"Refinement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and making us ask if they were brought into Chaldaea by caravans, or made from models which had come from some other country. A few rare objects of artistic character might be found, which bore witness to a certain taste for elegance and refinement; as, for instance, a kind of circular trough of black stone, probably used to support a vase. Three rows of imbricated scales surrounded the base of this, while seven small sitting figures lean back against the upper part with an air of satisfaction which is ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... vellum nor illumination shows the least sign of decay. The writing is exquisitely beautiful, and points to a degree of refinement and cultivation which we do not usually associate with a rough life, such as was led by the monks of sea-girt Lindisfarne. There are to be seen wonderful initial letters, geometrical and tesselated designs, like the most delicate and intricate mosaics, and above all, beautifully ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... recognized some of the names they mentioned as belonging to persons to whom he had been presented at the church. It gradually dawned upon him that he had spent the evening with the aristocracy of the Blue Mound neighborhood. Culture, refinement, and poverty were the chief characteristics of the ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... said something to the effect that an orang-outang would receive a degree of polish and refinement by ten years of life in Paris. This statement is not to be taken literally, of course: I have detected no special polish of manners in the monkeys confined at the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris, some of whom are pretty well on in years. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... world to imitate their grandmothers, to breed canary birds, to make herbals, to water little Bengal rose-bushes, to fill in worsted work, or to put on collars. Moreover, if a little girl in her tenth year has more refinement than a boy of twenty, she is timid and awkward. She is frightened at a spider, chatters nonsense, thinks of dress, talks about the fashions and has not the courage to be either a watchful ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Cape Cod and Cape Charles. The industrious and thriving built good houses, raised good crops, sent their surplus abroad and bought English goods with it, went to church, and discussed politics. In education, in refinement, in literature and art, most of the colonists had made about the same advance as the present farmers of Utah. The rude, restless energy of modern America ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... acknowledge the correctness of the common belief: they rehabilitate an opinion which philosophers have till now turned to ridicule, under the name of naive realism. All which proves that the naivete of some may be the excessive refinement of others. ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... Imagine Mme. Katti Lanner having a corrupt influence! Imagine those delightful beings who play "Alice in Wonderland" corrupting anybody or anything! I have always been struck by the pretty manners of the trained children—and the advance in refinement is especially noticeable among those who have been speaking or singing parts. The most pleasing set of youths that I ever met were the members of a comic-opera troupe. Some of them, without an approach ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... man's life. I learnt, however, one general rule—that all the myriad forms of dancing originally express only love and war, in African parlance 'woman-palaver' and 'land-palaver.' However much the 'quiet grace of high refinement' may disguise original significance, Nature will sometimes return despite the pitchfork; witness a bal de l'Opera in the palmy days of ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... himself together, and with a tremendous effort shout a high A in the thick register. His neck swelled out, his face became blood-red, and altogether the "performance" was of an acrobatic rather than of an artistic nature. The general public, of course, loudly applauded, but people of taste and refinement shuddered. Such exhibitions are, unfortunately, not rare. If this little book should contribute, however remotely, to discourage them, it will not have ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... Jenkins naturally assumed the leadership of this band of jail-breakers. The light from the binnacle illuminated a countenance of rugged yet symmetrical features, stamped with prison pallor, but also stamped with a stronger imprint of refinement. A man palpably out of place, no doubt. A square peg in a round hole; a man with every natural attribute of a master of men. Some act of rage or passion, perhaps, some non-adjustment to an unjust environment, had sent him to ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... which furnishes the most striking results in connection with the object of this essay. (See "Monthly notices R.A.S." Vol. 63, 1903, page 527.) This star has a mean magnitude of about 7 1/2, and it is therefore invisible to the naked eye. Its period of variability is 14h 32m 10s.76, the last refinement of precision being of course only attained in the final stages of reduction. Twenty-nine mean values of the magnitude were determined, and they were nearly equally spaced over the whole cycle of changes. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... something quite different from sending short chatty accounts of one's journey to one of the papers. And of course he would be able to do it. People who had not half the education, not half the knowledge, not half the aesthetic refinement of feeling he had wrote ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... and unpretentious and likable. Teresa, whom I had scarcely noticed on the night of the accident, was a charmingly pretty girl of eighteen, very chic and gay, with pleasant manners and a contagious laugh. She had arrived at obviously the turn of the Grossensteck fortunes, and might, in refinement and everything else, have belonged to another clay. How often one sees that in America, the land above others of social contrast, where, in the same family, there are often three ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... only show the progress of art among the Egyptians, but strongly argue the great advancement they had made in the customs of civilized life; since it is certain, that until society has arrived at a high degree of luxury and refinement, artificial wants of this nature are not created, and the poorer classes do not yet feel the desire of imitating the rich, in the adoption of objects dependent ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... nothing new. Old families always hold together, and where there is a beginning there will be an increase." The elder Niemeyer, painfully embarrassed by these and similar pointed remarks, which showed a lack of culture and refinement, lamented once more the fact that he had married a ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... history, which in the rapid progress of American events, was so far forgotten that you had first to remind people of what he had helped do before you could enjoy their surprise in realizing that this gentle person, with the cast of intellectual refinement which distinguished his face, was the notorious Milray, who was once in all the papers. When he made his game and retired from politics, his family would have sacrificed itself a good deal to reclaim him socially, though they were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... conventional knowledge which is held to give a polish to the individual; this polish providing a distinguishing mark by which the learned class is separated from the ignorant. It is undoubtedly true that the so-called culture of the educated man should add to the grace and refinement of social life. In this sense, culture is not foreign to the conception of individual and social efficiency. A narrow cultural view, however, overlooks the fact that man's experience is significant only when it enables him to meet the needs and problems of the present, and that, as a member ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... equalize, and thus create, if I may be allowed the expression, a democracy of knowledge. In this way, and in this way only, can men be made equal in fact—equal in their social and political relations—equal in mental refinement, and in a just appreciation of what constitutes man the brother of his ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... them, I was, nevertheless, spared a repetition of the misery and indignation which the sight in the morning produced in my mind. I have been told positively that the poor old creatures brought in with the other captives will not fetch a shilling a-head in the slave-market. It is, therefore, a refinement of cruelty not to let them die in their native homes,—to tear them away to a foreign soil, and subject them to the fatigues of the journey, and the insults of a rude populace, and ruder and crueller slave-dealers. Many die on the road during the ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... words are sufficient to inspire us with thoughts ennobling, grand and elevating. There are to be found growlers in every clime, and it is only such that will desert their fatherland and seek refuge under foreign skies. We have liberty, right, education, refinement and culture in our midst; we have a good government, noble reforms, and all advantages to make us good and happy. Then let us cherish every right and institution which makes our beloved New Brunswick the pride of its loyal people. It is such feeling which prompts this work, ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... would not be possible for anyone to recommend anything more instructive than the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. The immortal Thueringian composer was the master-weaver of all. His tapestries have never been equalled in refinement, color, breadth and general beauty. Why is Bach so valuable for the student? This is an easy question to answer. It is because his works are so constructed that they compel one to study these details. Even if the student has only mastered the intricacies ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... society against the charge of surpassing dulness. In an insular colony, under the enervating influence of a tropical climate, the pulse of intellectual life beats very faintly, at its strongest. Still, if whatever of education and refinement there is in Kingston would cordially combine it might make a pleasant society. But it is divided into little cliques, each mortally afraid of the rest, and producing, in their division, a paradise ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of comparison. 1] Discrimination — N. discrimination, distinction, differentiation, diagnosis, diorism^; nice perception; perception of difference, appreciation of difference; estimation &c 466; nicety, refinement; taste &c 850; critique, judgment; tact; discernment &c (intelligence) 498; acuteness, penetration; nuances. dope [Slang], past performances. V. discriminate, distinguish, severalize^; recognize, match, identify; separate; draw ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fifteen years ago, the loveliest of women, and her speech and manners may still give you some report of the same. She has always lived with good people, and in her position is a centre of what is called good society, wherein her large heart makes a certain glory and refinement. She is one of nature's ladies, and when I hear her tell I know not what stories of her friends, or her children, or her pensioners, I find a pathetic eloquence which I know not where to match. But I suppose you shall ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... these impressions, the verdict of the fresh mind uninfluenced by the old conception, was the more correct one. The speech was decidedly out of place in that company. The skit was harmless enough, but it was of the Comstock grain. It lacked refinement, and, what was still worse, it lacked humor, at least the humor of a kind suited to that long-ago company of listeners. It was another of those grievous mistakes which genius (and not talent) can make, for genius is a sort of possession. The individual ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... haircut when we are too young to think, and when also the process is sugar-coated by the knowledge that we are losing our curls. Then habit accustoms us to it. Yet it is significant that men of refinement seek the barber in secluded places, basements of hotels for choice, where they can be seen only by barbers and by other refined men having or about to have haircuts; and that men of less refinement submit to the operation where every passer-by can stare in and ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... amusement, is one large reason why the country furnishes so large a proportion of prostitutes to the city. "This civilizational factor of prostitution, the influence of luxury and excitement and refinement in attracting the girl of the people, as the flame attracts the moth, is indicated by the fact that it is the country dwellers who chiefly succumb to the fascination. The girls whose adolescent explosive and orgiastic impulses, sometimes increased by a slight congenital ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... that (irrespective of differences in individual temper and character) the excellence of an artist, as such, depends wholly on refinement of perception, and that it is this, mainly, which a master or a school can teach; so that while powers of invention distinguish man from man, powers of perception distinguish school from school. All great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of sight: ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... which those differences arose without being deeply affected. The mention of Greece fills the mind with the most exalted sentiments and arouses in our bosoms the best feelings of which our nature is susceptible. Superior skill and refinement in the arts, heroic gallantry in action, disinterested patriotism, enthusiastic zeal and devotion in favor of public and personal liberty are associated with our recollections of ancient Greece. That ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... things for us of the present day to imagine is, how persons of refinement and sensibility, living in comfort and without a care, could take any pleasure in life when they knew that within a stone's throw of their doors were human beings who, very often through no fault of their own, were so destitute that a crust would ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... well filled did any one have the audacity to sit at the stranger's table. His elegance and refinement were as a barrier between him and all that was rude and coarse. If he glanced about the place, taking notes in his turn of this and that, it was covertly and quietly and without offence. His eyes passed across Daisy's without resting or any show of interest. Once or ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... encountered at the rest-houses beyond Verkhoyansk. Nearly every one contained one or more unmistakable lunatics, and it afterwards struck me that in a land where even the natives go mad from sheer despondency of life, it is no wonder that men and women of culture and refinement are driven to suicide from the constant dread of insanity. Idiocy, however, is more frequent amongst the natives, and in one povarnia we found a poor half-witted wretch who had taken up his quarters there driven away from the nearest stancia by the cruelty ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... poet, sang in his time of the domestic and social amenities of our age with a most felicitous versification, his object being, in his own words, "to glorify the result of six thousand years' evolution towards the refinement of thought, manners and feelings." Why he fixed the term at six thousand years I don't know. His poems read like sentimental novels told in verse of a really superior quality. You felt as if you, were being taken out for a delightful country ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... understood woodcraft; he now found how mistaken he had been. He had acquired woodcraft as a gentleman; he now learned the knave's woodcraft. They taught him a hundred tricks of which he had had no idea. They stripped man of his dignity, and nature of her refinement. Everything had a blackguard side to them. He began to understand that high principles and abstract theories were only words with the ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... discern the idea, the pattern, the radiant genius of womanhood itself, as it hovers, unseen to other eyes, over the living representatives of the sex. Literature boasts many eminent female poets and novelists; but not one has ever approached Shakespeare in the purity, the sweetness, the refinement, the elevation, of his perceptions of feminine character,—much less approached him in the power of embodying his perceptions in persons. These characters are so thoroughly domesticated on the earth, that we are tempted to forget the heaven of invention from which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... there were inlaid marble mantel-pieces and cut-steel fenders; there were stupendous wall-papers, and octagonal, medallioned Wedgwood what-nots, and black-and-gilt Austrian images holding candelabra, with every other refinement that Art had achieved or wealth had bought between 1851 and 1878. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... first time, the records of a mind whence my own sprang; and most strange, and at once sad and sweet, to find that mind of a truly fine, pure, and elevated order. They were written to papa before they were married. There is a rectitude, a refinement, a constancy, a modesty, a sense, a gentleness about them indescribable. I wish she had lived, and that I had ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... knowledge, and they were evidently many, began to attract him. The thought of her ancestry crossed him now and then, rousing in him now wonder, and now a strange sense of congruity and harmony. Clearly she was the daughter of a primitive unexhausted race. And yet what purity, what refinement, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... towards many, besides the Bishop, among the bolder and less conventional of his contemporaries. Their fire, their energies, their enthusiasm, warmed his somewhat under-vitalized nature. He regarded himself as one of them, and his refinement and distinction drew the robuster spirits towards himself. But gradually, as time went on, these energies and enthusiasm took form, and, alas! took forms which he had not expected—he never expected anything—and from which his mind instinctively recoiled. He had supposed ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... instances is in the Cloaca Maxima. And thus in the case of spires and towers, it is just to ascribe to the devotion of their designers that dignity which was bestowed upon forms derived from the simplest domestic buildings; but it is ridiculous to attribute any great refinement of religious feeling, or height of religious aspiration, to those who furnished the funds for the erection of the loveliest tower in North France, by paying for permission to eat butter ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... the inestimable boon of the trained nurse of education, refinement and ability. Before Florence Nightingale gave herself and initiated the movement for the training of young women of standing as nurses, such work had been left to the rough, uncouth, and often low-lived men and women, of whom the unspeakable ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... the people, but suppressed their noblest sentiments, and confined their energies to inglorious pursuits. Men might acquire more gigantic fortunes under the emperors than in the times of the republic, and art might be more extensively cultivated, and luxury and refinement and material pleasures might increase; but public virtue fled, and those sentiments on which national glory rests vanished before the absorbing egotism which pervaded all orders and classes. The imperial despotism may have ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... student of Cambridge, named Stallknecht, was one of the works of the day which increased the interest in foreign literature, and made its study fashionable. This mystical romance, called by its author the 'Apotheosis of Poetry,' was distinguished by a simple pathos, an ultra-refinement of thought, an almost womanly delicacy of expression, and a deeply religious sentiment. Such works fascinated many who had been proof against the sterner allurements of the more practical Goethe or the aristocratic Schiller, and added a new regiment ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... something in the composition likely enough to puzzle, and consequently to mislead the Understanding.—The reader will perceive that I distinguish between mental Impressions and the Understanding.—I wish to avoid every thing that looks like subtlety and refinement; but this is a distinction which we all comprehend.—There are none of us unconscious of certain feelings or sensations of mind which do not seem to have passed thro' the Understanding; the effects, I suppose, of some secret influences from without, acting upon a certain mental sense, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... Christianity which they received was so thoroughly imbibed and so completely carried out that any thing in the least opposed to it was sternly rejected by the whole nation. Hence they became a people of peculiar habits. Rejecting the harsh features of feudalism, not caring for the refinement of the so-called revival of learning, sternly opposed at all times to Protestantism, they would have naught to do with what was rejected or even suspected by the Church, until in our days they offer ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... dark-skinned, flat-nosed, thick-lipped low castes of non-Aryan origin, with their short bodies and bullet heads. The Brahman stands apart from both, tall and slim, with finely-modelled lips and nose, fair complexion, high forehead, and slightly cocoanut shaped skull—the man of self-centred refinement. He is an example of a class becoming the ruling power in a country, not by force of arms, but by the vigor of hereditary culture and temperance. One race has swept across India after another, dynasties have risen and fallen, religions have spread themselves over the land and disappeared. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... the graces of both person and mind; but many others are equally favored. Her indescribable charm arose from the fact that she was very receptive in her disposition. She had been wax to receive, but marble to retain. Therefore, since she had always lived and breathed in an atmosphere of culture, refinement, and Christian faith, her character had the exquisite beauty and fragrance which belongs to a rare flower to which all the conditions of perfect development have been supplied. Although the light of her eye was serene, and her laugh as clear and natural ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... pleasure-loving and fond of practical jokes. While his father was never rich, the family after the removal to Warsaw lived at ease. The country was prosperous and Chopin the elder became a professor in the Warsaw Lyceum. His children were brought up in an atmosphere of charming simplicity, love and refinement. The mother was an ideal mother, and, as George Sand declared, Chopin's "only love." But, as we shall discover later, Lelia was ever jealous—jealous even of Chopin's past. His sisters were gifted, gentle and disposed to pet him. Niecks has killed all the pretty fairy ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... related at the opening of this chapter a pale weary-looking woman, leading by the hand a little boy, might have been seen walking one evening along the principal street of the small village of Walden. Although her dress was extremely plain, yet there was a certain air of refinement about her which informed the observer that she had once occupied a position very different from what was indicated by her present appearance. The little boy by her side was indeed a child of surpassing ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... had to make my father and mother live on potatoes I had to cross the park to give a lesson She was perhaps a little the taller of the two The circle which the ladies of Brookfield were designing The gallant cornet adored delicacy and a gilded refinement The philosopher (I would keep him back if I could) They had ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... first visit to Hillside was in every way a delight and a satisfaction. To Alice, it was even more than that. For the first time in years she found herself welcomed into a home of wealth, culture, and refinement as an equal; and the frank cordiality and naturalness of her hostess's evident expectation of meeting a congenial companion was like balm to a sensitive soul rendered morbid by long ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... pronounced English, though even there one caught a dash of something Gallic; but he had no English shyness: he had learnt somewhere, somehow, the art of setting himself quite at his ease, and of allowing no insular timidity to intervene as a barrier between him and his convenience or pleasure. Refinement he did not affect, yet vulgar he could not be called; he was not odd—no quiz—yet he resembled no one else I had ever seen before; his general bearing intimated complete, sovereign satisfaction with himself; yet, at times, an indescribable shade passed ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... gesture of his body, and every modulated tone of his voice. Whether his moral nature had become warped and cracked and twisted out of all shape by constant daily and nightly contact—especially the last—with the sort of life he had led, or whether some of the old-time refinement of his better days still clung to him, was a question I could not decide from the exhibits before me—certainly not from the calm eyes which never wavered, nor the set mouth which never for a moment relaxed, the only important features in the ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Indian palmette, we are dealing with the results of centuries of ornamental evolution, and with emblems immemorially treasured by ancient races. It behoves us, if we are called upon to recombine them, to treat them with sympathy, refinement, and respect, and to let them deteriorate as little as possible, for the spirit of an important ornamental form is like a gathered flower—it soon withers and ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... truck, with the heart pendant link, a later refinement, became the dominating form of centering devices and was used well into this century. It was to be superseded in more recent years by the constant resistance and gear roller centering devices which, like Bissell's ...
— Introduction of the Locomotive Safety Truck - Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Paper 24 • John H. White
... that list, by three or four to one, the entire exports of all kinds in 1790; and they equal the average aggregate of the years from 1815 to 1824. But the multiplication of the wants of a people rapidly growing in numbers and refinement will, with the comparatively high price of labor, scarcity of capital and distance of most of our ports from the markets supplied by European manufactures, for a long time to come make the home-supply the chief care of our artisans. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... the Aztecs with their refinement, their civilisation, and the lake dried gradually through the years, and causeways were built across the swamp, and one by one dwellings appeared on the hardest, driest places, and step by step there grew to be a city. Then ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... Maistre does not seem by any means so well convinced of this. He is, at times, not merely evidently pretending and making believe, but laughing at himself for pretending and making believe. He still thinks Sensibility a gratissimus error, a very pretty game for persons of refinement to play at, and he plays at it with a great deal of industry and with a most exquisite skill. But the spirit of Voltaire, who himself did his sensibilite (in real life, if not in literature) as sincerely as Sterne, has affected Xavier de Maistre "with a difference." The Savoyard ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... become the richest men cannot be denied, because their artificial wants are fewer, and their labours greater than those of the higher ranks. However, the man of education and refinement will always keep the balance steady, and will hold offices in the Colony and responsible situations which his richer but less learned neighbour can never fill with ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... might occasion greater danger to liberty, than could ever reasonably be dreaded from the possibility of a perpetuation in office, by the voluntary suffrages of the community, exercising a constitutional privilege. There is an excess of refinement in the idea of disabling the people to continue in office men who had entitled themselves, in their opinion, to approbation and confidence; the advantages of which are at best speculative and equivocal, and are overbalanced by disadvantages far more ...
— The Federalist Papers
... decided Grisell. She looked up at Lambert, and when he used her title of "Lady," in begging her to leave old Mother Abra in charge and to come down to supper, she made a gesture of silence, and as she came down the broad stair—a refinement scarce known in England—she entreated him to let ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... contented yourself with merely Saying a thing—you swore that, as far as lay in your power, you'd make my wretched life pleasant for me. And you've denied me the consolation of breaking down. I should have done it—indeed I should. A woman would hardly have thought of this refinement, my kind, considerate friend. (Fan-guard as before.) You have explained things so tenderly and truthfully, too! You haven't spoken or written a word of warning, and you have let me believe in you till the last ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... was a cut-throat, and badly educated. Morny laughed at him for his pronunciation of the "Sovereign People." "He pronounces the word no better than he understands the thing," said he. The Elysee, which prides itself upon its refinement, only half-accepted Saint-Arnaud. His bloody side had caused his vulgar side to be condoned. Saint-Arnaud was brave, violent, and yet timid; he had the audacity of a gold-laced veteran and the awkwardness of a man who had formerly ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... which space does not allow even mention. Details apparently trifling, as noiseless shoes, quietness, wearing garments that do not rustle, use of small pillows of different sizes, and countless other small things that make up the refinement of modern nursing, play an important part in building up the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... own island were accustomed to give extravagant vails at every country house which they visited, learned, with admiration, that His Highness's servants were strictly forbidden to receive presents. At his luxurious table, by a refinement of politeness, choice cider from the orchards round the Malvern Hills made its appearance in company with the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the stern sheets, who wished to see me, to come on board, and then conducted him to my state-room. He was not more than thirty-five, and was dressed rather jauntily in a suit of light-colored clothes. He looked and acted like a gentleman, and his speech indicated that he was a person of refinement. I gave him a chair, and took one myself. Washburn had gone ashore in one of the boats, and I had the room to myself. Before he seated himself he handed me a card, on which was engraved "Kirby Cornwood." There was nothing more to ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... and leisure, litterateurs, retired merchants and collectors of art-treasures, as well as health-seekers. These little colonies, of which most of the large cities on the Rhine have a copy in miniature, even if it be not a bathing-place, are the places in which to seek for that domestic taste and refinement which some hasty and prejudiced critics have thought fit to deny ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... shudderingly horrified. Not all the longings of an untainted mind could make her skin less tawny. Its stain was too deep to be blanched by the most fervent of prayers. Her outlook on life, her intensest wishes, were those of a white girl of more than decent perceptions—of actual refinement, for they tended to the avoidance of everything unpleasant and unsightly. In other respects, too, she was an absolute variant from the type, for her sensitiveness to the pain of others and of the lower animals amounted almost to a mania; for though ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the whole ground of our narrative, from the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, to the coming of Charles V. into Spain. They are plainly written, without ambition of rhetorical show or refinement. The early part is little better than memoranda of the principal events of the period, with particular notice of all the migrations of the court. In the concluding portion of the work, however, comprehending Ferdinand's death, and ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... on the 28th of October. Her father, John Dickinson, and her mother, who had been Mary Edmundson before her marriage, were both persons who were interested in the vital questions of the day, and Anna had been brought up in an atmosphere of refinement and of high principles. All this her new friend learned by a series of friendly questions, and Anna, having begun her story, continued with a degree of frankness which was little less than surprising, after so short an acquaintance. Her father had been a merchant, and ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... implies the desire of concealing something individual and intimate; where this is not the case, there can be no feeling of shame. Finally, I should like to point out that the perversity and sexual refinement peculiar to China and Japan are attributable simply to the fact that the limits of sexuality cannot be overstepped, and that sexuality is therefore dependent on vice and perversity to ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... night spent on the rain-soaked battle-field afflicted him with an asthmatic complaint and a partial paralysis of the limbs, which darkened for years the musician's peaceful household. He himself, however, was greatly cheered by the musical proficiency of his two sons, and the intellectual refinement of Frederick William. "My brothers," says Caroline Herschel, "were often introduced as solo performers and assistants in the orchestra of the court; and I remember that I was frequently prevented"—she was then a child about five years old—"from ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... ball, or party, or sociable at her residence is a success, the credit is hers exclusively, for the husband does little more than pay the bills. Many of these women are "from the ranks." They have risen with their husbands, and are coarse and vulgar in appearance, and without refinement. But the women of fashion are not all vulgar or unrefined. Few of them are well educated, but the New York woman of fashion, as a rule, is not only very attractive in appearance, but capable of creating a decided ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... and Anglo-Norman word, answering to the Italian gentilezza, and signifying the possession of every species of refinement, has been retained as supplying a want which there is no modern ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... disappointment—but although a careful examination of ancient and modern manners might lead to a different conclusion, (for as the corruption of excessive refinement ends by placing her in the first condition, so does the brutal assertion of physical superiority begin by degrading her to the last,) woman is, we firmly believe, neither intended for a tyrant nor a slave—Not a slave, for till she is raised above the condition of a beast of burden, man, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... say imperfect souls, I am not referring to souls with spiritual imperfections only, for the holiest souls will not be perfect till they are in heaven. I mean those who are also afflicted with want of tact and refinement, as well as ultra-sensitive souls. I know such defects are incurable, but I also know how patient you would be, in nursing and striving to relieve me, were my illness ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... are weak, yet less weak than we, the strong sex, for they can raise us to our feet. She called me, "My dear Monsieur Fabien," and there was balm in the very way she said the words. I used to think she wanted refinement; she does not, she only lacks reading, and lack of reading may go with the most delicate and lofty feelings. No one ever taught her certain turns of expression which she used. "If your mother was alive," said she, "this is what she would say." And then she spoke to me of God, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... small and decent London horse which at all points in its equipment perfectly expresses a pure taste and a wholly unstudied refinement. Nothing there offends the eye or oppresses the mind. It is the dignified habitation of a poor gentleman, breathing a charm not to be found in the house of a rich parvenu. He has avoided without effort the conscious artistry of Chelsea and the indifference to ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... there was about Randolph, and it made no difference to him that Luke lived in a small and humble cottage, and, till recently, had been obliged to wear old and shabby clothes. In this democratic spirit, Linton was encouraged by his parents, who, while appreciating the refinement which is apt to be connected with liberal means, were too sensible to undervalue ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... . . . In his social intercourse he was a gentleman of the purest and most refined type. . . . At his own home, at the homes of others, in casual meetings, in travel, everywhere, he always exhibited toward those who met him an unbroken front of courtesy, gentleness, and refinement."* ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... opens to let it in. A tallow dip burns sleepily on the creaking stairs. The water runs with a loud clatter in the sink: it is to keep it from freezing. There is not a whole window pane in the hall. Time was when this was a fine house harboring wealth and refinement. It has neither now. In the old parlor downstairs a knot of hard-faced men and women sit on benches about a deal table, playing cards. They have a jug between them, from which they drink by turns. On the stump of a mantel-shelf a lamp burns before a rude print ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Opera-house in process of erection in Vienna might be utilized by limiting the number of performances and securing a careful representation of the style of the works produced. Had not Joseph II. recognized the theatre as "contributing to the refinement of manners and of taste"? He even offered to prepare specially for Vienna a more condensed work, the "Meistersingers." The reply was, however, that the name of Wagner had for the present received sufficient ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... Sterling from his country home, and in his general appearance was decidedly unlike either of his classmates. The influences of his home had been of a different character from those which had surrounded his two friends. Not that the love for him had been less, but certain elements of refinement had been lacking and his familiarity with the ways of the world was much less. Besides, his father had been in humbler circumstances, and Peter John was to room in college in Leland Hall, one of the oldest of the dormitories, where ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... roots and the tender bark of trees. Some became delirious, indeed some seemed quite insane through their sufferings. The man who was wounded, Mr. Schenck, was a gentleman of intelligence and of refinement and of distinguished family connections, from Ohio. A poetic temperament had induced him to seek the romance of an adventure ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... friendship was extended to all whom he trusted and esteemed. The Secretaries of State and War (Pickering and McHenry) had been his fellow-soldiers; the Secretary of the Treasury (Wolcott) had, as it were, grown up under his eye. The simplicity and military frankness of Pickering, the kindly nature and refinement of McHenry, the warm-heartedness and bonhommie of Wolcott, all won upon his regard. On their part there was a no less sincere love for their chief. There are those devotion to whom is no degradation. Washington was such a one, and to him it was rendered in the spirit ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... properly prepared, encounter the rest with that high-spirited cheerfulness of which well- educated females often give extraordinary proofs. She likewise wishes to teach them to discard every thing exclusively pertaining to the artificial refinement of fashionable life in England; and to point out that, by devoting the money consumed in these incumbrances to articles of real use, which cannot be readily obtained in Canada, they may enjoy the pleasure of superintending a pleasant, well-ordered home. She is desirous ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... and were made a good deal of—their health drunk and what not—and Starlight told us afterwards he returned thanks for the strangers and visitors; said he'd been told Australia was a rough place, but he never expected to find so much genuine kindness and hospitality and, he might add, so much refinement and gentlemanly feeling. Speaking for himself, he had never expected, considering his being a total stranger, to be welcomed so cordially and entertained so handsomely, more particularly at the mess of ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Miss Elgin's were mostly the children of wealthy parents, but unhappily many of them, though rich and fashionable, were sadly lacking in refinement of heart and mind. Money was the god revered and worshipped in most of their homes, the one thing talked of and held in honour, and it was not surprising that the girls, from constantly hearing their neighbours' worth reckoned solely by the amount of money they possessed, had come ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... prisoners, I learned that in Lima there were a number of Chilian officers and seamen taken on board the Maypeu, whose condition was even more deplorable than their own, the fetters on their legs having worn their ancles to the bone, whilst their commander, by a refinement of cruelty, had for more than a year been lying under sentence of death as a rebel. Upon this, I sent a flag of truce to the viceroy, Don Joaquim de la Pezuela, requesting him to permit the prisoners to return to their families, ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... must be borne in mind that my invitation was in the nature of a command, which it would have been vastly discourteous to decline. And, besides, they were my friends. As for myself, I have no excuses to offer—and, methinks, I need none. The situation had long passed the refinement of ethics. It was war; and war not of my declaring. Neither was I responsible for the style of the campaign. Madeline Spencer deserved no consideration from me—and no ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... with which Burns expressed himself as being "charmed," was first published in the second volume of Johnson's "Musical Museum." It is not only gay and animating, but has the merit of being free of blemishes in want of refinement, which affect the others. The "Bogie" celebrated in the song, it may be remarked, is a river in Aberdeenshire, which, rising in the parish of Auchindoir, discharges its waters into the Deveron, a little distance below the town of Huntly. It gives its name to the extensive and rich valley ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... only Puritan, but clerical; that the central and vital thread of the idea that created us, ran through his heart. The nation, and even New England, Massachusetts, Boston, have many traits that are not found in him; but there is nothing in him that is not a refinement, a sublimation and concentration of what is good in them; and the selection and grouping of the elements are such that he is a typical figure. Indeed, he is all type; which is the same as saying that there is nobody like him. And, mentally, he produces the impression of being all force; ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... broad porches. A wide hall ran through the center of the house from one porch to the other and on either side of the hall were well furnished rooms of ample size. In rear, in an enclosure as broad as the house, was a well kept flower garden. It was a typical southern home of refinement and comfort. There were several ladies. The men were, of course, in the army. General Custer with several of his officers called upon the ladies to pay his respects and assure them of protection. He was received with quiet dignity and refined courtesy ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... 17). Truly did David sing in his elegy, 'Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'; for in that old world, in which the relations between the sexes had not yet received the hallowing and refinement of Christian times, much of what is now chiefly found in these was manifested in friendship, such as that of these two young men. Jonathan is the foremost figure in it, and the nobility and self- oblivion of his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of men were often brought up under alien conditions, like ducklings brooded over by a mother hen, but as soon as a chance was given, they flew to their native element and the former things were as though they had not been. An inborn instinct of refinement made this new life immediately congenial. But—could she ever forget the weary conditions of Sleepy Hollow? She frequently heard in imagination the clatter of the dishes and the rough romping of the children as they noisily trooped to bed. Her nerves quivered ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... its full glory at the commencement of the Christian era. It was a city of wealth and refinement, with about 35,000 inhabitants, and beautifully located at the foot of Mount Vesuvius; it possessed all local advantages that the most refined taste could desire. Upon the verge of the sea, at the entrance of a fertile plain, on the bank ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... deserve notice. With the exception of Noah's wife, who was commonly treated in a broadly humorous vein, the principal female characters possess that sweet naturalness, depth and constancy of affection, purity and refinement which an age that had not yet lost the ideals of chivalry accepted as the normal qualities of a good woman. The mothers, wives, and daughters of that day would appear to have been before all things womanly, in an unaffected, instinctive way. ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... there was good cause for this admiring question. Both of the men were bachelors, but they possessed natural refinement, and they could reverence the innocence and loveliness of childhood. With the discovery that she was an actual human being, the awe-struck wonder of the two men vanished, though their curiosity was great to learn how it was she was carried away ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... are joined together without one softening vowel to intervene; and all this only to make one syllable of two, directly contrary to the example of the Greeks and Romans, and a natural tendency towards relapsing into barbarity. And this is still more visible in the next refinement, which consists in pronouncing the first syllable in a word that has many, and dismissing the rest. Thus we cram one syllable and cut off the rest, as the owl fattened her mice after she had bit off their legs ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... letter. We want for once the genuine man. We would have a mediaeval Arab telling the tales and traditions with the lays and legends of his own land in his own way, and showing the world what he has remained and how he has survived to this day, while we Westerns have progressed in culture and refinement. Above all things give us the naive and plain-spoken language of the original—such a contrast with the English of our times—and show us, by the side of these enfantillages, the accumulated wit and wisdom, life-knowledge and experience of an old-world race. We want also ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... saw the sun shine beyond their own native hills. In the summer time the children brought berries to the nearest station to sell, and with the money they bought a few of the necessities of the outside refinement. ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... much to do," said Professor Auer modestly, "a little fingering, some bowing indications and not much else. No reviser needs to put any indications for nuance and shading in Beethoven. He was quite able to attend to all that himself. There is no composer who shows such refinement of nuance. You need only to take his quartets or these same sonatas to convince yourself of the fact. In my Brahms revisions I have supplied really needed fingerings, bowings, and other indications! Important compositions on which I am now at work include Ernst's fine Concerto, Op. ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... has a remarkable gift in the facility and refinement with which she is able to approach the most delicate subject without arousing a single ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... the charm and grace of the household, and it is hard to think of her as an integral part of the social order, hard to believe that she has duties outside of the family, to the state and to society in the larger sense. This assumption that the daughter is solely an inspiration and refinement to the family itself and its own immediate circle, that her delicacy and polish are but outward symbols of her father's protection and prosperity, worked very smoothly for the most part so long as her education was in line with it. When there was ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... in it, but was eating her macaroni gently, as if it were a new and wonderful food. So Maurice thought as he looked at her. To-day there was something strange, almost pathetic, to him in Maddalena, a softness, an innocent refinement that made him imagine her in another life than hers, and with other companions, in a life as free but less hard, with companions as natural but ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... was currently reported and believed that Mr. McDonald designed him for his daughter. They were abroad now, the McDonalds and Tom, who bore the expenses of the party. Daisy, it was said, was even more beautiful than in her early girlhood, and to her loveliness were added cultivation and refinement of manner. She had had the best of teachers while in South America, and was now continuing her studies abroad with a view to further improvement. All this Julia Hamilton told Guy, and then bade him think again ere deciding to join her life ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... and a limiting of his immensity."—Calvin cor. "Tones being infinite in number, and varying in almost every individual, the arranging of them under distinct heads, and the reducing of them to any fixed and permanent rules, may be considered as the last refinement in language."—Knight cor. "The fierce anger of the Lord shall not return, until he hath done it, and until he hath performed the intents of his heart."—Bible cor. "We seek for deeds more illustrious and heroic, for events more diversified and surprising."—Dr. Blair cor. "We distinguish ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... society is a little mixed in Florida, and it is hard for a foreigner to discriminate closely enough to avoid being drawn into unpleasant complications if he relaxes in the slightest degree his rules of reserve. Besides which, the Jook was a man of the most morbid and ultra refinement. "Refinement" was the word he preferred, but I should have called it an absurd squeamishness. He could make no allowance for personal or local peculiarities, and eccentricities in our neighbors which delighted Koenigin and me ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... yet perfectly artistic figure. For the dress was the skillful creation of a great Parisian artist, and in its exquisite harmony of color, shape, and material it not only hid the absurd model, but clothed it with an alarming grace and refinement! A queer feeling of awe, of shame, and of unwilling admiration took possession of them. Some of them—from remote Western towns—had never seen the like before; those who HAD had forgotten it in those five years of self-exile, of healthy independence, and of contiguity ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... the sun's rays on the rock summit, as one who, by instinct and nature, was scarce less a savage than her most desperate follower, although she possessed the rare gift of masking her cruelty beneath the pleasing smile of a woman not entirely unacquainted with the courtesies of refinement. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... events there was something weird and pathetic in this Arcadian air, sung as it was by her. Her voice was a mezzo-soprano of rare bracing quality, and she had enough natural sensibility to give the antique refinement of the words a wistful charm, particularly apparent ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and rude. He who acquires wealth by the labor of slaves, has the means of improvement for himself and his children. He may have a more extended intercourse, and consequently means of information and refinement, and may seek education for his children where it may be found. I say, what is obviously true, that he has the means of obtaining those advantages; but I say nothing to palliate or excuse the conduct of him who, having such means, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... home, No. —— Gramercy Park, was one of those dignified, old-fashioned residences that still remain in New York to remind our vulgar, ostentatious nouveaux riches of the days when culture and refinement counted for something more than mere wealth. Overlooking the railed-in square with its green lawns, pretty winding paths and well-dressed children romping at play, it had a high stoop which opened into a wide hall, decorated ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... breeding.[109] He does not strike one as a degraded man of culture: for all his great powers, he is vulgar, and his probable want of military science may well be significant. He was married to a wife who evidently lacked refinement, and who appears in the drama almost in the relation of a servant to Desdemona. His manner was that of a blunt, bluff soldier, who spoke his mind freely and plainly. He was often hearty, and could ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... round the room, and was not a little surprised to find a pianoforte making part of the furniture, an open drawing-box, of a very expensive kind, with card-board and other drawing materials, occupied a side-table. These were articles of refinement she had not expected from a man-like woman of Miss ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... cruelly massacred with no profit to man! and how many beside, with unhappy hares, foxes, rats, stoats, and weasels, are held for days and nights in lingering torture by horrible steel traps? All this goes on in the midst of refinement, without prohibition from men or remonstrance from women. It is a fruit of the modern English system of game preserving;... and the artificial love of sport which cruel Norman tradition has fostered in the stolid Anglo-Saxon race." [Footnote: "On Cruelty" ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... the most delicate and nourishing food upon earth, is, with people like them, liable to inconveniencies; for in such a group or Archipelago of islands, whose inhabitants are in such various gradations of refinement, from the gentle and polished Otaheitean, to the savage and cannibal Feegee, a war amongst them is often attended with devastation as well as famine. By cutting round the bark of the Bread-fruit tree, a whole country may be laid waste for four or five years, young trees not bearing in less ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... fascinate the gazer—to rivet his glances—to follow him whithersoever he went—and to search into his soul, as did the dark orbs of Sir Reginald in his lifetime. It was the work likewise of Lely, and had all the fidelity and graceful refinement of that great master; nor was the haughty countenance of Sir Reginald unworthy the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... very midst of the pampered and enervated over-refinement of Roman decay, Constantine did something more than merely turn the conquering eagle back, against the course of the heavens, for which Dante seems to blame him,[2] when he established his capital at Byzantium; for there at once upon the new soil, ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... color, as Mr. Ruskin calls it, I know of no lovelier foil for the lobelia than the white orchis, which haunts the same marshy spots. Those long spikes of feathery and balanced blossoms are the most absolute white of anything in Nature. They positively insist upon the very refinement of purity, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... grace,—"that artless balance of motion and repose," says Fuseli, "springing from character and founded on propriety." Others may have equalled him in perspective, accuracy, and finish, but he added a refinement of taste which placed him on the throne which is now given to Raphael. No artists could complete his unfinished pictures. He courted the severest criticism, and, like Michael Angelo, had no jealousy of the fame of other artists; he reposed in the greatness of his own self-consciousness. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Scipio represented the two forces that were at this time working in society, the one opposing the entrance of the Grecian influence, and the other encouraging the refinement in manners and modes of living that came with it, even encouraging ostentation and the lavish use of money for pleasures. When Scipio was making his arrangements to go to Africa, he was governor of Sicily, and lived in luxury. Cato, then but thirty years old, had been ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... light now fell full on her face. Had she deliberately challenged me to look into her secret mind if I could? Anything like the stark insensibility of that young girl to every refinement of feeling, to every becoming doubt of herself, to every customary timidity of her age and sex in the presence of a man who had not disguised his unfavorable opinion of her, I never met with in all my experience of the world ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... crafty, sinister face; others an awkward, ill-bred rustic, neglected since her father's trial by designing guardians. Instead of this there appeared before them a slender, graceful, youthful form, with high refinement and perfect breeding in every outline and movement. The heavy masses of her dark hair were folded across her brow, and wreathed in voluminous folds behind. Her pallid face bore traces of many griefs ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... is one of the most perfect specimens of Goliardic writing. To render its fluent, languid, and yet airy grace, in any language but the Latin, is, I think, impossible. Who could have imagined that the subtlety, the refinement, almost the perversity of feeling expressed in it, should have been proper to a student of the twelfth century? The poem is spoiled toward its close by astrological and grammatical conceits; and the text is corrupt. That part I have omitted, together with some stanzas which ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... one might fairly look for, when the greatest metropolis of the world sets out to have such a collection at all.—My idea was, that here every living thing was provided for, in the way best suited to its nature and habits, and that the refinement of civilization had here restored a garden of Eden, where all the animal kingdom had regained a happy home. This is not quite the case; though, I believe, the creatures are as comfortable as could he expected, and there are certainly a good many strange beasts here. The hippopotamus ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... VOICE. She loves you so much she would endure even this to become your comrade as well as wife, to fit herself that she may take her place beside you in your world, serene and assured, to become the woman you can revere for her intellect and refinement. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... now he wants to construct. His object is not merely to do away with a positive faith and suppress social inequality, to proscribe revealed dogmas, hereditary beliefs, an established cult, the supremacy of rank and superiority of fortunes, wealth, leisure, refinement and elegance, but he wants, in addition to all this, to re-fashion the citizen. He wants to create new sentiments, impose natural religion on the individual, civic education, uniform ways and habits, Jacobin conduct, Spartan virtue; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... that the civilization of a community is measured by the amount of soap that it consumes, and it is almost the same thing to say that the refinement of a household is measured by the amount of water it uses. The poorer a family, the greater struggle it is to keep up the appearance of cleanliness, and no surer sign of rapid progress on a downhill road can be ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... enthusiastically asserts, "the most essentially a building people of all those we are acquainted with, and the most generally successful in all that they attempted in this way. The Greeks, it is true, surpassed them in refinement and beauty of detail, and in the class of sculpture with which they ornamented their buildings, while the Gothic architects far excelled them in constructive cleverness; but with these exceptions, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... eyes blazing. "You are a coward!" she cried passionately. "You would not have dared to do that to a man who could hit you back. You forced him to tell you and then struck him for doing it! If this is your culture and refinement, I despise it! I am going to be a Christian, ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... athletes, since you disdained the gladiators? in which even Pompey himself confesses that he lost his trouble and his pains. There remain the two wild-beast hunts, lasting five days, magnificent—nobody denies it—and yet, what pleasure can it be to a man of refinement, when either a weak man is torn by an extremely powerful animal, or a splendid animal is transfixed by a hunting spear? Things which, after all, if worth seeing, you have often seen before; nor did I, who was present at the games, see anything the least new. ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the appearance of being "well-groomed." It is a minor matter to add to habits of personal cleanliness, which every man and woman of refinement adheres to with scrupulous conscientiousness, that attention to the little details and finishing touches of dressing, which give the impression conveyed in that graphic expression "well-groomed." The niceties of life are always matters of small care ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... the nervous organization loses in the power of resistance as the result of higher civilization and of artificial refinement, it becomes imperatively necessary for the physician to guard her from the dangers of excessive ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... collect out of our dramatists from Elizabeth to Charles I. proofs of the manners of the times. One striking symptom of general coarseness of manners, which may co-exist with great refinement of morals, as, alas! vice versa, is to be seen in the very frequent allusions to the olfactories with their most disgusting stimulants, and these, too, in the conversation of virtuous ladies. This would not appear so strange to one who had been on terms of familiarity ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... for Saint Ives (Cornwall). His mother, Lady Reed, was the youngest daughter of Mr Edward Baines, Member of Parliament for Leeds. She was a lady of saintly life, of infinite gentleness and sweetness of heart, with extraordinary strength and refinement of mind, reverenced and loved by her sons and daughters, and by none more than by Talbot Reed, who bore a strong resemblance to her alike in ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... Carinthia washed him clean of the grimy district where his waxen sister had developed her stubborn insensibility;—resembling craziness, every perversion of the refinement demanded by young Englishmen of their ladies; and it pacified him with the belief that she was now at rest, the disturbed history of their father and mother at rest as well; his conscience in relation to the marriage likewise at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... charming, bright, anxious face he looked at Florence. It so happened that at that moment Florence had raised her own dark eyes and fixed them on him. The suffering she had lately lived through had added refinement to her face, and the baronet caught himself looking at ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... instinctiveness which characterised Antoine's; he meant to cultivate and gratify them honourably and openly. In his plump person of medium height, in his long pale face, in which the features derived from his father had acquired some of the maternal refinement, one could already detect signs of sly and crafty ambition and insatiable desire, with the hardness of heart and envious hatred of a peasant's son whom his mother's means and nervous temperament had turned into a ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... mutable and wavering as in modern Ages, was provided for; whether by the immediate Care of Parents, or essential Attention of Guardians, by the Laws of the Land; in order that Gentlemen should, to the Antiquity of Birth and Possession, add the important Dignity of Learning, and social Refinement of Arts: Since a Man at the Head of an original Estate, who should want the necessary Cultivation of Letters, was considered only as a Peasant in Disguise, and not more respected than a Hewer of ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... has so far lost and gained, in being transplanted from Europe to the New England soil and climate, is well illustrated by the writings of Emerson. There is greater refinement and sublimation of thought, greater clearness and sharpness of outline, greater audacity of statement, but, on the other hand, there is a loss of bulk, of unction, of adipose tissue, and shall ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... hands, was recovered by Mohan Chandra, who held it for sixteen months. Harsha Dev’ could no longer suffer this, but attacked his enemy, and, having taken him and his son prisoners, he put them both to death. In this he vented his hatred on the father by a barbarous refinement of cruelty. Under pretence of not shedding royal blood, he kept his unfortunate rival without food, and daily beat him, until he expired. It is said that he suffered for seventeen days, but this seems incredible. The Brahman then placed on the throne ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... aristocracy of sex, imposes upon the women of this nation a more absolute and cruel depotism than monarchy; in that, woman finds a political master in her father, husband, brother, son. The aristocracies of the old world are based upon birth, wealth, refinement, education, nobility, brave deeds of chivalry; in this nation, on sex alone; exalting brute force above moral power, vice above virtue, ignorance above education, and the son above the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... well fitted for a life in the wilderness. The other, Harry Crawford, though much older, looked at the first glance still less fitted for roughing it. Not that he wanted breadth of shoulders, strong muscles, or stout limbs; but that his countenance betokened intellect and refinement, rather than firmness, resolution, and the other qualities requisite for a person who has to go through the hardships of a ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... heart; at all events, to do it bunglingly would be ill-bred. I will not express my sentiments on smoking as a custom for the sex. I have recollections of beauteous lips profaned. Nevertheless, even in this I have seen a lady show her prettiness and refinement, barely touching the straw on her lips, as it were kissing it gently and taking it away. When a gentleman asks a lady for a light, she always removes the cigar from ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... conversation, the more significant and agreeable she found it. They who had painted the great Minister's portrait had not understood this countenance nor the character of the head. There was in it a certain squareness, but at the same time refinement. The complexion was fresh and delicate, the forehead magnificent, open, with ample space for both broad and elevated ideas; clear, lively, and penetrating was the glance of the light blue eye; the nose and mouth, as well as the shape of the face, not unlike ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... called upon Annie during the week, with excuses for her delay and for coming alone. She seemed to have intentions of being polite; but she constantly betrayed her want of interest in Annie, and disappointed an expectation of refinement which her physical delicacy awakened. She asked her how she ever came to take up the Social Union, and answered for her that of course it had the attraction of the theatricals, and went on to talk of her sister's part in them. The relation ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... occasional degradation; but the simplicity of this new school seems intended to ensure it. Their simplicity does not consist, by any means, in the rejection of glaring or superfluous ornament—in the substitution of elegance to splendour, or in that refinement of art which seeks concealment in its own perfection. It consists, on the contrary, in a very great degree, in the positive and bona fide rejection of art altogether, and in the bold use of those rude and negligent expressions, which would be banished by a little discrimination. One of their ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... appearance. Lord Chetwynde was of about the medium size, with slight figure, and pale, aristocratic face. His hair was silver-white, his features were delicately chiseled, but wore habitually a sad and anxious expression. His whole physique betokened a nature of extreme refinement and sensibility, rather than force or strength of character. His companion, General Pomeroy, was a man of different stamp. He was tall, with a high receding brow, hair longer than is common with soldiers; thin lips, which spoke of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... form of decorative stitches followed the lines of weaving. Simple as was its evolution, and its preliminary use, cross-stitch has a past which entitles it to reverence. With many races it has remained a habitual form of expression, and, as in Moorish and Algerian work, is carried to a refinement of beauty which would seem beyond so simple a method. It has given form to a lasting style of design, to geometrical borders, which have survived races and periods of history, and still remain an underlying part of the world ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... the neck of the elder man, a rather peculiar locket, containing a portrait painted on ivory. Keith was a long time opening this, the spring being very ingeniously concealed, but upon finally succeeding, he looked upon the features of a woman of middle age, a strong mature face of marked refinement, exceedingly attractive still, with smiling dark eyes, and a perfect wealth of reddish brown hair. He held the locket open in his hands for several minutes, wondering who she could be, and what possible connection she could have held with the dead. Something about ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... silent, he could not but admit the truth of the man's words and reflect upon the misery of such a life would naturally bring to a man of education and refinement like this one. "You might escape, go to some other state, and begin life anew," he at last suggested. "After what you have done for us, and believing you innocent as we now do, we should do all we could to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... get from his toys a bare suggestion of the object, and not a lifelike representation that will be of interest to the critical adult. Refinement of finish and realistic representation are entirely wasted on the child. A massive wooden dog or bird is better than a furry or feathery one. It is enough of a dog or bird, so far as the child is concerned, and if it can stand rough handling, so much the better. ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... himself, for he knew that this girl whom he had won was, by virtue of her beauty and refinement, qualified to fill the highest place in that vague sphere which went by ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice |
