consider a life of business. The result was a certain constraint and embarrassment in her manner, which, however, had the laudable effect of limiting Emile's attention to significant glances, and was no ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... on Albyn's hill, (When England's sons the strife resigned), A rugged race, resisting still, And unsubdued though unrefined. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... meet them. However broad and elevated may be the interests of the modern gentleman and his cultured wife, they cannot forget that the physical needs of their family are as insistent as those of the unrefined day laborer. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... (as such a knowledge of the shape of objects is in his profession) this keen student of nature has stored away in his brain. In the next plate, where Jack is escaping from his mistress, the figure of that lady, one of the deepest of the [Greek text omitted], strikes us as disagreeable and unrefined; that of Winifred is, on the contrary, very pretty and graceful; and Jack's puzzled, slinking look must not be forgotten. All the accessories are good, and the apartment has a snug, cosy air; which is not remarkable, except that it shows ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... shocked, and though he hated all impure suggestiveness, he could be amused by what may be called broad humour. I always felt him to be totally free from prudishness, and it seemed to me that he drew the line in exactly the right place between things that might be funny and unrefined, and things which were merely coarse and gross. The fact was that he had a perfectly simple manliness about him, and an infallible tact, which was wholly unaffected, as to the limits of decorum. The result was that one could talk to him with the utmost plainness ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... not understand your gibberish, my good man: but that you are unrefined and uneducated I can easily see, and I command you to ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... Brook-street, into Bond-street. I turned, and beheld Lord Dartmore, of Rocher de Cancale memory. I returned his greeting with the same cordiality with which it was given: and I was forthwith saddled with Dartmore's arm, and dragged up Bond-street, into that borough of all noisy, riotous, unrefined, good fellows—yclept—'s Hotel. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... seemed to the travellers, it was not an exceptional banquet; indeed, the Duchess apologised for its simplicity, since she had been taken at unawares, evidently considering it as the ordinary family meal. There was ample provision, served up in by no means an unrefined manner, even to the multitudinous servants and retainers of the various trains; and beyond, on the steps and in the court, were a swarm of pilgrims, friars, poor, and beggars of all ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... this, you will remark that gold of an inferior degree of purity cannot mix with that of a superior purity. The one must contract the impurity of the other, or else impart its own purity to it. Put a refined gold with an unrefined one, what can the goldsmith ever do with it? He will have all the impurity taken from the second piece, that it may be able to mix with the first. This is what St Paul tells us, that "the fire shall try every ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... business as a farmer. He was rather shiftless, and preferred the company of his farm laborers to going into the fashionable society the rest of the family moved in; and so all his life he has been nothing but a rough, unrefined farmer." ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger

... Mr. Graham,' said the client, 'and if the text strikes you as disagreeably unrefined, think how it must pain me to speak thus of an uncle, if only ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... spray and dosed himself liberally in preparation for his return to civilization. "Of course, the natives are going to be wondering what kind of idiots they're dealing with to sell them pure refined extract of Venusian beefsteak in return for raw chunks of unrefined native soil. But I think we can afford to just let them wonder for ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse

... was then thou sought'st on Albyn's hill, (When England's sons the strife resign'd) A rugged race resisting still, And unsubdued though unrefined. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... of flowers. Why should it not be painted?" And then, while still he argued for the return of the Greek's love of beauty, covering his moral depravity with the mantle of the philosopher, he placed another canvas before her—something so unrefined, so animal, so destructive of womanly modesty and of all reserve, that any one looking upon it would instantly know that the man who had painted it was a degenerate demon—an associate of dissolute models, an anarchist in the ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... that means, wealthy cit? Can you guess, Dainty lady of fashion, with "dots" of your own, Bright-eyed and trim-vestured, well-fed and well-grown? Well, BOBBY'S a cripple, and BESS has a cough, Which, untended, next winter may "carry her off," As her folks in their unrefined diction declare; They are dying, these children, for food and fresh air, And their slum is much more like a sewer than a street, Whilst their food is—not such as your servants would eat; Were they housed like your horses, or fed like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various

... provisions to keep his clothes properly filled out. These two articles we took in compact form, regretting even the necessity of guarding against a ducking by a change of clothes. Our provision, that unrefined pork and hard tack, presently to be converted into artist and friend, was packed with a few delicacies in a firkin,—a commodious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... as his pleasing, manly, and not unrefined face shows, is a poet of the African race; and this novel and suggestive fact at once placed his work upon a peculiar footing of interest, of study, and of appreciative welcome. So regarded, it is a most remarkable and ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... on his Fingers and his Toes; there are many who may very justly consider this line as undignified and unrefined; but such readers should always remember that these quatrains may be taken as purely symbolical. Thus the Fingers and Toes may be regarded as mental aspects and the whistle as whatever best suits ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin

... is not surely the eating acorns or ragouts, a well-powdered head, or one decorated with red feathers, that constitutes the difference between barbarism and civilization; and, I fear, if the French proceed as they have begun, the advantage of morals will be considerably on the side of the unrefined savages. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... Miss Dawson was in high spirits (that trying test to an unrefined woman.) She considered Mrs. Castleton's visit and invitation as a marked compliment, (as she had every right to do,) and her attentions now, and the admiration she received, excited her to even more than her ordinary animation, which was always, to say the least of it, sufficient. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... "you are not hankering after dog-fighting again, a sport which none but the gross and unrefined care anything for? No, one's thoughts should be occupied by something higher and more rational than dog-fighting; and what better than love—divine love? Oh, there's nothing ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... lived well! I ate so many sweets and cakes in my childish years that if they could be sold now it would be enough to buy a good horse. Mamma taught me to read and write, she instilled the fear of God in me from my earliest years, and she so trained me that now I can't bring myself to utter an unrefined peasant word. And I don't drink vodka, my lad, and am neat in my dress, and know how to behave with decorum in good society. If she is still living, God give her health; and if she is dead, then, ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the whites who would not under any circumstance have wantonly wounded Eunice's sensibilities, had nevertheless issued the decree of caste and the grosser ones among them were to execute it, and Eunice was tasting the gall that the unrefined pour out daily for ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... as mercenary as Caroline Danby, which his knowledge of his mother forbade him to do, even in his most woman-scorning mood, he yet doubted whether any of those who had been reared amidst the refinements of cultivated life, could be won to leave them all for love in the western wilds; and as the unrefined could have no charms for him, he deliberately embraced bachelordom as a part of his portion, and, not without a sigh, yielded himself to the conviction that all the wealth of woman's love within his power to attain, was ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... lived in times remote, A shape half-human and half-goat, Who, having all Man's faults combined With a Goat's nature unrefined, Was not what you would call a bright Example or a shining light. Far be it from me to condone The Satyr's sins, yet I must own I like to think there were a few Young Satyrs who to Heaven flew, And when Saint Peter, thunder browed, Seeing them, cried, "No goats allowed!" ...
— The Mythological Zoo • Oliver Herford

... defence seemed to be instinct with an eloquent and imposing serenity, which aroused astonishment at first, coming from that clown, that upstart, unread, uneducated, with his Rhone boatman's voice and his street porter's bearing, and afterward moved his auditors strangely by its unrefined, uncivilized character, utterly at variance with all parliamentary traditions. Already tokens of approval had manifested themselves among the benches, accustomed to submit to the colorless, monotonous downpour of administrative language. But at that ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... decadence from the beautiful uncials of the fifth and sixth centuries, seen in the St. Germain's Psalter, for example, now in the National Library at Paris. The colours are coarse and badly applied, and even where brightest are utterly unrefined and without taste. ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... subjection to the charm of mere unqualified wonder and exaggeration—rioting in the wonders of the East, like the Varangians on their holiday, when they were allowed a free day to loot in the Emperor's palace.[79] The poem of Charlemagne's journey to Constantinople is unrefined enough, but the later and more elegant romances deal often in the same kind of matter. Mere furniture counts for a good deal in the best romances, and they are full of descriptions of riches and splendours. The story of Troy is full of details of various sorts of magnificence; ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... you remember seeing her, but she was a quiet, retiring, well-educated, rosy-cheeked English girl—impressed you right away as being the pure, unrefined article, about twenty-two karat. She "chinned" me about an hour, that evening, and just cut a cameo of her pretty face right ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... women of commerce there are, of course, many secret rebels—now and then only does one make her exit from society through the courts. The vast majority of Anglo-Saxons in whatever clime or capital, suppress their "unrefined" appetites or vagrant fancies—which are vibrations from the wheel; sometimes hard jerks when the presiding genius is more than commonly out of patience—and rise to serene heights or grow morbid and irritable according ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... popular crudity, as it is termed by some, a vulgarity as others name it, in the Methodist movement, in the Presbyterian movement, in the Protestant movement, world-wide? Was English Puritanism free from the same sort of characteristics, the things that are unrefined as belong to democratic politics in another sphere? The method, the phenomena, are those that belong to life universal, if life be free and efficient in moving masses of men upward into more noble ranges. Men of the people lead, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... after the subjection of the native language by conquest, and systematically applied in the versification of the great old poet, shows a feeling of language, and an authentic stamp of art, that claim the most genial and sympathizing respect of a refined posterity, to their not wholly unrefined, more heroic ancestors. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... enthusiasm and of sentiment. The worship of the Deity was blended with all that was ennobling and beautiful. Moved by these glowing fancies, her susceptible spirit, in these tender years, turned away from atheism, from infidelity, from irreligion, as from that which was unrefined, revolting, vulgar. The consciousness of the presence of God, the adoration of his being, became a passion of her soul. This state of mind was poetry, not religion. It involved no sense of the spirituality ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... afterward how the rough seamen gazed at us for a while in astonishment, and then, with a delicacy of feeling which even such unrefined natures can sometimes exhibit, moved quietly off and left us unobserved; but I forgot for a while that there was any one else on the ship besides my new-found brother and myself. It was full five minutes before either of us could utter a word, and then, after a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... of hypoglycemia requires that not only refined but also unrefined sugars and starches with a high glycemic index be removed from the diet. (The glycemic index measures the ease with which the starch is converted into glucose in the body, and estimates the amount of insulin needed to balance it out.) This means no sugar, ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... blindly on to destruction. "Elizabeth," he said, sternly, "in view of your most unrefined and unladylike language it behooves me to reprimand you ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart

... comprehension of, the Kanaka's reason for exiling himself: he goes away to acquire civilization. Yes, he was naked and not ashamed, now he is clothed and knows how to be ashamed; he was unenlightened; now he has a Waterbury watch; he was unrefined, now he has jewelry, and something to make him smell good; he was a nobody, a provincial, now he has been to far countries and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... than his marriage. The following extract from Guizot's Life of Monk will fully explain the allusion: "The return of the new admiral [Monk] was marked by a domestic event which was not without its influence on his public conduct and reputation. Unrefined tastes, and that need of repose in his private life which usually accompanies activity in public affairs, had consigned him to the dominion of a woman of low character, destitute even of the charms which seduce, and whose manners did not belie the ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... so glad, Gabriella, that you are pretty, that you are really classically beautiful, for he will think so much more of you for being so. He ought not, perhaps; but one cannot help having a fine taste. He cannot abide any thing coarse or unrefined." ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... he fills Affection's eye, Obscurely wise and coarsely kind; Nor, letter'd Arrogance, deny Thy praise to merit unrefined. ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... characteristic of the romances of chivalry. The low standard of morality also, which is reflected in the same pages, is due quite as much to the predominance of the dogmatic over the moral element of Christianity, as to the unrefined and rude conditions ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... headed by Professor Wilson, declared he was Burns's rival as a song-writer, and his superior in anything relating to external nature! indeed they wrote of him as unsurpassed by poet or painter in his fairy tales of ancient time, dubbing him Poet Laureate to the Queen of Elfland; and yet his unrefined manner tempted these friends to speak of him familiarly as the greatest hog in all Apollo's herd, or the Boar of the Forest, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... higher. If the more refined art is the higher, and the more refined in every case is that which appeals to the better sort of audience, the art which imitates anything and everything is manifestly most unrefined. The audience is supposed to be too dull to comprehend unless something of their own is thrown in by the performers, who therefore indulge in restless movements. Bad flute-players twist and twirl, if they have to represent 'the quoit-throw,' or hustle the ...
— Poetics • Aristotle

... discipline, and his readiness to share their toils and dangers; stern and rugged; without education, eloquence, or riches; ill-suited for shining in public assemblies, but resolute and dexterous in action; verily made to dominate the vigorous but unrefined multitude, whether in camp or city, partly by participating their feelings, partly by giving them in his own person a specimen of the deserts and sometimes of the virtues which they esteem ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... truth, and reason is always reason; they have an intrinsick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual gold which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser matter, that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in unrefined and plebeian words, that none but philosophers can distinguish it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... the opportunity to mumble some words of regret for what had happened, and to express a hope that nothing more would be said about the matter, while his mother was sympathetic and Elsa most charming and attentive. Now, as he knew well, all this would be changed. Foy, the exuberant, unrefined, plain-spoken, nerve-shaking Foy, would become the centre of attention, and overwhelm them with long stories of very dull exploits, while Martin, that brutal bull of a man who was only fit to draw a cart, would stand behind and play the part of chorus, saying "Ja" and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... minutes in boiling water, to separate the kernel from the parenchymatous part of the sarcocarp, which has a sweet taste, and is pounded and bruised in a large vessel filled with water. The infusion yields a yellowish liquor, which tastes like milk of almonds. Sometimes papelon (unrefined sugar) is added. The missionary told us that the natives become visibly fatter during the two or three months in which they drink this seje, into which they dip their cakes of cassava. The piaches, or ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... Julien quite as much was that she seemed to have received a degree of education superior to that of people of her condition, and he wondered at the amount of will-power by which a nature highly cultivated, relatively speaking, could conform to the unrefined, rough surroundings in which ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... be born we might hope for a musical adaptation of corroborees. Wagner was essentially the exponent of folk-lore music, wherein must be expressed the fundamentals of human passion unrefined. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... brutal vice, by all abominations that distinguish the lodging-letter of the metropolis.' No book exhibits more naively the extravagant value which Gissing put upon the mere externals of refinement. The following scathing vignette of his unrefined younger brother by the hero, Godfrey Peak, shows the ferocity with which this feeling could manifest itself against a human being who lacked the elements of scholastic learning (the brother in question had failed to give the date of the ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... when she was gone, all places were the same to him. There was, besides, that in the disposition of the man which tended to the homely:—any one who imagines that in the least synonymous with the coarse, or discourteous, or unrefined, has yet to understand the essentials of good breeding. Hence it came that the other rooms of the house were by degrees almost neglected. Both the dining-room and drawing-room grew very cold, cold as with the coldness of what is dead; and though he slept in the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... dependants. All had forsaken him—all but one man; he alone, in spite of the fate which inevitably awaited his adherence to the fallen chief, still remained faithful to his side: it was Malique. There is an instinctive fidelity, existing sometimes in the most unrefined and barbarous minds, honorable to human nature,—the uncouth Malique was of this stamp; he had received no favors from his master when in prosperity, yet he now scorned to abandon ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... but it was a case of 'first catch your hare.' Where was the 'sensible and agreeable woman of thirty or so?' Not Miss Browning, nor Miss Phoebe, nor Miss Goodenough. Among his country patients there were two classes pretty distinctly marked: farmers, whose children were unrefined and uneducated; squires, whose daughters would, indeed think the world was coming to a pretty pass, if they were to marry ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... halberds, it will be seen that the tin varies from .18 to .31 per cent. We may therefore conclude that the copper halberds are simply coarse or unrefined copper from similar ores to the copper celts; and that the copper implements found in Ireland may contain up to about .5 per cent. of tin. An increasing percentage of tin was not found in any of the copper celts, or, contrary to expectation, in the copper halberds; ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey

... steals us so insensibly along with him, that we sympathize even in his excesses. In his amatory odes there is a delicacy of compliment not to be found in any other ancient poet. Love at that period was rather an unrefined emotion; and the intercourse of the sexes was animated more by passion than by sentiment. They knew not those little tendernesses which form the spiritual part of affection; their expression of feeling was therefore rude and unvaried, and the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... imagine what kind of animals they were? We think not; and least of all, that he would suppose them to be of his own species. This is no improbable case; and we very much fear, should it ever occur, that the unrefined savage would go home with an impression not very flattering either to the ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... retrospect than in the society, and that they were better to write about than to live with. He never confessed it, but to his aunt, who understood him, it was plain that he found it a different thing to talk philanthropic socialism, or even to work among the poor, and to live in the society of the unrefined equals. ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a poet. He could scheme easily, but even his rhymes were poor. His sense of delicacy was quite obtuse, but perhaps not more so, than we ought to expect from the unrefined times ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... if someone had held up a scorching light in front of her friend, showing just how rough and unrefined she really was ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres

... station, of calling each other by such familiar names as Dick, Jack, Tom, &c. [Footnote: Dick Sheridan, Ned Burke, Jack Townshend, Tom Grenville, &c. &c.]—a mode of address that brings with it, in its very sound, the notion of conviviality and playfulness, and, however unrefined, implies, at least, that ease and sea-room, in which wit ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... which the king changed with the Duchess of Buckingham for one of His Majesty's Mantua pieces." It may well have suggested to Rubens, who must have seen it among the King's possessions on the occasion of his visit to London, his superb, yet singularly unrefined, Helene Fourment in a Fur Mantle, now ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... danced the tango and the trot In days of old, there is no doubt we'd find The poet would have written—would he not?— "On with the dance, let joy be unrefined!" ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... altogether, given to the new comers was cordial, if unrefined, and not many minutes had elapsed before they were all perfectly at home. Ronald, less accustomed than the rest to a midshipman's berth, felt more inclined than usual to be silent. He found himself seated next to a midshipman, who differed ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... risked the love that had been her own from childhood, and broken with the friend to whom her father had commended her? Was it worth while to defy their censures for this dreary spot, this weak-spirited, exacting, unrefined companion, and the insult of Mr. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... not so great that she did not retain the "better part of valor," for she stepped back, unlocked the front door, and set it ajar. On returning, she opened with a volubility that awed even Mrs. Wiggins for a moment. "You miserable, mountainous pauper; you interloper; you unrefined, irresponserble, unregenerate female, do you know what you have done in thus outraging ME? I'm a respecterble woman, respecterbly connected. I'm here in a responserble station. When Mr. Holcroft appears he'll drive you from the dwelling which ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... me, promising her five hundred cash (about three cents) for every rhyme she could give me, good, bad, or indifferent, for I wanted to secure all kinds. And I did. Before I was through I had rhymes which ranged from the two extremes of the keenest parental affection to those of unrefined filthiness. The latter class however came not from the nurses ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... fruits. Prunes, prunus domestica. Cassia sistula. Tamarinds, crystals of tartar, unrefined sugar. Manna. Honey. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... are inclined, Saith Merlin,[16] who bamboozled are. The word, though rather unrefined, Has yet an energy we ill can spare; So by its aid I introduce my tale. A well-fed rat, rotund and hale, Not knowing either Fast or Lent, Disporting round a frog-pond went. A frog approach'd, and, with a friendly greeting, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine









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