"Refine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one than anywhere else. And he gave Rowland to understand that he meant to live freely and largely, and be as interested as occasion demanded. Rowland saw no reason to regard this as a menace of dissipation, because, in the first place, there was in all dissipation, refine it as one might, a grossness which would disqualify it for Roderick's favor, and because, in the second, the young sculptor was a man to regard all things in the light of his art, to hand over his passions to his genius to be dealt with, and to find that he could live largely enough without ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... was pronounced a crime whose penalty was death. And Bruno, who, from the depths of infamous superstition, had risen into the pure light of heaven, to a theory whose principles, though they might not satisfy, could not fail to refine, elevate, and encourage the soul long groveling in the mire of ignorance, or languishing in the dark dungeons of Scholasticism,—Bruno died for the truth. More foolish than the savages of whom Montesquieu speaks, who cut down trees to reach their fruit, these ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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, ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... supreme. Beautiful, elegant, accomplished, and powerful in her little world (for the world of fashion does not stretch ALL the way from pole to pole), her influence in Sir Leicester's house, however haughty and indifferent her manner, is greatly to improve it and refine it. The cousins, even those older cousins who were paralysed when Sir Leicester married her, do her feudal homage; and the Honourable Bob Stables daily repeats to some chosen person between breakfast and lunch his favourite original remark, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... ridicule of their large promises in the Idler, by clothing those promises in language as magnificent as his own. It is much less easy to catch the subtle graces of Addison. At the conclusion of the Rambler, he boasts that "he has laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... them as fast as possible. You must shut your heart against the Muses, and be content to feed your understanding with plain, household truths. In short, you must not attempt to enlarge your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine your sentiments; but must keep on in one beaten track, without turning aside either to the right hand or to the left. "But I cannot submit to drudgery like this: I feel a spirit above it." 'Tis well: be above it then; only do not repine that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Manifestly, in allowing or forbidding divorce, in extending or restricting what a man may dispose of by testament, in favoring or interdicting substitutions, it is chiefly in view of some political, economical or social advantage, either to refine or consolidate the union of the sexes, to implant in the family habits of discipline or sentiments of affection, to excite in children an initiatory spirit, or one of concord, to prepare for the nation ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... art true, my love, And welcome as the breeze Which comes, with healing on its wings, Across the summer seas: That thou hast every winning charm Which culture may refine— I know that thou art mine, my love, I know that I am thine. Yes, thine, my love, I'm thine, my love, Thine, thine, ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... that reasoning. Put yourself in the mental attitude of a man looking for deer. His eye sweeps rapidly over a side hill; so rapidly that you cannot understand how he can have gathered the main features of that hill, let alone concentrate and refine his attention to the seeing of an animal under a bush. As a matter of fact he pays no attention to the main features. He has trained his eye, not so much to see things, as to leave things out. The odd-shaped rock, the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... is the letter inspired by the Spirit. What Jesus said in justification of his doctrine of the new birth is equally applicable to the doctrine of inspiration: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Educate, develop, and refine the natural man to the highest possible point, and yet he is not a spiritual man till, through the new birth, the Holy Ghost renews and indwells him. So of literature; however elevated its tone, however lofty ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... granulated sago, from the hands of the grower or producer, was, according to Mr. Crawfurd, only a dollar a picul. It fetches in the London market—common pearl, 20s. to 26s. the cwt., sago flour, 20s. the cwt. The Chinese of Malacca and Singapore have invented a process by which they refine sago, so as to give it a fine pearly lustre, and it is from thence we now principally derive our supplies of this article. The exports from Singapore in 1847 exceeded 61/2 million pounds, but are now ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... be contradicted in an hour's time,"—said Angus—"I tell you, David, when I started working in journalism, I thought it was the finest profession going. It seemed to me to have all the responsibilities of the world on its back. I considered it a force with which to educate, help, and refine all peoples, and all classes. But I found it was only a money speculation after all. How much profit could be made out of it? That was the chief point of action. That was the mainspring of every political ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... without permission from the Board. Gulflex and other oil companies protest to Number One as they say we might open up a hole that will spill all the petroleum out of the earth all at once, so fast they couldn't refine it. A spark could ignite it and set the globe on fire like it was a brandied Christmas pudding. But then another earthquake shakes Earth from the rice fields of China to the llamas in Peru just when it looks as if we were about to be tossed into ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... other magistrates to solicit their votes. Marcus Porcius Cato, a young man of about forty years, who had been brought up on a farm, and looked with the greatest respect upon the virtue of the olden times, before Grecian influences had crept in to soften and refine the hard Roman character, represented the party of conservatism. Now, thought he, is an opportunity for me to stand against the corrupting influence of Magna Grcia. He therefore rose and made a long speech in opposition to the petition of the matrons. He thought they ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... reverence is our guide in determining our duty, and the test of universality perpetually comes in to correct the commands of this sentiment and to clear and so to refine the ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... marble!—'neath my tools More pliable than jelly—as it were Some clear primordial creature dug from depths In the earth's heart, where itself breeds itself. And whence all baser substance may be worked; Refine it off to air, you may—condense it Down to the diamond;—is not metal there, When o'er the sudden speck my chisel trips? —Not flesh, as flake off flake I scale, approach, Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep? Lurks flame in no strange windings where, surprised By the swift implement sent ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Infuse the rinds of 8 Lemons in a Gallon of Brandy 48 hours then add 5 Quarts of Water and 2 pounds of Loaf Sugar then Squize the Juices of all the Lemons to these Ingredients add 2 Quarts of new milk Scald hot stirring the whole till it crudles grate in 2 Nutmegs let the whole infuse 1 Hour then refine through ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... any workman mould The iron to his preconceived design, Nor can the artist without fire refine And purify from all its dross the gold; Nor can revive the phoenix, we are told, Except by fire. Hence if such death be mine I hope to rise again with the divine, Whom death augments, and time cannot make old. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and emotions are caused by some agent acting on us. This is true of all the senses and the spiritual faculties. Hence we should by all possible means purify and refine our organism, so that we may hear the most delicate, the sweetest, the stillest sounds and murmurings of the angels who are about us. How much fuller and richer would be our life if we were more acutely sensitive and finely textured! How many exquisite delights nature yields which we are not yet ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... who seeks the society of the loose and the dissolute. There is at all times and everywhere open to him a society of persons of the opposite sex of his own age and of pure thoughts and lives, whose conversation will refine him and drive from his ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... not fit for warp or woof! Till cunning come to pound and squeeze And clarify,—refine to proof *2* The liquor filtered by degrees, While ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... 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 ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... buried. He might ask himself the use of lifting the mind above the level of common things,—of hoping to carry another one with him in equal companionship,—of allowing the vulgarities of life to become disgusting,—and of striving for a clearer, brighter, loftier sphere. Why refine the thoughts, elevate the aspirations, and broaden the heart, till the nature shrinks from contact with commonplaces, and shudders at the coarse touch of worldly tongues? You see that Atticus uses broad generalities, and never once individualizes Mrs. Atticus. And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... proposition, hazard a guess, talk at random. reason ill, falsely &c adj.; misjudge &c 481; paralogize^. take on faith, take as a given; assume (supposition) 514. pervert, quibble; equivocate, mystify, evade, elude; gloss over, varnish; misteach &c 538 [Obs.]; mislead &c (error) 495; cavil, refine, subtilize^, 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of a society of Lesbian ladies who applied themselves successfully to literature. Says SYMONDS: "They formed clubs for the cultivation of poetry and music. They studied the arts of beauty, and sought to refine metrical forms and diction. Nor did they confine themselves to the scientific side of art. Unrestrained by public opinion, and passionate for the beautiful, they cultivated their senses and emotions, and indulged their wildest ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... "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, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... swearing, and hard drinking. Many a scene of riot and orgies did those log-walls witness. Such is generally the life in a lumber-camp: hard, wholesome labour in the day, loud revelling at night. The rough, adventurous life, with no home charm or female influence to refine or restrain, is probably the principal reason of such low practice of life ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... warden had been 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 ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... for mate. It's no use; they can't spake the language, and it's no use t'achin' thim. They're good min to wurruk—all bone and sole leather, but ye can't refine thim." ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... need If thou, O Lord, be mine; Thy rod will bring my spirit low, Thy fire my heart refine, And cause me pain that none may feel By other love ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... ages, and conditions. No yard connected with a dwelling is complete without a flower-bed. The cultivation of flowers is eminently promotive of health, refinement of manners, and good taste. Constant familiarity with the most exquisite beauties of nature must refine the feelings and produce gentleness of spirit. Association with flowers should be a part of every child's education. Their cultivation is suitable for children and young ladies in all the ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... grow for many years from 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 ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... ignorant unskilled labour where competition is always hottest and most perilous, it will teach him, better than he could know without it, the relative value of things; it will so elevate his thoughts and refine his tastes that the path of duty in its roughest and steepest places, will yet ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... to him. He opens out to me with a vengeance, and wants a little of your preaching to refine his language. But who can wonder? I am ashamed to show my nose myself. The first bit of pleasure I have had since it began was seeing Gladys look so well and happy this morning. What has happened to her? Is she ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... these woods to-day Hear love discoursed; and it shall well be seen That my divinity is present here In its own person, not its ministers. I will inbreathe high fancies in rude hearts; I will refine and render dulcet sweet Their tongues; because, wherever I may be, Whether with rustic or heroic men, There am I Love; and inequality, As it may please me, do I equalise; And 'tis my crowning glory and great miracle To ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... knowledge of all that has been written on this hackneyed subject will never supply the want of natural poetic taste, of that union of mental and moral refinement which produces the only infallible touchstone of the beautiful; still such criticisms will tend to refine and sharpen a natural taste, where it does exist; and without bringing its technical rules practically to bear upon the objects of your delighted admiration,[82] they will insensibly improve, refine, and subtilize the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... every night, in imaginary scenes, as he walked through the lamplit streets home from the office. To walk with Katharine in the flesh would either feed that phantom with fresh food, which, as all who nourish dreams are aware, is a process that becomes necessary from time to time, or refine it to such a degree of thinness that it was scarcely serviceable any longer; and that, too, is sometimes a welcome change to a dreamer. And all the time Ralph was well aware that the bulk of Katharine was not represented in his dreams at all, so that when he met her he ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... 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 ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... 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 ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... less than mother's love in other breasts, Will, among us warm-clad and warmly housed, 30 Do for thee what the finger of the heavens Doth all too often harshly execute For thy unblest coevals, amid wilds Where fancy hath small liberty to grace The affections, to exalt them or refine; 35 And the maternal sympathy itself, Though strong, is, in the main, a joyless tie Of naked instinct, wound about the heart. Happier, far happier is thy lot and ours! Even now—to solemnise thy helpless ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... notions in his Phys. 1. ii. c. iii., referred to by Brucker and Formey in their Histories of Philosophy. Of the Scholastic Metaphysics, Sprat, the historian of the Royal Society, observes, "that the lovers of that cloudy knowledge boast that it is an excellent instrument to refine and make subtle the minds of men. But there may be a greater excess in the subtlety of men's wits than in their thickness; as we see those threads, which are of too fine a spinning, are found to be more useless than those which are homespun and gross."—History ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... him-by circuitous means as given by proper food, sunlight, and harmonious 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 for ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... nature dowered me with bounteous treasure You tyrants think 'twas all to serve your pleasure. Why should my person, throne, and wealth be booty To one harsh, jealous master? No, all beauty Is heaven's gift, and like the sun, should shine To glad earth's children, and their souls refine. I hate proud man, and like to make him feel He may not crush free woman 'neath ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... he is 'collecting' in them. In his wildest glades, this is still the species that he is busied with. He has brought him there to experiment on him, and that we may see the better what he is. He has brought him there to improve his arts, to reduce his conventional savageness, to re-refine his coarse refinements, not to make a wild-man of him. This is the Poet of the Woods; but he is a woodman, he carries an axe on his shoulder. He will wake a continental forest with it and subdue it, and fill it ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Yet, for all that, his despotic nature was not disarmed by this angel of gentleness, whose ugliness day by day decreased, driven out by the ineffable expression of moral qualities which shone upon her face. She was all soul. The spirit of prayer seemed to purify her and refine those homely features and make them luminous. Who has not seen the phenomenon of a like transfiguration on sacred faces where the habits of the soul have triumphed over the plainest features, giving them that spiritual illumination ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Condemning Jeffries or indulging spleen, Reproving Congress or amending laws, Still fond to find out blemishes and flaws; Here harmless sentimental-mongers join To praise some author or his wit refine, Or treat the mental appetite with lore From Plato's, Pope's, and Shakespeare's endless store; Young blushing writers, eager for the bays, Try here the merit of their new-born lays, Seek for a patron, follow fleeting fame, And beg the slut may ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... Three out of four who work in packing towns were born abroad or are children of those who were born abroad; four out of five of those who make our silk goods, seven out of eight of those employed in woolen mills, nine out of ten of those who refine our petroleum, and nineteen out of twenty of those who manufacture our sugar are immigrants or the children of immigrants." And it might have shown a similarly high percentage of those in the ready-made clothing industries, railway and ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... 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
... a wild life I lived. I had no friends, no ties, nothing, in fact, to refine or purify. The hatred in my heart kept me from being loved by my associates, and nothing kept me from sinking to the lowest depths of degradation but my love for Ruth. Often, when I was on the point of yielding to the low and the depraved, my love for her saved me. ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... who are desirous to refine our manners, and improve our faculties, some are willing to supply the deficiency of our speakers[1]. We have had more than one exhortation to study the neglected art of moving the passions, and have been encouraged to believe that our tongues, however feeble in themselves, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the chance turn of the phrase. Neither the girl nor her hearers recalled the succeeding verses, wherein the destruction of Jerusalem is foretold: "And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... a friendship such as mine Such feelings must thy heart refine As seldom mortal mind gives birth, 'Tis love, without a stain of earth, Fratello ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... charge 100,000 Leyden jars and blow the Houses of Parliament to atoms. Farraday amazes us by his statement of the energy required to embroider a violet or produce a strawberry. To untwist the sunbeam and extract the rich strawberry red, to refine the sugar, and mix its flavor, represents heat sufficient to run an engine from Liverpool to London or from Chicago to Detroit. But because nature does her work noiselessly we must not forget that each of her gifts also ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... 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; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... to refine upon this statement of the matter. The course of external events, in so far as it affects one person, whether as proceeding from or reacting upon him, reveals character, and has meaning as an interpretation of inward life. It is a series outward indeed, but parallel with the states of will, intellect, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... any thing like a defence upon this ground, the Citizen at length, p. 24, dismisses his whole train of statements, certificates and letters, & undertakes very learnedly and elaborately to refine upon the distinction; and insists that if a man expresses his personal wish to resign, it is to all intents and purposes a resignation, and that no other was ever heard of; as if it was impossible to consult the opinions of others, and make a general resignation depend upon ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... 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" ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... a hand White, delicate, dimpled, warm, languid, and bland. The hand of a woman is often, in youth, Somewhat rough, somewhat red, somewhat graceless in truth; Does its beauty refine, as its pulses grow calm, Or as Sorrow has, crossed the life-line in the palm? 866 OWEN MEREDITH: Lucile, Pt. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... transformed the rude church of the Moravian sisters to a cathedral with "glimmering tapers," swinging censers, chancel, altar, cowls and "dim mysterious aisle." After his visit to Europe, {478} Longfellow returned deeply imbued with the spirit of romance. It was his mission to refine our national taste by opening to American readers, in their own vernacular, new springs of beauty in the literatures of foreign tongues. The fact that this mission was interpretative, rather than creative, hardly detracts from Longfellow's true originality. It ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... far from poisoning the springs of human joy, so far from imbittering the cordials of our cup, will refine every enjoyment and purify every pleasure. It will blunt the keen edge of sorrow, and smooth the asperities of adversity. It will bring down heaven to earth, and render death itself a desirable passage to everlasting life. Let ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... say you will agree with me, that as there is no Moral in these Jests, they ought to be discouraged, and looked upon rather as pieces of Unluckiness than Wit. However, as it is natural for one Man to refine upon the Thought of another, and impossible for any single Person, how great soever his Parts may be, to invent an Art, and bring it to its utmost Perfection; I shall here give you an account of an honest Gentleman of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... mentioned,—an Orator who had received more literary improvements than Curio, and had a more accurate and delicate manner of speaking, which he conducted with great taste and elegance; but, (by being too minute and nice a critic upon himself,) while he was labouring to correct and refine his language, he suffered all the force and spirit of it to evaporate. In short, it was so exquisitely polished, as to charm the eye of every skilful observer; but it was little noticed by the common people in a crowded Forum, which is the proper theatre of Eloquence."—"His aim," said Brutus, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... 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. They find the exact Weight that I told them; they ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... that is false and hollow, and we assert that nothing can be sound and true which puts the God who made us out of his place, and thrusts him down from his rightful throne in our hearts. Study science by all means, cultivate your intellects, elevate your tastes, refine your pursuits. But then, remember that you are, after all, not your own in any of these things, for Christ has purchased you for himself. Begin with him, and he will give you peace, and an abiding blessing upon all ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... however 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
... 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 not merely accumulated, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it. What the study of "literature" (only the adult's manner of saying "reading") is expected to accomplish was aptly described by Cardinal Newman when he wrote: "The object of literature in education is to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to comprehend and adjust its knowledge, to give it power over its faculties—application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, address and expression." Reading at home and in the public schools as well as in the high school and colleges helps to accomplish these ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... 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 ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... is the breeze. The air in the valleys immediately 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 ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... 