"Refine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... towns. Munich has little to show the American Sunday school superintendent on the loose. The ideal there is not a sharp and stinging deviltry, a swift massacre of all the commandments, but a liquid and tolerant geniality, a great forgiveness. Beer does not refine, perhaps, but at any rate it mellows. No Muenchener ever ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... it close with a cloth wrapped round the bung. A pint of white brandy for every gallon of the gooseberry wine may be added on bunging it up. At the end of four or five months it will probably be fine enough to bottle off. It is best to bottle it in cold frosty weather. You may refine it by allowing to every gallon of wine the whites of two eggs, beaten to a froth, with a very small tea-spoonful of salt. When the white of egg, &c, is a stiff froth, take out a quart of the wine, and mix them well ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... and upon others, a considerable portion of that flippancy which youth sometimes confounds with wit, she had much real shrewdness and judgment, which wanted only opportunities of observation to refine it—a lively, good-humoured, playful disposition, and an excellent ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... Angelo, working in an age of literary pedantry and moral prudery, fancied that it was his duty to refine the style of his great ancestor, and to remove allusions open to ignorant misconstruction. Instead, therefore, of giving an exact transcript of the original poems, he set himself to soften down their harshness, to clear away their obscurity, to amplify, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... prepared for salvation by sending perfection embodied in Christ. We may not attach ourselves to any system or effort as absolutely true or good, nor condemn any as utterly false. All knowledge and arts are related to religion. They refine man and aid him in his emancipation from ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... everything, and without the power of hating, or of long retaining a resentment, he became attached to his little flock, especially the younger ones, and was loved in return by them, without reserve or doubt. He did much to improve, not alone the minds of the older pupils, but to soften and refine the manners of the young men under his charge; while the young women, always inclined to idealize, found how pleasant it was to receive little acts of gentlemanly attention ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... vanity is so predominant, require the greatest care, for the failing is difficult to eradicate and would, if not cured, be a source of great unhappiness in after life. To prevent such a result, generally, means are taken to refine the taste of the patient (if I may use the word), and call out the quality most opposed to the infirmity, viz., that of looking out for beauties instead ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... just mentioned,—an Orator who had received more literary improvements than Curio, and had a more accurate and delicate manner of speaking, which he conducted with great taste and elegance; but, (by being too minute and nice a critic upon himself,) while he was labouring to correct and refine his language, he suffered all the force and spirit of it to evaporate. In short, it was so exquisitely polished, as to charm the eye of every skilful observer; but it was little noticed by the common people in a crowded Forum, which is the proper theatre of Eloquence."—"His aim," said Brutus, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... day pregnant with its own suggestion: saw his life as a tapestry, the design of which was woven upon a background of surpassing natural beauty—the climax and gradual decrescendo of the year. He had emerged from that long period of semi-idleness in which he had been able to do no more than refine a mass of half-finished work; and was now feeling a fresh joy in a renewed and strong-flowing power; an excitement in the evolving of new ideas. September found ready for the printer five new works; ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... is a leading purpose in the Orthodox system to produce this sense of dependence. That group of graces—reverence, humility, submission, trust, prayer—which lend such an ineffable charm to the moral nature, which purify and refine it to its inmost depths,—these spring almost wholly from the sense of dependence on a higher and better being than ourselves. These being absent, the elevating principle is wanting; the man cannot rise above himself. There may ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... He never wearied of maintaining the uplifting quality resident in the Sunday afternoon contemplation of works of painting and sculpture, and nothing, to his mind, was more calculated to ennoble and refine human nature than the practice of art itself. The Doctor was one of the trustees of the Art Academy; he went to every exhibition, and dragged as many of his friends with him as could be induced to listen to his orotund commentaries; and he had almost reached the point where it was a ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... logic of that reasoning. Put yourself in the mental attitude of a man looking for deer. His eye sweeps rapidly over a side hill; so rapidly that you cannot understand how he can have gathered the main features of that hill, let alone concentrate and refine his attention to the seeing of an animal under a bush. As a matter of fact he pays no attention to the main features. He has trained his eye, not so much to see things, as to leave things out. The odd-shaped ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... the refining of Silver, the Lead that is mix'd with it (to carry away the Copper or other ignoble Mineral that embases the Silver) will, if it be let alone, in time evaporate away upon the Test; but if (as is most usual amongst those that refine great quantities of Metals together) the Lead be blown off from the Silver by Bellowes, that which would else have gone away in the Form of unheeded steams, will in great part be collected not far from the Silver, in the Form of a darkish Powder or Calx, which, because it is blown off from ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... ... refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried." Zech. xiii, 9. "I bought the field ... and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver. And I ... weighed him the money in the balances." Jer. xxxii, 9, 10. A shekel was ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... was to Caesar, Alexander, Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It was first of all made a sin by monasticism, and it has been made a crime in recent times, by the Goths—the Germans and English—who have done little or nothing since to refine or exalt the ideals of humanity. They all damn the sins they have no mind to, and that's their morality. A brutal race; they overeat and overdrink and condemn the lusts of the flesh, while revelling in all the vilest ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... refine; but all moral power issues out of moral forces. And it may be well, therefore, rapidly to sketch the history of religion, which is the greatest of moral forces, as it sank and rose in this island through the last two ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... passions, to carry him beyond rules of judgment; nor weakness, to cause him to fall short of doing justice: Therefore he has (as was said) his judgments for her by weight, and his indignation by measure: But yet this weight and measure is not suited to her constitution, not with an intent to purge or refine her; but it is disposed according to the measure and nature of her iniquity, and comes to sweep her, as with the besom of destruction, until she is swept off from the face of all ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the principle before laid down as to simplicity in diet. For to please a child's appetite we need not arouse it, but merely satisfy it; and this may be done with the most ordinary things in the world, if we do not take pains to refine his taste. His continual appetite, arising from his rapid growth, is an unfailing sauce, which supplies the place of many others. With a little fruit, or some of the dainties made from milk, or a bit of pastry ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... interlude the morality, so now they were all to give way before the regular drama. The people were becoming more educated; the greater spread of classical knowledge had caused the dramatists to study and assimilate the excellences of Latin and Greek models; the power of the drama to instruct and refine, as well as to amuse, was acknowledged, and thus its capability of improvement became manifest. The forms it then assumed were more permanent, and indeed have remained almost unchanged down ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... we pour oil into a burning lamp. Others imagined they had discovered something invisible and incorporeal in the air, that important medium which supports the life of man. They pretended to catch, refine, reduce, and materialize this indefinable something, so that it might be swallowed in the form of powders, and drops; that, by its penetrating powers, it might insinuate itself into the whole animal frame, invigorate, and consequently qualify it ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Metamorphosis is under the Operation, and to look on very attentively, and that they may have the less Reason to doubt, to perform the whole Operation with their own Hands, while I stand at a Distance, and don't so much as put my Finger to it. I put them to refine the melted Matter themselves, or carry it to the Refiners to be done; I tell them beforehand, how much Silver or Gold it will afford: And in the last Place, I bid them carry the melted Mass to several ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... hour's time,"—said Angus—"I tell you, David, when I started working in journalism, I thought it was the finest profession going. It seemed to me to have all the responsibilities of the world on its back. I considered it a force with which to educate, help, and refine all peoples, and all classes. But I found it was only a money speculation after all. How much profit could be made out of it? That was the chief point of action. That was the mainspring of every political discussion—and in election times, one side had ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... they had, at least, a definite model to follow. As in the 14th century, metrical romances continued to be translated from the French, homilies and saints' legends and rhyming chronicles were still manufactured. But the poems of Occleve and Lydgate and James I. had helped to polish and refine the tongue and to prolong the Chaucerian tradition. The literary English never again slipped {46} back into the chaos of dialects which ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... see the molten gold darkly refine O'er the great sea of human joy and sorrow, I bear the deep voice of a grief divine Calling sweet notes to some diviner morrow, And though I know not how the two may part, I feel thy rays, O Sun, write it ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... proved In liberating strife Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And every ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... that Jane had been so long a listener to the conversations between Michael and Kirkwood. Defective as was her instruction in the ordinary sense, those evenings spent in the company of the two men had done much to refine her modes of thought. In spite of the humble powers of her mind and her narrow experience, she had learned to think on matters which are wholly strange to girls of her station, to regard the life of the world ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... all the lecturings, and teachings, and prizes and principles of art, in the world are of no use, so long as you don't surround your men with happy influences and beautiful things. . . . Inform their minds, refine their habits, and you form and refine their designs; but keep them illiterate, uncomfortable, and in the midst of unbeautiful things, and whatever they do will still be ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... J., in the waning of that first winter, began actually to refine his own superlative elegance by spraying his superior garments with perfume, by munching tiny confections reputed to scent the breath desirably, by a more diligent grooming of the always superb moustache, the little boy suspected no motive. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... desire was that he might be a blessing to them. He came "not to be ministered unto, but to minister;" not to have friends, but to be a friend. He chose the Twelve that he might lift them up to honor and good; that he might purify, refine, and enrich their lives; that he might prepare them to be his witnesses, the conservators of his gospel, the interpreters to the world of his life and teachings. He sought nothing for himself, but every breath he drew was full of ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... not neglected. Alas! the only use I have ever made of what I acquired, has been to gild my vices when acted, or refine upon the manner of acting them while in contemplation. I look back, at this moment, to the period of my life I am describing, as prosperous men recall the day-spring of their fortunes. They, from the proud eminence on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed. All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the Middle Ages, with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... such verse as we can read! Their own strict judges, not a word they spare, That wants or force, or light, or weight, or care; Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong; Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, But show no mercy to an empty line; Then polish all with so much life and ease, You think 'tis nature, and a knack to please; But ease in writing flows from art, not chance, As those move easiest ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... companion who feels for his own or for other people's misfortunes, and who is perhaps obliged to affect or resort to his very pleasantry sometimes, because he feels more acutely than the gravest. The sources of tears and smiles lie close to, ay and help to refine one another. If Dante had been capable of more levity, he would have been guilty of less melancholy absurdities. If Rabelais had been able to weep as well as to laugh, and to love as well as to be licentious, he would have had faith and therefore support in something ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... spiritual life is stale, and petty, or egoistic, or seeking for enjoyment only rather than action; if we have nothing in us to give the words and forms we use, but only some national force left to use and play with them, we for a while refine, and paint, and pettify, and elaborate into meaningless subtleties of form, every one of which in turn reacts upon our mental and spiritual life, distracting and enchaining us, until at last the nation and its language—die out; for neither can live ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... true that the intimate knowledge of all that has been written on this hackneyed subject will never supply the want of natural poetic taste, of that union of mental and moral refinement which produces the only infallible touchstone of the beautiful; still such criticisms will tend to refine and sharpen a natural taste, where it does exist; and without bringing its technical rules practically to bear upon the objects of your delighted admiration,[82] they will insensibly improve, refine, and subtilize the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... that once arrayed him, The charm Admitto te ad gradum, With touch of parchment can refine, And make the veriest coxcomb shine, Confer the gift of tongues at once, And fill with sense the vacant dunce. Trumbull's Progress of Dullness, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... privacy was invaded by some patronizing, loud-voiced nouvelle-riche with a low-bred physiognomy that no millions on earth could gild or refine, and manners to match; some foolish, fashionable, would-be worldling, who combined the arch little coquetries and impertinent affectations of a spoilt beauty with the ugliness of an Aztec or an Esquimau; some silly, titled old ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... such as mine Such feelings must thy heart refine As seldom mortal mind gives birth, 'Tis love, without a stain of ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... to have it French-polished. It would be too fine to be of use; and its possessor would fear to scratch it, and would preserve it as a show, seeking some plainer vehicle to carry his coals. In like manner, do not refine too much either the products of the mind, or the sensibilities of the taste which is to appreciate them. I know an amiable professor very different from Dr. Dryasdust. He was a country clergyman,—a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... women, if true, gentle, and unselfish, have great power with their own sex, and almost unbounded influence over men. Your power, therefore, is subtle, penetrating, and reaches the inner life, the very warp and woof of character. If a beautiful statue can ennoble and refine, a beautiful woman can accomplish infinitely more. She can be a constant inspiration, a suggestion of the perfect life beyond and an earnest of it. All power brings responsibility, even that which a man ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... result of the act of voting, but are the expressions of course, criminal and evil natures, excited by the desire for victory. The admission to the polls of delicate and tender women would, without injury to them, tend to refine and elevate the politics in which they took a part. When, in former times, women were excluded from social banquets, such assemblies were scenes of ribaldry and excess. The presence of women has substituted for them the festival ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... but verbs ending in ee retain both; as see, seeing. The word dye, to color, however, must retain the e before ing. All verbs ending in ly, and nouns ending in ment, retain the e final of the primitives; as brave, bravely; refine, refinement; except words ending ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... was founded, not to polish the manners, refine the taste, or impart accomplishments, but to renovate the character by a permanent inward change. The main dependence for bringing this about was the power of the Holy Ghost—the only power that can impart or maintain spiritual life in man. This dependence was expressed in fervent prayer, offered ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... have first to mould her physical frame, and then, as the strength she gains will permit you, to fill and temper her mind with all knowledge and thoughts which tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice, and refine its natural tact ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... as they will grow for many years from the same roots; and although the canes from old stools, as they are called, produce less sugar than those of the first year's planting, the juice is clearer, and requires far less trouble to prepare and refine. Before another year came round, the boys made a pair of wooden rollers of eighteen inches in diameter. These were covered with strips of hoop iron, nailed lengthways upon them at short intervals from each other, thereby ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... Gioconda those subtle and poisonous curves. Do you ask me what Lionardo would have said had any one told him of this picture that 'all the thoughts and experience of the world had etched and moulded therein that which they had of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the Middle Age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias?' He would probably have answered that he had ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... bring misconstruction. He is not even a miserable; he is a person. It is curious to note how persistently this man has perverted his gifts. With talents that might have corrupted panegyric, he preferred to refine detraction; fitted to disgrace the salon, he has elected to adorn the cell; the qualities that would have endeared him to a blackguard he has wasted ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... occasional thought to his loss. Analysis of the sample cut from the meteorite showed that it was even richer than he had hoped in the new substance, X. Immediately he telegraphed a large science supply house for huge flasks, beakers, retorts and other paraphernalia necessary to extract and refine ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... to be thwarted in what would best raise and refine him. That great, bright leading star of a well-placed affection is not to be allowed to help him through all the storms and quicksands in ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of his grand design, To frame no new church, but the old refine; Which, spouse-like, may with comely grace command, More than by force of argument or hand. For doubtful reason few can apprehend, And war brings ruin where it should amend; 40 But beauty, with a bloodless conquest finds A welcome sovereignty in ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... to give their plans the uniform success already mentioned. Kindness and warm affection, clearness of moral vision, and purity of heart, with a lively relish for quiet intellectual pleasures, for society and books adapted to refine, improve and elevate, were among the characteristics ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... guess, talk at random. reason ill, falsely &c adj.; misjudge &c 481; paralogize^. take on faith, take as a given; assume (supposition) 514. pervert, quibble; equivocate, mystify, evade, elude; gloss over, varnish; misteach &c 538 [Obs.]; mislead &c (error) 495; cavil, refine, subtilize^, split hairs; misrepresent &c (lie) 544. beg the question, reason in a circle, reason in circles, assume the conclusion. cut blocks with a razor, beat about the bush, play fast and loose, play fast and loose with the facts, blow hot and cold, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... tends to break up the intellectual stupor of large classes, to rouse their minds, to increase their knowledge of the genuine work that is being done, to provide them even with more of such recreations as refine and invigorate, must have our sympathy, and will be useful both to those who confer and to those who receive instruction. So, after all, a philosopher can learn few things of more importance than the art ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... a while do trouble the Aire, do withall purge and refine it: And our trust is that through the most wise Providence and blessing of GOD, the Truth by our so long continued agitations, will be better cleared among us, and so our service will prove more acceptable to all the Churches of Christ, but more especially to you, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... are not seamen. With the seaman, wonder changes into fellowship and close affection; but to all landsmen, from youth upwards, the boat remains a piece of enchantment; at least unless we entangle our vanity in it, and refine it away into mere lath, giving up all its protective nobleness for pace. With those in whose eyes the perfection of a boat is swift fragility, I have no sympathy. The glory of a boat is, first its steadiness of poise—its assured standing on the clear softness of ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... fine temper, for, in seeing abroad diverse honourable customs, even though he might be perverse in nature, he learns to be tractable, amiable, and patient, with much greater ease than he would have done by remaining in his own country. And in truth, he who desires to refine men in the life of the world need seek no other fire and no better touchstone than this, seeing that those who are rough by nature are made gentle, and the gentle become more gracious. Gherardo di Jacopo Starnina, painter of Florence, being nobler ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... I repeat it, as little a gainer by the revolution as morals. The pieces which were best calculated to form and refine the minds of the people, all abound with maxims of loyalty, with respect for religion, and the subordinations of civil society. These are all prohibited; and are replaced by fustian declamations, tending to ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... aim to cultivate their morals, refine their tastes, manners, habits. I wish to lift from them that ever-depressing sense of hopelessness which keeps them in ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... with beauty; but that was not enough for the poets of the Renaissance: they determined to sing not only with beauty, but with care. The movement began in the verse of MAROT, whose clear, civilized, worldly poetry shows for the first time that tendency to select and to refine, that love of ease and sincerity, and that endeavour to say nothing that is not said well, which were to become the fundamental characteristics of all that was best in French poetry for the next three hundred years. In such an exquisite little work of art as his epistle ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... barbarism, but a certain feebleness of exertion takes place, and it is more difficult to recover them from this dying languor to their proper strength, than it was to polish them from their former rudeness; for it is a less formidable undertaking to refine barbarity, than to stop decay: the first may be laboured into elegance, but the latter will ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... ignorance. His insight is anything but profound. He has no suspicion of deeper waters. Through the whole course of the present story, he never attempts to fathom Crosbie's feelings, to retrace his motives, to refine upon his character. Mr. Trollope has learned much in what is called the realist school; but he has not taken lessons in psychology. Even while looking into Crosbie's heart, we never lose sight of Courcy Castle, of his Club, of his London life; we cross ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... same age as Schiller, who was destined to win fame as an actor, playwright and manager. Like Diderot, Iffland believed ardently in the moral mission of the drama. He was himself a man of character who had taken to the stage against the wish of his kinfolk, and now his hobby was to refine the language of the stage and to elevate the actor's profession. He was an industrious and thoughtful player, who gave careful attention to the little matters of mimicry and personation and seldom failed to please. Another was Beil, a greater actor in point of natural endowment, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... of a man, This marred one heedless day, This heart take Thou to scan Both within and without: Refine with fire its gold, Purge thou its dross away— Yea, hold it in Thy hold, Whence none can pluck ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... he could scarce contain himself; but still he kept a grave countenance; and, when the Master had ended his song, and said:—"How likes it thee?" he answered:—"Verily, no lyre of straw could vie with you, so artargutically(4) you refine your strain." "I warrant thee," returned the Master, "thou hadst never believed it, hadst thou not heard me." "Ay, indeed, sooth sayst thou," quoth Bruno. "And I have other songs to boot," said the Master; "but enough of this at present. Thou must know that ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... others; and now the Court party was revenging itself by indulging in extreme licentiousness. Its amusements were cruel and vicious, and the Puritans did nothing to improve them, but denounced them altogether and held themselves aloof. It was Addison's task to refine the taste of his contemporaries and to widen their outlook, so that the Puritan and the man of the world might find a common ground on which to meet and to learn each from the other; it was his endeavour ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... of it. Look around. Numbers have the same and infinitely worse complaints to make; and, truly, when we consider what real misery there is in the world, it seems the height of folly fastidiously and foolishly to refine away our happiness, by allowing such worthless trifles ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... traditions dating back to times of savagery; and all the ignominies that stained the old Phrygian religion must not prejudice us against it nor cause us to slight the long continued efforts that were made to refine it gradually and to mould it into a form that would fulfil the new demands of morality and enable it to follow the laborious march of Roman society on the ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... expression were concerned, although it is not likely that any of them wrote poetry. This was true in regard to the Saxon in his chilly northern home, as well as to the Greek in the sunny southland. But, while the balmy air and clear sky of the south tended to refine men's thoughts and language, the rugged scenery and bleak storms of the north made them uncouth, bold, and energetic. Yet both the cultured Greek and the rude Saxon looked upon Nature with much the same eyes, and there was a strange resemblance in their manner of ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... Collonel, refine your Tast;——A common Woman! I'd as soon dine at a common Ordinary: Give me a Woman of Condition, there's Pride as well as Pleasure in ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... ladies appear possessed of the same naive, simple, yet perfectly easy manners which characterise their countrywomen of the North, where indeed they are principally educated and instructed in all those graceful accomplishments which embellish and refine our life. It appears upon a first view strange that, superior as they are, they do not exercise a greater influence over the youth of the other sex; but this may be ascribed to the fact, that they are ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... extricate him from the hopeless mass of ignorant unskilled labour where competition is always hottest and most perilous, it will teach him, better than he could know without it, the relative value of things; it will so elevate his thoughts and refine his tastes that the path of duty in its roughest and steepest places, will ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... gentlewoman, would naturally be imbibed from a constant early association with a model of what the chivalrous spirit of the age could form, with all its perfections and its faults; in a situation, too, calculated still more to refine such a character; especially with one who was the centre of his affections and regrets, and whom he was so soon to leave unprotected. That, possessing all these advantages, notwithstanding her low station, she should be beloved by, and, on the discovery of her birth, married to a young nobleman, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... right in her estimate of me. Looking back at the pages of this narrative, I discover some places in which I certainly appear to justify her opinion. I even justified it at the time. Before she and Mr. Keller were out of my hearing, I began to see "under the surface," and "to refine" ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... mixed together, of course keeping the different qualities as much apart as possible. By this means, a chop (or parcel) of 600 chests is made; and all the tea of this chop is of the same description or class. The large merchant in whose hands it is now, has to refine it, and pack it for the foreign market. When the chests are packed, the name of the chop is written upon each, or ought to be; but it is not unusual to leave them unmarked till they reach the port of exportation, when the name most in repute is, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... merely relative, or that a language or art which is externally vulgar can ever be the adequate and appropriate expression of the Catholic religion, whose tendency when unimpeded is ever to refine and purify. But it is perhaps another narrowness to suppose that a reform can only be effected by a return to the past, to mediaeval symbolism and music and architecture. No effort of the kind has ever ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... humour differ quite; That gives surprise, and this delight, Humour is odd, grotesque, and wild, Only by affectation spoil'd; 'Tis never by invention got, Men have it when they know it not. Our conversation to refine, True humour must with wit combine: From both we learn to rally well, Wherein French writers most excel; [2]Voiture, in various lights, displays That irony which turns to praise: His genius first found out the rule For an obliging ridicule: He flatters ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... amusement which hold out no temptation to vice, but which excel all vicious places in real beauty and attractiveness, would greatly lessen the sum needed to be expended on any one particular day, and would refine and prepare our people to keep holidays and ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... chiefly made at the charge of the subjects. This I doubt not but that, in a short time, both king and people shall be safe at home, and feared abroad. To conclude, I shall be very glad to hear any man make objection against this design, so that he do so with an intention to refine and perfect the work; but if any shall speak against it with a mind to hinder and destroy it, I must entreat him to pardon me, if I do scarce think him ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... which corresponds to that of other peoples when the short story pre-eminently flourished among them. But when one has said a thing like this, it immediately accuses one of loose and inaccurate statement, and requires one to refine upon it, either for one's own peace of conscience or for one's safety from the thoughtful reader. I am not much afraid of that sort of reader, for he is very rare, but I do like to know myself what I mean, if I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Titian that hangs on the wall of the Gallery at Munich. The head and neck, the whole personality, had an air of distinction and destiny. The drawing had been done by a wandering duchess who had seen the girl sketching in the foothills, when on a visit to that "Wild West" which has such power to refine and inspire minds not superior to Nature. Its replica was carried to a castle in Scotland. It had been the gift of Diana Welldon on a certain day not long ago, when Flood Rawley had made a pledge to her, which was as vital to him and to his future as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to refine curiously upon the origin of government. If any one insists, with the honorable gentleman from Broome, that there are no such things as natural political rights, and that no man is born a voter, I will not now stop to argue with him; but as I believe the honorable gentleman ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... things of this world with generous feelings, to inspire men with a scorn of mere temporal advantage, to give birth to living convictions, and to keep alive the spirit of honorable devotedness; if you hold it to be a good thing to refine the habits, to embellish the manners, to cultivate the arts of a nation, and to promote the love of poetry, of beauty, and of renown; if you would constitute a people not unfitted to act with power upon all other nations, nor unprepared for those high enterprises ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... type which we have found in St. Teresa and St. Juan. St. Francis de Sales has been a favourite devotional writer with thousands in this country. He presents the Spanish Mysticism softened and polished into a graceful and winning pietism, such as might refine and elevate the lives of the "honourable women" who consulted him. The errors of the quietists certainly receive some countenance from parts of his writings, but they are neutralised by maxims of a different tendency, borrowed eclectically from ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... great armed demonstration, to exhibit the Riseholme spirit in its full panoply, and then crush into dazzled submission any potential rivalry. She meant also to exert an educational influence, for she allowed that Olga had great gifts, and she meant to train and refine those gifts so that they might, when exercised under benign but autocratic supervision, conduce to the strength and splendour of Riseholme. Naturally she must be loyally and ably assisted, and Georgie realized that the tableau of King Cophetua ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... e'er so fair, It was not kept so without care. The whole world, without art and dress, Would be but one great wilderness; And mankind but a savage herd, 235 For all that nature has conferr'd. This does but rough-hew, and design; Leaves art to polish and refine. Though women first were made for men, Yet men were made for them agen; 240 For when (outwitted by his wife) Man first turn'd tenant but for life, If women had not interven'd, How soon had mankind had an end! And that it is in being yet, 245 To us alone you ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... projectors who are desirous to refine our manners, and improve our faculties, some are willing to supply the deficiency of our speakers[1]. We have had more than one exhortation to study the neglected art of moving the passions, and have been encouraged to believe that our tongues, however ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... their concerns, and pleasures in their own families? Former acquaintances are neglected or forgotten; the tenderest ties between friends are weakened or dissolved; and benevolence itself moves in a very limited sphere." "It is the glory of the marriage state," she rejoined, "to refine by circumscribing our enjoyments. Here we can repose ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... of one blood, all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth."—(Acts 17: 26.) Much of our happiness, and usefulness in this world arises from this quality which man possesses over the animal creation. And just in proportion, as we shall cultivate, and refine our social and intellectual natures, just in that proportion, shall we rise above the level of the savage and ...
— A Narrative of The Life of Rev. Noah Davis, A Colored Man. - Written by Himself, At The Age of Fifty-Four • Noah Davis
... such a solidity of judgement, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination.—His acquaintance was cultivated by the most polite and accurate men, so that his house was an University in less volume, whither they came, not so much for repose as study, and to examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and consent made current ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... virtually homeless. "Home-keeping hearts," said Longfellow, "are happiest." What is a good wife, a good mother? Is she not a gift out of heaven, sacred and delicate, with affections so great that no measuring line short of that of the infinite God can tell their bound; fashioned to refine and soothe and lift and irradiate home and society and the world; of such value that no one can appreciate it, unless his mother lived long enough to let him understand it, or unless, in some great crisis of life, when all else failed ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... the tayle will reach And at this diftance they both heare, and teach. Now for the peace of God and men, advise (Thou that haft wherewithall to make us wise) Thine owne rich ftudies, and deepe Harriots mine, In which there is no drosse, but all refine, O tell us what to trust to, lest we wax All stiffe and tupid with his paralex ; Say, shall the old Philofophy be true ? Or doth he ride above the Moone think you ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... aboriginal races, their development and evolution is a matter of the deepest importance to you. If a man came down to barter with you who had a rudimentary tail and couldn't bend his thumb—well, it wouldn't be pleasant, you know. Our idea is to elevate them in the scale of humanity and to refine their tastes. Hewett, of the Royal Society, went to report on the matter a year or so back, and some rather painful incident occurred. I believe Hewett met with some mishap—in fact, they go the length of saying that ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... earnest prayer to tender your affections, to refine your nature, to make you very sensitive to the feelings of your child, and to help you to love the tender "olive plants" round about thy fireside. Some day there may be a vacant chair, and there can be no sweeter joy on earth ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... man means to be honest solely because honesty is right, and not because honesty is profitable, there is a perpetual and beautiful tendency of his honesty to refine and ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... remaining in the oil, and the water removes the alkali, when the process of refining is finished. A few refiners improve the quality of their refined oil by redistilling it after treating it with acid and alkali. All distillates of petroleum have to be treated with acid and alkali to refine them. There is one thing peculiar about the distillates of petroleum, and that is that the run which follows naphtha, which is called "the middle run oil," is the highest test oil that is made, running as high as 150 and 160 degrees flash, while the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... the boy-tradesman, there had been a growing friendship between the two; and of late years Lord Driffield's interest in David's development and career had become particularly warm and cordial. He had himself largely contributed to the subtler sides of that development, had helped to refine the ambitions and raise the standards of the growing intellect; his advice, owing to his lifelong commerce with and large possession of books, had often been of great practical use to the young man; his library had for years been at David's service, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... palaces, no courts, no fine buildings. They had no magistrates to administer law; no avarice to carry them to court. In fine, although without vices, they knew nothing of the arts,—of splendid virtues,—nor of any of the things which refine a people. They appeared to be rather an oak forest than a sensible and ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... independents, and the production of crude oil and the market demand in a thousand directions has increased the business to an extent which is now far beyond the ability of any one corporation to monopolize. The Standard interests refine perhaps something more than fifty per cent of the crude oil produced in this country. But in recent years, Standard Oil has meant more than a corporation dealing in this natural product. It has become the ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... this well-covered incident spurred the colonel's group to extend and refine their activities. Their idea was to build a radiation-detection instrument in an empty wing tank and hang the tank on an F-47. Then when a UFO was reported they would fly a search pattern in the area and try to establish whether or not a certain sector of the sky was more ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... the elder artists having done all that is possible in realizing the national conceptions of the Gods, the younger ones, forbidden to change the scheme of existing representations, and incapable of doing anything better in that kind, betake themselves to refine and decorate the old ideas with more attractive skill. Their aims are thus more and more limited to manual dexterity, and their fancy paralyzed. Also, in the course of centuries, the methods of every art continually improving, and being made subjects of popular inquiry, praise ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... and added, 'Ah! dear God! Thou hast done clumsily in exalting children—such poor little simpletons—so high. Is it just and right that Thou shouldst reject the wise, and receive the foolish? But God our Lord has purer thoughts than we have; He must, therefore, refine us, as said the fanatics; He must hew great boughs and chips from us, before He makes such children and ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... taken, for their walk, to the cropped, rain-freshened grass, after finding it already dry; and the chairs, turned away from the broad alley, the main drive and the aspect of Park Lane, looked across the wide reaches of green which seemed in a manner to refine upon their freedom. They helped Charlotte thus to make her position—her temporary position—still more clear, and it was for this purpose, obviously, that, abruptly, on seeing her opportunity, she sat down. He ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... object of his pursuit, once a woman, may also become a beast, and then shift shapes to a tree or a bird or a star. But in the civilised races the genius of the people tends to suppress, exclude and refine away the wild element, which, however, is never wholly eliminated. The Erinyes soon stop the mouth of the horse of Achilles when he begins, like the horse in Grimm's Goose Girl, to hold a sustained conversation.(1) But the ancient, cruel, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... of his own performances. This in the author of the Essay on Murder may seem surprising, but, in fact, there are few things of which there are so many subdivisions, or in which the subdivisions are marked off from each other by such apparently impermeable lines, as humour. If I may refine a little I should say that there was very frequently, if not generally, a humorous basis for these divagations of De Quincey's; but that he almost invariably lost sight of that basis, and proceeded ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... two men," he was saying, "and suppose that one of them possessed a genius for the creation of noble and beautiful works of art of any sort, which would afford great pleasure to many people and would refine and elevate their tastes. But suppose that at the same time he was living such a private, even secret, life as made him a source of wickedness and corruption, an endless influence for evil. Then would such a man, do you think—" his voice sank lower and thrilled with solemn earnestness—"deserve ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... to refine the somewhat rude household in which she dwelt occurred to her, she discovered that the work was already well begun, for the chief condition of success was present—the disposition to do as she would like. The Atwoods ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... all the cruelties and deprivations of a bondman. His natural abilities were above mediocrity, but having never had the advantages of an education, or the privileges of a society calculated to cultivate and refine his natural aspiring intellect, and to direct his indomitable will in the acquirement of the more imperishable graces of the human heart, he had come to manhood with a determined, selfish disposition, to accomplish whatever gratified his vanity or administered to ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... described in the last chapter was fully carried out in the West India colonies. Manufactures were so entirely interdicted from the date of their coming under the crown of Great Britain, that the colonists were not permitted even to refine their own sugar, and still less to convert their cotton into cloth. The necessary consequence was that women and children could have no employment but that of the field. This, of course, tended to sink both mother and child far lower in the scale of civilization than would have been the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... to refine your soul, Juan? Has the terrible judgment of which my father's statue was the ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... It has a grade of petroleum that differs from any other thus far found in the world. It is most easily converted into kerosene or lamp oil, and contains a larger proportion of such oil. It is the finest petroleum in the world, except that found in Indiana and Ohio, and that costs more to refine. ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... improved sort of phonograph that Gonzales had invented. None of the harshness and squeakiness of tone that you associate with the ordinary instrument. Partly a new method of making the records and partly a system of qualifying chambers that refine and purify the tones. It is wonderful enough to deceive anybody, and, of course, he had all his records ready ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of this colony, particles of mica glittering in the brook were mistaken for gold dust. "There was no talk, no hope, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold." Newport carried to England a shipload of the worthless stuff. Smith remonstrated in ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... harmonious thoughts-to a million-year Goal. It needs twelve years of normal healthful living to effect even slight perceptible change in brain structure, and a million solar returns are exacted to sufficiently refine the cerebral tenement for manifestation of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... afflicting and soul-harrowing words, "can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then will they do good who are accustomed to do evil." Weighing this text duly with another, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," how shall we presume to refine away the sovereignty of God, by arraigning Jehovah at the bar of human reason, which, in religious matters, is too often opposed by infinite wisdom? "Broad is the way which leadeth to death, and many walk therein. Narrow is the way ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... but the least climb, even a hundred feet, puts you on a plane with the atmosphere itself, uninterrupted by so much as the tree-tops. It is air without admixture. If it comes from the south, the waves refine it; if inland, the wheat and flowers and grass distil it. The great headland and the whole rib of the promontory is wind-swept and washed with air; the billows of ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... are actors who, if there were any dramatic head-quarters as a school, might become very good. The most hopeless feature is, that they have the smallest possible idea of an effective and harmonious whole, each "going in" for himself or herself. The music-halls attract an immense public, and don't refine the general taste. But such things as they do are well done of their kind, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... unsuspicious temper. You must learn to do hard, if not unjust things; and as for the embarrassment of a delicate and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary for you to get rid of it as fast as possible. You must not stop to enlarge your mind, polish your taste, or refine your sentiments; but must keep on in one beaten track, without turning aside to the right hand or the left. "But," you say, "I cannot submit to drudgery like this; I feel a spirit above it." 'Tis well; be above it then; only ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... of personal freedom; but the sugar of Porto Rico was excluded, because our conscience was shocked at the notion that some part of it might have been produced by slaves. But what was thus forbidden directly, was allowed circuitously; we were willing to refine and export this slave-grown sugar, and to take the hemp and tallow of Russia in its stead, which seemed to be an easy way of letting down our consciences. This savoured of hypocrisy. If the United States were permitted to send us their sugars, which they would do to the extent ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... shoulders. You would crown them with a pretty garland of flowers, such as I like for Aimee. You should wear a light-coloured muslin dress, very low and very short, up to the knees, your arms bare, and the skirts exceedingly full (the body of which would be transparent, and refine and reveal the divine shape of your angelic bosoms), your legs, perfectly naked, would be visible amongst a mass of folds of muslin, and would be covered by little open-work stockings of rose-coloured silk, fastened at the instep by bows, like the dress, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... fine example of the independent and beneficent existence that intellect and character can give to Woman, no less than Man, if she know how to seek and prize it,—also, that the intellect need not absorb or weaken, but rather will refine and invigorate, the affections,—the teachings of her practical good sense come with great force, and cannot fail to avail much. Every way her writings please me both as to the means and the ends. I am pleased at the stress she lays on observance of the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... gold is where you find it," which of course, is a mere misreading or faulty remembering of a verse in the Book of Job: "Surely there is a vein for the silver and a place for the gold where they fine it" (refine it). But that "gold is where you find it" is about the only law touching auriferous deposits ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... history I want to draw a lesson, especially for the boys, today. Perhaps we cannot own any stock in the Standard Oil company, but we have something just as good, and better. Perhaps we have found in ourselves what we think is a useless talent—useless unless we refine it and cultivate it. One day some people living on a certain street in New York raised a big row because a small, ragged street boy drew pictures all over their sidewalks with chalk. To them, he was nothing but a nuisance. However, a prominent man came walking by one day. He looked ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word. The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine." ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... overweights the other side of the scale and says that art should "never exist alone, never for itself," never except as "representing a true"—defined as actually-existing—"thing or decorating a useful thing;" when he declares that every attempt by the imagination to "exalt or refine healthy humanity has weakened or caricatured it." Mr. Ruskin bade men "go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to penetrate her meaning, rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing;" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... built my hopes as I had built his body and mind and character, sure that contact with the world would only refine and strengthen him." ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... poet's page, Good books in prose would oft his mind engage: For he had joined th' Mechanics' Institute— And in its praises I would not be mute. Mechanics! It deserves your best support, And to its rooms you often should resort. There you may learn from books to act your parts, While they refine and ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... Promethean heat; Italia's gales shall bear my song In soft-link'd notes her woods among; Upon the blue hill's misty side, Thro' trackless deserts waste and wide, O'er craggy rocks, whose torrents flow Upon the silver sands below. Sweet land of melody! 'tis thine The softest passions to refine; Thy myrtle groves, thy melting strains, Shall harmonise and soothe my pains. Nor will I cast one thought behind, On foes relentless, friends unkind: I feel, I feel their poison'd dart Pierce the life-nerve within my heart; ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... should, on the following day, distinguish themselves by any festive performances; the tables of the antechamber were covered with gold and pearls, and robes and garlands decreed the rewards of those who could refine elegance or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... interdependence, I hope, will elevate and refine our patriotism by teaching men a wider sympathy and a deeper understanding of other peoples, nations, and languages. I sincerely hope it will educate us up to what I ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... I dare say you will agree with me, that as there is no Moral in these Jests, they ought to be discouraged, and looked upon rather as pieces of Unluckiness than Wit. However, as it is natural for one Man to refine upon the Thought of another, and impossible for any single Person, how great soever his Parts may be, to invent an Art, and bring it to its utmost Perfection; I shall here give you an account of an honest ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... to observe the steps by which, were it only through impulses of self-conservation, and when searching with a view to more effectual destructiveness, war did and must refine itself from a horrid trade of butchery into a magnificent and enlightened science. Starting from no higher impulse or question than how to cut throats most rapidly, most safely, and on the largest scale, it ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... art true, my love, And welcome as the breeze Which comes, with healing on its wings, Across the summer seas: That thou hast every winning charm Which culture may refine— I know that thou art mine, my love, I know that I am thine. Yes, thine, my love, I'm thine, my love, Thine, ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... brute, to wait for successive experiences of like objects to impress themselves upon him; but he goes out toward the new, expecting it to be like the old, and so acting as to anticipate it. He thus falls naturally into general ways of acting which it is the function of experience to refine and distinguish. He seems to have more of the higher sort of what was called above Apperception, as opposed to the more concrete and accidental Associations of Ideas. He gets Concepts, as opposed to the Recepts ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... To refine it, a good man who ran a whisky-still tried his plan of the worm that never dies, with the oil. The vapor condensed and was caught in the form of an oil that was nearly white. This oil burned with a steady flame, if protected ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... "Refine Vincart!" repeated Claudet, sternly, "what business have you to mix up her name with those creatures to whom you refer? Mademoiselle Vincart," added he, "has nothing in common with that class, and you have no right, Monsieur de Buxieres, to use ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... different brilliancy from those presented by nature. The fascination of such works springs less from the desire which each author feels to show his skill in putting forth choice and delicate ideas than from the mysterious working of the human intellect. It is characteristic of man to purify and refine everything that he lays up in the treasury of his thoughts. What human faces, what monuments of the dead are not made more beautiful than actual nature in the artistic representation? The soul of the reader assists ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... workman mould The iron to his preconceived design, Nor can the artist without fire refine And purify from all its dross the gold; Nor can revive the phoenix, we are told, Except by fire. Hence if such death be mine I hope to rise again with the divine, Whom death augments, and time cannot make ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... even its conception, was pronounced a crime whose penalty was death. And Bruno, who, from the depths of infamous superstition, had risen into the pure light of heaven, to a theory whose principles, though they might not satisfy, could not fail to refine, elevate, and encourage the soul long groveling in the mire of ignorance, or languishing in the dark dungeons of Scholasticism,—Bruno died for the truth. More foolish than the savages of whom Montesquieu speaks, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... deportment oftener strike the imagination than more important changes, Hetty perceived the circumstances, and wondered at them in her own simple way. Her ambition was a little quickened, and the answer was as much out of the usual course of things as the question; the poor girl attempting to refine beyond her strength. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... one end of the furnace come hot air and gas, which burn in the furnace, producing sufficient heat to melt the charge and refine it of its impurities. Lime and other nonmetallic substances are put in the furnace. These melt, forming a "slag" which floats on the metal and aids materially in the ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... with him into the sterner regions of the north, all the fertilizing arts of southern refinement. He did every thing in his power to win his countrymen to the gay, the elegant, and gentle arts, which soften and refine the character of a people, and wreathe a grace round the loftiness of a proud and warlike spirit. He wrote many poems, which, unfortunately for the fulness of his fame, are now lost to the world; one, which is still preserved, called "Christ's Kirk of the Green," ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the most startling thing I have on record is that von Schoenvorts and Olson while out hunting the other day discovered oil about fifteen miles north of us beyond the sandstone cliffs. Olson says there is a geyser of oil there, and von Schoenvorts is making preparations to refine it. If he succeeds, we shall have the means for leaving Caspak and returning to our own world. I can scarce believe the truth of it. We are all elated to the seventh heaven of bliss. Pray God ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... turning an apt material into an expressive and delightful form, thus filling the world with objects which by symbolising ideal energies tend to revive them under a favouring influence and therefore to strengthen and refine them. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... sun, and the crowing of some distant chanticleer, moved lazily in the sluggish air. It was a season of general repose, just such a day, I think, as a saint would choose to assist his fancy in describing the sunny regions whither his thoughts delight to wander, or a poet would select to refine his ideas of the climate of Elysium. At length I arrived at the old meeting-house where I had often gone, when a lad with my father ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... salt, helps to refine it in the still, and the juniper berries gives the flavor or taste ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... herself harmonious; wont so oft In outward things to meditate the charm Of sacred order, soon she seeks at home To find a kindred order, to exert Within herself this elegance of love, This fair-inspired delight; her temper'd powers Refine at length, and every passion wears A chaster, milder, more attractive mien. But if to ampler prospects, if to gaze On Nature's form, where, negligent of all 610 These lesser graces, she assumes the port Of that Eternal Majesty that weigh'd The world's foundations, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... appetites that were not only sordid, but inhuman. There was a sort of odd contrast in his disposition: for while he practised cruelties sufficient to make the mind shudder with horror, he was fond of those amusing arts which soften and refine the heart. He was particularly addicted, even from childhood, to music, and not totally ignorant of poetry; chariot-driving was his favourite pursuit; and all these he frequently ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... you see, then, that you must stand up for art all the more unflinchingly if you intend to write plays that will refine the theatre-going public, or create a new one? That is why I can't endure to have you even seem to ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Saadiah (892-942) united within himself all strands of thought. Over and above a large number of philological and other writings of scientific purport, he created a momentous religio-philosophic system, with the aim to clarify Judaism and refine religious conceptions. He was an encyclopedic thinker, a representative of the highest Jewish culture and of Arabic culture as well—he wrote his works in Arabic by preference. In this way Jewish thought gained ground more and more in the Orient. It was in the West, however, that it attained soon ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... an admixture with the people, provided always it was on the female side, was not only excusable, but expedient; and, finally, my uncle held that whereas a man is a rude, coarse, sensual animal, and requires all manner of associations to dignify and refine him, women are so naturally susceptible of everything beautiful in sentiment and generous in purpose that she who is a true woman is a fit peer for a king. Odd and preposterous notions, no doubt, and capable of much controversy, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Power. The former faculty exacted approbation of that which it was considered orthodox to admire; the latter groaned forth its utter inability to pay the tax; it was then self-sneered at, spurred up, goaded on to refine its taste, and whet its zest. The more it was chidden, however, the more it wouldn't praise. Discovering gradually that a wonderful sense of fatigue resulted from these conscientious efforts, I began ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte |
