"Refine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... At the same moment, the elder artists having done all that is possible in realizing the national conceptions of the gods, the younger ones, forbidden to change the scheme of existing representations, and incapable of doing anything better in that kind, betake themselves to refine and decorate the old ideas with more attractive skill. Their aims are thus more and more limited to manual dexterity, and their fancy paralyzed. Also in the course of centuries, the methods of every art continually improving, and being made ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... artist err in aiming, according to his nature or to the purity and elevation of his genius, to approach in his portraitures such ideals as this great typical exemplar of our humanity, whose influence has for eighteen centuries been stealing down into the hearts and souls of men to elevate and refine, and who is now, and who is more and more becoming, the paramount factor in individual character, and in social and political relations? Or can such ideals, presented before us, fail to arouse in some degree the ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... imagine than from impure to become pure? May I not forget that I am impure and vicious! May I not cease to love purity! May I go to my slumbers as expecting to arise to a new and more perfect day! May I so live and refine my life as fitting myself for a society ever higher than ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... would refine her; prune away all that reminded him of her wild growth, so that it might no longer humiliate him to think to what a companion he had sunk. How happy they would be! Of course the world would censure him if it knew, but the world was stupid and prosaic, and measured all things ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... silence, and reserve, which misses in their teens are apt to take for an amiable modesty; and, upon others, a considerable portion of that flippancy, which youth sometimes confounds with wit, Mistress Margaret had much real shrewdness and judgment, which wanted only opportunities of observation to refine it—a lively, good-humoured, playful disposition, and an excellent heart. Her acquired follies were much increased by reading plays and romances, to which she devoted a great deal of her time, and from which she adopted ideas as different as possible from those which ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... lilly-white hand in mine, Let its velvet touch on my horny palm, Comfort, encourage, embolden, refine,— This grosser clay, ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs Morning Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism is to disseminate truth; to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and holier, and happier; and yet this blackhearted scoundrel degrades his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... such as mine Such feelings must thy heart refine As seldom mortal mind gives birth, 'Tis love, without a stain of earth, ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... nature, and try to see what are the real notes, what the really component colors, of any color contrast or light contrast which you see. Purple shadows and yellow light re-enforcing each other you will find to exist constantly in nature. Refine your color perception, and you will be able to get the result without the obviousness of the means which has brought down the condemnation on it. Closer study of the relations is the way to find the art ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... and patient and honest under oppression and wrong; that it has stirred in them a noble ambition to raise themselves in life; and taught them, at the same time, that the only safe and sure way of rising is to fear God and keep his commandments; and so has really done more to civilize and refine them—to make them truly civilized men and gentlemen, and not vulgar savages—than if they had known a smattering of a dozen sciences. I say that the Bible is the book which civilizes and refines, and ennobles rich and poor, ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... brought before him. Nothing assists him so much as having the moral disposition developed rather than the intellectual after his work; anything that touches his feelings is good, and puts new life into him; therefore I want modern pictures, if possible, of that class which would ennoble and refine by their subjects. I should like prints of all times, engravings of all times; those would interest him with their variety of means and subject; and natural history of three kinds, namely, shells, birds, and plants; not minerals, because a workman cannot study mineralogy ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the same roots; and although the canes from old stools, as they are called, produce less sugar than those of the first year's planting, the juice is clearer, and requires far less trouble to prepare and refine. Before another year came round, the boys made a pair of wooden rollers of eighteen inches in diameter. These were covered with strips of hoop iron, nailed lengthways upon them at short intervals from each other, thereby obtaining a better grip upon the canes, and ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... wholly at the mercy of Lapierre. For somewhere behind that barrier of logs was the woman he loved. He shuddered at the thought. He knew Lapierre. Knew that the man's white blood and his education, instead of civilizing, had served to heighten and to refine the barbaric cruelty and savagery of his heart. He knew that Lapierre would stop at nothing to gain an end. His heart chilled at the possibilities. He dreaded to act—yet he ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... countries of Europe and America, who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are preparing the esthetics of the future). It must be here admitted that there exists an altogether special manner of feeling, dependent on temperament at first, which many cultivate and refine as though it were a precious rarity. There lies the true source of their invention. Doubtless, to assert this pertinently, it would be necessary to establish the direct relations between their physical and psychical constitution and that of their ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... in the next chapter that, when we attempt to supply the poor with the necessities of life, our path is beset with difficulties. But when we give them those things which, though not necessary to life, yet refine {139} and elevate it, we can do them only unmixed good. Gifts of books, flowers, growing plants, pictures, and simple decorations, or, as in one instance known to me, the present of several rolls of light-colored wall-paper to ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... legitimate pride. I couldn't give the finest loyalty and comradeship I had to give to a man, have it returned disdainfully, and then furbish up the pieces and present it over again. If I can patch those same pieces and so polish and refine them that I can make them, in the old phrase, "as good as new," possibly in time—but, Linda, one thing is certain as the hills of morning. Never in my life will any man make any headway with me again with vague suggestions and innuendoes and hints. If ever any man wants to be anything in my life, ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... tried to tell what they had thought of each other from the first moment they met, and tried to make out that they neither had ever since had a thought that was not the other's; they believed this. The commonplaces of the passion ever since it began to refine itself from the earliest savage impulse, seemed to have occurred to them for the first time in the history of the race; they accused themselves each of not being worthy of the other; they desired to be very good, and to live for the ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... Austria and France have not introduced their civilization to him yet. But Bavaria and Austria and France are on their way. They are coming. They will rescue him; they will refine the vileness ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... will; Soothed our affections; and, with their delight, To gain our actions, bribed our appetite. 50 Now, who shall, with a greatness like thy own, Thy pulpit dignify, and grace thy gown? Who, with pathetic energy like thine, The head enlighten, and the heart refine? Learn'd were thy lectures, noble the design, The language Roman, and the action fine; The heads well ranged, the inferences clear, And strong and solid thy deductions were: Thou mark'd the boundaries out 'twixt right and wrong, And show'd the land-marks ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... with the people, provided always it was on the female side, was not only excusable, but expedient; and, finally, my uncle held that whereas a man is a rude, coarse, sensual animal, and requires all manner of associations to dignify and refine him, women are so naturally susceptible of everything beautiful in sentiment and generous in purpose that she who is a true woman is a fit peer for a king. Odd and preposterous notions, no doubt, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of personal freedom; but the sugar of Porto Rico was excluded, because our conscience was shocked at the notion that some part of it might have been produced by slaves. But what was thus forbidden directly, was allowed circuitously; we were willing to refine and export this slave-grown sugar, and to take the hemp and tallow of Russia in its stead, which seemed to be an easy way of letting down our consciences. This savoured of hypocrisy. If the United ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... with the delicacy and artistic taste of refine womanhood, has in this work shown great ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... water near Jamestown. Their raging thirst for gold was re-excited by this incident. Smith, in his History of Virginia, describing the frenzy of the moment, says, "there was no thought, no discourse, no hope, and no work, but to dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, and load gold. And, notwithstanding captain Smith's warm and judicious representations how absurd it was to neglect other things of immediate use and necessity, to load such a drunken ship with gilded dust, yet was he overruled, and her returns were made in a parcel of glittering ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... are not valuable only because of the available information they give; when they do not instruct, they elevate and refine. ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... paralogize[obs3]. take on faith, take as a given; assume (supposition) 514. pervert, quibble; equivocate, mystify, evade, elude; gloss over, varnish; misteach &c. 538[obs3]; mislead &c. (error) 495; cavil, refine, subtilize[obs3], split hairs; misrepresent &c. (lie) 544. beg the question, reason in a circle, reason in circles, assume the conclusion. cut blocks with a razor, beat about the bush, play fast and loose, play fast and loose with the facts, blow hot and cold, prove that black is white ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... even death failed to refine your soul, Juan? Has the terrible judgment of which my father's statue was the minister taught ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... altar, with an image of Saint Catharine, and the panels of the room are painted with subjects from her life, mostly copied from Italian masters. The pictures of St. Catharine and her legend very early impressed her on my mind as the type of ideal beauty—of all that can charm, irradiate, refine, exalt, in the best ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... Nature. So I am all the more anxious that those following after me should not, by like omission, commit the same sin against themselves and against our country. We owe it to ourselves and to mankind to give full rein to our instinctive love of Natural Beauty, and to train and refine every inclination and capacity we have for appreciating it till we are able to see all those finer glories of which we now discern only the first ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... idea at all. For I ask any one, whether, taking the smallest atom of dust he ever saw, he has any distinct idea (bating still the number, which concerns not extension) betwixt the 100,000th and the 1,000,000th part of it. Or if he think he can refine his ideas to that degree, without losing sight of them, let him add ten cyphers to each of those numbers. Such a degree of smallness is not unreasonable to be supposed; since a division carried on so far brings it no nearer the end of infinite division, than the first division into two ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... King Arthur. In the honest bosom of this heroic Dutchman dwelt the seven noble virtues of knighthood, flourishing among his hardy qualities like wild flowers among rocks. He was, in truth, a hero of chivalry struck off by Nature at a single heat, and though little care may have been taken to refine her workmanship, he stood forth a miracle of her skill. In all his dealings he was headstrong perhaps, but open and above board; if there was anything in the whole world he most loathed and despised, it was cunning and secret wile; "straight forward" was his motto, and he at any time ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... refine; but all moral power issues out of moral forces. And it may be well, therefore, rapidly to sketch the history of religion, which is the greatest of moral forces, as it sank and rose in this island through ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... heart, creep in, creep in, Afar from the fret, the toil and the din, Where the spring of love forever flows, As clear as light and as sweet as the rose; (Creep into my heart), Where the dreams never wilt but their tints refine, Rooted in beautiful thoughts of thine; Where morn falls cool on the soul, like sleep, And the nights are tranquil and tranced and deep; Where the fairest thing of all the fair Thou art, who hast somehow crept in there, Deep into my ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... should despair? Rather it is a reason why it should rejoice in an opportunity occurring not more than once in the ages to seize the likeness and express the significance of Arrival, the arrival of a whole civilization. To do this, art must refine and re-refine upon itself; it must use methods of unapproached delicacy, of unimagined subtlety and celerity. It is easy enough to catch the look of the patrician in the upper air, of the plebeian underfoot, but to render the image of a world-bourgeoisie, compacted in characters of undeniable ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Christ to simple belief. He that hath faith thereby has the righteousness which is through faith in Christ, for in his faith he has the one formative principle of reliance on God, which will gradually refine character and mould conduct into whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. That righteousness which faith receives is no mere forensic treating of the unjust as just, but whilst it does bring with it pardon and oblivion from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the peculiar offices of women is to refine society. They are very much shielded by their sex from the stern duties of men, and from that intercourse with the basest part of mankind which is opposed to the humanizing influence of mental cultivation. On them, the improvement of society in these respects chiefly depends; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Bill J., in the waning of that first winter, began actually to refine his own superlative elegance by spraying his superior garments with perfume, by munching tiny confections reputed to scent the breath desirably, by a more diligent grooming of the always superb moustache, the little boy suspected no motive. He ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic. And in the same manner the faculty which removes the illusions of external appearance, and enables us to "look into the seeds of time," is one which we are bound to estimate at its genuine value. The more we refine our faculties, other things equal, the wiser we grow: we are the more raised above the thickness of the atmosphere that envelops our fellow-mortals, and are made partakers of ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... it so but those who possess, or fancy they possess, it. To hear them speak, you would believe that their hearts would be cold if that elixir did not flow about them, that their eyes would be dim if that flame did not refine their vision, that they would be lonely if this strange companion abandoned them. You would suppose that it imparted some glad hope to spring, some fine charm to summer, some tranquil joy to autumn, some consolation to winter, which you do not feel. An illusion, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... is most easily converted into kerosene or lamp oil, and contains a larger proportion of such oil. It is the finest petroleum in the world, except that found in Indiana and Ohio, and that costs more to refine. ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... thy peace, Her balls of discord in thy way: Here Beauty's day doth never cease; 450 Day is abstracted here, And varied in a triple sphere. Hero, Alcmane, Mya, so outshine thee, Ere thou come here, let Thetis thrice refine thee. Love calls to war; Sighs his alarms, Lips his swords are, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... fashion, were among the illustrious personages of the decline of her salon. We smile at its follies and affectations; but, while it harmed literature by magnifying things that were petty, it did something to refine manners, to quicken ideas, to encourage clearness and grace of expression, and to make the pursuit of letters an avenue to social distinction. Through the Hotel de Rambouillet, and the salons which ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... usually runs through many volumes, and place it into a practical form for the common reader. We hope, however, that this work will give the reader a greater longing to extend his inquiries into these most interesting subjects, so rich in everything that can refine the taste, enlarge the understanding and improve the heart. It has been our object, so far as possible, to avoid every expression of opinion, whether our own or that of any school of thinkers, and to supply first, facts, and secondly, careful references by which the citations of those facts, may ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... short time," she answered, and returned at once to her desk. Henry looked at her as she proceeded with her work. Her presence seemed to refine the entire office. He fancied that her hair made the room brighter. His curiosity was awakened by one touch of her presence. He sought to know more of her, and when she had come in again to consult him, he said: "Wait a moment, ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... tongue recoils from speaking the horrors and atrocities of war thus brought into the bosom of a peaceful home. All the amenities and charities of domestic life are outraged, are annihilated. All that is dearest to man; all that tends to refine, to soften him—to make him a noble and a better being—all these are trampled under foot by a brutal soldiery—all these are torn from his heart for ever! He will tell you that he detests war so much ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... natural cravings of the great body of Taoist followers. Chuang Tzu had already placed the source of human life beyond the limits of our visible universe; and in order to secure a return thither, it was only necessary to refine away the grossness of our material selves according to the doctrine of the Way. It thus came about that the One, in whose obliterating unity all seemingly opposed conditions were to be indistinguishably blended, ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... other peoples when the short story pre-eminently flourished among them. But when one has said a thing like this, it immediately accuses one of loose and inaccurate statement, and requires one to refine upon it, either for one's own peace of conscience or for one's safety from the thoughtful reader. I am not much afraid of that sort of reader, for he is very rare, but I do like to know myself what I mean, if I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... them and concentrated on letting his mind roam about the great room, seeking information and trying to refine and develop his mind-reading ability. It seemed to him the latter was improving to some extent ... yet realized this could as easily be wish-fulfillment ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... exaltation, reached so suddenly, Is not fortuitous nor wrought in vain; But that is may his worthy cradle be, Whereof I speak, shall so the heaven ordain. For where men look for fruit they graff the tree, And study still the rising plant to train; And artist uses to refine the gold Designed by him the precious ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... which yielded to the influence of companions inferior to himself, except in bodily vigour and more sturdy will, Arthur Beaufort had been ruined by prosperity. His talents and acquirements, if not first-rate, at least far above mediocrity, had only served to refine his tastes, not to strengthen his mind. His amiable impulses, his charming disposition and sweet temper, had only served to make him the dupe of the parasites that feasted on the lavish heir. His heart, frittered away in the usual round of light intrigues and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... these yearnings and desires adumbrate what man in himself calls "love," spelled all out in capitals. I repeat, the need is the same. From the amoeba, up the ladder of life to you and me, comes this passion of perpetuation. And in yourself, refine and sublimate as you will, it is none the less blind, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... down, Nero gave a loose to appetites that were not only sordid, but inhuman. There was a sort of odd contrast in his disposition: for while he practised cruelties sufficient to make the mind shudder with horror, he was fond of those amusing arts which soften and refine the heart. He was particularly addicted, even from childhood, to music, and not totally ignorant of poetry; chariot-driving was his favourite pursuit; and all these he frequently exhibited ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... must only make the best of it. Look around. Numbers have the same and infinitely worse complaints to make; and, truly, when we consider what real misery there is in the world, it seems the height of folly fastidiously and foolishly to refine away our happiness, by allowing such worthless trifles to interfere ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... to be guarded against in considering all scales as continuous rather than discrete, is that careless thinkers may refine their calculations far beyond the accuracy which their original measurements would warrant. One should be very careful not to make such unjustifiable refinements in his statement of results as are often made by young pupils when they multiply the diameter of a circle, which ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... their development and evolution is a matter of the deepest importance to you. If a man came down to barter with you who had a rudimentary tail and couldn't bend his thumb—well, it wouldn't be pleasant, you know. Our idea is to elevate them in the scale of humanity and to refine their tastes. Hewett, of the Royal Society, went to report on the matter a year or so back, and some rather painful incident occurred. I believe Hewett met with some mishap—in fact, they go the length of saying that he ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... patient, suffering soul! I hear thy cry. The trial fires may glow, but I am nigh. I see the silver, and I will refine Until My image shall upon it shine. Fear not, for I am near, thy help to be; Greater than all thy pain, My love ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... in much earnest prayer to tender your affections, to refine your nature, to make you very sensitive to the feelings of your child, and to help you to love the tender "olive plants" round about thy fireside. Some day there may be a vacant chair, and there can ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... striking out this course, and setting the successful example of introducing always into his most whimsical pieces some beautiful faces or agreeable forms, he had done more than any other man of his generation to refine a branch of art to which the facilities of steam-printing and wood-engraving were giving almost unrivalled diffusion and popularity. His opinion of Leech in a word was that he turned caricature into character; and would leave ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... E. Church, Beach was a courteous, good-natured politician, who tried to keep company with a canal ring and keep his reputation above reproach. But his character did not refine under the tests imposed upon it. His policy of seeming to know nothing had resulted in doubling the cost of canal repairs during his four years in office. A careful analysis of his record showed that only once did he vote against ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... efficiency which did so much to give their plans the uniform success already mentioned. Kindness and warm affection, clearness of moral vision, and purity of heart, with a lively relish for quiet intellectual pleasures, for society and books adapted to refine, improve and elevate, were among the characteristics common to ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... to refine the Russian tongue the more thoroughly, something like half the words in it were cut out: which circumstance necessitated very frequent recourse to the tongue of France, since the same words, if spoken in French, were another matter altogether, and one could use even blunter ones ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Attic Plain and the hills of Latium. They are useful, not because they teach us anything that may not be learned and learned more accurately from modern books, but because they move the mind, fire the heart, ennoble and refine the imagination in a way which nothing else has power to do. They are sources of inspiration; they first roused the modern mind to activity; and the potency of their influence can never cease to be felt by those whose aptitudes lead them to the love of intellectual perfection, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... aiming to have, so far as could be, two suits to a man, a common, every day suit, and one better for Sabbaths, &c., it being thought that this would tend to refine and elevate the prisoners. Hence, he left them with a generous supply, well fitted up. But it would need more or less renewing and refitting in the fall, which it did not receive, but was made to answer by patching. Hence, patched and ragged clothes would ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... que cil pardon, fut issi gran, si s'en esmeurent mult li cuers des genz, et mult s'en croisierent, porce que li pardons ere si gran. Villehardouin, No. 1. Our philosophers may refine on the causes of the crusades, but such were the genuine ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... sing and chatter and mix his punch and make his cigarettes. Ah! how much more entrancing would be Ralph's chamber with Suzette to garnish it! He would make a thousand studies of her face; she should be his model, his professor, his divinity! What was gross in her he would refine; what dark he would make known. They would walk together by the river side, into the parks, into the open country. He would know no regrets for the friends across the sea. Europe would become beautiful to him, and his art would find inspiration from so much loveliness. No indissoluble tie ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... maiden as her mother must have been, one of Nature's own ladies, but more refined in type, texture, and form, as the American atmosphere and food and life always refine the children of European stock,—slenderer, more delicate, finer of complexion, and with a soft, exquisite sweetness of voice, more thrilling than her mother's, larger and more robust heartfeltness of tone,—and with the same, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... fulfilled the desire of man, whom he had prepared for salvation by sending perfection embodied in Christ. We may not attach ourselves to any system or effort as absolutely true or good, nor condemn any as utterly false. All knowledge and arts are related to religion. They refine man and aid him in his emancipation from whatever is sinful ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... oxidizing coal or oil at a low degree, within an insulated vessel. With such an invention electricity would be obtained at such a low cost that it would be used exclusively to light and heat our houses, to smelt, refine, and manipulate our metals, to propel our cars, wagons, carriages, and ships, cook our food, and drive all ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... and prevent redness and roughness, and to make the skin soft, smooth, white and delicate, producing a perfectly natural appearance. It teaches how to cure and refine a coarse skin, so that it will ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... prostitution or the venereal scourges. "We are compelled squarely to face the distorting influences of biologically aborted reformers as well as the wastefulness of seducers," Dr. Edward A. Kempf recently declared. "Man arose from the ape and inherited his passions, which he can only refine but dare not attempt to castrate unless he would destroy the fountains of energy that maintain civilization and make life worth living and the world worth beautifying.... We do not have a problem that is to be solved by making repressive laws and executing them. Nothing will be more disastrous. ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... "Refine Vincart!" repeated Claudet, sternly, "what business have you to mix up her name with those creatures to whom you refer? Mademoiselle Vincart," added he, "has nothing in common with that class, and you have no right, Monsieur de Buxieres, to use her ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... speculation. Notwithstanding, it finds itself unable to settle the contending claims of Reason and Inclination, and so is driven to devise a practical philosophy, owing to the rise of a 'Natural Dialectic' or tendency to refine upon the strict laws of duty in order to make them more pleasant. But, as in the speculative region, the Dialectic cannot be properly got rid of without a complete ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... to cultivate their morals, refine their tastes, manners, habits. I wish to lift from them that ever-depressing sense of hopelessness which keeps them ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... indistinguishably blended. This One, the source of human life, was placed beyond the limits of our visible universe; and in order for human life to return thither at death and to enjoy immortality, it was only necessary to refine away corporeal grossness according to the doctrines of Lao Tzu. Later on, this One came to be regarded as a fixed point of dazzling luminosity, in remote ether, around which circled for ever and ever, in the supremest ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... it is recommended to use none else. In consequence of the subtleness of the essentia, which keeps continually swimming in the beer, porter requires a considerable body of finings; but should any one choose to brew without the essentia, with amber malt, and with colour only, the porter will soon refine of itself. The finings however are composed of isinglass dissolved in stale beer, till the whole becomes of a thin gluey consistence like size. One pint is the usual proportion to a barrel, but ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... jar of oxygen to keep Luke Claridge alive! But for it one enemy to his career, to his future, would be gone. He did not shrink from the thought. Born a gentleman, there were in him some degenerate characteristics which heart could not drown or temperament refine. Selfishness was inwoven with every ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in a foreign land. Something special stirs the heart through the fine Scriptural language in which everything is recorded. The echoes of massive Latinity with which the atmosphere is charged suggest nothing more majestic and monumental. I may seem unduly to refine, but the injunction to the reader in the monument to Miss Bathurst, drowned in the Tiber in 1824, "If thou art young and lovely, build not thereon, for she who lies beneath thy feet in death was the loveliest flower ever cropt in its bloom," affects us irresistibly ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... arteries close in a terminating point; which arteries taking their rise and origin from the left capsule of the heart, bring, through several circuits, ambages, and anfractuosities, the vital spirits, to subtilize and refine them in the ætherial purity of animal spirits. Nay, in such a studiously meditating, musing person, you may espy so extravagant raptures of one, as it were out of himself, that all his natural faculties ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... differing among themselves, who believed the holy communion to be a feast and not a sacrifice, and that larger class of persons who, placing the solemn duty upon its proper religious basis, were contented to worship without waiting to refine." ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... single soothing exception. "Yes, sir, a set of ingrates!" she repeated accusingly. "Spend your life trying to teach them what to do and how to do it! Cram ideas into those that haven't got any, and yank ideas out of those who have got too many! Refine them, toughen them, scold them, coax them, everlastingly drill and discipline them! And then, just as you get them to a place where they move like clock-work, and you actually believe you can trust them, ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... democratic spirit through beauty. Its enemies are of its own household; those who by nature and training should be its helpers hinder it instead. Why do they do this? Because their fastidious, aesthetic natures are outraged by a crudeness which they themselves could easily refine away if they chose; because also they recoil at a lack of conformity to existing conventions—conventions so hampering to the inner spirit of the Newness, that in order to incarnate at all it must of necessity ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... be thy generous indignation check'd, Nor check'd the tender tear to Misery given; From Guilt's contagious power shall that protect, This soften and refine the soul for Heaven. But dreadful is their doom whom doubt has driven To censure Fate, and pious Hope forego: Like yonder blasted boughs by lightning riven, Perfection, beauty, life, they never know, But frown on all that pass, a ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... him that shal trace or unfeather me; I meane through clearenesse of judgement, and by the onely distinction of the force and beautie of my discourses. For my selfe, who for want of memorie am ever to seeke how to trie and refine them by the knowledge of their country, knowe perfectly, by measuring mine owne strength, that my soyle is no way capable of some over-pretious flowers that therein I find set, and that all the fruits of my increase could not make it amends. This am I bound to answer ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... thousands of people scan the newspapers each day to see what price its staple is bringing. From its bounty a vast army of toilers, who plant its seed, who pick its bolls, who gin its staple, who spin and weave its lint, who grind its seed, who refine its oil, draw daily bread. Does not its proper production deserve the best thought that ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... and root through Government and Law. His hand that Hell-penn'd League of Belial drew, } That Swore down Kings, Religion overthrew, } Great David banisht, and Gods Prophets slew. } Nor does the Courts long Sun so powerful shine, T'exhale his Vapours, or his Dross refine; Nor is the Metal mended by the stamp. With his rank oyl he feeds the Royal Lamp. To Sanedrins an everlasting Foe, Resolv'd his Mighty Hunters overthrow. And true to Tyranny, as th'only Jem, That truly sparkles in a Diadem; To Absalons side does his old Covenant bring, With State ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... thus conclude that in the treatment of inversion the most satisfactory result is usually obtained when it is possible by direct and indirect methods to reduce the sexual hyperesthesia which frequently exists, and by psychic methods to refine and spiritualize the inverted impulse, so that the invert's natural perversion may not become a cause of acquired perversity in others. The invert is not only the victim of his own abnormal obsession, he is the victim of social ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of a humbler order, to raise them up to itself. Now this, so far as I understand it, is the character of the Christian philosophy—for philosophy I must think it deservedly called. It is admitted into the mind with ease. But once being there, its operation is continually to exalt and refine it—leading it upwards forever to some higher point than it has hitherto arrived at. I do not deny an elevating power to your philosophy when once an inmate of the soul—I only assert the difficulty of receiving it on the part ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... refine on the refinements of sensibility. You have brooded until you no longer are normal and capable of logic. Compare your life with that of most men, and hope. You are but twenty-five, and you have won a deathless glory, by a valour and brilliancy on these ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... great many reasons against copious profanity of speech. Here you have the artistic reason, and, by implication, that which forbids its use in literature—namely, its ineffectiveness. But though she selects, Mrs. Woods does not refine. She exhibits the life of the travelling show in its habitual squalor as well as in its occasional brightness. How she has managed it passes my understanding: but her book leaves the impression of confident familiarity with this kind of life, of knowledge ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... gentler attributes which beautify and refine human existence were personified by the Greeks under the form of three lovely sisters, Euphrosyne, Aglaia, and Thalia, the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome (or, according to later writers, of Dionysus ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... thoughts-to a million-year Goal. It needs twelve years of normal healthful living to effect even slight perceptible change in brain structure, and a million solar returns are exacted to sufficiently refine the cerebral tenement ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Plato said,[46] were established by men of great genius who, in the early ages, strove to teach purity, to ameliorate the cruelty of the race, to refine its manners and morals, and to restrain society by stronger bonds than those which human laws impose. No mystery any longer attaches to what they taught, but only as to the particular rites, dramas, and ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... the workings of the laws of supply and demand would in the regular and natural course of events, and by a steady progression, eliminate that evil, and achieve adequate minimum standards. Modern opinion has found it necessary greatly to refine upon these broad generalisations of the truth, and the first clear division that we make to-day in questions of wages, is that between a healthy and ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... be, with some show of reason, the boast of men, why are women so infatuated as to be proud of a defect? Rousseau has furnished them with a plausible excuse, which could only have occurred to a man, whose imagination had been allowed to run wild, and refine on the impressions made by exquisite senses, that they might, forsooth have a pretext for yielding to a natural appetite without violating a romantic species of modesty, which gratifies the pride and libertinism ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... judged: and if it is hugely animal still, that is because primitive men abound and will have their pasture. Since the lead is ours, the leaders must bow their heads to the sentence. Jealousy of a woman is the primitive egoism seeking to refine in a blood gone to savagery under apprehension of an invasion of rights; it is in action the tiger threatened by a rifle when his paw is rigid on quick flesh; he tears the flesh for rage at the intruder. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the sounds represented by our alphabetic symbols b, c or s, d, f, g, j, q, x, and z—a poverty for which no richness in vowel sounds can make amends. The Hawaiian speech, therefore, does not call into full play the uppermost vocal cavities to modify and strengthen, or refine, the throat and mouth tones of the speaker and to give reach and emphasis to his utterances. When he strove for dramatic and passional effect, he did not make his voice resound in the topmost cavities of the voice-trumpet, but left it to rumble ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... repeat it, as little a gainer by the revolution as morals. The pieces which were best calculated to form and refine the minds of the people, all abound with maxims of loyalty, with respect for religion, and the subordinations of civil society. These are all prohibited; and are replaced by fustian declamations, tending to promote ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... scattered fragmentary sacraments of Him whose number is not two, nor seven, "but seventy-times seven;" that is the way—I think, the only way—to be ready to recognise our Saviour, and to prepare to meet our God; that He may be to us, too, as a refiner's fire, and refine us—our thoughts, our ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... though moneyless, determined to face whatever fate had decreed for me. Mr. King soon asked me what I could do; and at the same time said he did not mean to treat me as a common slave. I told him I knew something of seamanship, and could shave and dress hair pretty well; and I could refine wines, which I had learned on shipboard, where I had often done it; and that I could write, and understood arithmetic tolerably well as far as the Rule of Three. He then asked me if I knew any thing of gauging; and, on my answering that I did not, he said one of ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... present all the While the Metamorphosis is under the Operation, and to look on very attentively, and that they may have the less Reason to doubt, to perform the whole Operation with their own Hands, while I stand at a Distance, and don't so much as put my Finger to it. I put them to refine the melted Matter themselves, or carry it to the Refiners to be done; I tell them beforehand, how much Silver or Gold it will afford: And in the last Place, I bid them carry the melted Mass to several Goldsmiths, to have it try'd by the Touchstone. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... little American girl, who has been brought up to cultivate her mind, to refine her taste, to care for her health, to be a helpful daughter and a good sister, to visit the poor and teach in Sunday schools; when a good, sweet, modest little puss of this kind combs all her pretty hair backward till it is one mass of frowzy confusion; when she powders, and paints ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... of our physical body is intelligent and capable of being instructed into finer grades of expression; this is the process by which we refine matter into spirit and by which we pass from a lower to a higher expression of wholeness and build our cells into a grade of consciousness so high that we produce objective expressions of such perfect response that ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... produce a new ticker. From the beginning, each phase of electrical development—indeed, each step in mechanics—has been accompanied by the well-known phenomenon of invention; namely, the attempt of the many to perfect and refine and even re-invent where one or two daring spirits have led the way. The figures of capitalization and profit just mentioned were relatively much larger in the sixties than they are to-day; and to impressionable ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... a great many changes during the last few weeks. He had begun to grow rather captivated by Miss Chivvey and in his efforts to polish, refine and educate her had become rather carried away himself. But towards the end she began to show signs of rebellion; she was bored, though impressed. He took her to a serious play and explained it all the time, during which she openly yawned. Finally, when she insisted on his ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... and comic. Shakespeare, though not yet an idol, had still a hold upon the stage, and was beginning to be imitated by Rowe and to attract the attention of commentators. The sturdy Briton would not be seduced to the foreign model. The attempt to refine tragedy was as hopeless as the attempt to moralise comedy. This points to the process by which the Wit becomes 'artificial.' He has a profound conviction, surely not altogether wrong, that a tragedy ought to be a work of art. The artist must observe certain rules; though I need not ask whether ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... question—the refining or the vulgarizing influence of man upon nature, and the opposite. Now, did the summer Bostonians make this coast refined, or did this coast refine the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... precision, it can mean but little save to the person who writes it. The soul of a poem lies not in words but in meaning; and if the author have any skill at all in recording thought through language, he will be able to refine the uncouth mass of spontaneous verbiage which first comes to him as representing his idea, but which in its original amorphous state may fail entirely to suggest the same idea to another brain. He will be able to preserve ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the arts:' so said the old maxim, but it has rarely been found a truism. They who feel it, feel also the virtue which dictated the aphorism. Men whose object is to enlighten the nations or exalt the judgment or (the least ambition) to refine the tastes of others—men who feel that this object is dearer to them than a petty and vain ambition—feel also that all who labor in the same cause are united with them in a friendship which exists in one climate as in another—in a I republic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... wine-lees, or potters' crimson even, like the old rude idols painted red; and carry in midnight procession such rough symbols of the productive force of nature as the women and children had best not look upon; which will be frowned upon, and refine themselves, or disappear, in the feasts of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... it was eminently characteristic of the eighteenth century, an age of staid and decorous subsidence from the energetic restlessness of the seventeenth—an age in which men eschewed revolution and innovation, and devoted themselves assiduously to conserve, consolidate, polish, refine, and make the best of what ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... And behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore and did refine it; and thus they ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... is more correctly rendered 'glorify.' Is not that the end of a trouble which has been borne in company with Him; and from which, because it has been so borne, a devout heart is delivered even whilst it lasts? Does not all such sorrow hallow, ennoble, refine, purify the sufferer, and make him liker his God? 'He for our profit, that we should be partakers of His holiness.' Is not that God's way of glorifying us before heaven's glory? When a blunt knife ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Schoenvorts and Olson while out hunting the other day discovered oil about fifteen miles north of us beyond the sandstone cliffs. Olson says there is a geyser of oil there, and von Schoenvorts is making preparations to refine it. If he succeeds, we shall have the means for leaving Caspak and returning to our own world. I can scarce believe the truth of it. We are all elated to the seventh heaven of bliss. Pray God ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... developing abnormal psychical conditions. They are therefore especially dangerous to those who are already inclined to be physically and mentally negative and sensitive. Such persons must avoid all practices which tend to refine excessively the physical body and to develop prematurely and abnormally the sensory organs of the spiritual body. The most dangerous of these methods are long extended fasting, raw food diet, that, is, a diet consisting of ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... without at all destroying their Nature. Thus we see that in the refining of Silver, the Lead that is mix'd with it (to carry away the Copper or other ignoble Mineral that embases the Silver) will, if it be let alone, in time evaporate away upon the Test; but if (as is most usual amongst those that refine great quantities of Metals together) the Lead be blown off from the Silver by Bellowes, that which would else have gone away in the Form of unheeded steams, will in great part be collected not far from the Silver, in the Form of a darkish Powder or Calx, which, because it is blown ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... who feels for his own or for other people's misfortunes, and who is perhaps obliged to affect or resort to his very pleasantry sometimes, because he feels more acutely than the gravest. The sources of tears and smiles lie close to, ay and help to refine one another. If Dante had been capable of more levity, he would have been guilty of less melancholy absurdities. If Rabelais had been able to weep as well as to laugh, and to love as well as to be licentious, he would ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... beneath them is pure and pleasant; but the least climb, even a hundred feet, puts you on a plane with the atmosphere itself, uninterrupted by so much as the tree-tops. It is air without admixture. If it comes from the south, the waves refine it; if inland, the wheat and flowers and grass distil it. The great headland and the whole rib of the promontory is wind-swept and washed with air; the billows of the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... for a while do trouble the Aire, do withall purge and refine it: And our trust is that through the most wise Providence and blessing of GOD, the Truth by our so long continued agitations, will be better cleared among us, and so our service will prove more acceptable to all the Churches of Christ, but more especially to you, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... intensity—and of course, now, shall have to do so still more; which will leave them all even more bewildered than the boldest definition would have done. But that's quite a different thing. The furthest we have gone in the way of definition—unless indeed this too belongs but to our invincible tendency to refine—is by the happy rule we've made that Lorraine shall walk with me every morning to the Works, and I shall find her there when I come out to walk home with me. I see, on reading over, that this is what I meant by "our" in speaking above of our little daily heroism in that direction. The heroism ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... Fools, who exclaim against Wine, And fly the dear sweets that the Bottle doth bring; It heightens the Fancy, the Wit does refine, And he that was first Drunk was made ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... decorations. Yet again, it sets going manufactures which were before impossible, from lack of a material fit for the requisite implements. And all these changes react on the people—increase their manipulative skill, their intelligence, their comfort,—refine their habits and tastes. Thus the evolution of a homogeneous society into a heterogeneous one, is clearly consequent on the general principle, that many effects are produced by ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Let us not mistake the nature of a real civilization, nor suppose we have it because we can convert crude iron into the most delicate mechanism, or transport ourselves sixty miles an hour, or even if we shall refine our carnal tastes so as to be satisfied at dinner with the tongues of ortolans and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... He dared hardly relax a moment from his toil. He felt that, in the book which he was translating, there was a deep human, as well as heavenly wisdom, which would of itself suffice to civilize and refine the savage tribes. Let the Bible be diffused among them, and all earthly good would follow. But how slight a consideration was this, when he reflected that the eternal welfare of a whole race of men depended upon his accomplishment ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... other Indian schools which are not wholly or mainly supported by private endeavour? Is not the "harmonious combination of secular and religious instruction" for which the Maharajah of Jaipur pleads better calculated than our present policy of laisser faire to refine and purify Indian religious conceptions, and to bring about that approximation of Eastern to Western ideals, towards which the best Indian minds were tending before the present ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... defined Friendship. Let the lights and shadows of the thought of Carlyle and Emerson play upon these words, they are at once removed from mechanical definition, and we dimly perceive that each word is larger than the outreach of the thought of man. Another generation than ours shall define and refine them. In heaven, in some other aeon, we shall find out what ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... other comforter I need If thou, O Lord, be mine; Thy rod will bring my spirit low, Thy fire my heart refine, And cause me pain that none may feel ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... that should regulate clothing, the rules of cleanliness, the advantages of early rising and domestic exercise, as readily communicated as the principles of mineralogy, or rules of syntax? Are not the rules of Jesus Christ, applied to refine domestic manners and preserve a good temper, as important as the abstract principles of ethics, as taught by Paley, Wayland, or Jouffroy? May not the advantages of neatness, system, and order, be as ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... 'till Sir Philip broke the Charm, and sigh'd out, Oh, the monstrous Effects of Passion! Say rather, Oh, the foolish Effects of a mean Education! (interrupted his Majesty of Bantam.) For Passions were given us for Use, Reason to govern and direct us in the Use, and Education to cultivate and refine that Reason. But (pursu'd he) for all his Impudence to me, which I shall take a time to correct, I am oblig'd to him, that at last he has found me out a Kingdom to my Title; and if I were Monarch of that Place (believe me, Ladies) I would make you all Princesses and Duchesses; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... and this moral problem, had a restraining effect upon the young man's temper. A practical person justifies himself in wrath as soon as his judgment is at one with that of the multitude. Godwin, though his passions were of exceptional force, must needs refine, debate with himself points of ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing |
