"Refine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... present all the 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. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... the way hole. He lived the life of an honest man, once more turned peasant, hoeing his little garden redeemed from the rock, smoking his pipe and watching his salads grow. His sole fault was a gluttony which he knew not how to refine, reduced to adoring mackerel and to drinking, at times, more cider than he could contain. In other respects, the father of his parishioners, who came at long intervals to hear a ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... had 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 ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... misunderstanding and consequent struggle between Will and Power. The former faculty exacted approbation of that which it was considered orthodox to admire; the latter groaned forth its utter inability to pay the tax; it was then self-sneered at, spurred up, goaded on to refine its taste, and whet its zest. The more it was chidden, however, the more it wouldn't praise. Discovering gradually that a wonderful sense of fatigue resulted from these conscientious efforts, I began to reflect whether I might not dispense with ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Sufi attains to the third stage in the spiritual life which is called the Hakyat. To reach this exalted condition of humanity the disciple must restrain all his natural passions and moderate all his desires. In the denial of self he must labor for the good of others. Whatever contributes to refine the feelings, to exalt the thoughts, to extend the knowledge of the spiritual world, is to be desired; while the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life are to be as earnestly repressed and ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... this well-covered incident spurred the colonel's group to extend and refine their activities. Their idea was to build a radiation-detection instrument in an empty wing tank and hang the tank on an F-47. Then when a UFO was reported they would fly a search pattern in the area and try to establish whether or not a certain sector ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... 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
... understood; Gold alone does passion move, Gold monopolizes love; A curse on her, and on the man Who this traffic first began! A curse on him who found the ore! A curse on him who digged the store! A curse on him who did refine it! A curse on him who first did coin it! A curse, all curses else above, On him who used it first in love! Gold begets in brethren hate; Gold in families debate; Gold does friendship separate; Gold does civil wars create. These the smallest harms of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... contradicted in an hour's time,"—said Angus—"I tell you, David, when I started working in journalism, I thought it was the finest profession going. It seemed to me to have all the responsibilities of the world on its back. I considered it a force with which to educate, help, and refine all peoples, and all classes. But I found it was only a money speculation after all. How much profit could be made out of it? That was the chief point of action. That was the mainspring of every political discussion—and in election times, one side had orders to abuse the other, merely to ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... definite model to follow. As in the 14th century, metrical romances continued to be translated from the French, homilies and saints' legends and rhyming chronicles were still manufactured. But the poems of Occleve and Lydgate and James I. had helped to polish and refine the tongue and to prolong the Chaucerian tradition. The literary English never again slipped {46} back into the chaos of dialects which had prevailed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... boy seems already to have a taste for flowers, which I shall encourage as much as possible. It is a study that tends to refine and purify the mind, and can be made, by simple steps, a ladder to heaven, as it were, by teaching a child to look with love and admiration to that bountiful God who created and made flowers so fair to adorn and ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... an untaught first love: Yet rude, unfashioned truth it does express; 'Tis love just peeping in a hasty dress. Retire, fair creature, to your needful rest; There's something noble labouring in my breast: This raging fire, which through the mass does move, Shall purge my dross, and shall refine my love. [Exeunt ALMAHIDE and ESPERANZA. She goes, and I like my own ghost appear; It is not living when she ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... branch of intellect they neglect the rest? Nay, the very torpor of the reasoning faculty has often kindled the imaginative. Lucretius composed his sublime poem under the influence of a delirium. The susceptibilities that we create or refine by the pursuit of one object, weaken our general reason; and I may compare with some justice the powers of the mind to the faculties of the body, in which squinting is occasioned by an inequality of strength in the eyes, and discordance of voice by the same inequality ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... don't you see, then, that you must stand up for art all the more unflinchingly if you intend to write plays that will refine the theatre-going public, or create a new one? That is why I can't endure to have you even seem ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... reasoning. Put yourself in the mental attitude of a man looking for deer. His eye sweeps rapidly over a side hill; so rapidly that you cannot understand how he can have gathered the main features of that hill, let alone concentrate and refine his attention to the seeing of an animal under a bush. As a matter of fact he pays no attention to the main features. He has trained his eye, not so much to see things, as to leave things out. The odd-shaped rock, the charred stub, the bright flowering bush do not exist for him. His eye passes ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... rejoice in a family inheritance of legitimate pride. I couldn't 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 ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... not how to make fine sugar; they only used to boil and skim the juice, which when cold left a black paste. But after they came under the Great Kaan some men of Babylonia who happened to be at the Court proceeded to this city and taught the people to refine the sugar with the ashes of certain ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Lee Virginia's efforts to refine the little hotel produced an amazing change in Eliza Wetherford's affairs. The dining-room swarmed with those seeking food, and as the news of the girl's beauty went out upon the range, the cowboys sought excuse to ride in and get a square meal and ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... that it is often called King Cotton. Thousands upon thousands of people scan the newspapers each day to see what price its staple is bringing. From its bounty a vast army of toilers, who plant its seed, who pick its bolls, who gin its staple, who spin and weave its lint, who grind its seed, who refine its oil, draw daily bread. Does not its proper production deserve the best thought that ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs Morning Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism is to disseminate truth; to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and holier, and happier; and yet this blackhearted scoundrel degrades his great office ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... must not lose faith thereby. He must set himself with all his might to preach a gospel of beauty to minds which, like his own, were incapable of the larger mental sweep, and could only hope to disentangle the essence of the moment, to refine the personal sensation. That was the noble task of high literature, of art, of music, of the contemplation of nature, that it could give the mind a sense of largeness, of dim and wistful hope, of ultimate possibilities. The ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Looking back at the pages of this narrative, I discover some places in which I certainly appear to justify her opinion. I even justified it at the time. Before she and Mr. Keller were out of my hearing, I began to see "under the surface," and "to refine" ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... startling thing I have on record is that von Schoenvorts and Olson while out hunting the other day discovered oil about fifteen miles north of us beyond the sandstone cliffs. Olson says there is a geyser of oil there, and von Schoenvorts is making preparations to refine it. If he succeeds, we shall have the means for leaving Caspak and returning to our own world. I can scarce believe the truth of it. We are all elated to the seventh heaven of bliss. Pray God ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... grafts or buds the tree; In other things we count it to excel, If it a docile scholar can appear To Nature, and but imitate her well: It over-rules, and is her master here. It imitates her Maker's power divine, And changes her sometimes, and sometimes does refine: It does, like grace, the fallen-tree restore To its blest state of Paradise before: Who would not joy to see his conquering hand O'er all the vegetable world command, And the wild giants of the wood receive What laws ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... 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 ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to be thwarted in what would best raise and refine him. That great, bright leading star of a well-placed affection is not to be allowed to help him through all the storms and quicksands in ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... call partial half-lights, by courtesy, genius; talent which converts itself to money; talent which glitters to-day that it may dine and sleep well to-morrow; and society is officered by men of parts, as they are properly called, and not by divine men. These use their gifts to refine luxury, not to abolish it. Genius is always ascetic, and piety, and love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and they find beauty in rites and ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... boast of men, why are women so infatuated as to be proud of a defect? Rousseau has furnished them with a plausible excuse, which could only have occurred to a man, whose imagination had been allowed to run wild, and refine on the impressions made by exquisite senses, that they might, forsooth have a pretext for yielding to a natural appetite without violating a romantic species of modesty, which gratifies the ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... thy judgment could refine My flattened thought and cumbrous line, Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, And in the minstrel spare the friend: Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale, Flow forth, flow unrestrained, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt;" and those in the intermediate state, who go down into hell, where they cry and howl for a time, whence they ascend again; as it is written (Zech. xiii. 9), "And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on my name, and I will hear them." It is of them Hannah said (1 Sam. ii. 6), "The Lord killeth and maketh alive; He bringeth down to hell ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... manners. The typical Londoner of Queen Anne's day was still rude, and a little vulgar in his tastes; the city was still very filthy, the streets unlighted and infested at night by bands of rowdies and "Mohawks"; but outwardly men sought to refine their manners according to prevailing standards; and to be elegant, to have "good form," was a man's first duty, whether he entered society or wrote literature. One can hardly read a book or poem of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... that is possible in realizing the national conceptions of the gods, the younger ones, forbidden to change the scheme of existing representations, and incapable of doing anything better in that kind, betake themselves to refine and decorate the old ideas with more attractive skill. Their aims are thus more and more limited to manual dexterity, and their fancy paralyzed. Also in the course of centuries, the methods of every art continually improving, and being made subjects of popular inquiry, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... to be unable to go abroad without being hissed and pelted by the mob, and it is hard for a minister to convince himself of the admiration of a nation when a strong bodyguard is necessary to secure him from the constant danger of personal attacks. Bute's character did not refine under the tests imposed upon it. His objectionable qualities grew more and more unpopular. The less he was liked the less he deserved to be liked. Adversity did not magnify that small soul. In his mean anger he sought for mean revenge. Every person who owed an appointment to ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... refine the Russian tongue the more thoroughly, something like half the words in it were cut out: which circumstance necessitated very frequent recourse to the tongue of France, since the same words, if spoken in French, were another matter altogether, and one could use ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... fully loved the Alps who have not spent some days of meditation, or it may be of sorrow, among their solitudes. Splendid scenery, like music, has the power to make 'of grief itself a fiery chariot for mounting above the sources of grief,' to ennoble and refine our passions, and to teach us that our lives are merely moments in the years of the eternal Being. There are many, perhaps, who, within sight of some great scene among the Alps, upon the height of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... opportunities, to feel intuitively the drift of sentiment and conviction, and so to adjust the uses of art to life as to exalt the one, and enrich and refine the other, involved not only the possession of gifts of a high order, but that training which puts a man in command of himself and of his materials. Addison was fortunate in that incomparably important education ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Saint Catharine, and the panels of the room are painted with subjects from her life, mostly copied from Italian masters. The pictures of St. Catharine and her legend very early impressed her on my mind as the type of ideal beauty—of all that can charm, irradiate, refine, exalt, in the best ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... of reflection. The darling of the public began to think more of his art and less of his popularity. Less impetuous, less fecund, perhaps, in melodic invention, he began to study how to wed dramatic situations and music. This led him to enrich his harmonies, and to refine his instrumentation, which in his earlier works is frequently coarse and vulgar in the extreme. At this stage he gave us "La Forza del Destino" and "Ada." Now the hack writers of opera books would no longer ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... many years, the keenest wits of the coffee merchants, not only of the United States but of Europe as well, have been at work to refine the beverage as it comes to the consumer's cup; and their success has been striking. Now the consumer can have his favorite brand not only roasted but packed air-tight to preserve its flavor; and made up, moreover, of growths brought from the four corners ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... temper, for, in seeing abroad diverse honourable customs, even though he might be perverse in nature, he learns to be tractable, amiable, and patient, with much greater ease than he would have done by remaining in his own country. And in truth, he who desires to refine men in the life of the world need seek no other fire and no better touchstone than this, seeing that those who are rough by nature are made gentle, and the gentle become more gracious. Gherardo di Jacopo Starnina, painter of Florence, being nobler in blood than in nature, and very harsh and rough ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... properly trained he may be a useful factor in the uplifting and refining of the world. I love little children," she went on rapturously, looking at Jimmy as if he wasn't there at all, "and I would love to train one, for service in the world to uplift and refine." ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... teachers and all the students belong. It is a kind of co-operative society for the "purchase and distribution of daily necessities," but one of its objects is "the maintenance of public morality." Then there is the students' association which has literary and gymnastic sides, the one side "to refine wisdom and virtue," the other "for the rousing of spirit." Mention may also be made of a "discipline calendar" of fixed memorial days and ceremonies "that all the students should observe": the ceremony of ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... literature an almost aristocratic daintiness and feeling for the refined and select. As compared with the British school, the leading American school is marked by an increased delicacy of finesse, a tendency to refine and refine, a perhaps exaggerated dread of the platitude and the commonplace, a fondness for analysis, a preference for character over event, an avoidance of absolutely untempered seriousness and solidity. Mr. Bryce notes that the verdicts of the best literary circles of the United States ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... 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 right here at home. I am a living proof of this. What I have done others ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... soul! I hear thy cry. The trial fires may glow, but I am nigh. I see the silver, and I will refine Until My image shall upon it shine. Fear not, for I am near, thy help to be; Greater than all thy pain, ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... not despised, for he never thought about them. He began to look down upon all his past, and, in it, upon his old companions. Since knowing Kate, who had more delicate habits and ways than he had ever seen, he had begun to refine his own modes concerning outside things; and in his anxiety to be like her, while he became more polished, he became less genial ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... upon the human mind, and to teach it to regard the things of this world with generous feelings; to inspire men with a scorn of mere temporal advantage; to give birth to living convictions, and to keep alive the spirit of honorable devotedness; if you hold it to be a good thing to refine the habits, to embellish the manners, to cultivate the arts of a nation, and to promote the love of poetry, of beauty, and of renown; if you would constitute a people not unfitted to act with power upon all other nations; nor unprepared for those high enterprises, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... think of it, sir, probably the first metal they ever used was aluminum—where our ancestors used copper—and they had a beryllium age next, instead of iron. And right now, sir it's probably as expensive for them to refine iron as it is for us to handle titanium and beryllium and osmium—which are duck soup for them! Our two cultures ought to thrive as long as we're friends, sir. They know it already—and we'll find ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... We must know, many of us, that strange shadow which falls upon us when we say, "I feel so happy to-day that some evil must be going to befal me!" It is true that afflictions must come, but they are not to spoil our joy; they are rather to refine it and strengthen it. And those who have yielded themselves to joy are often best equipped to get the ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... however, to refine upon this statement of the matter. The course of external events, in so far as it affects one person, whether as proceeding from or reacting upon him, reveals character, and has meaning as an interpretation ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... 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 ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... time and space were indistinguishably blended. This One, the source of human life, was placed beyond the limits of our visible universe; and in order for human life to return thither at death and to enjoy immortality, it was only necessary to refine away corporeal grossness according to the doctrines of Lao Tzu. Later on, this One came to be regarded as a fixed point of dazzling luminosity, in remote ether, around which circled for ever and ever, in the supremest ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... We seek not to refine; but all moral power issues out of moral forces. And it may be well, therefore, rapidly to sketch the history of religion, which is the greatest of moral forces, as it sank and rose in this island through the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... 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 ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... curiously refined, almost delicate, almost supercilious (in the pride of young strength), but not quite either. It is noticeable generally that an orderly mental existence has great power to regularise the features, and in so doing, to refine them. Hence perhaps this refinement of feature in George; for if, in the effort to gain promotion, he has been putting his heart into his work—the routine work of his ship and the Naval barracks—it follows that his mental existence must have been very orderly and regular. But how far the total ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... 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
... certain phases of religion. We will purify, refine and beautify our religion, just as we have our table etiquette and our housekeeping. The millennium will come only through the scientific acceptance of piety. When Church and State separated it was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... beautiful for heroes proved, In liberating strife. Who more than self their country loved. And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And ev'ry gain divine! America! America! God shed ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... who was destined to win fame as an actor, playwright and manager. Like Diderot, Iffland believed ardently in the moral mission of the drama. He was himself a man of character who had taken to the stage against the wish of his kinfolk, and now his hobby was to refine the language of the stage and to elevate the actor's profession. He was an industrious and thoughtful player, who gave careful attention to the little matters of mimicry and personation and seldom failed to please. Another was Beil, a greater actor ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... to refine the system suggested by Rodriguez, follows the Arte in listing as praepositio those elements which translate the Latin prepositions (pp. 57-59) but uses the term particula to cover all the other particles ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... god may become a beast, and the object of his pursuit, once a woman, may also become a beast, and then shift shapes to a tree or a bird or a star. But in the civilised races the genius of the people tends to suppress, exclude and refine away the wild element, which, however, is never wholly eliminated. The Erinyes soon stop the mouth of the horse of Achilles when he begins, like the horse in Grimm's Goose Girl, to hold a sustained conversation.(1) But the ancient, cruel, and grotesque savage element, nearly overcome ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the world raw and unsubdued and he can transform it again as he has. He can build again everything on land and sea, the farms, towns, and cities, and the floating palaces. He can again dig out the mines and refine the silver and gold, mould the clay, smelt the ore and shape the iron. His needs and his power, however, give him no claim to ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... or guard against the follies which undermine a state? What are the true conservative forces of our world? On what did Luther and Cranmer build the hopes of regeneration? The cant of dilettanti would be laughed at by the old apostles and martyrs. Art amuses, and may refine when it is itself pure. It does not brace up the soul to conflict. It does not teach how to resist temptation. It presents temptations rather. It gilds the fascinations of earth. It does not point to duties, or the life to come. That which is conservative is what saves, not what adorns. We want ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... charm us by their wit or their sweetness, others that surprise and captivate us by their strength: books that refresh us when weary: books that comfort us when afflicted: books that stimulate us by their robust health: books that exalt and refine our natures, as it were, to a finer mould: books that rouse us like the sound of a trumpet: books that illumine the darkest hours, and fill all our day ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... living nature, training their eyes to see correctly and their hearts to respond intelligently. What is knowledge without enjoyment, without love? It is sympathy, appreciation, emotional experience, which refine and elevate and breathe into exact knowledge the breath of life. My own interest is in living nature as it moves and flourishes about me winter ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... and although most of the crude oil so made is refined at other works in Scotland, a not inconsiderable quantity is sent to the Welsh refiners, while some of it is sent to the Continent. Of the remaining works, 16 refine the crude oil only. There are altogether 3804 retorts in operation, both vertical and horizontal. It is a moot point, which is now engaging the attention of those in the trade, whether vertical or horizontal retorts are the best suited for the purposes in view. At Mr. Young's ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... should aim to cultivate their morals, refine their tastes, manners, habits. I wish to lift from them that ever-depressing sense of hopelessness which ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... Andersen in a hundred disguises, not with the rudimentary features of the old story, but modernized, individualized, and carrying on his shield an unobtrusive little moral. In "Jack the Dullard" he comes nearest to his primitive prototype, and no visible effort is made to refine him. In "The Most Extraordinary Thing" he is the vehicle of a piece of social satire, and narrowly escapes the lot which the Fates seem especially to have prepared for inventors, viz., to make the fortune of some unscrupulous clown ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... trouble, 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 spot. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... and the hills of Latium. They are useful, not because they teach us anything that may not be learned and learned more accurately from modern books, but because they move the mind, fire the heart, ennoble and refine the imagination in a way which nothing else has power to do. They are sources of inspiration; they first roused the modern mind to activity; and the potency of their influence can never cease to be felt by those whose aptitudes lead them to the love of intellectual perfection, who ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... the tenth to the fourteenth chapter inclusive, he says, "And it shall come to pass that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die, but the third shall be left therein, and I will bring the third part through the fire and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on my name and I will hear them, I WILL SAY IT IS MY PEOPLE; and THEY shall say THE LORD IS MY GOD."—xiii: 8, 9. Here then, is clearly pointed out the believers in the coming of Christ; a cry at mid-night shows first, ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... 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 ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... 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 roll ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... aiming to have, so far as could be, two suits to a man, a common, every day suit, and one better for Sabbaths, &c., it being thought that this would tend to refine and elevate the prisoners. Hence, he left them with a generous supply, well fitted up. But it would need more or less renewing and refitting in the fall, which it did not receive, but was made to answer by patching. Hence, ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... silliness is the childish fondness of the every-day children of the world! 'tis the unmeaning toying of the younglings of the fields and forests; but where Sentiment and Fancy unite their sweets, where Taste and Delicacy refine, where Wit adds the flavour, and Good Sense gives strength and spirit to all, what a delicious draught is the hour of tender endearment! Beauty and Grace, in the arms of Truth and Honour, in all the luxury of ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... why, though a physiognomist might have known. For Peter Ascott had the underhanging, obstinate, sensual lip, the large throat—bull-necked, as it has been called—indications of that essentially animal nature which may be born with the nobleman as with the clown; which no education can refine, and no talent, though it may co-exist with it, can ever entirely remove. He reminded one, perforce, of the rough old proverb; "You can't make a silk purse out of ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... to the great need of a process for oxidizing coal or oil at a low degree, within an insulated vessel. With such an invention electricity would be obtained at such a low cost that it would be used exclusively to light and heat our houses, to smelt, refine, and manipulate our metals, to propel our cars, wagons, carriages, and ships, cook our food, and drive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... vain cares and trifles, fly; Where God resides appear no more; Omniscient God, thy piercing eye Can every secret thought explore: O may thy grace our hearts refine, And fix our thoughts ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... 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
... Christ, the Maker of all things, the Teacher of all truth." The wide range of truth secured through reading acts in two ways upon the reader. It spiritualizes his character, and it makes him mighty in action. Knowledge on almost any subject has a marked tendency to sharpen one's wits, to refine his tastes, to ennoble his spirit, to improve his judgement, to strengthen his will, to subdue his baser passions, and to fill his soul with the breath of life. It is only upon truth that the soul feeds, and by means of knowledge that the character grows. ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... fiery trials your pathway shall lie, My grace, all-sufficient, shall be your supply; The flame shall not hurt you; I only design Your dross to consume, and your gold to refine. ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... like to practice interviewing. Jonathan's friend on "The Exeter News" told him that memory is everything in such work, that you must be able to put down exactly almost every word spoken, even if you had to refine some of it afterwards. Here was a rare interview. I shall try to ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... treasure You tyrants think 'twas all to serve your pleasure. Why should my person, throne, and wealth be booty To one harsh, jealous master? No, all beauty Is heaven's gift, and like the sun, should shine To glad earth's children, and their souls refine. I hate proud man, and like to make him feel He may not crush free woman 'neath ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... any other thus far found in the world. It is most easily converted into kerosene or lamp oil, and contains a larger proportion of such oil. It is the finest petroleum in the world, except that found in Indiana and Ohio, and that costs more to refine. ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... other from the first moment they met, and tried to make out that they neither had ever since had a thought that was not the other's; they believed this. The commonplaces of the passion ever since it began to refine itself from the earliest savage impulse, seemed to have occurred to them for the first time in the history of the race; they accused themselves each of not being worthy of the other; they desired to be very good, and to live ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... primarily, by faith. It is given in Christ to simple belief. He that hath faith thereby has the righteousness which is through faith in Christ, for in his faith he has the one formative principle of reliance on God, which will gradually refine character and mould conduct into whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. That righteousness which faith receives is no mere forensic treating of the unjust as just, but whilst it does bring with it pardon and oblivion from past ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... corresponds to that of other peoples when the short story pre-eminently flourished among them. But when one has said a thing like this, it immediately accuses one of loose and inaccurate statement, and requires one to refine upon it, either for one's own peace of conscience or for one's safety from the thoughtful reader. I am not much afraid of that sort of reader, for he is very rare, but I do like to know myself what I mean, if I mean ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sanitary reform, which may require municipal and parliamentary action. Domestic discomfort has to be dealt with by teaching wives the principles of domestic economy. The gracious influence of art and music, pictures and window-gardening, and the like, will lend their aid to soften and refine. Coffee taverns, baths and wash-houses, workmen's clubs, and many other agencies are doing real and good work. I for one say, 'God speed to them all,' and willingly help them so ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... them all even more bewildered than the boldest definition would have done. But that's quite a different thing. The furthest we have gone in the way of definition—unless indeed this too belongs but to our invincible tendency to refine—is by the happy rule we've made that Lorraine shall walk with me every morning to the Works, and I shall find her there when I come out to walk home with me. I see, on reading over, that this is what I meant by "our" in speaking ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... aesthetic creation, that man had exhausted the old models, and knew not where to look for new. Now the aim of Art is to interest or please, by gratifying the sense or taste for the beautiful or human genius in making; also to instruct and refine; and it is evident that Science is going to fulfill all these conditions on such a grand scale in so many new ways, that, when man shall be once engaged in them, all that once gratified him in the past will seem as childish things, to be put ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... 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
... production" could not exist: in three months 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 ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... all destroying 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
... that art should "never exist alone, never for itself," never except as "representing a true"—defined as actually-existing—"thing or decorating a useful thing;" when he declares that every attempt by the imagination to "exalt or refine healthy humanity has weakened or caricatured it." Mr. Ruskin bade men "go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to penetrate her meaning, rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... are not valuable only because of the available information they give; when they do not instruct, they elevate and refine. ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... 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 with this kind ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... them strongly on the minds of the audience, to speak to their hearts, and affect their passions, than to bewilder them in disputation, and lead them through labyrinths of controversy, which can yield, perhaps, but little instruction, can never tend to refine the passions, or elevate the mind. Being of this opinion, and from a strong desire of doing good, Dr. Trapp exerted himself in the pulpit, and strove not only to convince the judgment, but to warm the heart, for if passions ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... guarded against in considering all scales as continuous rather than discrete, is that careless thinkers may refine their calculations far beyond the accuracy which their original measurements would warrant. One should be very careful not to make such unjustifiable refinements in his statement of results as are often made by young pupils when they ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... other comforter 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 ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... and rewarded the learned men who, by their labors, made those fountains of classical literature easily accessible to all students. What shall I say of the patronage which they accorded to painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and the other arts which raise up and refine the human soul? Even the present glorious Pontiff, Pius IX., in the midst of troubles and persecutions, has done more for education than the richest and most powerful sovereigns of the world. You will unite with me, I am sure, in praying that he may soon recover ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... over the half written page. He dared hardly relax a moment from his toil. He felt that, in the book which he was translating, there was a deep human, as well as heavenly wisdom, which would of itself suffice to civilize and refine the savage tribes. Let the Bible be diffused among them, and all earthly good would follow. But how slight a consideration was this, when he reflected that the eternal welfare of a whole race of men depended ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the lovely colours of nature unspoiled; impossible for them to supply beautiful incident and action in their ornament, unless they see beautiful incident and action in the world about them. Inform their minds, refine their habits, and you form and refine their designs; but keep them illiterate, uncomfortable, and in the midst of unbeautiful things, and whatever they do will still be spurious, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... hottest Sun, from May till Michaelmas: Then pressing them well, Tun the Liquor up in a very strong Iron-Hooped Vessel to prevent its bursting. It will appear very thick and muddy when newly press'd, but will refine in the Vessel, and be as clear as Wine. Thus let it remain untouched for three Months, before it be drawn off, and it will ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... both take refuge in a land of fiction, of romance, from the realities into which they dread to splash; a world unsubstantial, diaphanous, faint-hued, almost passionless, which they make out of beauty and heroism and purity, which they alembicize and refine, but into which there never enters any vital element, anything to give it flesh and bone and pulsing life: it is a mere soap bubble. And beautiful as is this world of their own making, it is too negative even for them; they move in it only in imagination, calm, serene, vacant, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... earth."—(Acts 17: 26.) Much of our happiness, and usefulness in this world arises from this quality which man possesses over the animal creation. And just in proportion, as we shall cultivate, and refine our social and intellectual natures, just in that proportion, shall we rise above the level of the savage ...
— A Narrative of The Life of Rev. Noah Davis, A Colored Man. - Written by Himself, At The Age of Fifty-Four • Noah Davis
... "Home-keeping hearts," said Longfellow, "are happiest." What is a good wife, a good mother? Is she not a gift out of heaven, sacred and delicate, with affections so great that no measuring line short of that of the infinite God can tell their bound; fashioned to refine and soothe and lift and irradiate home and society and the world; of such value that no one can appreciate it, unless his mother lived long enough to let him understand it, or unless, in some great crisis of life, when all else failed him, he had a wife to reenforce ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... better leave the holes open than patch them with fancy work or with heterogeneous matter. The learned, indeed, as Lane tells us (i. 74; iii. 740), being thoroughly dissatisfied with the plain and popular, the ordinary and "vulgar" note of the language, have attempted to refine and improve it and have more than once threatened to remodel it, that is, to make it odious. This would be to dress up Robert Burns in plumes borrowed from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the rude church of the Moravian sisters to a cathedral with "glimmering tapers," swinging censers, chancel, altar, cowls, and "dim mysterious aisle." After his visit to Europe Longfellow returned deeply imbued with the spirit of romance. It was his mission to refine our national taste by opening to American readers, in their own vernacular, new springs of beauty in the literatures of foreign tongues. The fact that this mission was interpretive, rather than creative, hardly detracts from Longfellow's ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... 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
... thought of 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 would like. The Atwoods soon surmised that the family was in trouble of some kind, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... 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 the wood ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... vindicate their rights; that a herald had raised his voice to immortalize their renown. The distant or hostile tribes resorted to an annual fair, which was abolished by the fanaticism of the first Moslems; a national assembly that must have contributed to refine and harmonize the Barbarians. Thirty days were employed in the exchange, not only of corn and wine, but of eloquence and poetry. The prize was disputed by the generous emulation of the bards; the victorious performance ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... having; make, making, etc; but verbs ending in ee retain both; as see, seeing. The word dye, to color, however, must retain the e before ing. All verbs ending in ly, and nouns ending in ment, retain the e final of the primitives; as brave, bravely; refine, refinement; except words ending ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... if that it be pure, And fit to serve the lungs with lively breath: Hence do I likewise minister perfume[s] Unto the neighbour brain—perfumes of force To cleanse your head, and make your fancy bright, To refine wit and sharp[293] invention, And strengthen memory: from whence it came, That old devotion incense did ordain To make man's spirit more apt for things divine. Besides a thousand more commodities, In lieu whereof your ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... interdependence, I hope, will elevate and refine our patriotism by teaching men a wider sympathy and a deeper understanding of other peoples, nations, and languages. I sincerely hope it will educate us up to what I ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... 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
... 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 feelings of a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... getting into his pulpit. Truth was beauty, and beauty was truth. He never wearied of maintaining the uplifting quality resident in the Sunday afternoon contemplation of works of painting and sculpture, and nothing, to his mind, was more calculated to ennoble and refine human nature than the practice of art itself. The Doctor was one of the trustees of the Art Academy; he went to every exhibition, and dragged as many of his friends with him as could be induced to listen to his orotund commentaries; and he had almost reached the point where ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... shall deem, Because among us seem No dubious symptoms of a realm's decline— Wealth blind with its excess 'Mid far-diffused distress, And pride that kills, professing to refine— ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... nature acts her part, Unhelp'd by practice, books, or art: For wit and humour differ quite; That gives surprise, and this delight, Humour is odd, grotesque, and wild, Only by affectation spoil'd; 'Tis never by invention got, Men have it when they know it not. Our conversation to refine, True humour must with wit combine: From both we learn to rally well, Wherein French writers most excel; [2]Voiture, in various lights, displays That irony which turns to praise: His genius first found out the rule For an obliging ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... occasionally happened, but not too often; and then she was there in force. Then she both warmed to the perception that met her own perception, and disputed it, suspiciously, as to special items; while, in general, she had learned to refine even to the point of herself employing the word that most people employed. She employed it to pretend that she was also stupid and so have done with the matter; spoke of her friend as plain, as ugly even, in a case of especially dense insistence; but ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... accomplish it. For though to a reasonable extent and in certain circumstances, all enjoyments are harmless, they degenerate into crimes, when excessively indulged, and particularly when the imagination is overstrained to improve their zest, or to refine or exalt them beyond the limits which Nature and sobriety prescribe. But this can no more be alledged as a reason for renouncing the moderate use of the enjoyment, than the excesses of the drunkard or glutton for the rejection of food ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... "The aluminum ore isn't what we thought it would be. It's scarce and very low grade, of such a complex nature that we can't refine it to the oxide with what we have ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... timid than fiery and driving. It admires rather than covets the great exploits of the other sex. Woman never excelled in architecture. To her belong the gentler arts of quiet life and retirement, where she has power to soften and refine the heart of him who is accustomed to battle with the elements and the forces of ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... tragic and comic. Shakespeare, though not yet an idol, had still a hold upon the stage, and was beginning to be imitated by Rowe and to attract the attention of commentators. The sturdy Briton would not be seduced to the foreign model. The attempt to refine tragedy was as hopeless as the attempt to moralise comedy. This points to the process by which the Wit becomes 'artificial.' He has a profound conviction, surely not altogether wrong, that a tragedy ought ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... importunate Appetites, to put it in Mind of its Charge; knowing, that if we should eat and drink no oftner than cold abstracted Speculation should put us upon these Exercises, and then leave it to Reason to prescribe the Quantity, we should soon refine our selves out of this bodily Life. And indeed, 'tis obvious to remark, that we follow nothing heartily, unless carried to it by Inclinations which anticipate our Reason, and, like a Biass, draw the Mind strongly ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... Lord, whom ye seek, Will suddenly come to his temple; But who can endure the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner's fire, And like fullers' lyes; And he will sit as a refiner and purifier, And he will purify the sons of Levi, And refine them as gold and silver; And they shall offer offerings in righteousness. Then shall the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant to Jehovah, As in the days of old, and ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word. The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine." ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... 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 ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... full panoply, and then crush into dazzled submission any potential rivalry. She meant also to exert an educational influence, for she allowed that Olga had great gifts, and she meant to train and refine those gifts so that they might, when exercised under benign but autocratic supervision, conduce to the strength and splendour of Riseholme. Naturally she must be loyally and ably assisted, and Georgie realized that the tableau of King Cophetua ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are preparing the esthetics of the future). It must be here admitted that there exists an altogether special manner of feeling, dependent on temperament at first, which many cultivate and refine as though it were a precious rarity. There lies the true source of their invention. Doubtless, to assert this pertinently, it would be necessary to establish the direct relations between their physical ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... Dulcinea still shall reign Without a rival or a stain; Nor shall fate itself control Her sway, or blot her from my soul: Constancy, the lover's boast, I'll maintain whate'er it cost: This, my virtue will refine; This ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Deborah had occasion to exert any extraordinary condescension to Mrs Bridget, and by that means had a little soured her natural disposition, it was usual with her to walk forth among these people, in order to refine her temper, by venting, and, as it were, purging off all ill humours; on which account she was by no means a welcome visitant: to say the truth, she was universally dreaded and hated ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding |
