"Refinement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moderated. Nor shall your title of citizenship exclude you from worlds of imagination or of devotion. The Comic spirit is not hostile to the sweetest songfully poetic. Chaucer bubbles with it: Shakespeare overflows: there is a mild moon's ray of it (pale with super-refinement through distance from our flesh and blood planet) in Comus. Pope has it, and it is the daylight side of the night half obscuring Cowper. It is only hostile to the priestly element, when that, by baleful swelling, transcends ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and refinement of the English language follows the writings of Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Sir ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... 26, he wrote to Coleridge: "I have a sort of a recollection that somebody, I think you, promised me a sight of Wordsworth's tragedy. I shall be very glad of it just now, for I have got Manning with me, and should like to read it with him. But this, I confess, is a refinement. Under any circumstances, alone, in Cold-Bath Prison, or in the desert island, just when Prospero and his crew had set off, with Caliban in a cage, to Milan, it would be a treat to me to read that play. Manning has read it, so has Lloyd, and all Lloyd's family; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... compelled the owners of manorial houses to shut their doors on uninvited guests. The jovial coarse hospitality of those times delighted in a crowded board; the extensive household daily required ample provision, and refinement was too little advanced from its earliest stage to make nice arrangement or rare delicacies necessary to an esquire's table. Such a guest therefore as Evellin, was eagerly sought and warmly welcomed. He joined with the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... an employment appropriate to all classes, ages, and conditions. No yard connected with a dwelling is complete without a flower-bed. The cultivation of flowers is eminently promotive of health, refinement of manners, and good taste. Constant familiarity with the most exquisite beauties of nature must refine the feelings and produce gentleness of spirit. Association with flowers should be a part of every child's education. Their cultivation is suitable for children ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... the old faiths—economical, social, religious—were fermenting within him in different stages of disintegration and reconstruction; and his reserved habit and often solitary life tended to scrupulosity and over-refinement. His future career as a landowner and politician was by no means clear to him. One thing only was clear to him—that to dogmatise about any subject under heaven, at the present day, more than the ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... or so after arriving at Bolivar the word came to me in some way, I think from Enoch Wallace, that our first lieutenant, Dan Keeley, had spoken disapprovingly of my conduct in that regard. He was a young man, about twenty-five years old, of education and refinement, and all things considered, the best company officer we had. I was much attached to him, and I know that he liked me. Well, I learned that he had said, in substance, that a non-commissioned officer should set a good example to the men ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... up their quarters at Rockhouse. Wolston was an engineer by profession, but his wife belonged to a highly aristocratic family of the West of England; she had been brought up in a state of ease and refinement, was possessed of all the accomplishments required in fashionable society, but she was at the same time gifted with strong good sense, and could readily accommodate herself to the circumstances in which she was now placed. Her two daughters, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... that those who have been nearly drowned, find the return to consciousness much more painful than the loss of it had been, and so it was with my hero. As he lay helpless and feeble, it seemed to him a refinement of cruelty that he had not died once for all during his delirium. He thought he should still most likely recover only to sink a little later on from shame and sorrow; nevertheless from day to day he mended, though so slowly that he could hardly realise it to himself. One afternoon, however, about ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... it with a thrill of pleasure rarely produced by an American novel.—The interest of the story is sustained, throughout—in some instances INTENSELY EXCITING!—A vein of refinement and culture runs through it which reminds us of HANNAH ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman
... a dog-gone lot," Tommy emphatically replied. "Look at those books, at that piano, at what is suggested by the violin case, at the refinement of this room—and then picture what might have been here! Take another view, and consider what a fine chance you'd have had to meet her if that old codger hadn't turned scamp off there in Azuria! Anyway, we've got to ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... trade was not demoralized by excessive competition. No attempt was made to separate class from class, and population was not large enough to make the battle of life almost hopeless in the lowest section of the community. If there was less refinement than among ourselves, there was far less of nervous susceptibility, and the country was free from the half-educated class of men and women who know enough to make them dissatisfied, without attaining to the larger knowledge which yields wisdom and content. ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... far from unpleasant, however, to spend an evening at this water-side inn with people fresh from Paris, bringing with them the spray of the sea that beats against the shores of high-strung life. Nor was it unpleasant to find a little refinement in the kitchen again, and to eat trout not saturated with ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... expedition. Some become so enamored with this wandering and exposed life as to lose all desire of returning to the abodes of civilization, and remain for the rest of their lives in the American deserts. There are individuals, who are graduates of colleges, and who once stood high in the circles of refinement and taste, that have passed more than twenty years amongst the roaming tribes of the Rocky mountains, or on the western slope, till they have apparently lost all feelings towards civilized life. They have afforded an ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... even artificially polished—glaringly ultra-fashionable, ostentatiously polite and suave. In the lines of his bestial face he bore the records of a lifetime's profligacy and the black tales of habitual self-indulgence. Paul hated him instinctively and wondered how a man of Ledoux's unmistakable refinement could ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... mothers to their children is the early drill in personal habits that are required for health and decency and propriety in any given time and place. For this it is an absolute necessity that either the mother so serve herself or that she secure some substitute-mother of refinement, knowledge, affection and devotion which make her an equal in the family circle. How many nurses fulfil that demand? Many, even of those least recognized by their employers as entitled to special gratitude and appreciation. The point ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... indulged. I have shown him only as I saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his career, when he, in a manner, devoted himself to elegant pursuits and enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and sensibility, and refinement. While this lasted he was sacred from injury; the very schoolboy would not fling a stone at him, and the merest rustic would pause to ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... well-appointed room on the second story of an elegantly furnished house in an airy, fashionable part of the town; the apartment provided for my especial benefit, containing all the luxuries and comforts which modern refinement has ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... daughters of trades-people, however well educated, must necessarily be underbred, and as such unfit to be inmates of OUR dwellings, or guardians of OUR children's minds and persons. WE shall ever prefer to place those about OUR offspring who have been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinement as OURSELVES.'" ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... good-natured, loud-voiced woman, who idolized her son, and could not deny him anything. It was the want of refinement, which Carl felt but could not express, and the utter lack of home training, that ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... and delicate-featured girl, in whose surroundings you behold evidences of so much taste and refinement, you could scarcely be made to believe that the gross organization by her side is to her liking. Yet I assure you she is in love with the handsome animal—'madly in love' with him, as she ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... man? Was he to relate the nameless infamies of Macquarie Harbour as a proof that he was entitled to receive the hospitalities of the generous, and to sit, a respected guest, at the tables of men of refinement? Was he to quote the horrible slang of the prison-ship, and retail the filthy jests of the chain-gang and the hulks, as a proof that he was a fit companion for pure-minded women and innocent children? Suppose even that he could conceal the name of the real criminal, and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... he sought to set forth in accordance with the semi-religious, semi-poetical traditions of his race; and when he was at work upon a myth of nature-forces, he well knew that at the other end of the scale, separated by no spiritual barrier, but removed to an almost infinite distance of refinement, Zeus, Phoebus, and Pallas claimed his loftier artistic inspiration. Ammanati's confession, on the contrary, betrays that schism between the conscience of Christianity and the lusts let loose by ill-assimilated sympathy ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Whether in the rude original of society the first step was not the exchanging of commodities; the next a substituting of metals by weight as the common medium of circulation; after this the making use of coin; lastly, a further refinement by the use of paper with proper marks and signatures? And whether this, as it is the last, so it be not the ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... 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 ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... China it found there a native art whose value was proved beyond question by a long succession of masterpieces. After having exhausted every manifestation of strength and vigor, this art had arrived at expressions of extreme refinement and profound and appealing charm, closely verging on the ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... marked by a sudden extension of the world of readers. The developement of men's minds under the political and social changes of the day, as well as the rapid increase of wealth, and the advance in culture and refinement which accompanies an increase of wealth, were quickening the general intelligence of the people at large; and the wider demand for books to read that came of this quickening gave a new extension and vigour to their sale. Addison tells us how large ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... children, and had given no common attention to her boy in his early years. Hence his mental accomplishments. The husband was, I suspect, rather her inferior in intellect; and scarcely her equal in refinement and manner, but it's no matter, it would have been probably the same whatever he had been. She who will run astray under one set of circumstances, would probably have run astray under any. She was very vain of her beauty and talents, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... very little disturb the peace of mankind, were it always the consequence of superfluous delicacy; for it is the privilege only of deep reflection, or lively fancy, to destroy happiness by art and refinement. But by continual indulgence of a particular humour, or by long enjoyment of undisputed superiority, the dull and thoughtless may likewise acquire the power of tormenting themselves and others, and become sufficiently ridiculous or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Cnidus, to be jostled by the gay crowd at the Olympic games. It was indeed a golden age, when all that was beautiful in nature was reverently and assiduously nurtured, and all that was noble and natural in art was magnificently encouraged; an age in which refinement and nobility were not accidents, but necessities; when politics had reached the high grade of an art, and oratory attained a beauty and power beyond which no Pitt, Canning, or Brougham has ever yet aspired; an age when the gifted Aspasia held her splendid court, and Alcibiades ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... have a geologist assure him that his house sits on a ledge of Cherokee limestone that ought to be all right for zinc. I have met great numbers of miners who are hunchers. The most interesting is a man named Bernique, an old chap of education and refinement from St. Louis. He has a hunch about the Canaan Tigmores—at least so far in my intercourse with him I have not found anything more tangible than a hunch. I fell in with him just before I reached Canaan, and though he then declared his intention of being absent for some days, he did not go away, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... miraculous agencies, you have applied its creative force to every combination of human circumstances that could produce your objects. Yet, amid the toil and triumphs of your scientific industry, upon you there comes the undefinable, the irresistible yearning for intellectual refinement—you build an edifice consecrated to those beautiful emotions and to those civilizing studies in which they excelled, and you impress upon its front ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate, comes only from strength. He was unconscious ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... us in plant and earth and animal life. Consistently with various grades of competence for investigation, the man may be social, or may flee his fellows; may be witty, or incapable of seeing the broadest fun; a poet, or almost devoid of creative imagination; full of refinement and rife with multiple forms of culture, or neither scholarly nor well-informed outside of his especial line of work. According as he is endowed with mental graces and forms of culture, apart from his science, will be his charm as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... "but I wasn't led to suppose that that was the usual custom among illustrators, judging from some results I have seen. You know," he went on, "this Yankee of mine has neither the refinement nor the weakness of a college education; he is a perfect ignoramus; he is boss of a machine shop; he can build a locomotive or a Colt's revolver, he can put up and run a telegraph line, but he's an ignoramus, nevertheless. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... his father had, as a usual thing, that kindly and simple way of looking at the actions of his fellow-men which is refinement, so that it was evident that the contents of the letter were hateful. That was to be expected. The point that aroused the son's curiosity was to know how far the father recognised an obligation imposed by the letter. The letter would be hateful ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... in quite another direction. It is related that one of the tunnel men, two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers with a carpetbag, umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of "Civilization and Refinement," plodding along over the road he had just ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Crammed as he is with Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, and Church history, he knows all that they teach in colleges, being totally ignorant of all that can only be learnt at the Court of a king. He has no distinction of manner, no polish or refinement of address; he laughs in loud guffaws, and even raises his voice in the presence of his father. Having been born at Court, his way of bowing is not altogether awkward; but what a difference between his salute and that of the King! "Monseigneur ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of our original impulsive activities is not a refinement and perfecting achieved by "exercise" as one might strengthen a muscle by practice. It consists rather (a) in selecting from the diffused responses which are evoked at a given time those which are especially adapted to the utilization of ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... materials of art. Under the Roman empire, the labor of an industrious and ingenious people was variously, but incessantly, employed in the service of the rich. In their dress, their table, their houses, and their furniture, the favorites of fortune united every refinement of conveniency, of elegance, and of splendor, whatever could soothe their pride or gratify their sensuality. Such refinements, under the odious name of luxury, have been severely arraigned by the moralists of every age; and it might perhaps be more conducive to the virtue, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... clever. The brightest wit must say some dull things, and a comic journal can hardly help letting some dreary attempts at mirth slip into its columns. We could point out paragraphs in this serial which are most chaotic and unmeaning, and some, indeed, which fall below its own excellent standard of refinement; but we do not remember ever to have met in its pages a double-entendre or a foulness of speech. We must advise its conductor (who, we may say in passing, is a gentleman whose writings have not infrequently appeared in the "Atlantic") never to allow his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... before one at least knows exactly where he is. 'Just a homely spread, you know; pot-luck; a bit of fish and a glass of Moet; now do come.' This curious mixture of bluff cordiality, with unexpected snatches of refinement, is Mr. X——'s great charm. 'Style of farming; tell you with pleasure.' [Rings the bell.] 'John' (to the manservant), 'take this key and bring me account book No. 6 B, Copse Farm; that will be ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... to you and your friends. You must let me pay you for this." The suggestion was coarsely put. Returning strength was restoring the stranger to his usual condition of mind. There was little refinement about this ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... thought Rivers, as he observed the clean-shaven face, which was sallow, or what the English once described as olivaster, the eyes small and dark, the hair black and so long as to darkly frame the thin-featured, clean-shaven refinement of a pleasant and ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... acute perception, such as music, painting, manufacturing of delicate articles, etc. In literature they display refined taste, and the head is symmetrical and generally well developed. Those who are low in delicacy lack refinement and grace and should carefully ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... Think of the frightful situation in which a lady of great refinement was lately placed: she was conversing agreeably at her country seat near Paris, when her husband's servant came and whispered in her ear, "Monsieur ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... generous desire 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
... which they approximate to that ideal in their lives and conduct, 'the Christian is the highest style of man.' The disciple is above the righteous men adorned with many graces of character, who, if they are not Christians, have a worm at the root of all their goodness, because it lacks the supreme refinement and consecration of faith; and above the fiery-tongued prophet, if he is not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... will tell you how significant a feature is the nose; how its forms express strength or weakness of will, and good or bad temper. The nose of Julius Caesar, of Dante, and of Pitt, suggest "the terrors of the beak." What refinement, and what limitations, the teeth betray! "Beware you don't laugh," said the wise mother, "for then ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... anxious to return to my furniture polish, but the Doctor would have nothing of the kind. He declared himself a gentleman of too much refinement and dignity to allow a man in his company to descend to peddling from house ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... loneliness; he might have asked her how she could possibly endure life without companionship, but he did not; he only felt that other friends might have been rough and ill-bred; this girl derived her refinement, not only from nature, but also from separation from the other girls who might in the ordinary course have been her friends and associates. And if no other friends, then no lover. Arnold was only going to visit the young lady as her brother; but ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... believe in their existence. For instance, what a surprise it would be to Israelitic society, gathered in the largest city in the country, composed of cultivated men and of women, who by their beauty, refinement and wit are in no way inferior to the women of other nations: what a surprise it would be to this society, gowned in purple and fine linen, if somebody would all at once describe Szybow and what ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... is usually considered proper in commencing the day, but Dick was above such refinement. He had no particular dislike to dirt, and did not think it necessary to remove several dark streaks on his face and hands. But in spite of his dirt and rags there was something about Dick that was ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... the country respecting which those 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 ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe
... removal to Warsaw lived at ease. The country was prosperous and Chopin the elder became a professor in the Warsaw Lyceum. His children were brought up in an atmosphere of charming simplicity, love and refinement. The mother was an ideal mother, and, as George Sand declared, Chopin's "only love." But, as we shall discover later, Lelia was ever jealous—jealous even of Chopin's past. His sisters were gifted, gentle and disposed to pet him. Niecks has killed ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... whose posters were pasted on the victim's face. Neither cards nor any other form of play interested him, nor did the wine tempt him when it was red—or of any other color, for that matter, nor did he haunt the dressing-rooms of chorus girls and favorites of the hour. His innate refinement and good taste prevented any such uses of his spare time. His weakness—for it could hardly be called a vice—was narrowed down to one infirmity, and one only: this was his inability to be happy without the exclusive society of some ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... if you please, it is more euphonious Yes, I was at school in Leicester two years, and was called the best grammarian there, but since I've sojourned with this kind of people, I've nearly lost my refinement. To be sure I aim at exclusiveness, and now you've come I shall cut them all, with the exception of Uncle Peter, who would be rather genteel if he knew ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... firmly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease. I stick to that. Let us leave that, too, for a minute. Tell me this: why does it happen that at the very, yes, at the very moments when I am most capable of feeling every refinement of all that is "sublime and beautiful," as they used to say at one time, it would, as though of design, happen to me not only to feel but to do such ugly things, such that ... Well, in short, actions that all, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... was in love with you, and then I began to tremble, for she is not only a very witch of fascination, but she has about forty times more power of loving, or whatever she chooses to call it, than most women, and every mental attraction and fastidious refinement, besides. There is not a good woman in the country that could hold her own against her. I have no wish to slander her, and have never discussed her before; but my instincts are strong enough to teach ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... from endless store, God-sent, (For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,) Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and cannot tell, Art thou not universal concrete's distillation? Law's, all Astronomy's last refinement? Hast thou no soul? Can I not ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... is 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 ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... with the previous epoch the Greek as well as the Latin training improved in extent and in scholastic strictness quite as much as it declined in purity and in refinement. The increasing eagerness after Greek lore gave to instruction of itself an erudite character. To explain Homer or Euripides was after all no art; teachers and scholars found their account better in handling the Alexandrian ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... characterizes the history of nations and peoples. Where Christianity entered as a factor, as in the history of Western Europe and in the results of Christian missions in heathen lands, we can indeed observe a rise out of barbaric or savage conditions to refinement and culture. But only where the Christian gospel is preached, was the natural process of decay, of degeneration, interfered with. Elsewhere, that is to say, where purely natural forces were given ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... Yet there was 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 of religion—yet he had all that ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... proportions, with decorations in the highest style of Moorish art, the arms were of the latest pattern surreptitiously imported from England and many of them faithfully copied by skilful, enlightened workmen; electricity was known and used, and the tastes of the people showed a refinement almost equal to that of any European state. Yet in religion there prevailed the crudest and most ignorant forms of superstition, one of which was the horrible practice of burying alive all sick persons, while the custom of the executioner accompanying the reigning ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... large, square, strong, of two stories over a stoutly piered basement, and surrounded by two broad verandas, one at each story, beneath a great hip roof gracefully upheld on Doric columns. It bore that air of uncostly refinement which is one of the most pleasing outward features of the aloof civilization to which it, though not ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... from the spontaneous kindness of a worthy and excellent mind, and that of being indebted for it to the selfishness and baseness of the worst members of society. It was thus that I allowed myself in the wantonness of refinement, even ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... been chosen of such plain reference and derivation. Plato, in the words quoted above, has said that the whole of a man's life stands in need of a right rhythm: and it is natural to see some kinship between this Platonic attitude and the claim of Dalcroze that his discovery is not a mere refinement of dancing, nor an improved method of music-teaching, but a principle that must have effect upon every part ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... as after the passage of the great migratory bands of olden times. The buildings in the Rue Maqua, protected by a friendly influence, escaped the devastating irruption, and were only called on to give shelter to a few of the leaders, men of education and refinement. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Beau Brummel of the metropolitan smart set? Was Fifth Avenue losing its pre-eminence? On what days of the week was the Art Museum free to the public? What was the fare to New York, and the best quarter of the city in which to inquire for a quiet, select boarding house where a Southern lady of refinement and good family might stay at a reasonable price, and meet some nice people? And would he recommend stenography or magazine work, and which did he consider preferable, as a career which such a young lady might follow without ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the dear old dad's downright snubs," was her inward comment. "I must have a talk with him to-morrow. If he progresses at this rate toward English refinement he will be unbearable at O'Shanaghgan when he returns; quite, quite unbearable. Oh, for a sniff of the sea! oh, for the wild, wild wind on my cheeks! and oh, for my dear, darling, bare bedroom! I shall be smothered ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... art, and art is not vague production, transitory and isolated, but a power which must be directed to the improvement and refinement of the human soul—to, in fact, the raising of ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... It was strange now to peruse, for the first time, the records of a mind whence my own sprang; and most strange, and at once sad and sweet, to find that mind of a truly fine, pure, and elevated order. They were written to papa before they were married. There is a rectitude, a refinement, a constancy, a modesty, a sense, a gentleness about them indescribable. I wish she had lived, and that I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Heber C. Kimball once alluded to his wives by the endearing epithet of "my heifers;" and on another occasion politely spoke of them as "his cows." The phraseology may possibly be a slight indication of the refinement of manners prevalent in Salt Lake City.) He says ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... chiefly centred in the human figure. Landscape, with its many beauties, was reserved for modern hands to disclose. Color was used in abundance, without doubt, but it was probably limited to the leading hues, with little of that refinement or delicacy ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... tyranny that led up to it and ensued from it, they clapped their hands to their ears, and cried out that he was a shockingly coarse person, and quite too horribly indelicate for refined society. Because, indeed, they cared only about a surface and outside refinement, and not a whit for that which is inward and profound. For beauty of being—they had neither desire nor power of reverence; all their enthusiasm was spent over forms and words and appearances of beauty. In them the senses ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... gold eyeglasses hung on him by a black ribbon. He's puffin' away at a Cassadora cigar that must have measured seven inches over-all when it left the box. In fact, the Gummidges are displayin' all the usual marks of wealth and refinement. ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... what he considered the only sporting answer to that insult. While he listened he pondered, awestruck, upon the fact that out of all this muck and blackness, the degradation of hate by the lodger, the refinement of hate by himself, had flowered that rarest of all human creatures—one that could make the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... religious houses; work, too, which since those days has been done by the printing-press, and by many other institutions better fitted to deal with the requirements of an immensely larger population, and to be the instruments of diffusing culture and refinement through the nation after it had outgrown ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... carpentering where he ought to have left good. For even God himself will not build the carpenter's houses without the carpenter. Or, here is a mother in a home. Her children are about her, with their needs. Her home requires her skill, her taste, her refinement, her toil and care. It is her calling to be a good mother, and to make a true home for her household. Her duty is to do always her very best to make her home beautiful, bright, happy, a fit place for her children to grow up in. Faithfulness ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... higher class of Americans on one side—I refer to those who mostly belong to the older families, in some instances tracing back their descent to the days of the Puritan Fathers, and who, having learnt culture and refinement abroad, rarely mix in public life in the States—the general faith and morality of our Yankee "cousins" have never been so tersely described as in the "Pious Editor's Creed" of the Biglow Papers, which were written, as you are doubtless aware, by ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... In the greater refinement and increasing delicacy of the eighteenth century, the Inns of Court revels, which had for so many generations been conspicuous amongst the gaieties of the town, became less and less magnificent; and they altogether died out under the second of those Georges who are thought by some persons ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... meant that she too would be clever about clothes. They must, moreover, have cost what, again using a phrase that had always before seemed quite horrid, she called to herself a pretty penny, for the materials had been made to satisfy some last refinement of exigence which demanded textures which should keep their own qualities yet ape their opposites, and the dark fur on her coat seemed a weightless softness like tulle, and the chestnut-coloured stuff of the coat and the dress beneath it was thick and rough like ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... honour or condemned to obscurity, experiences that yearning for glory which alone begets virtuous endeavour.' The paper, still preserved at Hatfield, is a model of calligraphy; every letter is shaped with delicate regularity, and betrays a refinement most uncommon in boys of thirteen. {376a} Southampton remained at the University for some two years, graduating M.A. at sixteen in 1589. Throughout his after life he cherished for his ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... over seven hundred feet long by ninety wide, with the twelve doors still distinctly marked; as for the brooches and torques of gold, some we have surpass in magnificence anything here described, and their artistic beauty is eloquent of the refinement of spirit that conceived and the skill that fashioned them. Spear-heads, too, are of beautiful bronze-gold, with tracings round the socket of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... point out in this report the best means of meeting the proper conditions for obtaining the highest degree of accuracy consistent with fairly rapid work. It would be manifestly impossible to observe so great a refinement of accuracy in this work as would be employed in exact ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... the constitution of our own bodies. After we have reckoned up all that we can see or hear or feel, there still remains to be taken into account some sensibility more delicate than usual in the nerves affected, or some exquisite refinement in the architecture of the brain, which is indeed to the sense of the beautiful as the eye or the ear to the sense of hearing or sight. We admire splendid views and great pictures; and yet, what is truly admirable is rather the mind within us, that gathers together these ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 had ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... witchery in her rare smile, which atoned, in some degree at least, for want of complexion in the face and of flesh in the figure. Men might dispute her claims to beauty—but no one could deny that she was, in the common phrase, an interesting person. Grace and refinement; a quickness of apprehension and a vivacity of movement, suggestive of some foreign origin; a childish readiness of wonder, in the presence of new objects—and perhaps, under happier circumstances, a childish playfulness with ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... friend Bergaz, the shadowy Bourse jobber who had already been compromised in some piece of thieving, plainly declared that the aforesaid Bergaz was a bandit, Janzen contented himself with smiling, and replying quietly that theft was merely forced restitution. Briefly, in this man of culture and refinement, in whose own mysterious life one might perhaps have found various crimes but not a single act of base improbity, one could divine an implacable, obstinate theoretician, who was resolved to set the world ablaze for ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... vegetable growths of all kinds. This one gradually drifted away like the preceding. The third was covered with animals of every description—a mass, a chaos of animals. The fourth was similarly crowded with hairy men in battle, the next two showed the development of these men—gradual refinement and civilisation. The seventh I did ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... Christianization mellows those in manner whom it cannot mend in mind, much the same will it prove with the progress of genialization. And so, thanks to geniality, the misanthrope, reclaimed from his boorish address, will take on refinement and softness—to so genial a degree, indeed, that it may possibly fall out that the misanthrope of the coming century will be almost as popular as, I am sincerely sorry to say, some philanthropists of the present time would seem not to be, as witness my eccentric friend ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... human nature. In fact, she was a woman of the French memoirs—one of those charming and spirituelles Aspasias of the boudoir, who interest us by their subtlety, tact, and grace, their exquisite tone of refinement, and are redeemed from the superficial and frivolous, partly by a consummate knowledge of the social system in which they move, and partly by a half-concealed and touching discontent of the trifles on which their talents and affections are wasted. These are ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seated himself opposite her. As delicately as he could, he told of Jonas Medderbrook and his lost daughter, of the home of wealth that awaited that daughter, and finally, of his belief that Syrilla was that daughter. It was clear that Syrilla was quite willing to take up a life of refinement and dieting if she was given an opportunity such as Mr. Gubb was able to offer in the name of Jonas Medderbrook; and, this being so, he questioned her ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... features. But Robespierre, who was said to resemble a cat, and had also a cat's cleanliness, was prim and dainty in dress, shaven smoothness, and the womanly whiteness of his hands. Rene Dumas, born of reputable parents, and well educated, despite his ferocity, was not without a certain refinement, which perhaps rendered him the more acceptable to the precise Robespierre. Dumas was a beau in his way: his gala-dress was a blood-red coat, with the finest ruffles. But Henriot had been a lacquey, a thief, a spy of the police; ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... to do when about to say anything emphatic, and replied in his most energetic manner: "I have been a great deal in the South as well as in the North, and know both sections equally well, and I tell you, gentlemen, that there is more intelligence, more refinement, more cultivation, more virtue, and more good manners in one New England village than in all the South together." This decision put an end to the discussion. The South-Carolinian retreated in dudgeon, and Gurowski, chuckling, returned to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... words are sufficient to inspire us with thoughts ennobling, grand and elevating. There are to be found growlers in every clime, and it is only such that will desert their fatherland and seek refuge under foreign skies. We have liberty, right, education, refinement and culture in our midst; we have a good government, noble reforms, and all advantages to make us good and happy. Then let us cherish every right and institution which makes our beloved New Brunswick the pride ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... and motionless—with us two alone sitting by each other's side affectionately and respectfully on a sofa. Now it is filled with life, and heard you ever such a happy murmur? Yet no one in particular looks as if he or she were speaking much above breath, so gentle is true refinement, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... run along in their usual way. Tessibel had been able to ameliorate the conditions of her squatter neighbors and was regarded by the inhabitants of that end of the Silent City, as their lady bountiful. They put her in a niche by herself. None prouder than they of the evidences of culture and refinement she showed, while with characteristic independence, they called her "Brat" just as in the days, when she ran bare-legged and ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... and unkempt; untrained in all the pretty graces of refinement; deprived of all the fostering care of the home, how can the children of the street afford the artist any subjects for his canvas? Because, in spite of deprivation and poverty, they possess the imperishable treasure of a happy heart; and happiness ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... Aramis, hoping to bring about his downfall. Queen Anne of Austria, once the beautiful, helpless heroine, is now the ailing, sometimes imperial, matriarch of the royal household, tortured by the son she was forced to forsake. In other words, they are human. The refinement of the four principles, as age steals upon them, adds an element that is somehow lacking from the former books. They now hail from different spheres, which lends richness to their portrayal. Aramis is the man of God, with a scheme always in the works. Athos is the dignified, ...
— Dumas Commentary • John Bursey
... a Parsee gentleman of culture and refinement on the steamer, en route for Bombay, which fact made us eager to learn something of this sect. They came to India from Persia, twelve hundred years ago, driven away on account of Mohammedan persecution. They are ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... letters, song. The events of each day were executed like a piece of music, and even their sarcophagi were covered with scenes of feasting and revelry. But they were not true; and that false note jars through all their pages. Harshness in the poet and pride in the orator make their refinement and ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... grace, and the beautiful refinement of his countenance, together with his perfect taste in dress and the exquisite simplicity of his manners, made him the absolute ideal of what a poet should be. His voice, too, was soft, sweet, and musical, and, like his face, it had the innate charm of tranquillity. His eyes were blue-gray, very ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... manufactures for distant sale grow up naturally, and as it were of their own accord, by the gradual refinement of those household and coarser manufactures which must at all times be carried on even in the poorest and rudest countries. Such manufactures are generally employed upon the materials which the country produces, and they seem frequently to have ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... and satisfactory of any in which she ever was engaged. There was not the slightest friction between herself and the State association or State headquarters, and most of those prominent in the work were of such refinement and nobility of character that it was a pleasure to be associated with them. Not a day passed that she did not receive some token of affection from the women of the State. The Sargent home was filled with the flowers and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... pieces of mother of pearl and ivory. Later, this marqueterie became florid, badly finished, and the colouring of the veneers crude and gaudy. Old pieces of plain mahogany furniture were decorated with a thin layer of highly coloured veneering, a meretricious ornamentation altogether lacking refinement. ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... hate! how detect, and how guard against it. It lurks where you least expect it; it is created by causes that you can the least foresee; and civilization multiplies its varieties whilst it favors its disguise; for civilization increases the number of contending interests, and refinement renders more susceptible to the least ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... solidified, granite-like foundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will, the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its opposite, but—as its refinement! It is to be hoped, indeed, that LANGUAGE, here as elsewhere, will not get over its awkwardness, and that it will continue to talk of opposites where there are only degrees and many refinements of gradation; it is equally to be hoped that the incarnated Tartuffery of morals, which now ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... a stranger to this youth. I had seen his letters, and they bespoke, not indeed any great refinement or elevation of intelligence, but a frank and generous spirit, to which I could not refuse my esteem; but his chief claim to my affection consisted in his consanguinity to Mr. Hadwin, and his place in the affections of Susan. His ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... lighted and was tastefully decorated in delicate colors, and a wood fire was burning on the hearth; but, for the first time that he could remember, Nasmyth felt ill at ease in it. He was fresh from the snow-covered rocks and shadowy woods and the refinement and artistic luxury of his surroundings rather jarred on him. The story he had to relate dealt with elemental things—hunger, toil, and death—it would sound harsher and more ugly amid the evidences ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Mrs. Smithers, "that a gentleman of Mr. Whitechoker's refinement would not make any such insinuation, sir. He is not the man to quarrel with ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... success in making her own surroundings beautiful, determines the efforts of the individual woman. She feels that she is expected to prove her superiority by living in a home distinguished for beauty as well as for the usual orderliness and refinement. Of course this sense of obligation is a powerful spur to the exercise of natural gifts, and if in addition to these she has the habit of reasoning upon the principles of things, and is sufficiently cultivated in the literature of art ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler |
