"Refine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when his 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, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... 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 to our ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... only to notice the coincidence that while the Virgin was miraculously using the power of spiritual love to elevate and purify the people, Eleanor and her daughters were using the power of earthly love to discipline and refine the courts. Side by side with the crude realities about them, they insisted on teaching and enforcing an ideal that contradicted the realities, and had no value for them or for us except ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... street with his nose in his newspaper and his umbrella under his arm. We must write for that fat, breathless woman whom I see from my window, as she climbs painfully into the Odeon omnibus. We must write courageously for the bourgeois, if it were only to try to refine them, to make them less bourgeois. And if I dared, I should say that we must write even ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... the wealth of human life? Is it not fullness and richness of feeling? To refine this fullness, to purify this richness, to distill the essence out of this wealth, to educate the feelings by revealing their subtle possibilities, by bringing to light the divinity there is within and behind them, this is the ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... sugar-canes did not require planting again, 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 obtaining a better grip upon the canes, and preventing ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... I need If thou, O Lord, be mine; Thy rod will bring my spirit low, Thy fire my heart refine, And cause me pain that none may feel By other love ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... couple at one time; if the cockneys chosen should be tailors, he will of course think it his duty, on the old established equation, to murder eighteen. And, here, in this attention to the comfort of sick people, you will observe the usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine the feelings. The world in general, gentlemen, are very bloody-minded; and all they want in a murder is a copious effusion of blood; gaudy display in this point is enough for them. But the enlightened connoisseur is more refined in his taste; and from our art, as ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the study of "literature" (only the adult's manner of saying "reading") is expected to accomplish was aptly described by Cardinal Newman when he wrote: "The object of literature in education is to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to comprehend and adjust its knowledge, to give it power over its faculties—application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, address and expression." Reading at home ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... 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
... 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. He ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... There are natural filters as well as artificial ones; and though the great rivers are commonly more or less turbid, if you will look long enough, you may find a spring that sparkles as no water does which drips through your apparatus of sands and sponges. So there are families which refine themselves into intellectual aptitude without having had much opportunity for intellectual acquirements. A series of felicitous crosses develops an improved strain of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection at last in the large uncombed youth who goes to college and startles the hereditary ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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 ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... meant, as by some 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 (his tableau as she had said) partook of ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... laugh you lie Wallowing in wine, or cog the dubious die, Or act unshamed, by each indignant bust, The midnight orgies of promiscuous lust!— Go, lead mankind to Virtue's holy shrine, With morals mend them, and with arts refine, Or lift, with golden characters unfurl'd, The flag of peace, and still a warring world!— —So shall with pious hands immortal Fame Wreathe all her laurels round thy honour'd name, High o'er thy tomb with chissel ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... impunity. Those who suffered most were generally among the earliest to sue for peace. Sherman's terse answer to the mayor of Atlanta, when the latter protested against the banishment of the inhabitants, was appreciated by the Rebels after our final campaigns. "War is cruelty—you cannot refine it," speaks a ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... retirement, which divests them of practical skills for public purposes, guards them, at the same time, from the heart-hardening effects of general worldly commerce. It gives them leisure to reflect and to refine, not merely upon the virtues, but the pleasures of benevolence; not only and abstractedly upon that sense of good and evil which is implanted in all, but feelingly, nay awefully, upon the woes they see, ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... as I had built his body and mind and character, sure that contact with the world would only refine ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... me gentle. Hush my spirit. Refine my manner. Let me have Christ in my bearing and my very tones as ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... a coffin of all the things we are so mad to possess. But the last enemy, with all his malice and all his resistless power, cannot touch our moral character—unless it be in some way utterly mysterious to us that he is made under God to refine and perfect it. The Express Image carried up to His Father's House, not only the divine life He had brought hither with Him when He came to obey and submit and suffer among us; He carried back more than He brought, for He carried back a human heart, a human life, a human ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... rules of grammar, or facts in history? Are not the principles that should regulate clothing, the rules of cleanliness, the advantages of early rising and domestic exercise, as readily communicated as the principles of mineralogy, or rules of syntax? Are not the rules of Jesus Christ, applied to refine domestic manners and preserve a good temper, as important as the abstract principles of ethics, as taught by Paley, Wayland, or Jouffroy? May not the advantages of neatness, system, and order, be as well illustrated in showing how they contribute to the happiness of ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... vulgar type of features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood. We have few of these absolutely unilluminated faces among our native American population, individuals of whom must be singularly unfortunate, if, mixing as we do, no drop of gentle blood has contributed to refine the turbid element, no gleam of hereditary intelligence has lighted up the stolid eyes, which their forefathers brought from the Old Country. Even in this English almshouse, however, there was at least one person who claimed to be intimately connected with rank and wealth. The governor, after suggesting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... a stewpan a tea-spoonful of floor, four of vinegar, a quarter of a pound of butter, the yolks of five eggs, and a little salt. Set it on the fire, and keep continually stirring. When thick enough, work it well that you may refine it; pass it through a sieve; season with a little cayenne pepper, ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... skies, although each thread would be immeasurably above its present condition, the relation of one to another would still be the same. If the baser wool should be transmuted into gold, the very same process would refine and sublimate the precious metal, in a corresponding ratio; and the equilibrium of God's ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... fulfilled the desire of man, whom he had 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
... the democratic spirit through beauty. Its enemies are of its own household; those who by nature and training should be its helpers hinder it instead. Why do they do this? Because their fastidious, aesthetic natures are outraged by a crudeness which they themselves could easily refine away if they chose; because also they recoil at a lack of conformity to existing conventions—conventions so hampering to the inner spirit of the Newness, that in order to incarnate at all it must of necessity sweep ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... out for mate. It's no use; they can't spake the language, and it's no use t'achin' thim. They're good min to wurruk—all bone and sole leather, but ye can't refine thim." ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... Refine and purge our earthly parts; But, O, inflame and fire our hearts! Our frailties help, our vice control, Submit the senses to the soul; And when rebellious they are grown, Then lay thy hand and hold ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... worldly lust, We will behold a brighter world than this, With less of curse and much of noble bliss; For God's kind hand in all our conflicts here Is clearly seen and doubts must disappear; The end He has in view is most benign; The fire will dross consume and gold refine. ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... of the reign of Louis XIII., to amend the coarse and licentious expressions, which, during the civil wars had been introduced into literature as well as into manners. It was praiseworthy of some high-born ladies in Parisian society to endeavour to refine the language and the mind. But there was a very great difference between the influence these ladies exercised from 1620 until 1640, and what took place in 1658, the year when Molire returned to Paris. The Htel de Rambouillet, and the aristocratic ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... 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 ...
— A Narrative of The Life of Rev. Noah Davis, A Colored Man. - Written by Himself, At The Age of Fifty-Four • Noah Davis
... 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" on what ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... the happy statements of an experience profounder than his own, yet tallying in essentials: Thackeray's remarks seem to gather up into final shape the scattered oracles of the years. Gratitude goes out to an author who can thus condense and refine one's own inarticulate conclusions. The mental palate is tickled by this, while the taste is titillated by the grace and fitness of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... perceivable at the end of the wonderful net, where all the arteries close in a terminating point; which arteries taking their rise and origin from the left capsule of the heart, bring, through several circuits, ambages, and anfractuosities, the vital spirits, to subtilize and refine them in the ætherial purity of animal spirits. Nay, in such a studiously meditating, musing person, you may espy so extravagant raptures of one, as it were out of himself, that all his natural faculties for that time will seem to lie suspended ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... What I wished to explain was that, if a man in a humble situation seeks to refine his pronunciation of English, and finds himself in consequence taxed with pride that will not brook the necessities of his rank, at all events, he is but integrating his manifestations of pride. Already in his Sunday's costume he has begun ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the great majority of cases, will be bitterly disappointed. It is said: There must be hewers of wood and drawers of water, scavengers and coalheavers, day labourers and domestic servants, or the work of society will come to a standstill. But, if you educate and refine everybody, nobody will be content to assume these functions, and all the world will want to be ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... their pagan antagonists; their doctrine was not burdened with barbarous 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 road of ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... and Austria and France have not introduced their civilization to him yet. But Bavaria and Austria and France are on their way. They are coming. They will rescue him; they will refine the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Yes, he would refine her; prune away all that reminded him of her wild growth, so that it might no longer humiliate him to think to what a companion he had sunk. How happy they would be! Of course the world would censure him if ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... remuneration by natural commerce, or to the establishment of civilization. The African's barbarity must be first here assailed, and the infinite resources upon the coasts and maritime rivers must be developed to his view, to pre-dispose him to refine his condition, and adopt the civilized habits of life; nor is there any site which I have met with upon the Windward Coast of Africa, more calculated to promote this beneficent undertaking, than the ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... prophets plucked; and mused on famous tombs, and on the waves of ocean mused, and on the desert waste: the heavens and earth of every country, seen where'er the old inspiring Genii dwelt, aught that could rouse, expand, refine the soul," even such would fail to do ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... New England, go to Bryant, to Emerson, to Hawthorne; and it is more than excusable that those who were endeavouring to refine the very crude community in the midst of which they were anxiously holding up the agate lamp of Psyche, should see nothing to applaud in the vague and shadowy rhapsodies then being issued by a dissipated hack in Philadelphia. What the New England critics wanted, patriotically as well ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... doubt as to Andrew's state of mind, and this moral problem, had a restraining effect upon the young man's temper. A practical person justifies himself in wrath as soon as his judgment is at one with that of the multitude. Godwin, though his passions were of exceptional force, must needs refine, debate with ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... disaster upon themselves, are mistaken. All those Dissenters who deprecate it as a judgment, or would vote against it as such if it were in their power, are mistaken." In short, though he did not suppose that the movers of the Bill "did it in mere kindness to the Dissenters, in order to refine and purge them from the scandals which some people had brought upon them," nevertheless it was calculated to effect this object. The Dissenter being a man that was "something desirous of going to Heaven," ventured the displeasure of the civil magistrate ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... while the elegance and delicacy which more particularly distinguish the 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, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... intellect and freedom Greece has been a watchword on the earth. There rose the social spirit to soften and refine her chosen race, and shelter as in a nest her gentleness from the rushing storm of barbarism; there liberty first built her mountain throne, first called the waves her own, and shouted across them a proud defiance to despotism's banded myriads, there the arts and graces danced ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... flute- player's music that lent to the lips of La 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 ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... than the first. They were chiefly "gentlemen" again, and goldsmiths, whose duty was to discover and refine the quantities of gold that the stockholders in the enterprise were resolved should be found in Virginia, whether it was there or not. The ship took back on her return trip a ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... a loose to 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 exhibited ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... a friendship such as mine Such feelings must thy heart refine As seldom mortal mind gives birth, 'Tis love, without a stain of earth, ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... great misfortune for the workers who would thus have been rendered superfluous, while the community would not have profited at all. We, on the contrary, were able to find excellent employment for the labour thus saved, which could be utilised in producing things that would elevate and refine, and for which the increased productiveness of labour ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... us, O Purity divine, From ev'ry least corruption free; Our ev'ry sense from sin refine, And ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... gone through a great many changes during the last few weeks. He had begun to grow rather captivated by Miss Chivvey and in his efforts to polish, refine and educate her had become rather carried away himself. But towards the end she began to show signs of rebellion; she was bored, though impressed. He took her to a serious play and explained it all the time, during which she openly yawned. ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... be thy generous indignation check'd, Nor check'd the tender tear to Misery given; From Guilt's contagious power shall that protect, This soften and refine the soul for Heaven. But dreadful is their doom whom doubt has driven To censure Fate, and pious Hope forego: Like yonder blasted boughs by lightning riven, Perfection, beauty, life, they never know, But frown on all that pass, a monument ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... on the other hand, of [ ] but irresistible grace was the appropriate view of the Port-Royalists, high-pitched, eager souls as they were, and of their friend Pascal himself, however much in his turn he might refine upon it. Whether or not, as a matter of fact, upon which, as distinct from matters of faith, an infallible pope can be mistaken, the dreary old Dutch bishop Jansenius had really taught Jansenism, the Port-Royalists had found in his "Augustinus" an incentive to devotion, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... British aborigines, the less we find it necessary to bring the Finn or Lap families southward. This reasoning is valid if the original fact of any pre-Keltic population be true. Those, however, who doubt the premises, have no need to refine upon the current notion of Gaul being the original home of the Britons. Gaul, then, is the ground from which we take our view of the great Keltic division of the human species in its integrity; for, hitherto, we have seen but ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... charming it is to stand under a shelter in a storm, and see another hurrying through its rain and wind; but a woman would refine that sort of cruelty, and would not be quite content unless she had an umbrella beside her that ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Rebellion," by Edward McPherson, when he says: "In the Slaveholding States, a considerable body of men have always been disaffected to the Union. They resisted the adoption of the National Constitution, then sought to refine away the rights and powers of the General Government, and by artful expedients, in a series of years, using the excitements growing out of passing questions, finally perverted the sentiments of large masses of men, and prepared ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... shelves, for the reception of such necessaries of the dining-room as were not placed upon the table. The early buffets were sometimes carved with the utmost elaboration; the Renaissance did much to vary their form and refine their ornament. Often the lower part contained receptacles as in the characteristic English court-cupboard. The rage for collecting china in the middle of the 18th century was responsible for a new form—the high glazed back, fitted with shelves, for the display of fine pieces ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... feeling, described as Melancholy, Fear, Anger, Hate, Malevolence, and Despair. To the emotions we refer the highest qualities of character, while their opposites represent the animal or baser impulses. True, the emotions modify the propensities, as sympathy softens grief. They may subdue and refine the animal feelings, and thus veil them with a delicacy characteristic of their own purity; but the unrestrained influences of grief find vent in loud lamentations, and the bitter disappointments of the selfish ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... that Pope was capable of epic or tragic poetry; but within a certain limited region, he has been outdone by no poet."—Blair's Rhet., p. 403. "I, who now read, have near finished this chapter."—Harris's Hermes, p. 82. "And yet, to refine our taste with respect to beauties of art or of nature, is scarce endeavoured in any seminary of learning."—Kames, El. of Crit., Vol. i, p. viii. "By the Numbers being confounded, and the Possessives wrong applied, the Passage ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... give the finest loyalty and comradeship I had to give to a man, have it returned disdainfully, and then furbish up the pieces and present it over again. If I can patch those same pieces and so polish and refine them that I can make them, in the old phrase, "as good as new," possibly in time—but, Linda, one thing is certain as the hills of morning. Never in my life will any man make any headway with me again with vague suggestions and innuendoes and hints. If ever any man ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... woman who begins her nervous degeneration by indulging herself in jealousy—which is really a gross emotion, however she may refine it in appearance—could be made to see the truth, she would, in many cases, be glad to use her will in the right direction, and would become in reality the beautiful character which her friends believe her to be. This is especially true because this moral and nervous perversion often ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... Massachusetts, this is the a-b-c of all they seek to do: the individual tutoring, by college girls and town residents, of hundreds of young working men and women in whatever these may choose from among a score or so of light studies calculated to refine their aspirations; the training of young girls, by paid experts, in the arts of the home, from cooking to embroidery; the training of both sexes in all the social amenities; and the enlistment of more than a thousand cottage homes in ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... the states denominated Christian, and especially our own, which has, through age after age, found every conceivable thing necessary to be done, at all costs and hazards, rather than to enlighten, reform, and refine the people. He thinks that nothing can more strongly betray a judgment enslaved, or a time-serving dishonesty, in those who would assume to dictate to such an advocate and to censure him, than that sort of doctrine which tells him that it is beside his business, and out ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... 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 promote anarchy and ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... there is not a man in the kingdom who would not have full work. And when we had supplied the physical wants of our population (a greater task than it appears at the first view), we should have introduced from every corner of the world the luxuries which refine civilization; the artisan building himself a house would then make it more comfortable and healthy, with wood floors, carpets, better furniture, &c.; and the master manufacturer erecting a house would have marble stairs and floor in his entrance hall, doors, &c. of mahogany, ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... mind to laugh, that 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 ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... coal miners belong to it. Three out of four who work in packing towns were born abroad or are children of those who were born abroad; four out of five of those who make our silk goods, seven out of eight of those employed in woolen mills, nine out of ten of those who refine our petroleum, and nineteen out of twenty of those who manufacture our sugar are immigrants or the children of immigrants." And it might have shown a similarly high percentage of those in the ready-made clothing industries, railway ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... great many reasons against copious profanity of speech. Here you have the artistic reason, and, by implication, that which forbids its use in literature—namely, its ineffectiveness. But though she selects, Mrs. Woods does not refine. She exhibits the life of the travelling show in its habitual squalor as well as in its occasional brightness. How she has managed it passes my understanding: but her book leaves the impression of confident familiarity ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Por-ce que cil pardon, fut issi gran, si s'en esmeurent mult li cuers des genz, et mult s'en croisierent, porce que li pardons ere si gran. Villehardouin, No. 1. Our philosophers may refine on the causes of the crusades, but such were the genuine ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... trying 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 ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... continued the Bishop; you are intelligent, I know. You will succeed therefore, if you intend it seriously. Our misfortune is, that we are encumbered with dull and stupid peasants, whom the Seminary has been able only partly to refine, and who render us ridiculous. You must certainly have gone ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... scholar-dress 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, Ed. 1794, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... great ability; I believe you have genius. What you need now is the refinement of association. Seek companionship among men of superior intellect and character. Refine yourself and your work. Never affiliate ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... asserted that, through the knowledge of languages, enabling her to penetrate into the mysteries of the older world, she had become a sorceress, like the Celtic druidesses; and how as Abelard and Heloise sat together at home there, to refine a little further on the nature of abstract ideas, "Love made himself of the party with them." You conceive the temptations of the scholar, who, in such dreamy tranquillity, amid the bright and busy spectacle of the "Island," lived in a world of something like shadows; and that for one ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... dirty skill to freight such a drunken ship with so much gilded dirt"—was one of the mildest of his phrases, as, "breathing out these and many other passions," he harangued those who had "no thought, no discourse, no hope, and no work but to dig gold, wash gold, refine ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... ordinary. The vitality of nature animates him who has insight to discern her at first hand, whereas his followers miss the freshness of the morning, because, instead of discovering, they must be content to illustrate and refine. Those of our writers who betray Turguenieff's influence are possibly his superiors in finish and culture, but their faculty of convincing and presenting is less. Their interest in their own work seems less serious than his; ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... While the 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 Goldsmiths, to have it try'd by the Touchstone. They find the exact Weight ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... distinction be made between what must have some excellence because so many people like it, and what is good in a book whether many people like it or not. Such discrimination may not help the young novelist to make money, but it can refine judgment and deepen appreciation. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... monstrous Effects of Passion! Say rather, Oh, the foolish Effects of a mean Education! (interrupted his Majesty of Bantam.) For Passions were given us for Use, Reason to govern and direct us in the Use, and Education to cultivate and refine that Reason. But (pursu'd he) for all his Impudence to me, which I shall take a time to correct, I am oblig'd to him, that at last he has found me out a Kingdom to my Title; and if I were Monarch of that Place (believe me, Ladies) I would ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... misfortune in a foreign land. Something special stirs the heart through the fine Scriptural language in which everything is recorded. The echoes of massive Latinity with which the atmosphere is charged suggest nothing more majestic and monumental. I may seem unduly to refine, but the injunction to the reader in the monument to Miss Bathurst, drowned in the Tiber in 1824, "If thou art young and lovely, build not thereon, for she who lies beneath thy feet in death was the loveliest flower ever cropt in its bloom," affects us irresistibly as a case for tears on the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... thy generous indignation checked, Nor checked the tender tear to misery given; From Guilt's contagious power shall that protect, This soften and refine the soul for heaven. But dreadful is their doom, whom doubt hath driven To censure Fate, and pious hope forego; Like yonder blasted boughs by lightning riven, Perfection, beauty, life, they never know, But frown on all that pass, a ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... the British Aluminium Company was founded to mine bauxite and manufacture alumina in Ireland, to prepare the necessary electrodes at Greenock, to reduce the aluminium by the aid of water-power at the Falls of Foyers, and to refine and work up the metal into marketable shapes at the old Milton factory of the Cowles Syndicate, remodelled to suit modern requirements. In 1905 this company began works for the utilization of another ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... cavities of the pharynx and head are involved acoustically and in some way enlarge, refine and purify the tone, but one famous man says the head has nothing whatever to do with it. Another gentleman of international reputation says the nose is the most important factor in singing. If your nasal cavities are right you can ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... 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 to reason quite gravely away from it, in what is (not entirely with ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... that cannot be mistaken. To this end he keeps a deep hold of the savage, the unrefined, and marshals the elements and influences that make for the virile, the heroic, the sane, the large, and for the perpetuity of the race. We cannot refine the elements,—the air, the water, the soil, the sunshine,—and the more we pervert or shut out these from our lives the worse for us. In the same manner, the more we pervert or balk the great natural impulses, sexuality, comradeship, the religious ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... 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 deepen itself. ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... beautiful music, pictures, and ornaments, and so resting satisfied in a somewhat indolent feeling of goodness, and not troubling ourselves with too much effort of reason. A love of the beautiful undoubtedly tends to elevate and refine the mind, but the follies of the false love and the dangers of an inordinate love are numerous and deadly. It is absurd that a man should either be or pretend to be absolutely absorbed in the worship ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore and did refine it; and thus they ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... completely incandescent, completely fine. It refused you for the greater part the true adamantine hardness of the artist, the inviolability of soul, the sense of style. It made you, the prodigiously fecund inventor, the mine of thematic material, prodigal; unable to refine your ore, to chase your ideas, and give them their full value. Wagner could have said of you, had he so wished, what Haendel is reported to have said of the composer from whom he borrowed, "Of what use is such a good idea to a man like ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... in the Bible may be found these words, "Silver occurs in veins, but 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
... as her mother must have been, one of Nature's own ladies, but more refined in type, texture, and form, as the American atmosphere and food and life always refine the children of European stock,—slenderer, more delicate, finer of complexion, and with a soft, exquisite sweetness of voice, more thrilling than her mother's, larger and more robust heartfeltness of tone,—and with the same, but shyer ways, and swift blushes and smiles. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... moneyless, determined to face whatever fate had decreed for me. Mr. King soon asked me what I could do; and at the same time said he did not mean to treat me as a common slave. I told him I knew something of seamanship, and could shave and dress hair pretty well; and I could refine wines, which I had learned on shipboard, where I had often done it; and that I could write, and understood arithmetic tolerably well as far as the Rule of Three. He then asked me if I knew any thing of gauging; and, on ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... Downs is the breeze. The air in the valleys immediately beneath them is pure and pleasant; 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 the atmosphere ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... 