"Refinement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... surroundings which stood for her deepest affinities—the room for which she had left that other room—she was startled by the same sense of strangeness and unfamiliarity. The prints, the flowers, the subdued tones of the old porcelains, seemed to typify a superficial refinement that had no relation to the ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... had certainly always thought her astonishingly lady—like for a peasant girl, but attributed this to the superior refinement of ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... of every woman having a thorough knowledge of domestic economy cannot be too strongly insisted on. The false refinement which, of late years, has considered an acquaintance with domestic matters to be only suitable for servants, has been fraught with the most disastrous consequences. This may seem strong language, but it is not too strong. All sanitary reformers ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... lose something certainly, but do we not gain something also? Do we not gain just what Whitman had in view, namely, direct contact with the elements in which are the sources of our life and health? Do we not gain in scope and power what we lose in art and refinement? ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... upon a pine table over which hung, incongruously enough, a large electric light. "Austin is apparently blind to everything but her beauty, which is really noticeable, not that it matters. What is mere beauty beside such refinement as Sally's, for instance, how far will it go with OUR FRIENDS when they discover that Austin's wife is an untrained, common little country girl? Even when I tell you that she uses such words as 'swell,' and 'perfect lady,' and that ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... a civilized people must develop life in all these directions, and as far as such a thing is possible, harmoniously. Whoever excels in conduct, or in knowledge, or in a sense for the beautiful, or in manners, helps to raise the standard of living,—helps to give worth, dignity, charm, and refinement to life. It is hard to take interest in a people who have no profound thinkers, no great artists, no accomplished scholars, for only such men can lift a people above the provincial spirit, and bring ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... you would not be so radical!" Isabelle said, peevishly. "You must admit there is such a thing as culture and refinement." ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... was the mother of heroes in war, of poets in song, of sculptors and artists, and stands up after the lapse of centuries the educator of mankind, living in the grandeur of her works and in the immortal productions of minds which modern civilization with all its cultivation and refinement and science never surpassed and scarcely equalled. And why in the three hundred years of American history it should be given to the Old Dominion to be the grand mother, not only of States, but of the men by whom States and empires are formed, it might be curious ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... damsel had for him; in short, it was only accepted lovers who were thus admitted to the bed of the fair one, and, as he expresses it, only after long continued urging in most cases.[36] He thinks the fashion ceased about 1790 to 1800, and in consequence of education and refinement; and that no more mischief was done then than ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... they say here, of refinement, there is another American in the house—a gentleman from Boston—who is just crowded with it. His name is Mr. Louis Leverett (such a beautiful name, I think), and he is about thirty years old. He is rather small, and he looks pretty ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... evidence for which is complex but rational), we then collide with one of the worst mental evils of the age. The greatest disaster of the nineteenth century was this: that men began to use the word "spiritual" as the same as the word "good." They thought that to grow in refinement and uncorporeality was to grow in virtue. When scientific evolution was announced, some feared that it would encourage mere animality. It did worse: it encouraged mere spirituality. It taught men to think that so long as they were passing from ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... is in his wildest state a social being: a certain degree of civilization and refinement ever produces the want of sympathies still more intimate and complete; and the gratification of the senses is no longer all that is sought in sexual connection. It soon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... beings, and to his 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, founded, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... fingers is not the only thing that one learns from Kalkbrenner's method, for there is also a refinement of the quality of the sound made by the fingers alone, a valuable resource which is ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... profundity of thought and intelligence—a depth and soundness of judgment—an acuteness in discrimination—a logical accuracy, and critical analysis, such as mere good society rarely shows, and such as books almost as rarely teach. There will be a deficiency of refinement, taste, art—all that the polished world values so highly—and which it seems to cherish and encourage to the partial repudiation of the more essential properties of intellect. However surprising this characteristic ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... forth to the crowd on the evils of kings, priests, and mutton chops, the "plain man" turned up at intervals like the "theme" of a symphonic movement. "I am only a plain man and I want to know." It was a phrase that sabred the spider-webs of logical refinement, and held them up scornfully on the point. When Crowl went for a little recreation in Victoria Park on Sunday afternoons, it was with this phrase that he invariably routed the supernaturalists. Crowl knew his Bible better than most ministers, and always ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... without being deeply affected. The mention of Greece fills the mind with the most exalted sentiments and arouses in our bosoms the best feelings of which our nature is susceptible. Superior skill and refinement in the arts, heroic gallantry in action, disinterested patriotism, enthusiastic zeal and devotion in favor of public and personal liberty are associated with our recollections of ancient Greece. That such a country should have been overwhelmed and so long hidden, as it were, from ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe
... knowing always the possibilities of the souls if they would but reach upward to higher things, and yet constantly suffering the knowledge of the base, carnal, material thoughts and acts flowing from these souls. Is not this the extreme refinement of torture? Does not the agony of the cross sink into insignificance beside such spiritual agony? You rail at the cruelty of the Jews who crucified their Savior, and yet you crucify your Savior, with a thousandfold degree of torture, every day ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... was well filled did any one have the audacity to sit at the stranger's table. His elegance and refinement were as a barrier between him and all that was rude and coarse. If he glanced about the place, taking notes in his turn of this and that, it was covertly and quietly and without offence. His eyes passed across Daisy's without resting or any show of interest. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... his outward appearance only, few would have given Villiers credit for being the man of penetrative and almost classic refinement he really was,—he looked far more athletic than aesthetic. Broad-shouldered and deep-chested, with a round, blunt head firmly set on a full, strong throat, he had, on the whole, a somewhat obstinate and pugilistic air which totally belied his ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... 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; ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... the civilised world, and truth was lost to view amid the innumerable legends that grew up around his life and activities. One leading question dominated all discussions:—How could an individual so lacking in refinement and culture influence the life of a great nation, and become in indirect fashion one of the main factors in the struggle against the Central Powers? Through what miracle did he succeed in making any impression upon the thought and conduct of a social ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... fortune and prospects set aside any fears as to mercenary designs; he had no near relatives, but distant cousins in England were people of refinement and culture and on excellent terms with Thornton. Breathlessly Thornton carried everything before him. Six weeks after he ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... moment Clara was puzzled, and then her quick, feminine eye noted a complete absence of the common knick-knacks and trifles that indicate the refinement or vulgarity of the owner. She remembered that Jonah had told her that Ada pawned everything she could lay hands on since he stopped her allowance. But she was more surprised at the change in Ada herself. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... at heart; that, however averse they may be from forming new acquaintance, their esteem and confidence once gained, they make the most solid friends. He had formed friendships in England; he was fully sensible of the superior comforts, refinement, and information, of English society; but his own country was endeared to him by early association, and a sense of duty and patriotism attached him to Ireland.—"And shall I too be an absentee?" was a question which resulted from these reflections—a question ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... from utter destruction. But though this was uppermost in his mind, it did not forbid a grateful outflow of his old sympathies and expressions of interest in all that concerned his friend. It seemed to him that his easy refinement of manner, in such contrast with the ceremonious stiffness of the New England customs of speech, was but the sliming over of the Serpent's tongue, preparatory to a dreadful swallowing of soul and body; and the careless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... lost were not intended to be literally received, but were meant as figures of speech, highly wrought metaphors calculated to alarm and impress with physical emblems corresponding only to moral and spiritual realities. The progress of thought and refinement has made it natural that recourse should often be had to such an explanation; but unquestionably it is a mistake. The annals of theology, both dogmatic and homiletic, from the time of the earliest ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... by a black ribbon. He's puffin' away at a Cassadora cigar that must have measured seven inches over-all when it left the box. In fact, the Gummidges are displayin' all the usual marks of wealth and refinement. ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... of refinement, for the fate of so rough a sentiment; but, perhaps, we ought rather to tremble for that of the age which is become so refined. It will, at least, not be disputed, by posterity, that no man ever knew better than Lord Nelson, how ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... turned up the hill toward his own house. A new refinement of the plot had occurred to the artist's soul too much ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... next ingredient in the true hero's composition, is a mere bird of passage, or (as Shakspeare calls it) summer-teeming lust, and evaporates in the heat of youth; doubtless, by that refinement, it suffers in passing through those certain strainers which our poet somewhere speaketh of. But when it is let alone to work upon the lees, it acquireth strength by old age, and becometh a lasting ornament to the little ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... The Author was pursuing a fuller development of the ideal character of Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at extreme refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by this diffidence. [Shelley's Note.] Footnote diffidence cj. Rossetti (1878); difference ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... here, and I was told that, in fine weather, "at least half a dozen" private carriages might be seen making the fashionable drive on the Strada Regina Margherita. But it is not easy to imagine luxury or refinement in these dreary, close-packed streets. Judging from our table at the Concordia, the town is miserably provisioned; the dishes were poor and monotonous and infamously cooked. Almost the only palatable thing offered was an enormous radish. Such radishes I never saw: they were ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... were distributed in several buildings bearing such poetical names as the Hive, the Eyrie, the Nest, and so on. The number rose to ninety or a hundred before he left them, but the additions seem occasionally to have been in the nature of subtractions also, taking away more of the cultivation, refinement, and general good feeling which had been the distinguishing character of the place, than they added by their money ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... seared by the Autumn frosts. The broad lake sparkled, the swans, just aroused, came out gravely from the shore. Marie was going to a charming green sward, when a little dog, of English blood, came running to her barking. She was startled; but a voice of rare refinement said: "He will not bite you; do not ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... sinned by over refinement or over ingenuity, for both were utterly foreign to his nature. Still less did he impair his power in the Senate as Burke did in the Commons by talking too often and too much. If he did not have the extreme beauty and grace ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... a solitary dwelling, from whose roof rises the light tower. Its inmates are said to have preferred this solitude to the crowded refinement of a New England city. Shortly after, and still coasting the western side, we stopped at Church's Landing, where an enterprising New Englander has built his log houses in the forest, amid the Indians, and drives an active commerce in raspberry ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... alive, but so as by fire. This girl waited on him through that time as a servant. He was thrown chiefly on her hands,—no other person could be spared to wait on the poor stranger. She comforted him. Her ways were not refined and gentle as if she had been taught refinement and tenderness by precept or example. She had strong good-sense. So far as she understood his orders, she obeyed them. When he could not give any, she made use of her own judgment, and sought first of all his comfort. She was kind. In her rough honesty and unwearied attention ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... people, I have never met one whom I thought more cultured or refined than she. This may seem a strange statement, but the quiet dignity that she manifested on all occasions and her charming manners are not often met with. I have never felt on entering a drawing-room such an atmosphere of refinement as seemed ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... army, apparent deterioration in character of the men in the rebel congress, the undignified runaway, wandering habit of that congress with its papers hauled from one refuge to another in a wagon, and similar things which make a deep impression on men of a certain kind of education and refinement, he saw so clearly the unutterable folly and wickedness of the attempt at independence that he could stand ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... research into which might be left to time and occasion. Certainly the reader will not do the unscrupulous intellect of Randal Leslie the injustice to suppose that he was deterred from confiding to his fair friend all that he knew of Riccabocca, by the refinement of honor to which he had so chivalrously alluded. He had correctly stated Audley Egerton's warning against any indiscreet confidence, though he had forborne to mention a more recent and direct renewal of the same caution. His first visit to Hazeldean had been paid without consulting Egerton. He had ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... literature is invariably attended with danger. It has its element of good, for the people cherish those instinctive passions and notions of morality which keep art from falling into artificiality. But refinement, distinction, form, spirituality—all that makes of art a transcript of life sub specie oeernitatis—are commonly opposed to the popular interest and are even distrusted by the people. The attitude of the Elizabethan playwrights toward their audiences ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... came in. It was the first time I had ever seen him, though I had heard a great deal of him from our friends in Edinburgh. He is a man in middle life, tall and slender, with fair complexion, blue eyes, an air of delicacy and refinement, and manners of great gentleness. My ideas of the "learned blacksmith" had been of something altogether more ponderous and peremptory. Elihu has been for some years operating, in England and on the Continent, in a movement which many in ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... the subject, he referred to Harris; whose work is not an English grammar, but "A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar." Lowth's Grammar was first published in 1758. At the commencement of his preface, the reverend author, after acknowledging the enlargement, polish, and refinement, which the language had received during the preceding two hundred years, ventures to add, "but, whatever other improvements it may have received, it hath made no advances in grammatical accuracy." I do not quote this assertion to affirm it literally true, in all its apparent breadth; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... sometimes contents him with solitudes bereft of the human interest by which alone the landscape lives. But he is, to my thinking, a most genuine poet, and one of these few Americans, who, even in their over-refinement, could never be mistaken for Europeans; who perhaps by reason of it are only the more American."—WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... ornamental art discovered in the sepulchres of nations long since fallen into oblivion, were of no other value, at the present day, than merely to be applied to the purposes which they were originally intended to subserve; if they did not elucidate the manners, customs, and progressional refinement of men with passions and feelings similar to our own; the labour and expense incurred by their exhumation would be thrown away. It is not, then, for the intrinsic value of the specimens to be produced, neither is it for any very particular admiration of the 'good old times,' but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... as if a load had been taken off his mind. Once more he was among his old friends and associates, and, without confessing the fact to himself, he infinitely preferred being with them to enjoying all the luxury and refinement which Lady Elmore's house in London had afforded. So the days flew rapidly by till the party of seamen had once more to ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... gold-workers carry off the palm from even those of Paris. Her satins and brocades compete with the richest contributions of Lyons. She exhibits tables of malachite and caskets of ebony, whose curious richness indicates at once the lavish expenditure of a barbaric court, and the refinement and taste of civilization. Nor do we deem it of much account that her part of the exhibition is not exclusively the work of native artisans. Her satins are none the less genuine product of the country because the loveliest were woven by emigrants from the Croix Rousse or ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... are exquisite in their refinement, and yet robust in their appreciation of some of the rougher phases of woodcraft. "This is a book full of delight. An additional charm lies in Mr. Bull's faithful and graphic illustrations, which in fashion all their own tell the ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... of the villages which they had just evacuated, we found the body of a well-dressed female, whom they had murdered by a horrible refinement in cruelty. She had been placed upon her back, alive, in the middle of the street, with the fragment of a rock upon her breast, which it required four ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... than their brothers of that best of all practical and moral educations, that of family life. Any one who has had experience of the families of farmers and small tradesmen, knows how boorish the lads are, beside the intelligence, and often the refinement, of their sisters. The same rule holds (I am told) in the manufacturing districts. Even in the families of employers, the young ladies are, and have been for a generation or two, far more highly cultivated than their brothers, whose intellects are always early ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... Chinese merchants of the city, he never went out; but he received, and he always was the centre of his household and the head of his table. Himself peasant, born Chinese, he presided over an atmosphere of culture and refinement second to none in all the islands. Nor were there any in all the islands too proud to cross his threshold and enjoy his hospitality. First of all, the Achun bungalow was of irreproachable tone. Next, Ah Chun was a power. And finally, Ah Chun was a moral paragon ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... 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 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... 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 unconscious of ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... suit was the latest, smartest thing in riding habits, and it set off her magnificent figure as nothing else could. Systematic exercise and hard work, like the final touch of a skilled sculptor, had given it beauty and refinement; harmony and proportion had destroyed the impression of unusual size. How deep was her bosom, how smooth and flowing were her curves, how superbly tall she was! As a thing of flesh and blood, she made these other women look like females of an ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... subalterns could get drunk there, as speedily as in the centers of refinement, but there were no gentlemanly diversions at which an officer could dispel the gloom of his ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... He's not in form. You start it. You know how. Begin: 'As Bergson so well has said, with the utmost refinement of philosophic speech allied with the most comprehensive ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... mysteries of the kitchen, and now sails with me in the alternate exercise of his two last professions. This individual, thus happily combining the chivalry inherent in the profession of arms with the skill of the craftsman and the refinement of the artist—to whose person, moreover, a paper cap, white vestments, and the sacrificial knife at his girdle, gave something of a sacerdotal character—I did not consider unfit to raise the ship's guardian image to its appointed place; and after two hours' reverential ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... under Mr. Canning's incredulous gaze, that this sudden upwhirl of misfortune was the further refinement of cruelty. She hardly knew what to do. Scarcely thinkable as it was to dismiss Hugo Canning from her presence, it seemed even more impossible to pack off this nameless intruder. Inconceivable malignity of chance, indeed! Only one doubt of its all being ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... exception of a few pages of sublime beauty, I have never altogether liked the love scenes at the end of Siegfried and at the beginning of Goetterdaemmerung. I find their style rather pompous and declamatory; and their almost excessive refinement makes them border upon dulness. The form of the duet, too, seems cut and dried, and there are signs of weariness in it. The heaviness of the last pages of Siegfried recalls Die Meistersinger, which is also of that period. It is no longer the same joy nor the same quality of joy that is found ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... orator going to address the assembly? Was a glorious anniversary to be commemorated? Was a religious service to be performed? He looked round him to apply for information once more. Two gentlemen—who contrasted favorably, so far as refinement of manner was concerned, with most of the spectators present—were slowly making their way, at that moment, through the crowd near him. He respectfully asked what national solemnity was now about to take ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... this would be the only assumption on which one could successfully deal with him. He had the general quality of a child for whom life had not been simplified by school, a kind of homebred sensibility which might have been as bad for himself but was charming for others, and a whole range of refinement and perception—little musical vibrations as taking as picked-up airs—begotten by wandering about Europe at the tail of his migratory tribe. This might not have been an education to recommend in advance, but its results with so special a subject were ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... struck with quiet certainty the vein that was his by nature in poetry; and this has broadened almost continually, yielding richer results, which have been worked out with an increasing refinement of skill. His predilection is for the picturesque; for romance combined with simplicity, purity, and tenderness of feeling, touched by fancy and by occasional lights of humor so reserved and dainty that they never disturb ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... negroes in Liberia[FN235] amongst whom one Doalu invented or rather borrowed a syllabarium. The modern Gypsies are said also to have beast-fables which have never been traced to a foreign source (Leland). But I cannot accept the refinement of difference which Professor Benfey, followed by Mr. Keith- Falconer, discovers between the AEsopic and the Hindu apologue:— "In the former animals are allowed to act as animals: the latter makes them ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... supper, which had been somewhat delayed to provide for the new-comers. It was a simple enough meal, suited to Lent, and was merely of dried fish, with barley bread and kail brose; but there were few other places in Scotland where it would have been served with so much of the refinement that Sir David Drummond and his late wife had learnt in France. A tablecloth and napkins, separate trenchers, and water for hand cleansing, were not always to be found in the houses of the nobles; and in fact, there were those who charged Malcolm's delicacy and timidity on the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 which the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... it through his own ability and the necessities of the time. The Englishman Stanley, whom Pitt sent to negotiate with him, drew this sketch of his character: "Though he may have his superiors, not only in experience of business, but in depth and refinement as a statesman, he is a person of as bold and daring a spirit as any man whatever in our country or in his own. Madame Pompadour has ever been looked upon by all preceding courtiers and ministers as their tutelary deity, under whose auspices only they could exist, and who was as much ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... or then was, a plant of such senatorial qualities as to make the simile, in intention, most flattering. Far from charming in its refinement, the begonia was remarkable for curious and showy foliage; it was conspicuous; it seemed to have no useful purpose; and it insisted on standing always in the most prominent positions. Adams would have greatly liked to be a begonia in Washington, for this was rather his ideal ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... danger of occasional degradation; but the simplicity of this new school seems intended to ensure it. Their simplicity does not consist, by any means, in the rejection of glaring or superfluous ornament—in the substitution of elegance to splendour, or in that refinement of art which seeks concealment in its own perfection. It consists, on the contrary, in a very great degree, in the positive and bona fide rejection of art altogether, and in the bold use of those rude and negligent expressions, which would be banished ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... took their seats around a long table. Mrs. Stanton stood at one end, serene and dignified. Behind her sat a large semicircle of ladies, and close about her a group of her companions, who would have been remarkable anywhere for the intellectual refinement and elevated expression of their earnest faces. Opposite sat Charles Sumner, looking fatigued and worn, but listening with alert attention. So these two veterans in the cause of freedom were fitly and suggestively brought ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... away; yet his air and manner were proud and haughty, and what little evidences of feeling peered through the signs of dissipation too apparent on his naturally attractive face were those of genuine refinement. He was accompanied by a cicerone, or servant, as villainous-looking a fellow as one often meets, even in Italy, where an evil expression is so often seen stamped ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... sky, with no listeners except the bushes and the reeds by the edge of the Charente, let me tell you about my anxiety as to Lucien's present step, dear Eve. After all that I have just said, I hope that you will look on my fears as a refinement of friendship. You and your mother have done all that you could to put him above his social position; but when you stimulated his ambition, did you not unthinkingly condemn him to a hard struggle? How can he maintain himself in the society to which ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... been nearly exterminated by massacres, and it has been officially stated that 75 per cent. of the whole race has been put to the sword. This sounds awful enough, but when we consider that there is no refinement of torture that has not been practised upon them, then something within one gets up and shouts ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... firmness and immutability of the primogenial and constituent particles of matter?' 'Those translators who, for want of understanding the characteristical difference of tongues, have formed a chaotick dialect of heterogeneous phrases;' 'In one part refinement will be subtilised beyond exactness, and evidence dilated in another beyond perspicuity.' Johnson's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... silent, he could not but admit the truth of the man's words and reflect upon the misery of such a life would naturally bring to a man of education and refinement like this one. "You might escape, go to some other state, and begin life anew," he at last suggested. "After what you have done for us, and believing you innocent as we now do, we should do all we could to help you to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... white spirit, pulling off his nightcap again, and, with many bows, disappeared down a dark alley, carrying his refinement to the doors of his customers. He must have been a good specimen of the urbanity and good manners of his class in Bordeaux, and certainly no finished cavalier could have expressed himself better. We had not gone far before he re-appeared, to beg us not to forget, on our return, to visit the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... ridge of flesh lolled over the edge of his stiff shirt-collar, and he threw in various observations of his own with regard to Walden, such as 'Sniveling puppy!' 'Canting rascal!' 'Elderly humbug!' 'Sneaking upstart,' which were quite in accordance with his native good taste and refinement of speech. And when at last his stock of expletives became, for the time being, exhausted, and when Miss Tabitha's dumb viciousness had, like an invisible sculptor's chisel, carved sudden deep lines in her face as fitting accompaniments to the deepening malice of her thoughts, they all rose ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... their being, because not wholly understanding themselves and their place in nature; as the animals seem always to have this expression to some noticeable degree in the presence of man. In the later school of Attic sculpture they are treated with more and more of refinement, till in some happy moment Praxiteles conceived a model, often repeated, which concentrates this sentiment of true humour concerning them; a model of dainty natural ease in posture, but with the legs slightly crossed, as only lowly-bred gods are used to carry them, and with ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... were dirty, but she had to have cuff buttons with a coronet on them. And speaking of the young lady, she doesn't take proper care of herself and her person. I might even say that she's lacking in refinement. Just now, when she was dancing in the barn, she pulled the gamekeeper away from Anna and asked him herself to come and dance with her. We wouldn't act in that way. But that's just how it is: when upper-class people want to demean themselves, then they grow—- mean! But she's ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... foreign land, and prove to them at the same time how highly his Majesty appreciated their talents; an appreciation which most of them richly merited, both on account of their excellent social qualities, and the nobility and refinement of ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... magnetism, or nerve aura, is probably the most sublimated form of ethereal matter, hence nearest in refinement to spirit substance, and therefore spirits use it as the vehicle of their vibrating forces. Those persons who have an excess of magnetism, of the proper quality to unite with both the psychic force of spirits and the forces ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... letter. We want for once the genuine man. We would have a mediaeval Arab telling the tales and traditions with the lays and legends of his own land in his own way, and showing the world what he has remained and how he has survived to this day, while we Westerns have progressed in culture and refinement. Above all things give us the naive and plain-spoken language of the original—such a contrast with the English of our times—and show us, by the side of these enfantillages, the accumulated wit and wisdom, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... from the abolishing of all discretionary power in every magistrate; and that the laws, were they ever so carefully framed and digested, could not possibly provide against every contingency; much less, where they had not as yet attained a sufficient degree of accuracy and refinement. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... village, the young Brandons and herself were often together—and Gerald's admiration had evidently lost nothing from separation. His health had improved, though he still looked pale and delicate; but this physical languor lent refinement to his appearance, and excited Theresa's warmest sympathy. It would have been strange, were not the occurrence so common, that we should not have anticipated the probable consequences of such intercourse between Gerald and Theresa, but always accustomed to consider ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... languid undulations, and before you could tell how or why, they had disappeared and reappeared in short green skirts, and then shorter white skirts, with steps and stops appropriate to their costumes, but always, I am bound to say, of the refinement promised. I can't tell you in what their refinement consisted, but I am sure it was there, just as I am sure of the humor of the two brothers who next appeared as 'Singing and Dancing Comedians' of the coon type. I know ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... pillars, the simple exterior of the house, the well-ordered offices, though all upon the diminutive scale proper to a mere cottage, bespeak an amount of elegant comfort within, that might serve for a palace. This indication is not without warrant; for, within, it is a house of refinement and luxury. Rich colours, excellently blended, meet the eye at every turn; in the furniture—its proportions admirably devised to suit the shapes and sizes of the small rooms; on the walls; upon the floors; tingeing and subduing the light that comes in through the odd glass doors and windows here ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... was very happy, although greatly restrained by the apprehension of going a little too far with these persons of singular refinement ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... To put it more shortly, how to secure that a good life for the consumer shall be compatible with a good life for the producer. It is a problem which goes to the root of democracy: for the world has never yet known a time when the increase of wealth and the consequent growth of refinement and civilization in the upper section of the community did not lead to degradation and injustice in the lower. Here too the Greeks can give us no help. They did not even face the problem but fail to solve it, like the Romans. Their material civilization was ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Smitz. Before forming the circle, Mr. Smitz had addressed the company in a few well-chosen words, saying that a like purpose had brought all there that night, that as votaries of science and devotees of truth and persons of culture and refinement, mutual acquaintance could not but be pleasant as well as helpful, enabling those who sat together while witnessing the astounding and edifying phenomena they were soon to behold, to discuss these phenomena with reciprocal benefit—in view of all this, he hoped everybody would consider ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... Jonas Medderbrook and his lost daughter, of the home of wealth that awaited that daughter, and finally, of his belief that Syrilla was that daughter. It was clear that Syrilla was quite willing to take up a life of refinement and dieting if she was given an opportunity such as Mr. Gubb was able to offer in the name of Jonas Medderbrook; and, this being so, he questioned her ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... time to examine the countenance of the young girl who had assisted Dame Pearson in preparing the supper, and who now took her seat by her side at the head of the table. There was a bright, intelligent look about her, and a refinement of expression which Jack scarcely expected to find in a dwelling so remote from the civilised world. Her education also had evidently not been neglected, for she had apparently read a good deal, and her mind was well stored with information on various subjects. Jack did not find all this ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... punished my accomplice. A voice tells me, that if you had fallen sooner into my power, much blood might have been spared. I feel now a horror of my past murders, and yet, strange! it is without fear, it is with security that I intend to execute on you a frightful murder, with horrible refinement of cruelty. Speak, speak! can ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... this booklet, in Tagalog, is made clear in several passages. It was issued by the Franciscans, but proved too outspoken for even Latin refinement, and was ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... "Una." When about to associate with coarse hired London nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital, she asks herself, "Are you more above those with whom you will have to mix than our Saviour was in every thought and sensitive refinement?" It was by such self-teaching that these high-spirited girls made their life-toil redound to their own purification, as it did to the cause of humanity. The purpose served by binding in one volume the district experiences of Miss Dutton and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... rest of the journey Miss Winchelsea talked little, and what she said was as pleasant and as stamped with refinement as she could make it. Her voice was always low and clear and pleasant, and she took care that on this occasion it was particularly low and clear and pleasant. As they came under the white cliffs the young man put his book of poetry away, and when at last the train stopped ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... my gaze to stockingless and shoeless legs and feet, conveying somehow at the same time that they were not poor and destitute but rich and provided—just as I took their garden-feast for a sign of overflowing food—and that their state as of children of nature was a refinement of freedom and grace. They were to become great and beautiful, the household of that glimmering vision, they were to figure historically, heroically, and serve great public ends; but always, to my remembering eyes and fond fancy, they were to move through life as with the bare white feet of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... out a newspaper from his pocket and read aloud some article, which they discussed eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened more and more like a dumb, hopeless animal, with a duller, more stolid look creeping over his face, glancing now and then at Mitchell, marking acutely every smallest sign of refinement, then back to himself, seeing as in a mirror his filthy body, his more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... man is never wanting in excellent arguments to prove that his mistress is very nearly, if not quite, an honest woman. This distinction originates in the refinement of our manners and has become as indefinite as the line which separates bon ton from vulgarity. What then is meant by an ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... All are on the tiptoe of expectation, to hear what the inducements can possibly be for travelling in America. America!! every one exclaims—what can you possibly see there? A country like America—little better than a mere forest—the inhabitants notoriously far behind Europeans in refinement—filled with wild Indians, rattle-snakes, bears, and backwoodsmen; ferocious hogs and ugly negros; and every other species of ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... prolix - are written after the fashion prevailing among the rabbis of the time, in a complicated, pretentious style, often affecting the form of rhymed prose and always in a poetic jargon. With this exception, the Responsa do not betray the least straining after effect, the least literary refinement. The very fact that Rashi did not himself take the precaution to collect his Responsa, proves how little he cared to make a show with them, though, it is true, the custom of gathering together one's Responsa did not arise until later, originating in Spain, and passing on to Germany. As I ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... an old story connected with this place." And then, at his request, she proceeded to tell him how, some thirty years ago, her grandmother had had a favourite maid, a friendless orphan girl named Barbara, to whom attached a mystery. Barbara was a very lovely creature of refinement and education above her station, and she had of course numerous admirers. Young as she was, her discretion was faultless, with the sole exception that her native amiability and desire to please sometimes betrayed ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... came where morning, noon, and night the inexorable demands of rigid rules compelled his incessant obedience, vigilance, activity, and self-denial. He had known nothing from his childhood up except an atmosphere of amusement, refinement, brilliancy, and idleness; he came where gnawing hunger, brutalized jest, ceaseless toil, coarse obscenity, agonized pain, and pandemonaic mirth alternately filled the measure ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... society, especially in the West," said the young aristocrat. "Stepping-stones lie low, as my reverend friend suggests; impudence ascends; merit and refinement scorn such dirty paths,"—with a mournful remembrance of the last dime ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... after a higher expression, is, after his fashion, striving to embody something he sees of the same truth the utterance of which called forth this his answer, let us thank God and take courage. God at least is pleased: and if our refinement and education take away from our pleasure, it is because of something low, false, and selfish, not divine in a word, that is mingled with that refinement and that education. If the shoemaker's wife's response to the prophet's ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... progress of American events, was so far forgotten that you had first to remind people of what he had helped do before you could enjoy their surprise in realizing that this gentle person, with the cast of intellectual refinement which distinguished his face, was the notorious Milray, who was once in all the papers. When he made his game and retired from politics, his family would have sacrificed itself a good deal to reclaim him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... garret, to a well-appointed room on the second story of an elegantly furnished house in an airy, fashionable part of the town; the apartment provided for my especial benefit, containing all the luxuries and comforts which modern refinement has ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... periphrasis of a couple of lines to avoid using the word "cat." It was only in extempore speaking that a ray of his real genius could indiscreetly betray itself. One may judge what labor such a super-refinement of taste would inflict upon a man writing in a language not his own to some distinguished statesman or some literary institution,—knowing that language just well enough to recognize all the native elegances he failed to attain. Trevanion at that very moment was employed upon a statistical ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ready to present to Miss Macpherson, and to receive from her one of the beautifully illustrated scrap-books made by little English children. Willie has been nearly three years in his happy home, surrounded by all the influences of education and refinement. ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... newspaper sentence and the sensation is one of pain. Again I say, observe the method by which Hawthorne gets his effect, the simplicity of the language, the balance of the sentences, the reserve, the refinement, and the final imaginative touch in the charming comparison with which the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... seen casually, at the Offices, a picture that Dechartre liked. It was a decapitated head of the Medusa, a work wherein Leonardo, the sculptor said, had expressed the minute profundity and tragic refinement of his genius. She wished to see it again, regretting that she had not seen it better at first. She extinguished her lamp and went ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... interests of this hardy son of the West were political. How could they have been otherwise in his environment? There is no evidence of literary refinement in his public utterances; no trace of the culture which comes from intimate association with the classics; no suggestion of inspiration quaffed in communion with imaginative and poetic souls. An amusing recognition of these limitations is vouched for by a friend, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... it is! Why must people of refinement and elevation be forever tied down because of some distant relationship? Now there are our cousins the High-Flyers,—if we could get them, there would be some sense in it. Young Whisk rather promised me for Christmas; but it's seldom now you can get a flying squirrel to show himself ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Hospitality, to my thinking, is a virtue, a pleasure, and a luxury; but in whatever light it is considered, nay, even if you regard it as a speculation, ought not our guest or our friend to be made much of? Ought not every refinement of luxury to ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... follow him. Charles Town felt little dread of Stede Bonnet himself. He knew how to conduct himself as a gentleman and the story was well known,—how he had been a major in the British army and a man of wealth and refinement. He had left his home in Barbadoes to follow the trade of piracy because he couldn't get along with his wife, so the rumor ran. At any rate, he seemed oddly out of place among the dirty rogues who sailed under the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... enormous in everything. In the architecture of the so-called new quarters the very gifts of the Italians turned against them; for they are born engineers and mathematicians, and by a really marvellous refinement of calculation they have worked miracles in the construction of big buildings out of altogether insufficient material, while the Italian workman's traditional skill in modelling stucco has covered vast surfaces of unsafe masonry with elaborately tasteless ornamentation. One result ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... always retained a certain affinity with the soil; there is a wholesome vigor about him. Meyer is of patrician descent; His father, who died early, was a statesman and historian; his mother a highly gifted woman of fine culture. Thus the boy grew up in an atmosphere of refinement. Having finished the Gymnasium, he took up the study of law, but history and the humanities were of greater interest to him. Even in the child two traits were observed that later characterized the man and the poet: he had a most scrupulous regard for neatness and cleanliness, ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... servile; always reserved, she ever faced duties large and small, promptly, quietly and efficiently. Never, through her nearly ten years as daily companion of Hortense, did her speech or conduct betoken aught but refinement. More and more Hortense retreated to her wholesome companionship in face of the assaults of her mother's trying volubility. In many ways this most unusual nurse protected her charge from the greater damage of poor mothering than actually occurred. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... responsible.[71] It is impossible to be over-scrupulous in this matter. And the committee should see that the teacher does his duty; otherwise all his lessons in duty are of no avail, and the school, instead of being a source of purity, delicacy, and refinement, becomes a fountain of corruption, throwing out poisonous waters, and rendering the moral influence more pestiferous than that fabled fountain of old, over which no creature of heaven could ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... was too strong to be resisted. The occupations of her present life disgusted Maude beyond measure. The scullery-work, of which Ursula gave her the most unpleasant parts, was unspeakably revolting to her quick sense of artistic beauty, and to a certain delicacy and refinement of nature which she had inherited, not acquired; and which Ursula, if she could have comprehended it, would have despised with the intense contempt of the coarse mind for the fine. The child was one morning engaged in cleaning a very greasy saucepan, close to the open window, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... their sphere, I shall choose rather (while I am acting the divine, and venturing in their polemic difficulties), to wish myself for such time animated with Scotus, his bristling and prickly soul, which I would not care how afterwards it returned to his body, though for refinement it were stopped at a purgatory by the way. I cannot but wish that I might wholly change my character, or at least that some grave divine, in my stead, might rehearse this part of the subject for me; for truly I suspect that somebody will accuse me of plundering the closets of ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... situation; how a girl of her apparent refinement and gentility could ever be attracted by a rough, brutal type such as Ned Beaton so evidently was. Why, the man's lack of taste in dress, the expression of his face, his ungrammatical language, stamped him as belonging to a ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... Florens is styled by Quintilian the Prince of Eloquence. In fact a brilliant era appeared as if beginning to dawn throughout the greater portion of Gaul, academies were establishing, learning was revered, when suddenly every spark of refinement and civilisation was banished, by the successful aggression and permanent occupation of the country by hordes of barbarians; the natives being obliged to have recourse to arms for their defence against the common enemy, and the constant excitement of continued hostility with ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... Mr. Colburn was decidedly pleasing. His height was five feet ten, and his figure was well proportioned. His face was one not to be forgotten; it indicated sweetness of disposition, benevolence, intelligence, and refinement. His mental operations were not rapid, and it was only by great patience and long continued thought that he achieved his objects. He was not fluent in conversation; his hesitancy of speech, however, was not so great when with friends as with strangers. The tendency of his mind was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... the beginner is apt to forget at the period when his musical feeling though sincere is yet characterized by lack of refinement, is that these nuances must always be subtle, and that the listener ought not to have fluctuations in tempo thrust in his face at every turn. Indeed we may say that he should hardly know that they are present, unless he is making a definite attempt to analyze ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... day, a van-load of furniture arrived, though "The Bower" was already furnished; but, as Miss Limpenny said, in all these matters of comfort and refinement, "there are degrees." On this occasion the Admiral, who had been prevailed upon to leave his bed, executed a manoeuvre the audacity of which should have ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... exterior of the cottage was humble and unpretentious, and in keeping with the wildness of the landscape, its interior gave evidence of the cultivation and refinement of its inmates. An aquarium, containing goldfishes, stood on a marble centre-table at one end of the apartment, while a magnificent grand piano occupied the other. The floor was covered with a yielding tapestry carpet, and the walls were adorned ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... been easily kept in subjection, notwithstanding their immense numbers, first, because they had no leaders among them, nor even any nobles or rich people to govern their movements and tell them what to do; and next, because they were barbarians, and totally destitute of art or refinement, knowledge, or science, neither had they any skill in diplomacy or politics, but were ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... his last novel said something to the effect that an orang-outang would receive a degree of polish and refinement by ten years of life in Paris. This statement is not to be taken literally, of course: I have detected no special polish of manners in the monkeys confined at the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris, some of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... none but gentlemen; let no local attachment influence you; do not suffer your good nature to say Yes when you ought to say No. Remember that it is a public, not a private cause." What he desired was the gentleman's chivalry of refinement, sense of honor, dignity of character, and freedom from mere self-seeking. The prime qualities of a good officer, as he often said, were authority and decision. It is probably true of democracies that they prefer and will follow the man who will take with them a ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... with which he again went into business, this time as a distiller in Sunbury, Pa. After several years of commercial life he returned again to New York and resumed the profession which brought him into contact with people of refinement and social standing, who seem to have remained his friends, despite his complaints and importunities, till his death in 1838. Among those who were sincerely attached to him were Clement Clark Moore, Hebrew lexicographer, trustee of Columbia ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... four years; let him be tutor in a good family for a year or two; and if he be an observant fellow, you will find in him the quiet, self-possessed air and the easy address of the gentleman who has seen the world. And it is curious to see one brother of a family thus educated and polished into refinement, while the other three or four, remaining in their father's simple lot, retain its rough manners and its unsophisticated feelings. Well, look at the man who has been made a gentleman,—probably by the hard labor and sore self-denial of the others,—and see in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... poet, sang in his time of the domestic and social amenities of our age with a most felicitous versification, his object being, in his own words, "to glorify the result of six thousand years' evolution towards the refinement of thought, manners and feelings." Why he fixed the term at six thousand years I don't know. His poems read like sentimental novels told in verse of a really superior quality. You felt as if you, were being taken out for a delightful ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... it often now, women's souls are so clouded with knowledge. I think that sort of thing appeals especially to me because my own design isn't in the least esoteric. I'm only a man. Then she was so ludicrously out of her element. A creature like that should be surrounded by the softest refinement in her daily life. That was my chance. I could offer her her place. It's not much to counterbalance what she is, but it helps, roughly speaking, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... another difficulty. Coke was the great lawyer of the day, a man whom the Government could not dispense with, and whom it was dangerous to offend. And Coke thoroughly disliked Bacon. He thought lightly of his law, and he despised his refinement and his passion for knowledge. He cannot but have resented the impertinence, as he must have thought it, of Bacon having been for a whole year his rival for office. It is possible that if people then agreed with Mr. Spedding's opinion as to the management ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... not, however, adopt the opinion as correct; neither do I think that Dean Vincent took a right view of the subject; for, as discipline, the study of the classics may be highly useful, at the same time, the mere hammering of Greek and Latin into English cannot be very conducive to the refinement of taste or the exaltation of sentiment. Nor is there either common sense or correct logic in the following observations made on the passage and note, quoted by the anonymous author of Childe ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... New York and bravely resumed her visits to managerial offices and to the lairs of agents, in quest of an engagement not quite so incompatible with her sense of delicacy and refinement as the one she had just abandoned. But there was nothing to be had. More than once she was tempted to write to Flanders, begging him to forgive her and to forget, if he could, the silly mistake she had made. But love and loneliness were no ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... on the surface in educated society in the United States than in Great Britain; but in England outside that society it is nearly all Philistinism. Step down from a social class in England, and you come to a new and lower level of refinement and information. In America the people ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... and shameless enough to set forever aside the desolation that his hands had callously wrought. As her sorrow could never be mitigated it should always be shared. He would do everything for her. She should be educated, and inducted by gentle degrees into the refinement of civilization—he fervently hoped that it might not prove the refinement of cruelty. She should not be left desolate, forsaken, uncared-for; she should share everything he had except his heart. That was to be kept empty for her sake—for ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... nineteenth-century culture, and the peace of our lady the Queen, were these knights of the harpoon and companions of the rum-barrel. But the isolated coasts and savage men among whom their lot was cast did not as yet call for refinement and reflection. Such as their time wanted, such they were. They played a part and fulfilled a purpose, and then moved off the stage. It so happened that within a few years after the advent of the regular colonists whaling ceased to pay, and the rough crew who followed ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... U-League—and everybody else—had been hoping to obtain. 112-113 tentatively could be assumed to be a kind of monitor of the station's activities. It could be induced to go into action and to activate the other plasmoids. With further observation and refinement of method, its action undoubtedly could be shifted from the random to the purposeful. Finally, and most importantly, it had shown itself capable of producing a different form of plasmoid life to fulfill a ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... remove it in spite of my mortification,—but I was ashamed of my position; for these are evidently gentlemen, not the Billy Wilson's crew we were threatened with. Fine, noble-looking men they were, showing refinement and gentlemanly bearing in every motion. One cannot help but admire such foes! They set us an example worthy of our imitation, and one we would be benefited by following. They come as visitors without either pretensions to superiority, or the insolence of conquerors; they walk quietly their ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... eight and twenty years old, and was not altogether displeased with his appearance. He was not at all like the majority of his kind, who, in Rome at least, usually affect a scrupulous dandyism of attire and an uncommon refinement of manner. Whatever Contini's faults might prove to be, Orsino did not believe that they would turn out to be those of idleness or vanity. How far he was right in his judgment will appear before long, but he conceived ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... the situation appeared, he went to work with the greatest energy, patching up the old ships, and hurrying the completion of the new. Meanwhile the invaders sent raiding parties ashore that harried the unprotected country districts with every refinement of cruelty. In order to make each ship count as much as possible as an offensive unit, Theaphanes made an innovation by fitting out Greek fire tubes on the broadsides as well as in the bows. This may be noted as the first appearance of the broadside armament idea, which ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... not in my power to open out a painful subject in the flowery language of fiction, romance, and imagery, in musical sounds of the highest pitch of refinement, culture, and sentiment, I purpose following out very briefly the same course on the present occasion as I adopted on the three times I have had the honour to address the Social Science Congress with reference ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... there's a Bite." I would not have you undervalue this, for it is the constant amusement in Court, and every where else among the great people; and I let you know it, in order to have it among you, and to teach you a new refinement.' ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... murder, by the judicial butchers, who condemned him? On account of what misdemeanors was he robbed of his property, and slaughtered with two generations of his offspring; and the remains of the third race, with a refinement of cruelty, and lest they should appear to reclaim the property forfeited by the virtues of their ancestor, confounded in an hospital with the thousands of those unhappy foundling infants, who are abandoned, without relation, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... is making rapid strides of progress for himself. I saw him enter the great banquet room of a leading hotel in one of the country's largest cities. The hall was filled with men and women of refinement and culture. As Sergeant York and his young wife entered, the banqueters arose and cheered them. This demonstration was a welcome to ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... the French Merovingians and of the Saxon Heptarchy that ignorance and ferocity seemed to have done their worst. Yet even then the Neapolitan provinces, recognising the authority of the Eastern Empire, preserved something of Eastern knowledge and refinement. Rome, protected by the sacred character of her Pontiffs, enjoyed at least comparative security and repose, Even in those regions where the sanguinary Lombards had fixed their monarchy, there was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more than anything else, for the eye, a matter of the marked streaks of grey, extraordinary at his age, in his thick black hair; as well as that this new feature was curiously becoming to him, did something for him, as characterisation, also even—of all things in the world—as refinement, that had been a good deal wanted. Strether felt, however, he would have had to confess, that it wouldn't have been easy just now, on this and other counts, in the presence of what had been supplied, to be quite clear as ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... course. Since it couldn't be the mother, it has to be the daughter. That's nothing new. Old families always hold together, and where there is a beginning there will be an increase." The elder Niemeyer, painfully embarrassed by these and similar pointed remarks, which showed a lack of culture and refinement, lamented once more the fact that he had married ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... deep, with a resonance like that of the 'cello. It was not the voice of a young woman; it was, rather, a rare gift of age, telling how beautiful an old woman's speech could be. Moreover, it carried refinement of birth and culture, a beauty of phrase and enunciation, which would have marked ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... house was not only well kept, but presented many evidences of refinement. A mechanical piano stood against the log wall, and books and magazines, dog-eared with use, littered the table; and Norcross, feeling the force of Nash's half-expressed criticism of his "superior," listened intently ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... poetry, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressing cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity with what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts it has the same ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... recollection will always be highly esteemed by a people eager for amusement and information, but destitute of libraries. Such is the origin of ballad poetry, a species of composition which scarcely ever fails to spring up and flourish in every society at a certain point in the progress towards refinement.”— Macaulay. ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... by Miss Reuter, a lady of education and refinement, whose grace of manner and goodness of heart speedily endeared her to all with whom she came in contact. Varied as were the gifts and circumstances of the friends, they were one in desire and purpose. Their home ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... taste had not permitted so heavy a characteristic to be predominant; not merely elegant, for the fineness of all the details would warrant an ampler word. A larger part of the house than both these together had been left as generations past had left it, in various stages of, refinement, comfort and comeliness. It was a day or two before Fleda found out that it was all one; she thought at first that it was a collection of several houses that had somehow inexplicably sat down there with their backs to each other; it was ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... table in the refectory sat Etienne, and marvelled to see how well the ascetics fared. Yet there was refinement in their dishes; and there was little or no excess; they drank the light wines of France, not the heavier ale and ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... typical American critical journal, must needs conceive the United States, says H. G. Wells, as "a vain, garrulous and prosperous female of uncertain age and still more uncertain temper, with unfounded pretensions to intellectuality and an ideal of refinement of the most negative description ... the Aunt Errant of Christendom."[80] There is always that blushful shyness, that timorous uncertainty, broken by sudden rages, sudden enunciations of impeccable doctrine, sudden runnings amuck. Formalism is the ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Brighton, properly hashed and reduced for any further medical experiments. (See Engraving, p. 274.) The accommodation to fat citizens, and western gourmands, would be excellent, the very height of luxury and refinement—inhaling the salubrious breeze one moment, and gurgling down the glutinous calipash the next; no 277exactions of impudent waiters, or imposing landlords, or complaints of dying from hunger, or choking ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... all look like gentlewomen, and are such in refinement and manners, but there is an air, which comes partly of birth, partly of breeding, and that none of you, except, perhaps, Alethea, can boast of, and about which papa and I ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the effects of Byzantine art to represent violent action are inadequate, most of them ludicrously so, even when the sculptural art is in other respects far advanced. The early Gothic sculptors, on the other hand, fail in all points of refinement, but hardly ever in expression of action. This distinction is of course one of the necessary consequences of the difference in all respects between the repose of the Eastern, and activity of the Western, mind, which ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... of rich crimson satin 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 south ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... pounced upon this slim, attractive young woman as the only plausible heroine for his prospective romance, and, as such, she could not be guilty of forwardness or lack or dignity. Besides, first impressions are always good ones: she had struck him at the outset as being a girl of rare delicacy and refinement. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... idea of an entertainment presented before Elizabeth, in whose reign letters revived with such brilliancy, and whose court, governed by a female whose sense of propriety was equal to her strength of mind, was no less distinguished for delicacy and refinement than her councils for wisdom and fortitude. But whether from the political wish to seem interested in popular sports, or whether from a spark of old Henry's rough, masculine spirit, which Elizabeth sometimes displayed, it is certain the Queen laughed heartily at ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen who could be found—Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may be ranged under the general term of Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter forms. And this art the reader may conceive as ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... town, where they were confined, upon their parole: the militia of the country rose and set them at liberty. General Hawley is so strict as to think they should be sent back; but nobody here comprehends such refinement: they could not give their word that the town should not be taken. There are two or three others, who will lay the government under difficulties, when we have got over the rebellion. They were come to England on their ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... precepts, and corrected the fluctuating manners of fashion, in the tone of fashionable raillery; and the Connoisseur[7], by its gay and sparkling effusions, had forwarded the advance of the public mind to that last stage of intellectual refinement, in which alone a relish exists for delicate and half latent irony. The plain and literal citizens of an earlier period, who conned over what was "so nominated in the bend," would have misapprehended that graceful playfulness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... rendered less capable of performing his master's service when he finds himself exposed by law to the capricious violence of every turbulent man in the community. Mitigated as slavery is by the humanity of our laws, the refinement of manners, and by public opinion which revolts at every instance of cruelty towards them, it would be an anomaly in the system of police which affects them if the offense stated in the verdict [the striking of a slave] were not indictable."[20] Likewise the South Carolina ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips |
