"Refinement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assembled at the chateau, and danced in the barn or the court-yard, according to the season. The ladies of the house joined in the festivity, and that without any airs of condescension or of mockery; for, in their own life, there was little splendour or luxurious refinement. They travelled on horseback, or in heavy carriages drawn by oxen; and had little other amusement than in the care of their dependants, and the familiar intercourse of neighbours among whom there was no ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... Power that gives us the forms of men commands us to maintain the rights of men. And never yet was this truth dismissed from the human heart—never in any time, in any age—never in any clime, where rude man ever had any social feeling, or where corrupt refinement had subdued all feelings,—never was this one unextinguishable truth destroyed from the heart of man, placed, as it is, in the core and centre of it by his Maker, that man was not made the property of man; that human power ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... march. A day or so after arriving at Bolivar the word came to me in some way, I think from Enoch Wallace, that our first lieutenant, Dan Keeley, had spoken disapprovingly of my conduct in that regard. He was a young man, about twenty-five years old, of education and refinement, and all things considered, the best company officer we had. I was much attached to him, and I know that he liked me. Well, I learned that he had said, in substance, that a non-commissioned officer should set a good example to the men in all things, and that he hadn't expected ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... fellow-men; banished Priests and Bishops came back to their flocks; heathen temples were converted into Churches, and new Churches were built with great splendour. The vast resources of Roman wealth and refinement were employed to render the Worship of Almighty God costly and magnificent, and the ritual of the Church was probably more fully developed and brought more into harmony with the prophetic vision of St. John than ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... nurse imported from France. Nor did the Greeks merely ignore the Latin language. They refused to be romanized in any other respect. Even the Roman amusements tended to disgust them, and it is to the credit of his superior refinement that the average Greek was repelled by those brutal exhibitions of gladiatorial bloodshed and slaughter over ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... sole answer these words called forth did not take from the refinement of the young widow's expression, but rather added to it; Violet watched it in its ebb and flow and, seriously affected by it (why, she did not know, for Mrs. Hammond had made no other appeal either by look or ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... that marvellous bold touch of his, that had the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate, comes only from strength. He was ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... were gifted with the moral beauty which reacts upon the physical form, and, no less than work and vigils, overlays a youthful face with a shade of divine gold; purity of life and the fire of thought had brought refinement and regularity into features somewhat pinched and rugged. The poet's amplitude of brow was a striking characteristic common to them all; the bright, sparkling eyes told of cleanliness of life. The hardships ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... that sometimes the desire of accuracy will urge me to superfluities, and sometimes the fear of prolixity betray me to omissions; that in the extent of such variety, I shall be often bewildered, and, in the mazes of such intricacy, be frequently entangled; that in one part refinement will be subtilized beyond exactness, and evidence dilated in another beyond perspicuity. Yet I do not despair of approbation from those who, knowing the uncertainty of conjecture, the scantiness of knowledge, the fallibility of memory, and the unsteadiness of attention, can compare the causes ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... it is. The way I talk is the way Kraill and his school talk. Of course, there's something in it. There would be a great deal in it if we were only aiming at making bodies. All this tricking out—refinement—it may produce the people who tower over others—like the Greeks with their 'pure beauty' ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... too tight at the corners; the mouth also, brilliantly red and most delicately designed, is a little too tight, the lips strained a trifle over the teeth. Tight eyelids and tight lips give a strange refinement, and, at the same time, an air of mystery, a somewhat sinister seductiveness; they seem to take, but not to give. The mouth with a kind of childish pout, looks as if it could bite or suck like a leech. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... on, whether business affairs, or a debauch, or repentance thereof, he gives himself entirely to the impression of the moment. Like other men of his class, moreover, he lives a life which is a singular mixture of refinement and savagery. He spends his time in drinking and working, as much for himself as for his only son, Thomas, whose mother died in giving birth to him. The child grows up under the care of his aunt and shows a serious disposition toward study. Gradually, he feels the motives that make men act, and ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... kinds. The green, fresh trees wave against a summer sky, and the work is full of tender, sensitive elegance and love. It shows to me an entirely new side of Titian in its extreme delicacy and sweetness. Nobody can ever speak of a "want of refinement" in Titian, if they thought so before, after seeing these pictures. Then there is the Herodias, the same as the girl in Dresden who holds up the casket,—wonderfully delicate and beautiful; and several other portraits and pictures, which I cannot tell you of, even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... of the tendency to decadence from in-breeding of those types of humans which have the best advantages at least of education and refinement, whether or not those advantages are embraced. We refer to Royalty. We need only mention the illustrious example of Cleopatra to prove this. Cleopatra was the offspring of a marriage between a ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... are now actually in this state to your vague historical or traditionary records; and their gradual progress or improvement from this early state of society to that of the highest state of civilisation or refinement may, I think, be easily deduced from the exertions of reason assisted by the influence of the moral powers and of physical circumstances. Accident, I conceive, must have had some influence in laying the foundations of certain arts; and a climate in which labour was not too oppressive, ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... possession of a room of my own. I wanted badly to be able to shut myself in with my luggage; to secure privacy, and be able to think, without the distracting consciousness of my small capital melting away from me at an unnecessary and alarmingly rapid pace. Anything equivalent to the comparative refinement, quietness, cleanliness, and spacious outlook of my North Shore quarters was evidently quite out of the question; and would have been, as a matter of fact, even at double their cost ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... of territory, which was to be fought, but a struggle between intellect and brute power, between civilization and barbarism, the inevitable companion of the Russian hordes. Prussia represented Germany, and on her waving banner she bore the civilization, refinement, science, and poetry of Germany. Her opponent was no longer the German brother, sprung from the same stock; it was the Austrian, who had called in the assistance of foreign barbarians, and who was fighting the Germans, the Prussians, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... wife? Lies!" he broke out. "They are lies! There are not, so help me God! four words of truth in your intolerable libel! You are a man; you are old, and might be the girl's father; you are a gentleman; you are a scholar, and have learned refinement; and you rake together all this vulgar scandal, and propose to print it in a public book! Such is your chivalry! But, thank God, sir, she has still a husband. You say, sir, in that paper in your hand, that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Boers, supposed to number about two thousand men, came down in the night, bringing with them several heavy guns, and with the early morning opened a brisk fire upon the camp. The surprise was complete. But the refinement of the Boer tactics lay in the fact that they had a surprise within a surprise—and it was the second which was the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to say the English people were comparatively rude and uncivilised. And yet it is extraordinary to how few excesses it gave rise, even in that day, when men's minds were not enlightened, or their passions moderated, by the influence of education and refinement. That some excesses were committed through its means, in the remoter parts of the country, and that it was discontinued in those places, in consequence, cannot be denied: but generally speaking, there is no proof whatever on record, of its having had any tendency ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... drew into it nearly all the various powers of human refinement, and the inspiring influence of the first school in art having centered in Rome gave it superiority, till the Constable Bourbon, by sacking that city, obliged the fine arts to fly from their place, like doves from the vultures: they never re-appeared at Rome but with ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... myself were much of an age, and my regulation of expenditures in the stables had brought us constantly together. So a close friendship had resulted, valued greatly on my side, for I had soon come to know that Abdul was a man of refinement and learning such as I had never before encountered in any man of so humble a calling. And despite the fact that he was a Moslem and I a Hindu, he had chosen me as his intimate friend, his only confidant. Thus had it come about ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... arrival at their island, we were received by our hosts, who were very wealthy merchants, as if we had been old friends. The apartment, a kind of parlor into which we were ushered, not only evinced cultivation and refinement, but great elegance; a large divan extended around the hall, the inlaid floor of which was covered with artistically woven mats. Our hosts were six men who were associated in the same trade. I would have been somewhat embarrassed had not one of them who spoke French conversed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... human nature to be. Besides, there is no standard English pronunciation any more than there is an American one: in England every county has its catchwords, just as no doubt every state in the Union has. I cannot believe that the pioneer American, for example, can spare time to learn that last refinement of modern speech, the exquisite diphthong, a farfetched combination of the French eu and the English e, with which a New Yorker pronounces such words as world, bird &c. I have spent months without success in trying to achieve ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... actually lessened our capacity to enjoy, in comparison with theirs. Their simple tastes and homely joys amid their rude surroundings were probably more productive of positive pleasure and real happiness, than all the refinement and culture ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... stroking the head of Demon, his great Irish deerhound; but at other times would tease him to a wrath which touched the verge of dangerous. He was fond of practical jokes, and would not hesitate to indulge himself even in such as were incompatible with any genuine refinement: the sort had been in vogue in his merrier days, and Lord Lossie had ever been one of the most fertile in inventing, and loudest in enjoying them. For the rest, if he was easily enraged, he was readily appeased; could drink a great deal, but was no drunkard; and held as his creed that a God ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... humanity, entitled by the bishop 'his pious and honourable brethren,' he must, on mixing at this moment with the assemblage, have either doubted the truth of the episcopal appellation, or have given the citizens credit for that refinement of intrinsic worth which is of too elevated a nature to influence the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... 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
... common table, or as she passed the borders of the hay-field, where he and Henry were at work: but his words to her were always few and constrained. What was there in his eyes that haunted her? Not merely a most reverent admiration of her pure womanly refinement, although she read that also; not a fear of disparagement, such as his awkward speech implied, but something which seemed to seek agonizingly for another language than that of the lips,—something ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... emigrate, I think—I say, emigrate by all means, for you will have a better chance of leading a healthy, happy, and fairly comfortable life. But you must throw all ideas of gentility to the winds, banish the thought of refinement, and prepare for a rough, hard struggle, and it may be a long one, too. You may please yourselves with the prospect of competence, comfort, and even luxury in the distance, but you must look at it through a lengthy vista of real ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... pretty and quite well dressed, these two maidens. As to their being without a male escort, I rather admired their sturdy independence. Everything about them bespoke refinement, and yet the very next remark from the girl called Ruby sent a shiver through my sensitive frame, and caused my hastily formed but favorable opinion of the pair to ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... calculated to preserve a young man from the contamination of low pleasures and pursuits, than frequent intercourse with the more refined and virtuous of the other sex. Besides, without such society his manners can never acquire the true polish of a gentleman,—general character, dignity, and refinement;—nor his mind and heart the truest and noblest sentiments of a man. Make it an object then, I again say, to spend some portion of every week of your life in the company of intelligent and virtuous ladies. At all events, flee solitude, and especially the exclusive society of your own ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... banishment indeed. The tract of country beyond Jordan was known as Perea, and was very sparsely populated. There were some tracts of fertile country, dotted by a few scattered villages, but no one of repute lived there; and the refinement, religious advantages, and social life of the metropolis, were altogether absent. Perea was to Jerusalem what the Highlands, a century ago, were to Edinburgh. There our Lord spent the last few months of ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... house of one of her school friends, hence, we sat alone together in the cool drawing-room—a room which was essentially that of a woman of taste and refinement. ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... Spanish rancho situated in a beautiful valley about ten miles from Santa Fe and was generally conceded to be the most attractive estate in Chihuahua, though not the largest and most valuable; Don Felipe Ramirez possessed that. Both house and garden were a living monument to Dick's natural refinement and good taste. There were no jarring notes or lavish, tawdry display, the pitfalls into which the parvenue and petit bourgeois invariably fall. This was his only hobby, and just why he indulged it, he himself would have found it ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... household-fairy sort of sight, it was true, but not of the wildly exciting kind—he found a vision, as it seemed to him, of the most ethereal beauty—a woman whose every movement was full of grace, whose exquisitely modulated voice expressed refinement as clearly as her delicately moulded features; whose whole being seemed to exhale a sort of perfume of culture, as if she were in herself the most perfect product ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... not to love the other; and the man, woman, or child, who affects to under-value beauty, only proclaims the want in their own mental constitution. To be without an eye for beauty, is as to be without an ear for music, to be wanting in the refinement of the higher and more ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... one day said to him: "You have great ability; I believe you have genius. What you need now is the refinement of association. Seek companionship among men of superior intellect and character. Refine yourself and your work. Never affiliate ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... shall be sufficiently civilized to abolish duels and dismiss her standing army, she may have an opportunity of reaching the front rank in civilization and progress. Even at present France has many elements of the highest civilization in courtesy and refinement of manners, artistic skill, scientific progress and advancing wealth. The French might give some valuable lessons to Americans, especially in journalism. Mrs. J. C. Croly (Jennie June) in her recent address to the Women's Press Association in Boston, gave a pungent criticism on American journalism ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... association of prisoners with shameful crime and disgrace, the new-comer recoiled from this company. But the crowning unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all at once rising to receive him, with every refinement of manner known to the time, and with all the engaging graces and ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... calmness was attributable the fact that he lived till 1858, although when he was twenty the offices refused to insure his life for a year on any terms. Those who knew him best regarded him as a man of singular wisdom and refinement. He lived, till he came to London for the later education of his boys, in a small country house at Claybrook, near Lutterworth, and was proprietor of the 'Northampton Mercury,' one of the oldest papers in England, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... great wave of inspired thought.... We had valuable discussion on these points. All Monday morning in the woods again. Afternoon, out with the drawing party; I felt the evils of the want of conventional refinement, in the impudence with which one of the girls treated me. She has since thought of it with regret, I notice; and by every day's observation of me will see that she ought not to have done it. In the evening a husking in the barn ... a most picturesque scene.... I stayed and helped about half an hour, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... man presented as he stood there. Wrapped in a great-coat, with fur mittens in his hands; a long grey beard sweeping his breast; hair abundant and white, crowning a face of singular strength and refinement, he seemed the very embodiment of health and hearty cheer. No ascetic this, but a man in whose veins flowed the fire of youth, and whose eyes twinkled with quiet, honest laughter as they looked into his ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... man worth a hundred thousand francs a year ever a democrat? Consider me in future as an honest man who knows what refinement is, and who intends to love his wife," said Goupil; "and what's more, I shall prevent my clients from ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... 1910. Following close upon it comes the signal victory of California, where as never before were the friends and foes of woman's freedom so equally lined up. Wherever vice, corruption and cupidity held sway, there the vote for woman suffrage was weak. Wherever refinement, education, industry and self-respecting manhood and womanhood dwelt, there the vote in favor of women was strong. These are the battles in this war for justice which have been victorious. Others have been and are being fought at the present time ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... chord of 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, as you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... look at it with surprise, to think how much pains were thrown away to little purpose,—yet not altogether in vain if it taught me to see good in everything, and to know that there is nothing vulgar in Nature seen with the eye of science or of true art. Refinement creates beauty everywhere: it is the grossness of the spectator that discovers nothing but grossness in the object. Be this as it may, I spared no pains to do my best. If art was long, I thought that life was ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... art were imagination, insight, grace, intense emotion, and melancholy refinement. In Hamlet, Richelieu, Othello, Iago, Lear, Bertuccio, and Lucius Brutus they were conspicuously manifest. But the controlling attribute,—that which imparted individual character, colour and fascination to his acting,—was ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... the beautiful,—she is to make the beautiful, and preserve it; and she who makes and she who keeps the beautiful must be able to work, and to know how to work. Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings. If a true lady makes even a plate of toast, in arranging a petit souper for her invalid friend, she does it as a lady should. She does not cut blundering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... is a life of youth for the most part, for lodgers of Mr Sharnall's age are comparatively rare; it is a life of simple needs and simple tastes, for lodgings are not artistic, nor favourable to the development of any undue refinement; it is not a rich life, for men as a rule set up their own houses as soon as they are able to do so; it is a life of work and buoyant anticipation, where men are equipping for the struggle, and laying the foundations of fortune, or digging the pit of indigence. Such conditions beget and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... stayed in Boston, and had had time to teach their children grace and refinement and subtleties. Mine fought for their existence in a new country. And when men and women fight for existence ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... atmosphere of the Cathedral the noise and distractions of the modern city grate upon us; the return to the twentieth-century commonplace after the fourteenth-century refinement is too sudden, there being no intermediate stage between the one and the other, between the gloom of the great church and the glare and feverish hurry of a prosperous city. This being so, we cannot do better than seek ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... one-sidedness in matters of fancy and feeling, and by means of which the equipoise is again restored. The Italians were not, however, conscious of this, and Gozzi did not find any followers to carry his rude sketches to a higher degree of perfection. Instead of combining like him, only with greater refinement, the charms of wonderful poetry with exhilarating mirth; instead of comparing Gozzi with the foreign masters of the romantic drama, whom he resembles notwithstanding his great disparity, and from the unconscious affinity between them ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... dot whose outlines were blurred would show a certain sensuousness of character—strong passions and a want of restraint over the lower propensities; whereas, a dot whose edges were sharply defined would tell of refinement and a loathing against all ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... book is not only witty and humorous but fresh and original in style. It is admirably written. His prose is good,—which is moderate praise, striking a balance between the pros and cons of criticism. Prosit! To all holiday-makers who like quaintness and fun touched with pathos and refinement, I say again, buy and read In a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... early, and gave him a certain timidity with people. But he was inwardly sound and strong. Perhaps he had Katharine to thank for this, for in keeping his outward appearance always so neat and dainty, she might have unconsciously brought him up with a sort of inner purity and refinement. Thus it did not occur to him, since he was himself the cause of his own solitude, to seek, as he easily might have done, evil or at least lightminded distractions, to console himself for the fact that he was not of equal ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Court of Directors, where a favorable construction may be put, and some room is left for the interposition of the authority vested in ourselves,—but positive and decisive, admitting neither of refinement nor misconstruction. I should be happy, if in this instance a method could be devised of setting the act aside, which I should most willingly embrace; but, in my opinion, an opposition would be to incur ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a very young man. His large, thoughtful, well-opened gray eyes, and his habitual refinement and modesty of manner, gave a certain attraction to his personal appearance, of which it stood in some need. In stature he was little and lean; his hair had become prematurely thin over his broad forehead; there were hollows already in his cheeks, and marks on either side of his ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... embroidered with gold. In the middle stood a table covered with ornaments and rich trinkets lately arrived from Paris—for France already began to exercise the influence of its superior civilization and refinement over the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... wanting in refinement, which very few of the eighteenth century wits and authors possessed according to more modern notions; and she abounded in vanity, which, if not necessarily a baneful or unamiable quality, is a fruitful source of folly and peculiarly calculated to provoke censure or ridicule. In her, fortunately, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... And by an exquisite refinement in torture the possible father of several of his children not only dictated to the Queen perpetual outbreaks of frantic jealousy against her husband, but moved her to refuse with suspicion any food and drink offered her by his hands. The Concini's would even ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... age, and a large proportion were from 15 to perhaps 22 or 23. They had all the look of veterans, worn, stain'd, impassive, and a certain unbent, lounging gait, carrying in addition to their regular arms and knapsacks, frequently a frying-pan, broom, &c. They were all of pleasant physiognomy; no refinement, nor blanch'd with intellect, but as my eye pick'd them, moving along, rank by rank, there did not seem to be a single repulsive, brutal or markedly ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... spells is very apparent. But the teacher would make the pupil believe that the successful result would greatly depend on the color and kind of the fur or feathers employed. It is curious to observe how, in the over-refinement of "sport" among gentlemen, the idea that this or that is "good form" and "the correct thing," which must be done, has had the effect of establishing much which is mere fetich. A fox in England and a bear in Canada must be killed in a certain way ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... hat we unconsciously decide upon those colors and outlines which are an outward expression of ourselves. A hat, as well as any article of clothing, may express many things—dejection, happiness, decision, indecision, gayety, dignity, graciousness, a trained or an untrained mind, forethought, refinement, generosity, cruelty, or recklessness. How often we hear some one say, "That hat looks just like Mrs. Blank!" Clothing of any kind is an index to the personality of the wearer. A friend once said in my presence to a saleswoman who was trying to sell her a hat, "But I do not feel like that hat!" ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... Mr. Bennett's volume, which is from himself as well as from me, I am sure you will like; most thoroughly would like each other if ever you met. He has the poet's heart and the poet's mind, large, truthful, generous, and full of true refinement, delightful as a companion, and invaluable ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... makes me believe that a high-bred English lady is the most complete of all Heaven's subjects in this world. In whom else do you see so much grace, and so much virtue; so much faith, and so much tenderness; with such a perfect refinement and chastity? And by high-bred ladies I don't mean duchesses and countesses. Be they ever so high in station, they can be but ladies, and no more. But almost every man who lives in the world has the happiness, let us hope, of counting a few such persons amongst his ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... claimed them for France. In one of these sallies his vehement gestures overturned a cabinet with a costly vase; but the story that he smashed the vase, as a sign of his power to crush the House of Austria, is a later refinement on the incident, about which Cobenzl merely reported to Vienna—"He behaved like a fool." Probably his dextrous disclosure of the severe terms which the Directory ordered him to extort was far more effective than this boisterous gasconnade. Finally, after threatening an immediate attack ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Empress Wo only used 36,500; so that one single block remained over and above, without being turned to any account. This was cast down the Ch'ing Keng peak. This stone, strange to say, after having undergone a process of refinement, attained a nature of efficiency, and could, by its innate powers, set itself into motion and was able to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... of the ablest French astronomers, Le Verrier, experienced in computing perturbations, was independently at work, knowing nothing about Adams. He applied to his calculations every possible refinement, and, considering the novelty of the problem, his calculation was one of the most brilliant in the records of astronomy. In criticism it has been said that these were exhibitions of skill rather than helps to a solution of the particular problem, and that, in claiming ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... was impossible to attend the education of a numerous school without proper assistants; and those assistants were not always the kind of people whose conversation and morals were exactly such as parents of delicacy and refinement would wish a daughter to copy. Among the teachers at Madame Du Pont's school, was Mademoiselle La Rue, who added to a pleasing person and insinuating address, a liberal education and the manners of a gentlewoman. She ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... Her toilet, fresh and elegant, rich and clinging, harmonizing with the velvet drapings and melting lights of the room, seemed to invest her with an air of breeding, gave her an outward show of refinement. Yet she betrayed certain signs of doubtful comfort, as if all this magnificence had been borrowed ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... which your ladyship hath given of my Harry fills my heart with warmest gratitude. He is all indeed a mother may wish. A year in Europe will have given him a polish and refinement which he could not acquire in our homely Virginia. Mr. Stack, one of our invaluable ministers in Richmond, hath a letter from Mr. Ward—my darlings' tutor of early days—who knows my Lady Warrington and her excellent family, and saith that my Harry has lived ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with the poetic past of Europe, particularly in its romance. The same serenity of disposition that marked Irving and Bryant characterized his life; and his art, more varied than Bryant's or Irving's, has the same refinement, being simple and so limpid as to deceive the reader into an oblivion of its quality and sometimes into an unwitting disparagement of what seems so plain and natural as to be commonplace. In Longfellow, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... even she could wish, came some of them so seldom, and some of them never, to hear him at the Rixonite church. They ought, she said, to have been just suited by his preaching, which inculcated with the peculiar grace of his gentle, poetic nature a refinement of the mystical theology of the founder. The Rev. Adoniram Rixon, who had seventy years before formulated his conception of the religious life as a patient waiting upon the divine will, with a constant reference ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... be a mistake to think that the friends of God in this life are either exempted from pain and sorrow, or made insensible to them, either in themselves or in others. Of these and other evils they are truly more keenly aware than worldly men, if for no other reason than because of the superior refinement of their nature and the spiritual outlook of their vision. It is sin, after all, that hardens while it weakens. Sin closes the heart to love, it renders its victims cold, unsympathetic and selfish; whereas the gifts of grace and holiness are tenderness, ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... spoilt him, sir; I have spoilt him. Look here, my dear sir; I shall very much regret the day when we have to part, for my own sake and for my nephew's, for since he has had the advantage of your son's companionship I have been in hopes that he would acquire something of his refinement and polish, and that it might lead in time to his achieving to somewhat of the carriage of a gentleman. I regret to say that so far he is as rough and boorish as ever. Still, in the hope that every one of his opportunities may not be thrown away, I shall be ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... had said that my sympathies were with the Invisible Emperor, I might have been surprised into an acknowledgment," she answered. "After all, he does stand for that aristocracy that has disappeared from the modern world, does he not? For refinement of manners, for beauty of life, for all those things men ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... changelessness reigned in that drawing-room—that pretty drawing-room where mother and daughter sat in sweet naturalness, removed from the grossness and meanness of life as he knew it. Neither illicit whispering nor affectation of reserve, only the charm of strict behaviour; unreal and strange was the refinement, material and mental, in which they lived. And for a time the charm sufficed; desire was at rest. But she had been to see him, however at variance such a visit, such event seemed with her present demeanour. And she must come again! In increasing restlessness he conned all the narrow chances of ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... MELISSA'S ideas of refinement met with a great shock. She concluded that the Indians' acquaintance with soap and water must be extremely limited, and thought that the distribution amongst them of several boxes of COLGATE'S best would ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... hoping to bring about his downfall. Queen Anne of Austria, once the beautiful, helpless heroine, is now the ailing, sometimes imperial, matriarch of the royal household, tortured by the son she was forced to forsake. In other words, they are human. The refinement of the four principles, as age steals upon them, adds an element that is somehow lacking from the former books. They now hail from different spheres, which lends richness to their portrayal. Aramis is the man of God, with a scheme always in the works. Athos is the dignified, ...
— Dumas Commentary • John Bursey
... and dirt generally. Huge rough castings of steel and iron seemed gross and ugly to him, and the completed product seemed coarse and unfinished. The only improvements he could think of were improvements in beauty of line, in refinement of the design, in added ornamentation, and other enhancements of the physical appearance of the product. In these he took some interest, but he had the good sense to know that no change of this kind would accomplish what they wished in the matter of ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... little time and experience at their disposal to grow. A garden might be made beautiful with sweet-peas alone, and, with hardly any labour, except the sweet labour of picking to prolong the bloom, be turned into a fairy bower of delicacy and refinement. Yet the Frau Inspector not only had never heard of them, but, on my showing her a bunch, was not in the least impressed, and led me in her garden to a number of those exceedingly vulgar red herbaceous peonies growing among her currant bushes, ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the author has brought the habits of a watchful observer, the candor of a conscientious narrator, and the refinement of a writer who respects her subject. Hence she presents a true, vivid and interesting picture of court life in Germany and Austria. If such merely sensational, and too often fictitious, unsavory tales as crowd the so-called court narratives expressly concocted for the "society" ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... when we are all a little childish I hope, surprise is the flavor of our keenest joys. We all remember the thrill with which we once heard, behind some closed door, the rustle and crackle of paper parcels being tied up. We knew that we were going to be surprised—a delicious refinement and ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... listen, Ramsey, and let me speak now. What I meant was that we shouldn't be quite so much distressed by your being seen with a girl who dressed in better taste and seemed to have some notion of refinement, though of course it's only natural she wouldn't, with a father who is just a sort of ward politician, I understand, and a mother we don't know, and of course shouldn't care to. But, oh, Ramsey! if you had to make yourself so conspicuous why couldn't you ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... culture, was not vengeful, and did not use his power to the detriment or destruction of others. There were moments when he might have destroyed even Tigellinus, but he preferred to ridicule him, and expose his vulgarity and want of refinement. In Rome the Senate drew breath, for no death sentence had been issued for a month and a half. It is true that in Antium and the city people told wonders of the refinement which the profligacy of Caesar and his favorite had reached, but every one preferred a refined Caesar to one brutalized ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... that Widow Langford possessed a shrewdness and penetration of character, which we sometimes find in persons of her class, but which was in her case so combined, from long residence in Mr. Hamilton's family, with a delicacy and refinement, that she generally kept her remarks very much more secret than persons in her sphere of life usually do. It was fortunate for our poor Emmeline that it was so, for the widow had chanced to be an unseen witness of Arthur's impassioned farewell. ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... London. A first-class harim at Constantinople is one thing, at Damascus one of the same rank is another, while those of the middle and lower classes are different still. As a rule I met with nothing but courtesy in the harims, and much hospitality, cordiality, and refinement. I only twice met with bad manners, and that was in a middle-class harim. Twice only the conversation displeased me, and that was amongst the lower class. One of the first harims I visited in Damascus was that of the famous Abd el Kadir (of whom more anon), which of course was one ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... agglomeration of mud huts with thatched roofs, but of stately buildings of solid masonry, possessing such architectural adornments as towers, pinnacles, and domes, evidencing on the part of the inhabitants a condition of high civilisation and refinement. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... it to good account was so self-evident. He learned still further, that white men and women of social standing and high culture were willing to make personal self-sacrifices on behalf of the coloured race by becoming their teachers and their helpers. From such persons of culture and refinement he even learned the dignity of labour. He learned from their everyday example that education did not merely mean settling down into a more genteel life, but meant larger responsibilities and harder work. In other words, he came to see that the sharpening ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and a comic journal can hardly help letting some dreary attempts at mirth slip into its columns. We could point out paragraphs in this serial which are most chaotic and unmeaning, and some, indeed, which fall below its own excellent standard of refinement; but we do not remember ever to have met in its pages a double-entendre or a foulness of speech. We must advise its conductor (who, we may say in passing, is a gentleman whose writings have not infrequently appeared ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... of David to his fellows, who, in their turn, listened to the project with that sort of satisfaction that their untamed spirits might be expected to find in such a refinement in cruelty. They drew back a little from the entrance and motioned to the supposed conjurer to enter. But the bear, instead of obeying, maintained the seat it had ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... had shot. He was evidently an Englishman, and not long from Europe, by the bloom of the skin, which was perceptible in spite of the superficial tan. His face was at the moment flushed with heat; but the clear blue eyes and delicate features lost none of their sensitive refinement. ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... to buy their productions, and stimulate their genius. Art was cultivated more rapidly in the Asiatic colonies than in the mother country, both on account of their wealth, and the objects of interest around them. The Ionian cities, especially, were distinguished for luxury and refinement. Corinth took the lead in the early patronage of art, as the most wealthy and luxurious of the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... success; the same treatment produces differing results. There can be little doubt that of a thousand ten-year-olds taken at random, some will be four times as energetic, industrious, quick, courageous, or honest as others, or will possess four times as much refinement, knowledge of arithmetic, power of self-control, sympathy, or the like. It has been found that among children of the same age and, in essential respects, of the same home training and school advantages, some do in the same time six times as much, or do the same amount ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... foreign aids by being sufficiently elevated to procure all articles for subsistence in the productions of the spot, under a regimen of healthful labor and recreation; with benignity towards all creatures, human and inferior; with beauty and refinement in all economies; and the purest ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... surprise, on dragging the man back to the carriage, to find, instead of the ruffianly assassin I expected, a gentleman as far as could be judged from face and manner. Fine eyes, white hands, careful speech, all the signs of refinement and the dress of a man ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... it attained by the increase or refinement of her love for Man, or for any object whatever, or for all objects ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... which is sometimes called slang. It was the first specimen of a young London dandy that Laura had seen or heard: for she had been but a chit at the time of Mr. Foker's introduction at Fairoaks, nor indeed was that ingenuous gentleman much more than a boy, and his refinement was only that of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... large halls. This feature is no doubt due to the ever present danger of earthquakes. Many reliefs, particularly those of Panataran, show the influence of a style which is not Indian and may be termed, though not very correctly, Polynesian. The great merit of Javanese sculpture lies in the refinement and beauty of the faces. Among figures executed in India it would be hard to find anything equal in purity and delicacy to the Avalokita of Mendut, the Manjusri now in the Berlin Museum or the Prajnaparamita now ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... during its sessions: but that he would rather die at the head of his high-spirited Frenchmen than make himself ridiculous before England. Never was the writer's statecraft unfolded to greater daring. Long consultations were held with the King of Saxony, a man of gentleness and refinement, who was completely won by Napoleon's almost filial attentions, and Bubna was often kept at the council-table until after midnight. Eugene, however, was instantly despatched to raise a new army in Italy, with orders not to ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... "The refinement of your mind has been so evidently proved by every word and action ever since I had the first pleasure of knowing you, that I thought it impossible my good opinion of Horatio could have been heightened to any additional proof of merit. This very thought was ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... Henry Maxwell so far forgotten himself in a prayer as to make a mistake of that sort? He knew that he had often taken as much pride in the diction and delivery of his prayers as of his sermons. Was it possible he now so abhorred the elegant refinement of a formal public petition that he purposely chose to rebuke himself for his previous precise manner of prayer? It is more likely that he had no thought of all that. His great longing to voice the needs ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... their pitiless drivers urge them on by prodding the raw sores with sharpened sticks, and by belaboring them unceasingly with an instrument of torture in the shape of whips with six inches of ordinary trace-chain for a lash. As if the noble army of Persian donkey drivers were not satisfied with the refinement of physical cruelty to which they have attained, they add insult to injury by talking constantly to their donkeys while driving them along, and accusing them of all the crimes in the calendar and of every kind of disreputable ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens |