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 had ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... imperceptible wires; and he had ended by possessing only those books which could submit to such treatment and which were so solidly tempered as to withstand the rolling-mill of each new reading. In his desire to refine, he had restrained and almost sterilized his enjoyment, ever accentuating the irremediable conflict existing between his ideas and those of the world in which he had happened to be born. He had now reached such a pass that he could no longer discover any writings to content his secret longings. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... fit for warp or woof! Till cunning come to pound and squeeze And clarify,—refine to proof *2* The liquor filtered by degrees, While the world ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... life I lived. I had no friends, no ties, nothing, in fact, to refine or purify. The hatred in my heart kept me from being loved by my associates, and nothing kept me from sinking to the lowest depths of degradation but my love for Ruth. Often, when I was on the point of yielding to the low and the depraved, my love for her saved me. That was a ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... which usually runs through many volumes, and place it into a practical form for the common reader. We hope, however, that this work will give the reader a greater longing to extend his inquiries into these most interesting subjects, so rich in everything that can refine the taste, enlarge the understanding and improve the heart. It has been our object, so far as possible, to avoid every expression of opinion, whether our own or that of any school of thinkers, and ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 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 ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... the larger number of these art spoils were so placed as to be constantly seen by the whole Roman people, and there is no doubt that their influence was very great and went far to refine their ideas and to prepare the way for the polish and grace of the Augustan age. Very soon the individual desire for works of art was felt, and wealthy men began to decorate their homes with pictures and statues; ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... their Nature. Thus we see that in 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 ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... to have a talk with Uncle Israel, who, with a peacock fly-fan moving majestically back and forth, was sitting up with eighteen hundred pounds of sick bull. Aberdeen Boy, a recent importation, and one of the noblest of those who were to refine the wild-eyed longhorns of Texas, was having no more trouble with acclimation than his predecessors; he manifested his illness simply by lying down and looking more innocent than usual, and heaving big sighs which wrung ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... have been able to indicate how, by its essential nature, by the primordial power it embodies, all Beauty, and particularly Beauty in art, tends to fortify and refine the spiritual life of ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... linkages then in use were Watt's and Evans'. Chebyshev noted the departure of these linkages from a straight line and calculated the deviation as of the fifth degree, or about 0.0008 inch per inch of beam length. He proposed a modification of the Watt linkage to refine its accuracy but found that he would have to more than double the length of the working beam. Chebyshev concluded ruefully that his modification would "present ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... conceive how any mental action, however subtle, can occur without a corresponding change in the brain-cells. It is possible now to measure only the evidences of the effects on the brain-cells of gross and violent mental activity. At some future time it will doubtless be possible so to refine the technic of brain-cell examinations that more subtle changes may be measured. Nevertheless, with the means at our disposal we have shown already that in all the conditions which we have studied the cells of the cortex show the greatest changes, and that loss ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... 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 reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... 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 ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... count the indirection and freedom of kindly chat irksome, and the occasion of a needless blunting of that quick mental edger with which he must scathe all he touches. But the stiffness of Mr. Johns was not that of constant mental strain; he did not refine upon his dogmas; but he gave them such hearty entertainment, and so inwrapped his spirit with their ponderous gravity, that he could not disrobe in a moment, or uncover to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... scutcheon upwards upon a gibbet all the honour and gentility extinguishes of itself, like a candle that's held with the flame downwards. Other arms are made for the spilling of blood, but his only purify and cleanse it like scurvy-grass; for a small dose taken by his prescription will refine that which is as base and gross as bull's blood (which the Athenians used to poison withal) to any degree ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... sometimes at a play. The scholars and writers and artists and thinkers, as well as the people of leisure and of fashion, frequent places of amusement, not only for amusement, but to cultivate their tastes, to exercise their intellects, ay, and oftentimes to refine their hearts. The splendid homage paid in England not long ago to the drama, when the highest nobility and the first statesmen in the land were present at a banquet in honor of Charles Kean, is evidence enough that no puerile or uncultivated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... 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
... buildings, carvings, personal decorations. Yet again, it sets going manufactures which were before impossible, from lack of a material fit for the requisite implements. And all these changes react on the people—increase their manipulative skill, their intelligence, their comfort,—refine their habits and tastes. Thus the evolution of a homogeneous society into a heterogeneous one, is clearly consequent on the general principle, that many effects ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... 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 he ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hurried step, and dove-like trembling eye? Thou, as from heav'n, that couldst each grace dispense, Fancy's rich stream, and all the stores of sense; Give to each virtue face and form divine, Make dulness feel, and vulgar souls refine, Wake all the passions into restless life, Now calm to softness, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of her own intractable character, without religious faith to ennoble it, without even imagination to refine it—the unconscious disclosure of the one tender and loving instinct in her nature still piteously struggling for existence, with no sympathy to sustain it, with no light to guide it—would have touched the heart of any man not incurably depraved. Amelius spoke with the fervour of his young ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... not only conduce to the comfort of woman, but they refine and do away with the rough and selfish side of man's nature, for without this refining contact with gentle womanhood, a man will never lose the innate roughness with which nature has ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... 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
... complete dunderheads, 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 ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exaggeration of gesture and beauty which is the penalty of the stage. She did not in the least resemble a La Valliere as she stood there gazing at me, with her gleaming, pencilled eyes and heavy, scarlet lips. It seemed impossible that she could refine herself to a La Valliere. But that woman is the drama itself. She would act no matter what. She has always the qualities necessary to a role. And the gods have given her green eyes, so that she may be La Valliere to ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... its promulgation, 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
... education of the soul precedes that of the mind. They wish to make their children good before they make them clever; and good by the feelings of the heart rather than the instruction of the head. Every care is taken to refine and strengthen the sentiments and instincts, the conscience, good sense and taste, as well as the affections, filial piety, friendship, and the love of Nature. Spiritual and moral ideals are inculcated by means of innocent and simple tales or narratives. Children are taught to obey the ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... Integrity is a little softened and qualified by the Rules of Conversation and Good-breeding, there is not a more shining Virtue in the whole Catalogue of Social Duties. A Man however ought to take great Care not to polish himself out of his Veracity, nor to refine his Behaviour to the Prejudice of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... with themselves proceed The men, who write 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 who ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... Lies a joy, which he may never grasp, who rules in gorgeous state Fertile Africa's dominions. Happier, happier far my fate! Though for me no bees Calabrian store their honey, nor doth wine Sickening in the Laestrygonian amphora for me refine; Though for me no flocks unnumbered, browsing Gallia's pastures fair, Pant beneath their swelling fleeces, I at least am free from care; Haggard want with direful clamour ravins never at my door, Nor wouldst ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... Mysteries, as Plato said,[46] were established by men of great genius who, in the early ages, strove to teach purity, to ameliorate the cruelty of the race, to refine its manners and morals, and to restrain society by stronger bonds than those which human laws impose. No mystery any longer attaches to what they taught, but only as to the particular rites, dramas, and symbols used in their teaching. They taught faith in the unity and spirituality of ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... 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
... read hunger in Martin's face, which had grown lean and had enlarged the slight hollows in the cheeks. In fact, she marked the change in his face with satisfaction. It seemed to refine him, to remove from him much of the dross of flesh and the too animal-like vigor that lured her while she detested it. Sometimes, when with her, she noted an unusual brightness in his eyes, and she admired it, for it made him appear more the poet and the scholar—the things he would ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... 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 we shall ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 old. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... 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 brought out before either their judgment ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... has defined Friendship. Let the lights and shadows of the thought of Carlyle and Emerson play upon these words, they are at once removed from mechanical definition, and we dimly perceive that each word is larger than the outreach of the thought of man. Another generation than ours shall define and refine them. In heaven, in some other aeon, we shall find ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... 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
... seen in the next chapter that, when we attempt to supply the poor with the necessities of life, our path is beset with difficulties. But when we give them those things which, though not necessary to life, yet refine {139} and elevate it, we can do them only unmixed good. Gifts of books, flowers, growing plants, pictures, and simple decorations, or, as in one instance known to me, the present of several rolls of light-colored wall-paper to brighten a dark room—these help to express our friendliness, ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... conversations with the Laurences, while the girls sat by, drinking in every word with the delight all artists feel in their own beautiful world, and learning to see how sacred good gifts are, how powerful, and how faithfully they should be used for high ends, each in its own place helping to educate, refine, and refresh. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Government have been exhausted in prosecuting party measures, rewarding partisan services, and promoting sectional and personal schemes, little or nothing has been devoted to the encouragement of the arts and sciences, and the cultivation of those higher walks of human attainment which exalt and refine a people, and fit them for the purest ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... seems, then, as you say, I must have known about these matters, though unconsciously; and here I stand and beat my brains, [18] reflecting whether or not I may not know some other things—how to refine gold and play the flute and paint pictures—without being conscious of the fact. Certainly, as far as teaching goes, no one ever taught me these, no more than husbandry; while, as to using my own eyes, I have watched men working at the ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... ravaged, his home violated, his family —— But no! the tongue recoils from speaking the horrors and atrocities of war thus brought into the bosom of a peaceful home. All the amenities and charities of domestic life are outraged, are annihilated. All that is dearest to man; all that tends to refine, to soften him—to make him a noble and a better being—all these are trampled under foot by a brutal soldiery—all these are torn from his heart for ever! He will tell you that he detests war so much that he almost despises its glories; and that he detests ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... Havelock Ellis's Man and Woman.] An adult white woman differs far more from a white man than a negress or pigmy woman from her equivalent male. The education, the mental disposition, of a white or Asiatic woman, reeks of sex; her modesty, her decorum is not to ignore sex but to refine and put a point to it; her costume is clamorous with the distinctive elements of her form. The white woman in the materially prosperous nations is more of a sexual specialist than her sister of the poor and austere peoples, of the prosperous classes more so than the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the center of a society of Lesbian ladies who applied themselves successfully to literature. Says SYMONDS: "They formed clubs for the cultivation of poetry and music. They studied the arts of beauty, and sought to refine metrical forms and diction. Nor did they confine themselves to the scientific side of art. Unrestrained by public opinion, and passionate for the beautiful, they cultivated their senses and emotions, and indulged their ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... another kind in it, is of no austere or pedagogic character. The author has borrowed not a little from the classical comedy—Plautine or even Aristophanic rather than Terentian—to strengthen and refine the domestic interlude or farce; and the result is certainly amusing enough. The plot turns on the courtship of Dame Christian Custance [Constance], a widow of repute and wealth as well as beauty, by the gull and coxcomb, Ralph Roister Doister, whose suit is at once egged on ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... kind, where 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 ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... been when Mr. Fathom would have allowed Mrs. Muddy to refine at her leisure, and blessed God for his happy deliverance; but at present the case was quite altered. Smarting as he was from the expense of lawsuits, he dreaded a prosecution for bigamy, which, though he had justice on his side, he knew he could not of himself support. Besides, all ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... studying the qualities to which he was disposed to intrust his happiness; and so pure was Sibyll's affection, that she could have been contented to have lived forever thus,—have seen and heard him daily, have talked but the words of friendship though with the thoughts of love; for some passions refine themselves through the very fire of the imagination into which the senses are absorbed, and by the ideal purification elevated up to spirit. Rapt in the exquisite happiness she now enjoyed, Sibyll perceived not, or, if perceiving, scarcely heeded; that ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... steel, so sure To cut its one confided thought clean out Of all the world. But marble!—'neath my tools More pliable than jelly—as it were Some clear primordial creature dug from depths In the earth's heart, where itself breeds itself. And whence all baser substance may be worked; Refine it off to air, you may—condense it Down to the diamond;—is not metal there, When o'er the sudden speck my chisel trips? —Not flesh, as flake off flake I scale, approach, Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep? Lurks flame in no strange windings where, surprised By the swift implement ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... so; Extremity of passions still are dumb, No tongue can tell love's chief perfections: Persuade thyself my love-sick thoughts are thine; Thou only may'st those drooping thoughts refine. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... night which changed my whole career; my teacher also came to this country. I had everything to learn; I could not even speak my own language; my speech was a dialect heard in that part of the country where I was brought up. I have had to cultivate and refine myself. I had to study other languages, Italian, French and German. I learned them all in America. So you see there is no need for an American to go out of his own country for vocal instruction or languages; all can be learned ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... professes to be so, as a pleasant 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 ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... for years past? No; we find abuse condemned, and use allowed and approved. The Savior is at the hilarious merry-making of the marriage, contributing to the festivity. His own parable is on record, bidding men put the gospel into all the forms and developments of life, to refine and fit them for human enjoyment. The long list of exceptions with which men are forbidden to bring the gospel leaven into contact has been added by men, not by Christ. He was condemned for the very same reason for which hundreds condemn a so called liberal Christian to-day; because he used ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... they did not seem to be actors. They did not refine living into a cult, with every pleasure and pain classified and weighed out and valued. No, they actually lived. It was hard to realize this, but in the end she did, and with ever increasing wonder, with also a beginning of envy and hunger. But there was ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... first names, like servants. Think what an hourly pin-prick of insult that must be. Ever since her letter came, I've been thinking about it, the things she told me, about what happens when they try to raise themselves and refine themselves, how they're made to suffer intimately for trying to be what I thought we all wanted all Americans to be." He looked at Marise with troubled eyes. "I've been thinking how it would feel to be a Negro myself. What a different life would be in front of your little ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... and worms, Shall but refine this flesh, Till my triumphant spirit comes To put it ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... anything, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted, and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a 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 in vulgar ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock |
