"Refinement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... uniform of a naval petty officer entered the room. He was clean-shaven, looked about twenty-five years old, was dark and slim of the Latin type which is not uncommon in Cornwall, and impressed me at once with his air of intelligence and refinement. His voice, too, was rather striking. It was that of the wardroom rather than of the mess deck. I liked the look of Petty Officer Trehayne. Dawson presented him to us and then took him aside for instructions. When he had finished, both men rejoined us, and the conversation became ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... musician is not one of mere talent, or of a certain sensual refinement and dexterity. It involves deep systematic study, closely akin to that of the severer sciences. It has a sequence and logic of its own, and excellence in it is unattainable without good sense and strong intellect. It involves great moral and pathetic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... countenance. He was a cut-throat, and badly educated. Morny laughed at him for his pronunciation of the "Sovereign People." "He pronounces the word no better than he understands the thing," said he. The Elysee, which prides itself upon its refinement, only half-accepted Saint-Arnaud. His bloody side had caused his vulgar side to be condoned. Saint-Arnaud was brave, violent, and yet timid; he had the audacity of a gold-laced veteran and the awkwardness of a man who had formerly been "down upon his ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... forget in a year or two all that we learnt at school because the conditions of our lives are such as to destroy all inclination for culture or refinement. We must see that the children are properly clothed and fed and that they are not made to get up in the middle of the night to go to work for several hours before they go to school. We must make it illegal for any greedy, heartless profit-hunter to hire them and make ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... some mysterious ingredient sucked from the isle; otherwise a racial instinct necessary to the absolute unison of a pair. Thus, though he might never love a woman of the island race, for lack in her of the desired refinement, he could not love long a kimberlin—a woman other than of the island race, for her lack of ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... intellectual freedom of the Revival of Letters, that asceticism and self-denial cast their spell on imaginations glowing with the sense of varied and inexhaustible existence, that the dreamy and poetic refinement of feeling which expressed itself in the fanciful unrealities of chivalry co-existed with the rough practical energy that sprang from an awakening sense of human power, or the lawless extravagance of an idealized friendship and love lived side ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... Annie to accept a gingham frock which I made for her, and some stockings and shoes. Such dainty little feet as hers are, and such a lovely child! I have scarcely ever seen one so beautiful, and it is not common beauty, but of the rarest sort, with elegance and refinement in every feature and movement. It is a thousand pities that she should be left here to grow up in poverty without education, or any of the things she was born to, for, as I told you in my last, the family was once ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Johns appear in many devotional pictures, one on each side of Jesus. Yet the two men were vastly unlike. The Baptist was a wild, rugged man of the desert; the apostle was the representative of the highest type of gentleness and spiritual refinement. The former was the consummate flower of Old Testament prophecy; the latter was the ripe fruit of New Testament evangelism. They appear in history one really on each side of Jesus; one going before him to prepare the way for him, and the other coming after him to declare ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... any young girl is a great revealer of character in respect to real refinement and purity of taste, especially if one comes upon it somewhat unawares. Not very long since, I was called by unexpected circumstances to spend a day or two at the house of a friend, where, owing to the severe illness of two members of the family, the spare rooms were not available and I was without ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... One evening about this time, when his Lordship did me the honour to sup at my lodgings with Dr. Robertson and several other men of literary distinction, he regretted that Johnson had not been educated with more refinement, and lived more in polished society. 'No, no, my Lord, (said Signor Baretti,) do with him what you would, he would always have been a bear.' 'True, (answered the Earl, with a smile,) but he would have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... from him in a manner to which he could not in the least object, and that she had been absolutely fair and square in her agreement with him. WILL is a man who, while rough and rugged in many ways, possesses many of the finer instincts of refinement, latent though they may be, and his meeting with JOHN ought, therefore, to show much significance, because on his impressions of the young man depend the entire justification of his ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... from the contamination of low pleasures and pursuits, than frequent intercourse with the more refined and virtuous of the other sex. Besides, without such society his manners can never acquire the true polish of a gentleman,—general character, dignity, and refinement;—nor his mind and heart the truest and noblest sentiments of a man. Make it an object then, I again say, to spend some portion of every week of your life in the company of intelligent and virtuous ladies. At all events, flee solitude, and especially the exclusive society of your ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... their soul, and not their talent, that survives in their work. Dante's concise forthrightness of phrase, which to that of most other poets is as a stab[260] to a blow with a cudgel, the vigor of his thought, the beauty of his images, the refinement of his conception of spiritual things, are marvellous if we compare him with his age and its best achievement. But it is for his power of inspiring and sustaining, it is because they find in him a spur to noble aims, a secure refuge in that defeat which the present ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... low-ceilinged room on the first floor. There were three little white beds in the room, and three toilet tables, and, in short, three sets of everything. It was the prettiest, the brightest, the most lovely room the girls had ever seen. It contained luxury, and neatness, and comfort, and refinement, for beautiful pictures were placed on the walls, and flowers peeped in at the windows, and the furniture was of that sort which can best accommodate girls' ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... visits to Scotland for many years, and saw all parts of that country at various seasons. From the time of his first visit there was a new feeling in his works—a breadth and power was in them which he gained from nature, and a refinement and elevation which he undoubtedly received from his friendship with Sir Walter and the impetus it gave him. He also became so interested in the Gaelic people that he painted good pictures of them. ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... I can easily understand also that with many their admiration for his Majesty silenced all repugnance, for the same reason that we do not scruple to eat from the plate, or drink from the glass, of a person whom we love, even though it might be considered doubtful on the score of refinement; this is never noticed because love is blind. The dish which the Emperor preferred was the kind of fried chicken to which this preference of the conqueror of Italy has given the name of poulet a la Marengo. He also ate with relish beans, lentils, cutlets, roast ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... say? The refinement of cruelty rather; for now I had neither meat nor drink; my throat was a kiln; my tongue a flame; ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... schoolmaster cares for joining in the gambols of the noisy crowd of boys which surround him. The mission of these great minds is to guide mankind over the sea of error to the haven of truth—to draw it forth from the dark abysses of a barbarous vulgarity up into the light of culture and refinement. Men of great intellect live in the world without really belonging to it; and so, from their earliest years, they feel that there is a perceptible difference between them and other people. But it is ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... her husband. He seemed to have settled down. He had ceased to be uncertain in his temper, by turns irritable and depressed. He had parted with the heaviness which had once roused her aversion, and had recovered his personal distinction, the slender refinement of his youth. She rejoiced in his well-being. She attributed it, partly to his open-air habits, partly to the spiritual growth begun in him at the time of ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... entered upon his series of great imaginative paintings he had used realism for didactic purposes. In those days his work was less rugged than in later times, and had a delicateness and refinement which is seen to perfection in some of his earlier portraits. A few of these efforts may be mentioned. "Study" is the bust of a girl, with long red hair, looking upwards; it represents a beautiful combination ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... the lowest layers he made out ancient hearths, and found numerous fragments of pottery which are the most ancient examples of keramic ware found in New England, and were covered with incised ornamentation of considerable refinement. ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... books and for having her own way; but she was delicate, and Mrs. Howard wisely judged that a few years in a country village would improve her health and broaden her view of life beyond that of cockney provincialism. For, though Mrs. Howard had more refinement than strength of mind, and passed generally for a sweet and inoffensive little woman, she did not lack a certain true perception of values, due doubtless to the fact that she had been a New England girl, and, before her marriage and emigration to the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... pressure of poverty itself should not defeat the educational aim. The Italian girls in the sewing classes would count the day lost when they could not carry home a garment, and the insistence that it should be neatly made seemed a super-refinement to those in dire ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... obtainable, architecture has invariably been severe and simple; where soft stone is obtainable, exuberance of ornament makes its appearance, in consequence of the material lending itself readily to the carver's chisel. Where, on the other hand, marble is abundant and good, refinement is to be met with, for no other building material exists in which very delicate mouldings or very slight or slender projections may be employed with the certainty that they will be effective. Where stone is scarce, brick buildings, with many ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... before felt to be so essential. The negroes were more demonstrative, and their loud prayers and singing of hymns continued without abatement or hindrance. The expressions of some were so extravagant and uncouth as to grate harshly on all natures possessing any refinement; but when such men as Mr. Birdsall exhorted or prayed, there were but few among the whites who did not listen reverently, and in their hearts acknowledge the substantial truth of the words spoken and their need of the ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... tall, sallow widow with carefully maintained mourning visage, admitted that this was so. Refinement, she averred, was in the family, but she hinted at some obscure ailment which, while it made ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... We may be better women than those within the circle, we may be better-educated, more careful in our habits, and our manners may be finer, and yet we may not have the magic word which would admit us. There is no doubt, for instance, that blood and breeding do tell powerfully in refinement. I can think of half a dozen women, however, of no birth at all in the ordinary sense, and of no home education, who have blossomed into the loveliest and most refined of women. In one case, the ancestors had for generations been earnestly ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... atoned, in some degree at least, for want of complexion in the face and of flesh in the figure. Men might dispute her claims to beauty—but no one could deny that she was, in the common phrase, an interesting person. Grace and refinement; a quickness of apprehension and a vivacity of movement, suggestive of some foreign origin; a childish readiness of wonder, in the presence of new objects—and perhaps, under happier circumstances, a childish playfulness with persons whom she loved—were all characteristic attractions ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... joined together without one softening vowel to intervene; and all this only to make one syllable of two, directly contrary to the example of the Greeks and Romans, and a natural tendency towards relapsing into barbarity. And this is still more visible in the next refinement, which consists in pronouncing the first syllable in a word that has many, and dismissing the rest. Thus we cram one syllable and cut off the rest, as the owl fattened her mice after she had bit ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... spun and woven, and sewed and mended. They have not even shrunk from the coarser labors of dooryard and field, the care of the cattle, the planting and harvesting. But labor has done nothing to coarsen the innate refinement of the soul which looks out ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... is an emanation from the refinement of the nineteenth century, for a prejudice in favour of "extra-superfine" formerly existed, as the coarser textures, now prevalent, were confined exclusively to common sailors, hackney-coachmen, and bum-bailiffs. These frivolous distinctions are happily exploded, and the true gentleman ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... an astonishing number of circulating libraries, devoted exclusively to the latest fiction. And you note that all corner drug stores and all stationers' shops present a window display of "50-cent fiction." Ah! refinement. Reading people are nice people; they are not rough people. There is, you feel at once, an air, there is taste—how shall I say?—selectness, about this part of town. It is not as other parts of ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... been so prominent in the mother. Edwin, on the other hand, was small for his age and hollow-eyed from lack of sufficient food to satisfy his hunger, and his clothes were ragged and soiled. The honest, straightforward expression of the large brown eyes and the marks of refinement around his mouth made up, however, for what ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... There are some people who, for the sake of satisfying a purposeless curiosity, will ask questions which they know it cannot be agreeable to answer. In all cases, curiosity of this kind is evidence of want of real refinement, and is a breach of the finer rules of social morality; but, when the questions asked are intended to extract, directly or indirectly, unwilling information on a man's private life or circumstances, they assume the character of sheer vulgarity. A man's private affairs, providing ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... exaggerations, little imagining that in a short time we should have to give to our distant friends the same details of horror respecting our own vicinity. Too true it is that no nation has made such progress in the art of refinement, and is so ingenious in devising infernal torments, as that, which, under the name of allies and protectors, has made us so inexpressibly wretched. Ever since the battle of Luetzen, Leipzig had been one of the principal resources of the grand French army, and they showed ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... lingered on her in the dim light, taking in every detail of her sweet womanly refinement and loveliness, and with difficulty he choked back a groan. Again he asked himself what madness had come over him, and again for an answer rose up the vision of Magdalen Crawford's face as he had seen it that day, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... birth-place of Giordano Bruno. It is described by David Levi as a city which from ancient times had always been consecrated to science and letters. From the time of the Romans to that of the Barbarians and of the Middle Ages, Nola was conspicuous for culture and refinement, and its inhabitants were in all times remarkable for their courteous manners, for valour, and for keenness of perception. They were, moreover, distinguished by their love for and study of philosophy; so that this city was ever a favourite dwelling-place ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... 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 ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... passed the entrance examination to the University. Mr. Collins continued to assist him with counsel and deed; and his hospitable house in Bredgade became a second home to Andersen. There he met, for the first time, people of refinement and culture on equal terms; and his morbid self-introspection was in a measure cured by kindly association, tempered by wholesome fun and friendly criticism. He now resolved to abandon his University studies and devote his life ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... duties to her—no thoughtful persons now doubt this—is to secure for her such physical training and exercise as may confirm her health, and perfect her beauty, the highest refinement of that beauty being unattainable without splendor of activity and of delicate strength. To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its power; it cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light too far: only remember that ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... few sculptors with greater refinement or more cultured reserve than Herbert Adams. He understands the selection of the significant and in many ways seems most fitting to represent the Priestess of Culture. This figure at the base of the dome of the rotunda of the Fine Arts Palace, on the ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... of the ruthless massacre of Agosta swore to root out the seed of the French oppressors throughout the whole of Sicily; and this vow they cruelly fulfilled, slaughtering infants at their mothers' breasts and after them the mothers themselves, not sparing even pregnant women, but, with a horrible refinement of cruelty, ripping up the bodies of Sicilian women who were with child by French husbands, and dashing against the stones the fruit of the mingled blood of the oppressors and the oppressed. This general massacre of all who spoke the same language, and these heinous acts of cruelty, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... fashions or the follies of the times; But has confin'd the subject of his work To the gay scenes—the circles of New-York. On native themes his Muse displays her pow'rs; If ours the faults, the virtues too are ours. Why should our thoughts to distant countries roam, When each refinement may be found at home? Who travels now to ape the rich or great, To deck an equipage and roll in state; To court the graces, or to dance with ease, Or by hypocrisy to strive to please? Our free-born ancestors such arts despis'd; ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... on female rights and manners, the works which have been particularly written for their improvement must not be overlooked; especially when it is asserted, in direct terms, that the minds of women are enfeebled by false refinement; that the books of instruction, written by men of genius, have had the same tendency as more frivolous productions; and that, in the true style of Mahometanism, they are only considered as females, and not as a part of the human species, when improvable reason is allowed ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the civilization of a community is measured by the amount of soap that it consumes, and it is almost the same thing to say that the refinement of a household is measured by the amount of water it uses. The poorer a family, the greater struggle it is to keep up the appearance of cleanliness, and no surer sign of rapid progress on a downhill road can be found than neglect of those practices which tend toward personal ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... or "Write the lesson out after school, Smith." Lastly, Mr. Grice was not a gentleman. Boys, I know, pay little attention to the conventionalities, and are seldom found consulting books on etiquette; but those who have been well brought up, and accustomed at home to an air of refinement, are quick to detect ill-breeding and bad manners in those older than themselves, and who "ought to know better." So it came about that Mr. Grice was unpopular, and the boys in his class bemoaned their fate, and called ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... looked at him in some surprise. He had laid aside his workman's dress, and wore the ordinary garb of a gentleman. Perhaps his coat was a little shabby and the hat he held in his hand had lost its gloss, but no one would have noticed such trifles with that bright speaking face and air of refinement; and, though he looked down at his uncovered hands and muttered something about stopping to buy a pair of gloves, I hastened to assure him that it was so early that it did not matter. 'I should hardly have ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... itself is not always well founded, and sometimes runs into compassion even against justice, they class as moral duties arising from moral principles. They consider also too frequently the laws of religion as barbarous restraints, and which their new notions of civilized refinement may relax at will. And they do not hesitate, in consequence, to give a colour to some fashionable vices, which no christian painter would admit into any composition, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... say nothing. They take the mind hard, there, and we had better let such a state of things alone. But as respects a man or woman of leisure, a man or woman of taste, a man or woman of refinement generally, I am willing enough to admit that, caeteris paribus, each can find far more enjoyment in Europe than in America. But the philosopher, the philanthropist, the political economist—in a word, the patriot, may well ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... and soul to what he called a courtesan. Even the fact that she loved him at first did not blind him to the effect upon character that her life must inevitably have had. She had dwelt in an atmosphere of lies, he said, and to lie was nothing to her. Any original refinement of feeling as regards human relations that she might have had had become dulled, if it had not been destroyed. At first he blindly, miserably, resigned himself to this. He said to himself, 'Fate has led me to love ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... side she had seen, but never known. The beautiful young women quite different from the gay, chattering demoiselles, their proudly held heads, their dignity, their soft voices, their air of elegance and refinement, all this Jeanne Angelot felt but could not have put into words, not even into thought. And this young man was over on that side. Oh, all Detroit must lie between, from the river out to the farms! Could she ever cross the great gulf? ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Lima there were a number of Chilian officers and seamen taken on board the Maypeu, whose condition was even more deplorable than their own, the fetters on their legs having worn their ancles to the bone, whilst their commander, by a refinement of cruelty, had for more than a year been lying under sentence of death as a rebel. Upon this, I sent a flag of truce to the viceroy, Don Joaquim de la Pezuela, requesting him to permit the prisoners to return to their families, in exchange for ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... the vicissitudes of those that are polished by refined nations;[AF] and that, however paradoxical it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that the degeneracy of a language is more frequently to be attributed to an extravagant refinement than to the neglect of an illiterate people, unless indeed external causes interfere. May we not hence conclude, that as the Romansh has never been used in any regular composition in writing till the sixteenth ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... sent the Bishop of Parma to confer with him. The Duc de Vendome was a man who affected roughness and brutality of manners, and made it his pride to set all rules of decency at defiance. Peter the Great, Potemkin, Suwarrow, would have seemed men of ultra-refinement when compared with him. His manner of receiving the bishop was such that the bishop quitted his presence abruptly and without saying a word, and returning to Parma, told his master that no consideration on earth ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... appears to be the legitimate finish of the nave and aisles. A recent critic, defending the facade in spite of its architectural isolation from the building in its rear, points out that the chief objection to the west front is that it is wanting in that repose and refinement of detail which characterize the rest of the building, and that its design is entirely out of keeping therewith, and also complains that "the ragged outline at the angles produced by the high relief and rather ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... 