"Refinement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sometimes, have been prostituted to the purposes of vice; yet, in an age of taste and refinement, lessons of morality, and the consequences of deviation, may, perhaps, be as successfully enforced from the stage, as by modes of instruction, less censured by the severe; while, at the same time, the exhibition of great historical events, ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... notable figure among miners, was not a miner. His knowledge of mining consisted mainly in a marvelous command of its slang, to which he made copious contributions, enriching its vocabulary with a wealth of uncommon phrases more remarkable for their aptness than their refinement, and which impressed the unlearned "tenderfoot" with a lively sense of the profundity of their inventor's acquirements. When not entertaining a circle of admiring auditors from San Francisco or the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... Johns appear in many devotional pictures, one on each side of Jesus. Yet the two men were vastly unlike. The Baptist was a wild, rugged man of the desert; the apostle was the representative of the highest type of gentleness and spiritual refinement. The former was the consummate flower of Old Testament prophecy; the latter was the ripe fruit of New Testament evangelism. They appear in history one really on each side of Jesus; one going before him to prepare the way for him, and the other coming after him to ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... eyes now. "Just to wear less costly clothes—to walk instead of drive—to live on simpler food—what are those things? Look at these," she pointed to the rows of books in the bookcases which lined two walls of the room. "I'm marrying a man of refinement, of family, of the sort of blood that tells. He's an educated man—he loves the things those books stand for. He's good and strong and fine—and if I'm not safe with him I'll never be safe with anybody. But besides ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... of our national humanity—which at the time of these executions could only have been in name and not in reality, for those were the days of bull-fighting, bear-baiting, and like sports, the practice of which in those dark ages was thought to be the highest pitch of culture and refinement—no more instances of this kind were thrown into the balance, for the public conscience had become somewhat awakened; the days of enlightenment had begun to dawn, for by statute 23, George III., cap. 51, it was enacted that the Act of Eliz., cap. 20, is repealed; ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the room as the four men who had been playing with the girl got up and prepared to leave. The place was spotless. Oh, the furnishings weren't costly, but they were chosen with that sense of fitness, of refinement of color and decor that is curiously Psi. I suppose that's one of the little things that annoys Normals so much. Stigma powers seem to go beyond telepathy, clairvoyance and telekinesis—they extend in some hard to define way into the aesthetic. A chaste kind of ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... answer to my inquiry as to what France through you—can teach us. —["What could France teach America!" exclaims Mark Twain. France can teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in many avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy. She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that money-making ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Hans Christian passed the entrance examination to the University. Mr. Collins continued to assist him with counsel and deed; and his hospitable house in Bredgade became a second home to Andersen. There he met, for the first time, people of refinement and culture on equal terms; and his morbid self-introspection was in a measure cured by kindly association, tempered by wholesome fun and friendly criticism. He now resolved to abandon his University studies and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... was a large city. It was noted as the chief seat of Grecian learning, refinement of taste, cultivation of genius, and skill in the production of almost everything belonging to the fine arts. It had its philosophers, statesmen, orators, lawyers, priests, poets and painters. It had its high and low orders in society. But when Paul beheld ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... Bedhampton, a landed gentleman of means, an enthusiastic Catholic, and for the last five years or so a prisoner for religion. Mr. Pounde's message in effect was this. "You are going into the proximate danger of capture, and if captured you must expect not justice, but every refinement of misrepresentation. You will be asked crooked questions, and your answers to them will be published in some debased form. Be sure that whatever then comes through to the outer world will come out poisoned and perverted. Let me therefore urge you to write now, and to ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... it may be that the Acheulean culture came into being as a result of contact between an immigrant stock and a previous population practising the Chellean method of stone-work. We are at present far too ill-informed to rule out such a guess. But, on the face of it, the greater refinement of the Acheulean handiwork looks as if it had been literally hammered out by steadfastly following up the Chellean pattern into its further possibilities. Explain it as we will, this evolution of the so-called coup-de-poing affords almost the sole proof that the human world of that remote ...
— Progress and History • Various
... from another by fineness of nature, and, secondarily, by fineness of training, so also, a polite nation differs from a savage one, first, by the refinement of its nature, and secondly by ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... once and for all, was enough to embitter anybody's existence. He found it hard to accept the well-meant condolences of casual acquaintances, and still harder to do the right thing and congratulate Drake on his victory, a refinement of self-torture which is by custom expected of the vanquished in every branch of work or sport. But he managed it somehow, and he also managed to appear reasonably gratified when he went up to take his prize for the half-mile. Tony and the ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... indigo. There too had been transported enormous timber from the still virgin forests—timber of the most valuable kind, whether for ornament, for building or for dyeing purposes. Nor was the city more remarkable for its advantageous situation and the importance of its commerce than for the refinement of its society. Unlike the generality of inland towns in South America, where the constitution of society is apt to be rather heterogeneous, Cua was the residence of many of the principal families of the country—gentlemen at the head of wealthy commercial establishments, or opulent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... heart. In vain she said to herself that she was guiltless; in vain she folded herself round in the cloak of her former composure; the consciousness that, to say the least of it, she was regarded as a young woman of questionable refinement, weighed down her very eyelids as she crossed ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... English families formerly employed a nurse imported from France. Nor did the Greeks merely ignore the Latin language. They refused to be romanized in any other respect. Even the Roman amusements tended to disgust them, and it is to the credit of his superior refinement that the average Greek was repelled by those brutal exhibitions of gladiatorial bloodshed and slaughter over which the coarser ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... the inestimable boon of the trained nurse of education, refinement and ability. Before Florence Nightingale gave herself and initiated the movement for the training of young women of standing as nurses, such work had been left to the rough, uncouth, and often low-lived men and women, of whom the unspeakable Sairey ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... down out of the mountain heights with the elemental vigor of wind and sun and soil about him like an aura. A man of great natural refinement, he had grown strong and simple and masterful in his close contact with Nature. The clay that might have brutalized another nature ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... I am speaking he had sunk to his lowest, owing to continued theatre management. His speech and manners revealed the sugary refinement of a bygone day, while all that he did and everything about him testified to the most shameful neglect. He took me back to his house, where he presented me to his second wife, who, crippled in one foot, lay on an extraordinary ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... bread and milk the tired child was taken to her room by Mrs. Hornby, and in spite of the ruffled curtains which adorned the windows and the other evidences of taste and refinement about her, she was soon ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... differences arose without being deeply affected. The mention of Greece fills the mind with the most exalted sentiments and arouses in our bosoms the best feelings of which our nature is susceptible. Superior skill and refinement in the arts, heroic gallantry in action, disinterested patriotism, enthusiastic zeal and devotion in favor of public and personal liberty are associated with our recollections of ancient Greece. That such a country should have ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe
... his banquets. Although she obeyed his summons, she was very modest and timid, and did not try to make any conquest of him. She was afraid of him, as Madame de Stael was, and most ladies of rank and refinement. He was a hero to men rather than to women,—at least to those women who happened to know him or serve him. That cold and cutting irony of which he was master, that haughty carriage and air which he assumed, that selfish ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... writers whose works, both as to substance and manner, are more different from each other than those of Hippocrates and Galen, the simplicity of the former being strongly contrasted with the abstruseness and refinement of the latter."[23] ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... her natural refinement, "to be happy in these homes, they must be able to read a pleasant book or to sing a beautiful song, else their lives, spite of all their waterfalls, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... very well be described as a fancy subject, and designated Nature and Art. Opposite this fine picture of our English master hung another group, by Rembrandt; making up in force and colour what it lacked in delicacy and refinement. The subject was the De Witt family; and each portrait wore that genuine stamp of truth that left no question of their resemblance ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... Carrie. "It is a mighty unpalatable truth, I can tell you. I suppose, now, your next step will be to prosecute her to send the police after her, and have her locked up. Then you will ruin me too, for Sam Raynes—not that he is overparticular, nor that he cares twopence about refinement, or anything of that sort—would not care to marry a girl whose—whose sister was put in prison. That's your next step ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... would justify; but if any thing was gained in brilliancy, it was certainly lost in point of expression; and I infinitely preferred her pale, but beautifully fair countenance, to the rosy cheek of the picture; the figure was faultless; the same easy grace, the result of perfect symmetry and refinement together, which only one in a thousand of even handsome girls possess, was pourtrayed to the life. The more I looked, the more I felt charmed with it. Never had I seen any thing so truly characteristic as this sketch, for it was scarcely more. It was after nearly an hour's quiet contemplation, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... present happening, and he hearkened with sympathy and a troubled and wondering heart; for in that age a man might talk sanely upon that which, in this age of ours would be accounted foolishness and maybe the breathings of insanity; for there, by the refinement of arts of mentality and the results of strange experiments and the accomplishment of learning, men were abled to conceive of matters now closed to our conceptions, even as we of this day may haply give a calm ear to talk, that in the ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... earth. Her manufacturers produced the richest silks and velvets; her soil yielded corn and wine; her warriors were adventurous and brave; her soldiers inherited the gallantry of the followers of Charles V.; her cities were the splendid abodes of luxury, refinement, and elegance. She was the court of Europe, the acknowledged leader of chivalry and ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... be covered with floating palaces and argosies of wealth and commerce; a universal exchange of commodities will carry civilization, mutual recognition, and comfort to every clime; prosperous cities will crown every height, and expand their blessings of refinement and culture o'er every plain; earth will then offer happy and tranquil homes to all her children, she will be one vast and united house of blissful ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... them, I was, nevertheless, spared a repetition of the misery and indignation which the sight in the morning produced in my mind. I have been told positively that the poor old creatures brought in with the other captives will not fetch a shilling a-head in the slave-market. It is, therefore, a refinement of cruelty not to let them die in their native homes,—to tear them away to a foreign soil, and subject them to the fatigues of the journey, and the insults of a rude populace, and ruder and crueller ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... in the civilization. In Gaul, the Franks yielded to Latin influences: France was the product. With the fall of the empire, classical culture died out. The cathedral and cloister schools preserved the records of literature. The study of language, and the mental discrimination and refinement which spring from it and from literary discipline, passed away. Centuries of comparative illiteracy—dark centuries—followed. Yet the monks were often active in their own rude style of composition; and among them were not only good men, but men ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... castle of Buchan resembled more a citadel intended for the accommodation of armed vassals than the commodious dwelling of feudal lords, one turret gave evidence, by its internal arrangement, of a degree of refinement and a nearer approach to comfort than its fellows, and seeming to proclaim that within its massive walls the lords of the castle were accustomed to reside. The apartments were either hung with heavy tapestry, which displayed, in gigantic proportions, the combats of the Scots and ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... were designing The woman follows the man, and music fits to verse, The sentimentalists are represented by them among the civilized The dismally-lighted city wore a look of Judgement terrible to see The sentimentalist goes on accumulating images The gallant cornet adored delicacy and a gilded refinement The philosopher (I would keep him back if I could) Their way was down a green lane and across long meadow-paths They, meantime, who had a contempt for sleep They had all noticed, seen, and observed To know that you are in England, breathing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sister Margaret, and for a brief time and to a limited extent our lives touched. He was twenty-one and I was sixteen, so there was little intimacy, but he interested and attracted me as a new type of manhood. He bore the marks of good breeding, education, and refinement. He was quiet of manner, kindly but not demonstrative, with a certain reserve and aloofness. He was of medium height, rather slight of figure, with strongly marked features and an aquiline nose. He seemed clever rather than forcible, and presented a pathetic figure as of one who ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... to reform the degenerated manners of his fellow-creatures. This has been the cause of Aristophanes censuring the pedantry and superstition of Socrates; Horace, Persius, Martial, and Juvenal, the luxury and profligacy of the Romans; Boileau and Moliere the levity and refinement of the French; Cervantes the romantic pride and madness of the Spanish; and Dorset, Gldharn, Swift, Addison, Churchill, Stevens, and Foote, the variety of vice, folly, and luxury, which we have imported from our extensive commerce and intercourse with ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... a refinement in his vice: he did not care for coarse sensual indulgence to any great extent; his wickedness was that of a sensitive cultivated intellect, of a highly-wrought nervous temperament. Unscrupulous—careless of truth—contemptuous ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... a series of letters passing between the great Athenian demagogue, the hetaira, Aspasia, her friend, Cleone of Miletus, Anaxagorus, the philosopher, and Pericles's nephew, Alcibiades. In this masterpiece the intellectual life of Athens, at its period of highest refinement, is brought before the reader with singular vividness, and he is made to breathe an atmosphere of high-bred grace, delicate wit, and thoughtful sentiment, expressed in English "of Attic choice." The Imaginary Conversations, 1824-1846, were Platonic ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the clay which conducted you hither, with the heart neatly but painfully extracted. Look upon a woman's work, Davy, and shun the sex. I tell you it is better to go blindfold through life, to have—pardon me—your own blunt features, than to be reduced to such a pitiable state. Was ever such a refinement of cruelty practised before? Never! Was there ever such beauty, such archness, such coquetry,—such damned elusiveness? Never! If there is a cargo going up the river, let me be salted and lie at the bottom of it. I'll warrant you I'll not ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... told himself that he was still loyal, that above all else he loved his people. When he saw these women, whose youth and beauty lasted long into life, whose manners and clothes spoke of ease and wealth and refinement, he saw Sally again as he had left her, hugging his "rifle-gun" to her breast, and he felt that the only thing he wanted utterly was to take her in his arms. Yes, he would return to Sally, and to his people—some day. The some day he did not fix. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... thus rescued from oblivion, whilst the great power of such bodies as the Methodists, their growing wealth, and consequent responsibility to public opinion, are pledges that they will soon command all the advantages of colleges and academic refinement; so that if, in the manner of these funeral eloges, there has sometimes been missed that elegance which should have corresponded to the weight of the matter, henceforwards we may look to see this disadvantage giving way before institutions more thoroughly matured. But if these are our eloges, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... right," he acknowledged. "They are as black as sin! But, my friend Trent, I want you to consider this: If the nature of our surroundings is offensive to you, think what it must be to me. I may, I presume, between ourselves, allude to you as one of the people. Refinement and luxury have never come in your way, far less have they become indispensable to you. You were, I believe, educated at a Board School, I was at Eton. Afterwards you were apprenticed to a harness-maker, I—but no matter! ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the Cloaca Maxima. And thus in the case of spires and towers, it is just to ascribe to the devotion of their designers that dignity which was bestowed upon forms derived from the simplest domestic buildings; but it is ridiculous to attribute any great refinement of religious feeling, or height of religious aspiration, to those who furnished the funds for the erection of the loveliest tower in North France, by paying for permission to eat butter ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... knew how great his delight would be, and she smiled to think how entirely at her ease she should be, even with his stately lady mother; she should feel no great awe of her in the future, for if Heaven had not given her the position of a lady by birth, she had made herself one by study and refinement. ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... other hand, wishing to attract only an elegant and opulent class, was anxious to captivate persons of refinement by his quiet ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... no reason to doubt that Blennerhassett's mansion was fine, and of a grandeur unexampled in that new country where most men lived in log cabins, and where any framed house was a marvel. He was of English birth, but of Irish parentage, and to the ardor of his race he added the refinement of an educated taste. He was a Trinity College man, and one of his classmates at Dublin was the Irish patriot, Emmet, who afterwards suffered death for his country. But it does not appear that Blennerhassett came to America for political reasons, and he seems to have made his home in ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... her all about how I found the people down there at Crabtree, but she says I was there at a hotel where only people of refinement live, and that I know nothing about the people out in the country. I laughed at her and asked her if she knew anything about them herself, and she retorted that everybody who read newspapers knew what sort of ...
— Fred Fearnot's New Ranch - and How He and Terry Managed It • Hal Standish
... as everywhere we discover that the sexual refinement on which the capacity for supersensual love depends comes last of the virtues. The Rev. George Turner, who had forty years of experience among the Polynesians, writes (125) that at their dances "all kinds of obscenity in looks, language, and gesture prevailed; and often ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... classes have, therefore, selected purposes, and have invented ways of fulfilling them. Their ways have been imitated by the masses. The classes have led the way in luxury, frivolity, and vice, and also in refinement, culture, and the art of living. They have introduced variation. The masses are not large classes at the base of a social pyramid; they are the core of the society. They are conservative. They accept life as they find it, and live on by tradition and habit. In other words, the great mass of any ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... closely as they came on board, expecting to find the noble-looking, generous spirited tars I had become so familiar with in books. It happened, however, that three out of the five seamen who composed the crew were "old English men-of-war's-men," and had long since lost any refinement of character or rectitude of principle they originally possessed. They were brought on board drunk by the landlord with whom they boarded; for the "old tars" of those days fifty years ago had no homes; when on shore all they cared for was a roof to shelter them, and plenty ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... stool before a seven-inch shelf attached to the wall, facing an array of salt-castors and catsup-bottles and one of those colored glass windows with a portrait of Washington which give to all lunch-wagons their air of sober refinement, Carl ate solemnly, meditatively.... It did not seem to him an ignoble setting for his grief; but he was depressed when he came out to a drab first light of day that made the street seem hopeless and unrested after the ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... numerous exceptions, rich people are, as I said, commonly altogether the most agreeable companions. The influence of a fine house, graceful furniture, good libraries, well-ordered tables, trim servants, and, above all, a position so secure that one becomes unconscious of it, gives a harmony and refinement to the character and manners which we feel, if we cannot explain their charm. Yet we can get at the reason of it by thinking ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the man of avarice. There was none with Mr Clayton. He lived to accumulate. Once let the desire fasten, anchor-like, with heavy iron to the heart, and what becomes of the world's opinion, and the tremendous menaces of heaven? Mr Clayton was a scholar—a man of refinement, eloquent—an angel not more winning—he was self-denying in his appetites, humble, patient—powerful and beautiful in expression, when the vices of men compelled the unwilling invective. Witness the burst of indignation when he spoke of Emma Harrington, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... they will live in the city, as he is so wealthy; Mary will have an opportunity of tasting the fascinations of high life. I shall introduce her to a clique of great refinement at once. Don't you think Saratoga the most delightful place in the world, Miss Wyllys? I am never so happy as when here. I delight so much in the gay world; it appears to me that I breathe more freely in a crowd—solitude oppresses me; do you ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... young man is never wanting in excellent arguments to prove that his mistress is very nearly, if not quite, an honest woman. This distinction originates in the refinement of our manners and has become as indefinite as the line which separates bon ton from vulgarity. What then is meant by an ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... as utterly ridiculous that a society, the greater part of whose members are essentially parvenus, should assume the tone and mode of thought of an old-world aristocracy, we must yet acknowledge that that society keeps up a great many traditions of refinement which are in great danger of being lost sight of in colonial life. The outward and visible sign may be absurd, but the inward and spiritual grace is none the less concealed within it. That Australian society keeps up a number of social superstitions ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... that I could see that, perhaps of all in the block, the Estabrooks' was the plainest, the most modest, with its sobriety of architecture and simplicity, and on the whole the most respectable of all. It seemed to insure tranquillity, refinement, and peace to its owner. I tell you that at that moment, with my chauffeur coughing his hints behind me, I felt almost ashamed for the fancies that had led me to find a mystery ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... air became too close, and he went out upon the platform. For the sake of the democratic ideal, which meant so much to his race, he might have endured the affliction. He could easily imagine that people of refinement, with the power in their hands, might be tempted to strain the democratic ideal in order to avoid such contact; but personally, and apart from the mere matter of racial sympathy, these people were just as offensive to him as to the whites in the other end of the train. Surely, ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... lives and deportment bore thrilling witness to their sincerity. Edwards set apart special days of fasting, in view of the dreadful doom of the lost, in which he was wont to walk the floor, weeping and wringing his hands. Hopkins fasted every Saturday. David Brainerd gave up every refinement of civilized life to weep and pray at the feet of hardened savages, if by any means he might save one. All, by lives of eminent purity and earnestness, gave awful weight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... flocks, their money consequently was debased and almost worthless. The social distinctions of noble and peasant survived only in tradition, and all classes intermingled without any sense of superiority or inferiority. Elegance of manner, polish, grace, were unsought and existed only by natural refinement, which was rare among a people who were on the whole simple to boorishness. Physically they were, however, admirable. All visitors were struck by the repose and self-reliance of their countenances. The women were neither beautiful, stylish, nor neat. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... targets. In a sense, Sun Tzu attempts to achieve Hiroshima levels of Shock and Awe but through far more selective and informed targeting. Decapitation is merely one instrument. This model can easily fall outside the cultural heritage and values of the U.S. for it to be useful without major refinement. Shutting down an adversary's ability to "see" or to communicate is another variant but without many historical examples to ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... demolition and now he wants to construct. His object is not merely to do away with a positive faith and suppress social inequality, to proscribe revealed dogmas, hereditary beliefs, an established cult, the supremacy of rank and superiority of fortunes, wealth, leisure, refinement and elegance, but he wants, in addition to all this, to re-fashion the citizen. He wants to create new sentiments, impose natural religion on the individual, civic education, uniform ways and habits, Jacobin conduct, Spartan virtue; in short, nothing is to be left in a human being that is not prescribed, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to-day and where comfort, skill and cleanliness went hand in hand, Florence Nightingale nursed the sick and acquired a mastery of the profession as it was then understood. It was so unusual for a woman of refinement to enter such a calling that she had become known in many places simply because she had decided to become a nurse; and after she returned to England she was at once offered the position of Superintendent at a Home ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... his outward appearance only, few would have given Villiers credit for being the man of penetrative and almost classic refinement he really was,—he looked far more athletic than aesthetic. Broad-shouldered and deep-chested, with a round, blunt head firmly set on a full, strong throat, he had, on the whole, a somewhat obstinate and pugilistic air which totally belied his ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Wick Bonner to be near her and not fall a victim, as it was for the crude, humble youth of Tinkletown. His heart was just as fragile as theirs when it bared itself to her attack. Her beauty attracted him, her natural refinement of character appealed to him; her pureness, her tenderness, her goodness, wrought havoc with his impressions. Fresh, bright, as clear-headed as the June sunshine, she was a revelation to him—to Bonner, who had known her sex in all its environments. His heart was full of her, day and night; ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the royal kitchen a century ago, though not equal perhaps to the refinement of modern times, was sufficiently sumptuous; and what it wanted in delicacies, was abundantly compensated by a profusion of more substantial dishes of truly English fare. The following are only a few specimens of the stile of cooking ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the French Revolution, that the masses of the people can only be restrained from violence by the superstitious restraints which Christianity presents. We therefore think that every man, who is a gentleman, will do what he can to sustain the church and the clergy. Men of culture and refinement, are governed by principles of honor, and they do not need the superstitious motives ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... himself in pride, and endeavored to acknowledge the compliment in the manner of his well-meant but rude courtesy; for refinement did not then extend its finesse and its deceit among the glens ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... unwilling to entertain the project of an African expedition so long as Hannibal remained in Italy, but the majority was by no means favourably disposed towards the young general himself. His Greek refinement and his modern culture and tone of thought were but little agreeable to the austere and somewhat boorish fathers of the city; and serious doubts existed both as to his conduct of the Spanish war and as to his military discipline. How much ground there was for the objection that he showed too ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... me for timidity," he said quickly. "These are dangerous seas for a man of mark to steer his craft upon. Carthaginians and other barbarians are not citizens of Capua—no refinement—no civilization. Much has happened to disturb me—to unsettle my nerves. Decius Magius has been parading in the Forum, defying our friends,—and who with him but my own son, Perolla, casting discredit on my plans, and danger on himself! It was with the utmost ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... the play revealed, she must sit until its end, giving no sign of the tumult that raged within her. The eyes of the audience burned into the back of her head, and she seemed to read a knowledge of her secret in every careless glance thrown in her direction. This was a vengeance worth of Olga—the refinement of cruelty. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... not wish, Baron," I said, "to interfere with the opinion you entertain of the intellectual refinement of men, and their inclination to have their quarrels arranged rather by the silent aid of the pen, than the roar of cannon; but of this I am convinced, that, the more enlightened the human race appear to become, the more frequently submission and order ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... believe that in every class there is Good; in every man, Good. That in the highest and most tempted, as well as in the lowest, there is often a higher nobility than of rank. Pericles and Alexander had great, but different virtues, and although the refinement of the one may have resulted in effeminacy, and the hardihood of the other in brutality, we ought to pause ere we condemn where ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... sculptors and artists, and stands up after the lapse of centuries the educator of mankind, living in the grandeur of her works and in the immortal productions of minds which modern civilization with all its cultivation and refinement and science never surpassed and scarcely equalled. And why in the three hundred years of American history it should be given to the Old Dominion to be the grand mother, not only of States, but of the men by whom States and empires are formed, it might be curious ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... one-storied, soft brick-built, corrugated-iron-roofed house on Harris Street, behind the Market Square. It had been a store, but green and white paint and an iron garden-fence had turned it into a gentlemanly residence for a medical practitioner. Mrs. De Boursy-Williams, a lady of refinement, stamped with the ineffaceable cachet of Bayswater, had hung cheap lace curtains in all the windows, tying them up with silk sashes of Transvaal green. Between the wooden pillars of the stoep dangled curtains ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... as a sex ought not to do the hard work of the world, either social, intellectual, or moral. There are evidences in her physiology that this was not intended for her, and our friend of the Evening Post is right in saying that any country will advance more rapidly in civilization and refinement where woman is thus sheltered and protected. And I think, furthermore, that there is no country in the world where women are so much considered and cared for and sheltered, in every walk of life, as in America. In England and France,—all over the continent of Europe, in fact,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... the fourteenth century Guillaume de Machault (1295- 1377) inaugurated a revival, hardly of lyric poetry, but of the cultivation of lyric forms. He introduced a new style which made the old conventional themes again presentable by refinement of phrase and rhetorical embellishments, and he directed the pursuit of form not to the invention of ever new variations, but to the perfection of a few forms. And it is noticeable that these fixed forms were not selected ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... a strain of that boyishness which I hope survives in us all, and one of whose quaint fancies is an envy of house-painters, so happy all day with paint-pot and brush and great smooth boards to dab and smooth, that decided him to do the job himself. Mr. Moggridge had this great element of refinement, that he thought nothing ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... uninitiated, which seems to be a necessity of modern times, with few exceptions. Mary's education, defective though it may have been in some details, made her a fitting companion for some of the greatest of her day, and this quality in a woman could scarcely exist without a refinement of manner and tastes which, at times, might be misleading ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... think of the two friends together in a College chamber, Addison of slender frame, with features wanting neither in dignity nor in refinement, Steele of robust make, with the radiant 'short face' of the 'Spectator', by right of which he claimed for that worthy his admission to the Ugly Club. Addison reads Dryden, in praise of whom he wrote his earliest known verse; or reads endeavours ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... her return, having; no doubt fresh sins for which she needed forgiveness, she took my mother from her dungeon, assumed the liveliest indignation at this horrible treatment, about which she appeared to have known nothing, wiped her tears, and by an abominable refinement of perfidy received the thanks of the victim whom she was ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... anything. But I felt glorious at the time, just like a storm sweeping across the prairie, purifying the air and not caring whether the earth wants to be purified or not. I did wrong, because I came to the big world to study people of culture and refinement, not to quarrel with them. You must have money, you MUST have money, you MUST have money, if you're civilized. I don't care if I AM a little storm. Yes, of course, I know a storm isn't a civilized thing. Well, I know ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... to resist oppression' to legal formalities is the ultimate refinement of tyranny... When a government violates the people's rights, a general insurrection of the people, as well as portions of the people, is the most sacred ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... little refinement and strong sensual feelings virtually insult and thereby disgust and repel every female they meet. They look upon woman with an inherent vulgarity, and doubt the virtue and integrity of all alike. But it is ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... sketch and detail drawing show a design of a buffet wherein refinement of outline and harmony of details are conspicuously regarded. Quarter-sawed oak is the most suitable wood for this handsome piece of mission furniture. The material should be ordered from the mill ready cut to length, squared and ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... spirit, pulling off his nightcap again, and, with many bows, disappeared down a dark alley, carrying his refinement to the doors of his customers. He must have been a good specimen of the urbanity and good manners of his class in Bordeaux, and certainly no finished cavalier could have expressed himself better. We had not gone far before he re-appeared, to beg us not to ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... admirable short works—his "Theory of Form and Proportion"—appeared in Mr Fuseli's day, he would have taken a new view of beauty and grace. By taste, he means not only a knowledge of what is right in art, but a power to estimate degrees of excellence, "and by comparison proceeds from justness to refinement." This, too, we think inadequate to express what we mean by taste, which appears to us to have something of a sense, independent of knowledge. Using words in a technical sense, we may define them to mean what we please, but certainly the words ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... taste, are in themselves equal. In all ages there have been some excellent workmen, and some excellent work done. The question he asks is always:—In whom did the stir, the genius, the sentiment of the period find itself? where was the receptacle of its refinement, its elevation, its taste? "The ages are all equal," says William Blake, "but genius ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... ignoble and narrow natures may sit in judgment upon people of genius and refinement, and may force back the most aspiring seer into expressionless life by the utter lack of any comprehension by their dull, selfish fancy. Ye gods! How they exult in doing it! This trick is played upon sensitive, modest, gifted people everywhere. Fools ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... wall, mere ghosts and puppets. It is psychology of the first degree—elementary psychology—just as the colored pictures of Germany are elementary painting. And yet with all this, you have a double-distilled and often sophistical refinement: just as savages are by no means simple. The fine side of it all is the manly vigor, the bold frankness of ideas, words, and sentiments. Why is it that we find so large an element of factitious grandeur, mingled with true grandeur, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the fable and application, with this refinement upon it. For parties do not only split a nation, but every individual among them, leaving each but half their strength, and wit, and honesty, and good nature; but one eye and ear for their sight and hearing, and equally lopping the rest of the senses: Where ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... that there are two opposing notions of culture. On the one hand there are persons who conceive culture to be a refinement that is directly endangered by contact with the realities of life, for instance by participation in local politics and other social contests, and by such practice of charity as must be accompanied by physical exertion and bad smells. ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... Othello—Salvini—at this moment in Europe, the terrible scene of the murder of Desdemona is a shock that many would shrink from witnessing. They will bear any strain on the imagination, but their fine-strung nerves revolt against the terrible in action. To this natural refinement is owing much of that peculiar softness of manner and reluctance to disoblige which foreigners frequently mistake for some especial desire to ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... I spend on so few words (The "Kyrkegrim turned Preacher" was "in hand" two years!!!), and I think their only chance would be to be so dressed and presented as to specially and downrightly appeal to those who would value the Art of the Illustrator, and perhaps recognize the refinement of labour with which the letter-press has been ground down, and clipped, and condensed, and selected—till, as it would appear to the larger buying-public, there is wonderfully little left ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... resort to the arts of divination and to cunning to make up for her lack of physical force and to protect herself and her offspring.[11] In like vein Kaethe Schirmacher, a German feminist, says: "The celebrated intuition of woman is nothing but an astonishing refinement of the senses through fear.... Waiting in fear was made the life task ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... faithful lover had refused both honour and wealth rather than become a professed soldier and follow the Douglas. Catharine sighed deeply and shook her head at the history of bloody Palm Sunday on the North Inch. But apparently she had reflected that men rarely advance in civilisation or refinement beyond the ideas of their own age, and that a headlong and exuberant courage, like that of Henry Smith, was, in the iron days in which they lived, preferable to the deficiency which had led to Conachar's catastrophe. If she had any doubts on ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... British camped had numerous broken hills to the north and east of it. A force of Boers, supposed to number about two thousand men, came down in the night, bringing with them several heavy guns, and with the early morning opened a brisk fire upon the camp. The surprise was complete. But the refinement of the Boer tactics lay in the fact that they had a surprise within a surprise—and it was the second which was the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... saith, "Aha, it is warm!" he has not appetite for more. Or if for something else, then something higher; a fine school of poetry and song arose in these rough shelters, and an air like "Lochaber no more" is an evidence of refinement more convincing, as well as more imperishable, than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was nobler and manlier than it had ever been. Montagu had never known or heard much about godliness; his father, a gentleman, a scholar, and a man of the world, had trained him in the principles of refinement and good taste, and given him a high standard of conventional honor; but he passed through life lightly, and had taught his son to do the same. Possessed of an ample fortune, which Montagu was to inherit, he troubled himself with none of the deep ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... for he says that "temperance results in modesty, shamefacedness, abstinence, chastity, honesty, moderation, lowliness, sobriety, purity." Andronicus also says [*De Affectibus] that "the companions of temperance are gravity, continence, humility, simplicity, refinement, method, contentment." [*Per-se-sufficientiam which could be rendered "self-sufficiency," but for the fact that this is taken in a bad sense. See Q. 169, A. 1.] Therefore it seems that Tully insufficiently reckoned the parts ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... unhurt, as the natives noticed that the leg was broken. This disappointment brought to his recollection how ineffectual had been some former attempts of his to impress them with an idea of the superior refinement of his followers. Bong-ree, his musician, had annoyed his auditors with his barbarous sounds, and the clumsy exhibition of his Scotch dancers unaccompanied with the aid of music, had been viewed by them without ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... merchants and collectors of art-treasures, as well as health-seekers. These little colonies, of which most of the large cities on the Rhine have a copy in miniature, even if it be not a bathing-place, are the places in which to seek for that domestic taste and refinement which some hasty and prejudiced critics have thought fit to deny to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... 307; increase &c. 35; cultivation, civilization; culture, march of intellect; menticulture[obs3]; race-culture, eugenics. reform, reformation; revision, radical reform; second thoughts, correction, limoe labor[Lat], refinement, elaboration; purification &c. 652; oxidation; repair &c. (restoration) 660; recovery &c. 660. revise, new edition. reformer, radical. V. improve; be better, become better, get better; mend, amend. advance &c. (progress) 282; ascend &c. 305; increase ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... soft, dark eyes, and a pale intellectual countenance, with that nameless aspect of refinement which delicate health so often gives, especially to the young, greeted his quiet gaze, his heart was at once won over to the side of the rival. Will Somers was seated by the hearth, on which a few live embers despite the warmth of ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... expresses elevated thought and refinement of spirit, in whatever form it manifests itself, is at its lowest ebb among the Sakais and especially representative art, although it is curious to notice how much more they prefer (I speak of the male sex) this latter to that of sounds. Music may procure some moments of bliss ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... the great task of subduing them to the purposes of civilization, and to the task of advancing his economic and social status in the new democracy which he was helping to create. Art, literature, refinement, scientific administration, all had to give way to this Titanic labor. Energy, incessant activity, became the lot of this new American. Says a traveler of the time of Andrew Jackson, "America is like a vast workshop, over the door ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... lay before me, outstretched on that portion of the floor which had hitherto been hidden from me by the half-open door—a woman's form, which even in that first casual look impressed itself upon me as one of aerial delicacy and extreme refinement; and this form lay as only the dead lie; the dead! And I had been looking at the hearthstone for just such a picture! No, not just such a picture, for this woman lay face uppermost, and, on the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... Mr. Colburn was decidedly pleasing. His height was five feet ten, and his figure was well proportioned. His face was one not to be forgotten; it indicated sweetness of disposition, benevolence, intelligence, and refinement. His mental operations were not rapid, and it was only by great patience and long continued thought that he achieved his objects. He was not fluent in conversation; his hesitancy of speech, however, was not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... agreeable declension; he read his nature otherwise; he had proved himself incapable of rising, and he now learned by experience that he could not stoop to fall. Something that was scarcely pride or strength, that was perhaps only refinement, withheld him from capitulation; but he looked on upon his own misfortune with a growing rage, and sometimes wondered at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mrs. Oliver, a troublesome theologian, was silenced with a cleft stick applied to her tongue. Thomas Scott, in 1649, was sentenced for some offence to learn "the chatachise," or be fined ten shillings, and, after due consideration, paid the fine. Sometimes offenders, with a refinement of cruelty, were obliged to "go and talk to the elders." And if any youth made matrimonial overtures to a young female without the consent of her parents, or, in their absence, of the County Court, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "Whereases." Captain Kendrick, listening intently, found the path of his understanding clogged by them and tangled by Miss Elvira's flowers of rhetoric. He gathered, nevertheless, that the "little group of ladies resident at the Fair Harbor, having been reared amid surroundings of culture, art and refinement" were, naturally, desirous of improving their present surroundings. Also that a "truly remarkable opportunity" had come in their way by which the said surroundings might be improved and beautified by the expenditure of a nominal sum, seventy-five dollars, no more. With ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... object to encouraging anything like refinement amongst the operatives; and others, who would hardly object in open terms, find it difficult to reconcile themselves to the idea of it. Whatever there is in this repugnance that arises from any selfish motive should be instantly cast aside. Do not let us be meanly afraid that the classes ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... fever burned; the excitement continued and augmented till, towards three o'clock in the afternoon, the mighty throng stood still, and waited. It was no ordinary multitude; the wealth, refinement, fashion, the greatness and goodness of a vast city were there, pressed close against its coarser and darker and homelier elements. Men and women stood alike in the crowd, dainty patrician and toil-stained laborer, all thrilled by a common emotion, all vivified—if in unequal degree—by the ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... emaciated boy with a face of great refinement and delicacy, climbed out of the wagon and looked about. Dick busied himself with the work of making camp, letting Albert give what ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... danger of occasional degradation; but the simplicity of this new school seems intended to ensure it. Their simplicity does not consist, by any means, in the rejection of glaring or superfluous ornament—in the substitution of elegance to splendour, or in that refinement of art which seeks concealment in its own perfection. It consists, on the contrary, in a very great degree, in the positive and bona fide rejection of art altogether, and in the bold use of those rude ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Of having an eye fixed on you every moment, scrutinizing your smallest act, the change of the muscles of your face or the pose of your body? To have a human eye riveted on you every moment, waking, sleeping, sitting, walking, is a refinement of torture never dreamed of by a Comanche Indian—it is the eye of a spy or an enemy gloating over the pain and humiliation which it creates. The lamp burning in my eyes is a form of torment devised by someone who knew my habit of life never to sleep ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... ourselves for some minutes with her alarm and excuses. After that it was time to take leave, if we would sup at home and the King would not be missed; and accordingly, but not without some further badinage, in which Mademoiselle de Brut displayed wit equal to her beauty, and an agreeable refinement not always found with ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... everlasting devotion to labor is unnecessary. There are farmers who prosper in their calling, and do not become stolid. There are farmers who are gentlemen—men of intelligence—whose homes are the abodes of refinement, whose watchward is improvement, and whose aim it is to elevate their calling. If there be a man on the earth whom I honestly honor it is a farmer who has broken away from his slavery to labor, and applied ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... inquire if he might render any service. The girl awaited the arrival of this visitor with trepidation and some anxiety, being well aware that the companions of her father were, as a rule, men of little refinement, accustomed to the rough life of a camp, and more at their ease in a pot-house than in the society of a young woman. Her expectations were pleasantly disappointed, for on his first visit the stranger, by his ease and grace ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... how quickly suggestions of luxury, culture, refinement, in fact all the gentler aspects of life, which one had considered to be an integral part of one's life are quickly forgotten, and, more than that, not even missed. Centuries drop from one, and one becomes a primeval man, nearing the cave-dweller in an incredibly short ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... friends presented a singular contrast. Lord Hawbury was tall and slim, with straight flaxen hair and flaxen whiskers, whose long, pendent points hung down to his shoulders. His thin face, somewhat pale, had an air of high refinement; and an ineradicable habit of lounging, together with a drawling intonation, gave him the appearance of being the laziest mortal alive. Dacres, on the other hand, was the very opposite of all this. He was as tall as Lord Hawbury, but was broad-shouldered and massive. He had a big ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... into the sitting-room; there was but one in the house. It proved a queer kind of place with rude furniture seated with strips of hide after the Boer fashion, and yet bearing a certain air of refinement which was doubtless due to Inez, who, with the assistance of a stout native girl, was already engaged in setting the table. Thus there was a shelf with books, Shakespeare was one of these, I noticed—over which hung an ivory crucifix, which suggested that Inez was a Catholic. On the walls, too, were ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... the officers were escorted to their pinnace with many apologies from Lafitte, who now wrote a letter to Captain Lockyer, which shows him to have been a man of considerable cultivation, and not a mere "rough and tumble" pirate—without education or refinement. ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... cruel existence. This idea is a horrible symptom; but if sorrow must strike us, it is better to be prepared, is it not, Clemence? To prepare one's self for such a misfortune, to taste little by little beforehand that slow anguish, it is an unheard-of refinement of grief. It is a thousand times more dreadful than to have the blow fall unexpectedly; at least the stupor, the annihilation would spare one a part of this cutting anguish. But the customs of compassion prescribe to us a preparation. Probably I should never act otherwise myself, my ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... first green which, in its tenderness of beauty, is all hope and confidence. With the tide of humanity drifted Will Brent, whom business had brought from Kentucky to New York, but his thoughts were back there in the hills where the almost illiterate Diana, who knew nothing of life's nuances of refinement and who yet had all of life's allurements, was facing ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... "Cultivation and refinement have taught people to recognize and analyze and imitate it; the counterfeits are most current in that society,—but as to the reality I don't know—it is nature's work and she is a ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... (Cornwall). His mother, Lady Reed, was the youngest daughter of Mr Edward Baines, Member of Parliament for Leeds. She was a lady of saintly life, of infinite gentleness and sweetness of heart, with extraordinary strength and refinement of mind, reverenced and loved by her sons and daughters, and by none more than by Talbot Reed, who bore a strong resemblance to her alike in disposition ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... was she who was right; had she not always said there was refinement in Soerine? There was blue blood in ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... intimate ties of friendship which I can scarcely put in words. Everything about you charms me, but most of all, on the one hand, your perfect loyalty in matters of friendship, your wisdom, dignity, steadfastness; on the other hand, your wit, refinement, and ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... him of certain prejudices and superstitions which roused in her an intellectual impatience. But when all was said, Delafield, unconsciously, was drawing her towards him, as the fowler draws a fluttering bird. It was the exquisite refinement of those spiritual insights and powers he possessed which constantly appealed, not only to her heart, but—a very important matter in Julie's case—to her taste, to her own carefully tempered instinct for ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... play deserve notice. With the exception of Noah's wife, who was commonly treated in a broadly humorous vein, the principal female characters possess that sweet naturalness, depth and constancy of affection, purity and refinement which an age that had not yet lost the ideals of chivalry accepted as the normal qualities of a good woman. The mothers, wives, and daughters of that day would appear to have been before all things womanly, in an unaffected, instinctive way. Isaac (in the Chester Miracle Play), thinking, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... black as a gypsy's, and a clear olive complexion to match. Her forehead was low, but smooth and well-shaped; and the lower part of her face, handsome as it was, was far more developed than the upper. There was not a trace of refinement about her features; yet the coarseness of them was but slightly apparent as yet. She did not strike me as having more than a very slight ailment indeed, though she dilated fluently about her symptoms, and affected to be afraid of fever. It is not always ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... concinnity[obs3], delicacy, refinement; charm, je ne sais quoi[Fr], style. Venus, Aphrodite[obs3], Hebe, the Graces, Peri, Houri, Cupid, Apollo[obs3], Hyperion, Adonis[obs3], Antionous[obs3], Narcissus. peacock, butterfly; garden; flower of, pink of; bijou; jewel &c. (ornament) 847; work of art. flower, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... advantage in that which most accords with our style of person and complexion. To my eyes, in this more simple yet really elegant apparel, you look charming. Before, you impressed me with a sense of vulgarity; now, the impression, is one of refinement." ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... yet I employed him to read aloud to me, and derived pleasure from his intonation. I talk with refinement: yet he learned to answer me in language as precise as my own. My cast-off garments fitted him not more irreproachably than did my amenities of manner. Divest him of his tray, and you would find his mode of entering a room hardly ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... find our conduct and feelings as exemplified in our speech. And finally, highest of all, we must place our conduct as shown in written or printed language. This is a brief outline of our evolutionary and developmental ascent and of the increasing complexity and refinement of our ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... informing Pyr'rhus of the affair, and alleging his unfortunate choice of friends and enemies; that he had trusted and promoted murderers, while he directed his resentment against the generous and brave. 16. Pyr'rhus now began to find that these bold barbarians were, by degrees, schooled into refinement, and would not suffer him to be their superior, even in generosity. He received the message with as much amazement at their candour, as indignation at his physician's treachery. "Admirable Fabri'cius!" cried he, "it would be as easy to turn the ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... this romance with languid undulations, and before you could tell how or why, they had disappeared and reappeared in short green skirts, and then shorter white skirts, with steps and stops appropriate to their costumes, but always, I am bound to say, of the refinement promised. I can't tell you in what their refinement consisted, but I am sure it was there, just as I am sure of the humor of the two brothers who next appeared as 'Singing and Dancing Comedians' of the coon ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... drama, as it appears on the stage, afford subject of wonder and regret. We are continually speaking of the lights of the age, of the vast spread of popular information, of the march of intellect, and the superiority of this generation in intelligence and refinement over all that have gone before it. Go into any of the theatres of London at this moment, and consider what evidence they afford of this boasted advance and superiority. Time was when the versatile powers of Garrick enchanted the audience; and exhibited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the following source: Nations which are pleased to term themselves civilized have one sort of faith which they hold to one another, and another sort which they entertain towards people less advanced in refinement. The faith which they entertain towards the latter is, very often, treachery, in the vocabulary of the civilized. It was treachery towards Toussaint that caused the massacre of Santo Domingo; it was treachery towards Osceola that ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... rest of the journey Miss Winchelsea talked little, and what she said was as pleasant and as stamped with refinement as she could make it. Her voice was always low and clear and pleasant, and she took care that on this occasion it was particularly low and clear and pleasant. As they came under the white cliffs the young man put his book of poetry away, and when at last the train stopped ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... worse kind of barbarism than that of rude and primitive states of society, because it has more resources at its command, as cruelty with refinement has more resources for inflicting pain than cruelty which can only strike hard. Civilized selfishness is worse also in that it has let go of better things; it is not in progress towards a higher plane of life, but has turned its back upon ideals and is slipping ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... not forego the seductive intention of calling upon the poetess and romancer, at her now established town residence in Exonbury Crescent. One wintry afternoon he reached the door—now for the third time—and gave a knock which had in it every tender refinement that could be thrown into the somewhat antagonistic vehicle of noise. Turning his face down the street he waited restlessly on the step. There was a strange light in the atmosphere: the glass of the street-lamps, the varnished ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... attempt of an ignorant person to accomplish a high style of gentility. She was a kind-hearted, charitable woman, however; but so inveterately conscious of her station in life, that it became, in her opinion, a matter of duty to exhibit a refinement and elevation of language suitable to a matron who could drive every Sunday to Mass on her own jaunting car. When dressed on these Occasions in her rich rustling silks, she had, what is called in Ireland, a comfortable flaghoola look, but at the same time a carriage so stiff and rustic, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the first century of our aera, Tacitus, we may be certain, would have avoided as not coming within the scope of the historian's province, and as being altogether uncongenial to his sublime tone of elevated sentiments and high-minded refinement. But anyone conversant with the writings and temper of Bracciolini will know well that such passages, instead of being in any way distasteful, would be altogether agreeable. To be convinced, one ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... eagerness with which the people of the region from New York to Chicago now pursue their business enterprises. This led the Iroquois to torture their prisoners with the utmost ingenuity and cruelty. Not only did the savages burn and mutilate their captives, but they sometimes added the last refinement of torture by compelling the suffering wretches to eat pieces of flesh cut from their own bodies. Energy may lead to high civilization, but it may also lead to excesses of evil. The third prominent aboriginal type was that ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... the bowl sparkled in the flames which lighted but feebly the face of the dead. The days of suffering through which she had passed, or death's final chill had given the features a strange pallor and delicacy, the refinement of a woman bred in the city. Father and children were at first amazed, and then perceived in this the tremendous consequence of her translation ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... belonged distinctly to an older and less circumspect generation, and he was a good deal of an eccentric besides. His heart was of gold, and no one ever took the pedagogue's mission more seriously, but whatever he possessed of refinement went into his appreciation of the language that was his life's passion. When he spoke Swedish, he called a spade a spade in a manner that gave Keith shock after shock. Always rather given to a certain aristocratic exclusiveness in his speech, ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... "The very name of London sounds sweetly to me." This is not a whit better than the man who thought "no garden like Covent Garden, and no flower like a cauliflower." Captain Morris's "sweet shady side of Pall Mall," compared to these sentiments, is a piece of delicious refinement. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... go barefoot, dressed in a rough habit and cord, with only scraps of food to eat, begged from the houses of the rich. These Friars were only poor, ignorant men—very holy, but with no learning or refinement. They did not know Fernando was a very clever man, a scholar. Of course, he did not tell them, but humbly took his place as the newest and least important of the brothers, never letting them see that he missed the wonderful library, or the beautiful music of the ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... with the newspaper sentence and the sensation is one of pain. Again I say, observe the method by which Hawthorne gets his effect, the simplicity of the language, the balance of the sentences, the reserve, the refinement, and the final imaginative touch in the charming comparison ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... was undoubtedly an illegitimate child, put out to nurse and then abandoned. He had no other name than Georges Louis, but as on growing up he became particularly intelligent, with the good taste and native refinement which his acquaintances did not have, he was nicknamed "the Bourgeois," and he was never called otherwise. He had become remarkably clever in the trade of a carpenter, which he had taken up. He was also said to be a socialist fanatic, a believer in communistic and nihilistic doctrines, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Bursley and sung "The Miller of the Dee," people would have said, "Ah! But ye should hear Big James sing it!" It suited Big James. The sentiments of the song were his sentiments; he expressed them with natural simplicity; but at the same time they underwent a certain refinement at his hands; for even when he sang at his loudest Big James was refined, natty, and restrained. His instinctive gentlemanliness was invincible and all-pervading. And the real beauty and enormous power of his magnificent voice saved him ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... conducted him to my state-room. He was not more than thirty-five, and was dressed rather jauntily in a suit of light-colored clothes. He looked and acted like a gentleman, and his speech indicated that he was a person of refinement. I gave him a chair, and took one myself. Washburn had gone ashore in one of the boats, and I had the room to myself. Before he seated himself he handed me a card, on which was engraved "Kirby Cornwood." There was nothing more to ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... was. We have begun to suspect that no given number of square miles of land, no eloquence and sagacity of paper preambles and declarations, no swiftness of travel nor instantaneousness of communication, no invincibility of ironclads nor refinement of society, no logic in religion, no gospel of political economy,—none of these and a hundred other things will read us the Riddle of the Sphinx. Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis! The elements of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... myself for allowing this tall, simple-hearted country fellow to puzzle me so much. And yet, was he a simple-hearted country fellow? City bred he certainly was not; but his manner, in spite of his awkwardness, had an indescribable air of refinement. Now and then, too, he dropped a word or a phrase that showed his familiarity with unexpected lines of reading. "The other day," said Curtis, with the slightest elevation of eyebrow, "he had the cheek to correct my Latin for me." In ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the restaurant was well filled did any one have the audacity to sit at the stranger's table. His elegance and refinement were as a barrier between him and all that was rude and coarse. If he glanced about the place, taking notes in his turn of this and that, it was covertly and quietly and without offence. His eyes passed across Daisy's without resting or any show of interest. Once or twice he spoke quietly to the ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... pallid and puffy flesh of neck and arms, he gave an impression of sensuality emphasized by undress. The head was massive and well formed, and beneath the bloat of fever and dissipation there showed traces of refinement. The soft hands and neat finger-nails, the carefully trimmed hair, were sufficient indications of a kind of luxury. The animalism of the man, however, had developed so early in life that it had obliterated all strong markings of character. The ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick |