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 ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... growing friendship between the two; and of late years Lord Driffield's interest in David's development and career had become particularly warm and cordial. He had himself largely contributed to the subtler sides of that development, had helped to refine the ambitions and raise the standards of the growing intellect; his advice, owing to his lifelong commerce with and large possession of books, had often been of great practical use to the young man; his library had for years been at David's service, both for reference ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gentle, and unselfish, have great power with their own sex, and almost unbounded influence over men. Your power, therefore, is subtle, penetrating, and reaches the inner life, the very warp and woof of character. If a beautiful statue can ennoble and refine, a beautiful woman can accomplish infinitely more. She can be a constant inspiration, a suggestion of the perfect life beyond and an earnest of it. All power brings responsibility, even that which a man achieves ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... perceived goal, the intellectual superiority, which he possessed over his rival, was hardly balanced by any special moral obliquity on his part; though to Philip, with all his weakness, must always be given the sympathy provoked by the defence of his land against the foreign invader. It is useless to refine the issue further. The situation had become impossible, and fighting was the only way out of the difficulty. When in the late summer of 1339 the curtain was rung down on the long-drawn-out diplomatic comedy, Edward had not yet ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... own performances. This in the author of the Essay on Murder may seem surprising, but, in fact, there are few things of which there are so many subdivisions, or in which the subdivisions are marked off from each other by such apparently impermeable lines, as humour. If I may refine a little I should say that there was very frequently, if not generally, a humorous basis for these divagations of De Quincey's; but that he almost invariably lost sight of that basis, and proceeded to reason quite gravely away from it, in what is (not entirely with justice) called the scholastic ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... a mine for silver, And a place for gold which they refine. Iron is taken out of the earth, And brass is molten out of the stone. Man setteth an end to darkness, And searcheth out to the furthest bound The stones of thick darkness and of the shadow of death. He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn; They are forgotten of ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... a man, This marred one heedless day, This heart take Thou to scan Both within and without: Refine with fire its gold, Purge thou its dross away— Yea, hold it in Thy hold, Whence none can pluck it ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... her day to die, So heavenly, that on high Change could not glorify Nor death refine her: Pure gold of perfect love, On earth like heaven's own dove, She cannot wear, above, ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... all the face of the earth."—(Acts 17: 26.) Much of our happiness, and usefulness in this world arises from this quality which man possesses over the animal creation. And just in proportion, as we shall cultivate, and refine our social and intellectual natures, just in that proportion, shall we rise above the level of the savage and ...
— A Narrative of The Life of Rev. Noah Davis, A Colored Man. - Written by Himself, At The Age of Fifty-Four • Noah Davis
... separation in motives must lead also to a distinction in the machinery of the work. The philanthropists address themselves, not to the artisan merely, but to the laborer in general, desiring in any possible way to refine the habits or increase the happiness of our whole working population, by giving them new recreations or new thoughts: and the principles of Art-Education adopted in a school which has this wide but somewhat indeterminate aim, are, or should be, very different ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... had a nap in the old armchair. Face down on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Refine Pedauque, and just before he fell asleep he had been thinking: 'As a people shall we ever really like the French? Will they ever really like us!' He himself had always liked the French, feeling at home with their wit, their taste, their cooking. Irene ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the same desire To grant the bliss, and to require! But if in heaven a hell we find, 'Tis all from thee, O Jealousy! 'Tis all from thee, O Jealousy! Thou tyrant, tyrant Jealousy, Thou tyrant of the mind! All other ills, though sharp they prove, Serve to refine, and perfect love: In absence, or unkind disdain, Sweet hope relieves the lover's pain. But, ah! no cure but death we find, To set us free From Jealousy: O Jealousy! Thou tyrant, tyrant Jealousy, Thou tyrant ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the circumstances, and wondered at them in her own simple way. Her ambition was a little quickened, and the answer was as much out of the usual course of things as the question; the poor girl attempting to refine beyond her strength. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... misfortune for the workers who would thus have been rendered superfluous, while the community would not have profited at all. We, on the contrary, were able to find excellent employment for the labour thus saved, which could be utilised in producing things that would elevate and refine, and for which the increased productiveness of ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... skill to freight such a drunken ship with so much gilded dirt"—was one of the mildest of his phrases, as, "breathing out these and many other passions," he harangued those who had "no thought, no discourse, no hope, and no work but to dig gold, wash gold, refine ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... characters, do not develop any further the type which we have found in St. Teresa and St. Juan. St. Francis de Sales has been a favourite devotional writer with thousands in this country. He presents the Spanish Mysticism softened and polished into a graceful and winning pietism, such as might refine and elevate the lives of the "honourable women" who consulted him. The errors of the quietists certainly receive some countenance from parts of his writings, but they are neutralised by maxims of a different tendency, ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... means to be honest solely because honesty is right, and not because honesty is profitable, there is a perpetual and beautiful tendency of his honesty to refine and deepen itself. ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... things. It is impossible for them to have right ideas about colour, unless they see the lovely colours of nature unspoiled; impossible for them to supply beautiful incident and action in their ornament, unless they see beautiful incident and action in the world about them. Inform their minds, refine their habits, and you form and refine their designs; but keep them illiterate, uncomfortable, and in the midst of unbeautiful things, and whatever they do will still be ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then will they do good who are accustomed to do evil." Weighing this text duly with another, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," how shall we presume to refine away the sovereignty of God, by arraigning Jehovah at the bar of human reason, which, in religious matters, is too often opposed by infinite wisdom? "Broad is the way which leadeth to death, and many walk therein. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... 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
... gold darkly refine O'er the great sea of human joy and sorrow, I bear the deep voice of a grief divine Calling sweet notes to some diviner morrow, And though I know not how the two may part, I feel thy rays, O Sun, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... in obedience to your rare and divine instincts. So continue so to live, fair, free, and happy!—it is your mission—more providential than you may think it. Yes; continue to surround yourself with all the marvels of luxury and art; refine your senses, purify your tastes, by the exquisite choice of your enjoyments; by genius, grace, and purity raise yourself above the stupid and ill-favored mob of men, that will instantly surround you, when they behold you alone and free; they ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... you see, then, that you must stand up for art all the more unflinchingly if you intend to write plays that will refine the theatre-going public, or create a new one? That is why I can't endure to have you even seem to give way ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... sect or subsect. Some allow inherited wealth, or talent, or high character, etc., to outweigh disadvantages. In short, we already have selection. It always has existed. The law of incest was an instinctive effort in the same direction. The problem is the same now as it always has been,—to refine and correct the standards and to determine ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... own intractable character, without religious faith to ennoble it, without even imagination to refine it—the unconscious disclosure of the one tender and loving instinct in her nature still piteously struggling for existence, with no sympathy to sustain it, with no light to guide it—would have touched the heart of any man not incurably depraved. Amelius spoke with the fervour of his young ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed. All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the human form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reveries of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the pagan world, the sins of ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... said: "We must have two sexes and if the women insist on becoming men I suppose the men must refine themselves into women.... I dread the effect of this woman's movement upon civilization because I know what happened to the Roman republic when women attained their full rights. They married without going to church and were ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... to America soon after the eventful night which changed my whole career; my teacher also came to this country. I had everything to learn; I could not even speak my own language; my speech was a dialect heard in that part of the country where I was brought up. I have had to cultivate and refine myself. I had to study other languages, Italian, French and German. I learned them all in America. So you see there is no need for an American to go out of his own country for vocal instruction or languages; all can be learned right here at home. I am a living proof of this. ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... in the cant and quip of schools, Uncouth, if only city ways refine; Ungodly, if 'tis creeds that make divine; In station poor, as judged by human rules, And yet a giant towering o'er them all; Clean, strong in mind, just, merciful, sublime; The noblest product of the age and time, Invoked of God in ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... who now shall deem, Because among us seem No dubious symptoms of a realm's decline— Wealth blind with its excess 'Mid far-diffused distress, And pride that kills, professing to refine— ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Honoria, 'why have you been so unfaithful to your original? why have you, like all artists, been trying to soften and refine ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... But they unused to be controll'd) Then Esop thus his fable told: The Frogs, a freeborn people made, From out their marsh with clamor pray'd That Jove a monarch would assign With power their manners to refine. The sovereign smiled, and on their bog Sent his petitioners a log, Which, as it dash'd upon the place, At first alarm'd the tim'rous race. But ere it long had lain to cool, One slily peep'd out of the ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... heathbell flourish still; Cherish the tulip, prune the vine, But freely let the woodbine twine, And leave untrimmed the eglantine: Nay, my friend, nay—Since oft thy praise Hath given fresh vigour to my lays; Since oft thy judgment could refine My flattened thought, or cumbrous line; Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, And in the minstrel spare the friend. Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale, Flow forth, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... moment allow that the difference between bad taste and good is merely relative, or that a language or art which is externally vulgar can ever be the adequate and appropriate expression of the Catholic religion, whose tendency when unimpeded is ever to refine and purify. But it is perhaps another narrowness to suppose that a reform can only be effected by a return to the past, to mediaeval symbolism and music and architecture. No effort of the kind has ever met with more than seeming success. What is consciously imitated from the past is ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... him into literature on a scale and with a distinctness that cannot be mistaken. To this end he keeps a deep hold of the savage, the unrefined, and marshals the elements and influences that make for the virile, the heroic, the sane, the large, and for the perpetuity of the race. We cannot refine the elements,—the air, the water, the soil, the sunshine,—and the more we pervert or shut out these from our lives the worse for us. In the same manner, the more we pervert or balk the great natural impulses, sexuality, comradeship, the religious emotion, nativity, or the more we deny ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... 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
... forbidden at present to partake of its amusements, had agreed to accompany her to her retreat. Neither of them was perhaps much suited to Emily's temper, but youth and spirits make almost any one congenial to us: it is from the years which confirm our habits, and the reflections which refine our taste, that it becomes easy to revolt us, and difficult ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the power of it. Unless you do that, I do not say you do nothing, but you pour a bottle full of cold water into Vesuvius, and try to put the fire out with that. You may educate, you may cultivate, you may refine; you may set political and economical arrangements right in accordance with the newest notions of the century, and what then? Why! the old thing will just begin over again, and the old miseries will appear again, because the old grandmother of them all is there, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 young operators they spelled illimitable wealth. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... nations affects 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 or in a despotism: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... 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 ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... seemingly opposed conditions of time and space were indistinguishably blended. This One, the source of human life, was placed beyond the limits of our visible universe; and in order for human life to return thither at death and to enjoy immortality, it was only necessary to refine away corporeal grossness according to the doctrines of Lao Tzu. Later on, this One came to be regarded as a fixed point of dazzling luminosity, in remote ether, around which circled for ever and ever, in the supremest glory of motion, the souls of those who ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... a sheep has a vast amount of oil in it," explained one of the workmen, "and it is impossible to do anything until this grease has been extracted; so we put a bunch of skins under a heavy press and then collect the grease that runs out, refine, ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... every movement, was contentment to the other perceptions; the thought of a soul, bringing with it that other of death, was cold and inconsistent. Such mortal perfection loses its full effect, unless we can look upon it as physically immortal: as soon as we begin to refine our ideas into the abstract, we sully ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... what He is, at work with purposes of holy love in the venture of creation; and this they can see in Christ, living, suffering, dying, rising, and alive for evermore; or else Christianity is nothing in the world. That is the pure metal of our glorious religion, which the fierce fires of war must refine out of its traditional alloy. That is the great golden secret uttered in Christ—God, all-suffering and all-faithful love, calling out into active alliance the like qualities in His children for the accomplishment of His will on earth as ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... and simple, but as his mind ripens they become longer and more difficult. The education of the soul precedes that of the mind. They wish to make their children good before they make them clever; and good by the feelings of the heart rather than the instruction of the head. Every care is taken to refine and strengthen the sentiments and instincts, the conscience, good sense and taste, as well as the affections, filial piety, friendship, and the love of Nature. Spiritual and moral ideals are inculcated by means of innocent and simple tales or narratives. Children are taught to obey the authority ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... as sixty heats have been taken off in succession without giving the lining any attention. The absence of any reagent leaves the iron simply pure and homogeneous to a degree never realized in muck bars made by the old puddling process. Thus the expense of a reheating and rerolling to refine the iron is obviated. It was such iron as here results that Bessemer, in his early experiments, was seeking to obtain when he was diverted from his purpose by his splendid discoveries in the art of making steel. So effective is the new process, that even from the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... where vanity is so predominant, require the greatest care, for the failing is difficult to eradicate and would, if not cured, be a source of great unhappiness in after life. To prevent such a result, generally, means are taken to refine the taste of the patient (if I may use the word), and call out the quality most opposed to the infirmity, viz., that of looking out for ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... received a higher character; that the agitating circumstances of the stormy time seemed to call forth a certain dignity of feeling and expression, which he had not formerly observed; and that she omitted no opportunity within her reach to extend her knowledge and refine her taste. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... that, through the knowledge of languages, enabling her to penetrate into the mysteries of the older world, she had become a sorceress, like the Celtic druidesses; and how as Abelard and Heloise sat together at home there, to refine a little further on the nature of abstract ideas, "Love made himself of the party with them." You conceive the temptations of the scholar, who, in such dreamy tranquillity, amid the bright and busy spectacle of the "Island," lived ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... of being can we 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 I ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... for heroes proved, In liberating strife. Who more than self their country loved. And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And ev'ry gain divine! America! America! God shed His ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... Former acquaintances are neglected or forgotten; the tenderest ties between friends are weakened or dissolved; and benevolence itself moves in a very limited sphere." "It is the glory of the marriage state," she rejoined, "to refine by circumscribing our enjoyments. Here ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... their substance gross refine; Each bulky lout grows light like gossamere; Celestial thrones before purged ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... refine on thee, And turn thy stage into a school, The jest of Punch will ever be, And stand confest ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... to feel intuitively the drift of sentiment and conviction, and so to adjust the uses of art to life as to exalt the one, and enrich and refine the other, involved not only the possession of gifts of a high order, but that training which puts a man in command of himself and of his materials. Addison was fortunate in that incomparably important education which assails a child through every sense, and above all through the imagination—in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... one end of the furnace come hot air and gas, which burn in the furnace, producing sufficient heat to melt the charge and refine it of its impurities. Lime and other nonmetallic substances are put in the furnace. These melt, forming a "slag" which floats on the metal and aids materially in ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... partial half lights, by courtesy, genius; talent which converts itself to money; talent which glitters to-day that it may dine and sleep well to-morrow; and society is officered by men of parts,[674] as they are properly called, and not by divine men. These use their gifts to refine luxury, not to abolish it. Genius is always ascetic; and piety, and love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and they find beauty in rites and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for economy; she does not neglect to regard the duty that lies upon her, as the guardian and instructress of youth, to set before their eyes models of fair proportion, noble structures which shall exercise at once an influence to refine the taste and the sentiment and to enlarge the intellect. She acknowledges the claims of the future as well as of the present, and does not erect that which the future, however it may advance in constructive power, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... season of general repose, just such a day, I think, as a saint would choose to assist his fancy in describing the sunny regions whither his thoughts delight to wander, or a poet would select to refine his ideas of the climate of Elysium. At length I arrived at the old meeting-house where I had often gone, when a lad with my father ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... his umbrella under his arm. We must write for that fat, breathless woman whom I see from my window, as she climbs painfully into the Odeon omnibus. We must write courageously for the bourgeois, if it were only to try to refine them, to make them less bourgeois. And if I dared, I should say that we must ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... but a similar walpurgis nacht, in which an incestuous or amorous god may become a beast, and the object of his pursuit, once a woman, may also become a beast, and then shift shapes to a tree or a bird or a star. But in the civilised races the genius of the people tends to suppress, exclude and refine away the wild element, which, however, is never wholly eliminated. The Erinyes soon stop the mouth of the horse of Achilles when he begins, like the horse in Grimm's Goose Girl, to hold a sustained conversation.(1) But the ancient, cruel, and grotesque savage element, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Thousands upon thousands of people scan the newspapers each day to see what price its staple is bringing. From its bounty a vast army of toilers, who plant its seed, who pick its bolls, who gin its staple, who spin and weave its lint, who grind its seed, who refine its oil, draw daily bread. Does not its proper production deserve the best thought ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... cultivate their morals, refine their tastes, manners, habits. I wish to lift from them that ever-depressing sense of hopelessness which keeps ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... the British Aluminium Company was founded to mine bauxite and manufacture alumina in Ireland, to prepare the necessary electrodes at Greenock, to reduce the aluminium by the aid of water-power at the Falls of Foyers, and to refine and work up the metal into marketable shapes at the old Milton factory of the Cowles Syndicate, remodelled to suit modern requirements. In 1905 this company began works for the utilization of another water-power ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... larger trees. They had taken, for their walk, to the cropped, rain-freshened grass, after finding it already dry; and the chairs, turned away from the broad alley, the main drive and the aspect of Park Lane, looked across the wide reaches of green which seemed in a manner to refine upon their freedom. They helped Charlotte thus to make her position—her temporary position—still more clear, and it was for this purpose, obviously, that, abruptly, on seeing her opportunity, she sat down. He stood for a little before her, as if to mark the importance of not ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... of the act of voting, but are the expressions of course, criminal and evil natures, excited by the desire for victory. The admission to the polls of delicate and tender women would, without injury to them, tend to refine and elevate the politics in which they took a part. When, in former times, women were excluded from social banquets, such assemblies were scenes of ribaldry and excess. The presence of women has substituted for them the festival ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... well flavoured vinegar—let them stand twenty-four hours, strain them through a bag, put this liquid on another quart, of fresh raspberries, which strain in the same manner—and then on a third quart: when this last is prepared, make it very sweet with pounded loaf sugar; refine and bottle it. It is a delicious beverage mixed with ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph |