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 ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... schools a reasonable amount of grading can be secured. It may be true that in some of the large cities an extreme degree of grading defeats education and the true aim of organization, but certainly in consolidated rural schools no such degree of refinement need be reached or feared. Grading can remain here in the golden mean and will be beneficial to pupils and teachers alike. The pupils thus graded will have more time for recitation and instruction, and teachers will have more time to do efficient work. In the one-room ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... 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 ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... themselves, and in the treatment of the serifs, angles, and varying widths of line. Figures 11 to 13 and 16 to 22 are redrawn from rubbings [17] of Roman incised inscriptions. Figures 16 and 17 show beautifully proportioned letters cut in marble with unusual care and refinement, considering the large size of the originals. A later Roman form of less refinement but of greater strength and carrying power, and for that reason better adapted to many modern uses, is shown in 18 and 19. In this case the original letters were cut about seven ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... in its full glory at the commencement of the Christian era. It was a city of wealth and refinement, with about 35,000 inhabitants, and beautifully located at the foot of Mount Vesuvius; it possessed all local advantages that the most refined taste could desire. Upon the verge of the sea, at the entrance of a fertile plain, on the bank of a navigable river, it united ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... be no depot for fashion. It should be sacred to God and to the church. It should be a true exponent of the social elements of Christianity. It should not be a hermitage, a state of seclusion from the world; but should conform to fashion, yet so far only as the laws of a sanctified taste and refinement ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... there was a distinction in her voice and manner which bespoke the gentlewoman. With a pleasant smile, she welcomed me as one who had been expected, and ushered me into a small sitting-room, poorly furnished, but with a taste and refinement unusual in a workman's home. A large piano stood in one of the corners, and a pile of classical music lay on a chair beside it. The mantelpiece was decorated with cut flowers, and the walls were hung with portraits and sketches in crayons ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... was the sole answer these words called forth did not take from the refinement of the young widow's expression, but rather added to it; Violet watched it in its ebb and flow and, seriously affected by it (why, she did not know, for Mrs. Hammond had made no other appeal either by look or gesture), pushed forward a chair and begged ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... passion for the sea, he turned his attention to the 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 ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... when I saw that I must give up what I had with so much trouble acquired. At my father's house we had to live with much refinement, learn to speak correctly. All I said was there applauded and made much of. Here I was not listened to, except to be contradicted and to be blamed. If I spoke well they said it was to read them a lesson. If any one came and a subject was under discussion, while my father used to make ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... creaking stairs. The water runs with a loud clatter in the sink: it is to keep it from freezing. There is not a whole window pane in the hall. Time was when this was a fine house harboring wealth and refinement. It has neither now. In the old parlor downstairs a knot of hard-faced men and women sit on benches about a deal table, playing cards. They have a jug between them, from which they drink by turns. On the stump of a mantel-shelf a lamp burns before a rude print of the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... and the introduction of heat from a furnace under the main hall, in the cellar of the house. This would add to its general effect in winter, and, if continued through the summer, would not detract from its expression of dignity and refinement. From the veranda, a door in the center of the front, with two side windows, leads into the main hall, which is 26x12 feet in area, two feet in the width of which is taken from the rooms on the right of the main entrance. On the left of the hall ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... denomination; a boarding and day school for young ladies, the academy, some excellent district schools; a hall with library and reading-room; a bank; rows of attractive shops and stores; and, coming down in the scale of refinement, beer-saloons and concert-halls, kept generally up to a certain point of morality. There were so many laboring-men, and they must have something ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... meant pretty much the same. That was pronounced to be unnatural which was too silly, or too far-fetched, or too exalted, to approve itself to the good sense of a wit; and the very incarnation and eternal type of good sense and nature was to be found in the classics. The test of thorough polish and refinement was the power of ornamenting a speech with an appropriate phrase from Horace or Virgil, or prefixing a Greek motto to an essay in the Spectator. If it was necessary to give to any utterance an air of philosophical authority, a reference to Longinus or Aristotle ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... The other went up to Lupin. She was tall and shapely, with a very pale face, and her fair hair, which glittered like gold, was parted into two loosely waved bandeaux. Dressed in black, wearing no ornament beyond a five-fold jet necklace, she nevertheless struck a note of elegance and refinement. ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... divided standard to read the whole number of revolutions of the screw, a, the edge of which also serves the purpose of a pointer to read off the division on the top of the milled head, e. Still further refinement may be had by placing a vernier here. To measure a plane or curved surface with this instrument, a perfect plane or perfect spherical surface of known radius must be used to determine the zero point of the division. Taking for granted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... bare bellyful, and at night when he saith, "Aha, it is warm!" he has not appetite for more. Or if for something else, then something higher; a fine school of poetry and song arose in these rough shelters, and an air like "Lochaber no more" is an evidence of refinement more convincing, as well as more imperishable, than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appeal to women there is more in this tinge of off-hand refinement, the atmosphere, the enthusiasm shown and in the little personal touches, than in formidable arguments and logical reasons. What is triviality to a man is frequently the clinching statement with a woman. And so a fixed set of rules can not be formulated for writing ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... Catholic, and for the last five years or so a prisoner for religion. Mr. Pounde's message in effect was this. "You are going into the proximate danger of capture, and if captured you must expect not justice, but every refinement of misrepresentation. You will be asked crooked questions, and your answers to them will be published in some debased form. Be sure that whatever then comes through to the outer world will come out poisoned and perverted. Let me therefore urge you to write ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... satisfied by the irrecoverable detriment done to the navy and commerce of France, and his contrasting the difference in point of acquisitions made by Great Britain, with the total failure on the side of Austria; and it is no great refinement to suspect the whole of this to lead to an expectation that we may better buy back the Netherlands for them, than put them to the expense of defending them or regaining them; and that we should have an additional motive for sacrificing some of our conquests to this object, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... finally, I took up ideals, and seem now almost dropping those. But please observe in what sense it is that I drop them. It is when they pretend singly to redeem life from insignificance. Culture and refinement all alone are not enough to do so. Ideal aspirations are not enough, when uncombined with pluck and will. But neither are pluck and will, dogged endurance and insensibility to danger enough, when taken all alone. There must be some sort ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... allegory were so different their pictures were often hung side by side in exhibitions and their names were coupled together in the current talk of the time. Burne-Jones was markedly Celtic in his love of beautiful pattern, in the ghostly refinement of his figures, in the elaborate fancifulness of his imagery. Watts had more of the full-blooded Englishman in his nature, and his art was simpler, grander, more universal. If we may compare them with the great men of the Renaissance, Burne-Jones recalled the grace of Botticelli, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... larger share 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 absorbed in business, and ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... a refined people; but by this I mean the refinement which appreciates and cherishes whatever there is in nature, as manifested through the influence of the softer arts of music and poetry. The effect of music upon the Irish heart I ought to know well, and no man need tell me ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... progress was the realisation of three great aims, towards which the Romanesque architects were ever striving—the perfecting of the arcuated and vaulted construction, the increase of the altitude of their proportion, and the general adding of refinement and ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... with a flint hatchet would occupy the labour of a month, and to clear a small patch of ground for purposes of culture would require the combined efforts of a tribe. For the same reason, dwellings could not be erected; and without dwellings domestic tranquillity, security, culture, and refinement, especially in a rude climate, were all but impossible. Mr. Emerson well observes, that "the effect of a house is immense on human tranquillity, power, and refinement. A man in a cave or a camp—a nomad—dies with no more estate than the wolf or the horse leaves. But so ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... officers were escorted to their pinnace with many apologies from Lafitte, who now wrote a letter to Captain Lockyer, which shows him to have been a man of considerable cultivation, and not a mere "rough and tumble" pirate—without education or refinement. He said: ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... pacing up and down the room with the Duc de Grandlieu. Both were men of fifty-six or thereabouts, and still hale; both were short, corpulent, flourishing, somewhat florid-complexioned men with jaded eyes, and lower lips that had begun to hang already. But for an exquisite refinement of accent, an urbane courtesy, and an ease of manner that could change in a moment to insolence, a superficial observer might have taken them for a couple of bankers. Any such mistake would have been impossible, however, if the listener could have heard them converse, and seen them on their guard ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... begun to look down on Kirsty, who would so gladly have been a mother to the motherless creature; she was not a lady! Neither in speech, manners, nor dress, was she or her mother genteel! Their free, hearty, simple bearing, in which was neither smallest roughness nor least suggestion of affected refinement, was not to Phemy's taste, and she ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... more than a thousand miles of almost pathless wilderness, a party of Nez-Perce Indians, from Lake Superior, came down the river in their canoes. With them Marquette embarked. It was a wonderful voyage which this gentleman, from the refinement and culture of France, made ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... is grace without truth, or what is supposed to be grace. It is a sort of man-made substitute. It's something like this. Here's a man in the gutter, the moral gutter. It may be the actual gutter. Or, there may be the outer trappings of refinement that easy wealth provides; or, the real refinement that culture and inheritance bring. But morally and in spirit, it's a gutter. The slime of sin and low passion, of selfishness and indulgence and self-ambition, ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... original, creative and abiding Spiritual Life from whom we come, by whom we are sustained, in whom we live. Rather, as flowers reveal in their fragrance a beauty which is not in the earth where they grow nor in the roots on which they depend, so our spiritual life is the mysterious refinement of the material out of which we are constructed, and it has nothing to correspond with it in the source from which we sprang. Nevertheless, the new naturalism exalts this spiritual life within us, ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... into account when the critic wishes to decide upon the relative value of a work. It is evidently unjust to demand in writers of an uncultivated period the same delicacy of thought, feeling, and expression that is required in the writers of an age of refinement and intelligence. The indecencies in Chaucer and Shakespeare are to be attributed to the grossness ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... when Columbus landed on Hayti, he found there about 1,000,000 Indians, of a gentle refinement of manners, living peaceably under their kings or caciques. They were "faint-hearted creatures," "a barbarous sort of people, totally given to sensuality and a brutish custom of life, hating all manner of labour, and only inclined to run from place to place." The Spaniards killed many thousands ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... barrenness of country life to the girl growing into womanhood, hungry for amusement, is one large reason why the country furnishes so large a proportion of prostitutes to the city. "This civilizational factor of prostitution, the influence of luxury and excitement and refinement in attracting the girl of the people, as the flame attracts the moth, is indicated by the fact that it is the country dwellers who chiefly succumb to the fascination. The girls whose adolescent explosive and orgiastic impulses, ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... vexed with myself for allowing this tall, simple-hearted country fellow to puzzle me so much. And yet, was he a simple-hearted country fellow? City bred he certainly was not; but his manner, in spite of his awkwardness, had an indescribable air of refinement. Now and then, too, he dropped a word or a phrase that showed his familiarity with unexpected lines of reading. "The other day," said Curtis, with the slightest elevation of eyebrow, "he had the cheek to correct my Latin for me." In short, ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... star, but with a brighter lustre, was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a writer whose works are remarkable for purity of thought and refinement of language. Surrey was a gay and wild young fellow—distinguished in the tournament which celebrated Henry's marriage with Anne of Cleves; now in prison for eating meat in Lent, and breaking windows at night; again we find him the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth; he is a priest, an husbandman, and the father of a family. He is drawn as ready to teach, and ready to obey, as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity. In this age of opulence and refinement whom can such a character please? Such as are fond of high life, will turn with disdain from the simplicity of his country fire-side. Such as mistake ribaldry for humour, will find no wit in his harmless conversation; and such as have ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... other Latin writers, that, though Persius is acknowledged to have been both virtuous and modest, there are in the fourth satire a few passages which cannot decently admit of being translated. Such was the freedom of the Romans, in the use of some expressions, which just refinement has ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... in 1850 on the north side of the St. Lewis road, facing Cataracoui, affords a striking exemplification of how soon taste and capital can transform a wilderness into a habitation combining every appliance of modern refinement and rustic adornment. It covers about eighty-two acres, two thirds of which are green meadows, wheat fields, &c., the remainder, plantations, gardens and lawn. The cottage itself is a plain, unpretending structure, made more ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... of in that age, as well as in others of more refinement; and attempts were made by parliament to restrain it, particularly on the head of apparel, where surely it is the most obviously innocent and inoffensive. No man under a hundred a year was allowed to wear gold, silver, or silk in his clothes; servants, also, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... quite early, and gave him a certain timidity with people. But he was inwardly sound and strong. Perhaps he had Katharine to thank for this, for in keeping his outward appearance always so neat and dainty, she might have unconsciously brought him up with a sort of inner purity and refinement. Thus it did not occur to him, since he was himself the cause of his own solitude, to seek, as he easily might have done, evil or at least lightminded distractions, to console himself for the fact that he was not of equal standing ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... paillard, but a cavalier. Indeed, we have before noticed it as the most obvious and most degrading imperfection of Dryden's poetical imagination, that he could not refine that passion, which, of all others, is susceptible either of the purest refinement, or of admitting the basest alloy. With Chaucer, Dryden's task was more easy than with Boccacio. Barrenness was not the fault of the Father of English poetry; and amid the profusion of images which he presented, his imitator had only the task of rejecting or selecting. In the sublime ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... even equaled in any of the imperial capitals of Europe. The oriental artists and architects of the Mohammedan dynasties lavished money upon their homes and tombs in the most generous manner, and the refinement of their taste was equal to their extravagance. And where do you suppose they obtained all the money for these buildings, which cost millions upon millions of dollars? The architectural remains of Akbar and Shah Jehan, the two most splendid of the Moguls, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... realised a moderate fortune, and wishing to have a peep at the old country, was glad to let his house for a term of three years at a reasonable rent. The rooms were small but very snug, the fittings being all of cedar, which gave a look of refinement and elegance to the interior. There were good stables, coach-house, and offices, and a well of the purest water—a great matter in a place where many had no water at all except what dropped from the heavens, or had to content themselves ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... drinking tea that evening, Elihu Burritt 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 our half-Christianized ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... purposed to do, but, unluckily for himself, ventured on a refinement. Considering that, if his vessels bore down when abreast their respective antagonists, they would go bows-on, perpendicularly, subject to a raking—enfilading—fire, he deferred the signal to tack till his van had passed some distance beyond the French rear, because thus they would ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... the greatest master of the out-of-doors of modern times, while to-day the work of Meissonier has fallen into such disrepute that no owner dares offer one of his canvases at public auction except under the keenest necessity. The first master expresses the refinement of extreme realism, or rather detailism; the other is a pronounced impressionist of the sanest of the open-air school of to-day. How long this pendulum will continue to swing no one can tell. Both men are great painters in the widest, deepest, ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... exposure of some heinous immorality, to have been detected eating that forbidden portion of his allowance of animal food, the whole of which, while he was in health, was little more than sufficient to allay his hunger. The same, or even greater, refinement was shown in the rejection of certain kinds of sweet-cake. What gave rise to these supererogatory penances, these self-denying ordinances, I could never learn;[2] they certainly argue no defect of the conscientious principle. A little excess in that article is not undesirable in youth, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... "Ragged and Industrial School Rhymes," appeared in 1854, and has well sustained his reputation. Imbued with a keen perception of the beautiful and pleasing, alike in the natural and moral world, his poetry is marked by refinement of thought, elegance of expression, and an earnest devotedness. In social life he delights to depict the praises of virtue. The lover's tale he has told ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... not intended to. Elas Peterman had no desire in the world to hurt this girl. A cleverer man would have avoided it. But this man had no refinement of thought or feeling. Cynicism and sarcasm were his substitutes for a humour ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... in its golden elegance and doing more for the scene (by thus giving the beholder a point of such dignity for his orientation) than all its other elements together. Strange and seductive for any lover of the reasons of things this inordinate value, on the spot, of dauntless refinement of the Sherman image; the comparative vulgarity of the environment drinking it up, on one side, like an insatiable sponge, and yet failing at the same time to impair its virtue. The refinement prevails and, as it were, succeeds; holds its own in the medley of ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... than she did. They had young men of the kind whom she, since her experience with Drouet, felt above, who took them about. She came to thoroughly dislike the light-headed young fellows of the shop. Not one of them had a show of refinement. She saw ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... the labors of philosophers, sages, and legislators, through a long succession of years, are laid open for us, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the establishment of our forms of government. The free cultivation of letters, the unbounded extension of commerce, the progressive refinement of manners, the growing liberality of sentiment; and, above all, the pure and benign light of revelation, have had a meliorating influence on mankind, and increased the blessings of society. At this auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a nation; and ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... seen the world, has received admiration, and is familiar with the graceful little arts of social intercourse. In short, she has acquired a high external polish; and that is precisely what she most needed. Evidently, too, there is an increased mental refinement corresponding to the outward manner. She has mellowed, sweetened—whether deepened or not I should hesitate to affirm. But I am quite sure that I find her more charming to talk with, more supple in intercourse, more fascinating, in a word, than formerly. We chatted discursively ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... of whom Major Favraud had spoken so admiringly, and to whose kindness he had committed me, a group had gathered, chiefly of the young, not to be surpassed in any land for manly bearing, graceful feminine beauty, gayety, wit, and refinement. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... there were two sides to it, which side had become dirty from being carried in the pocket, and which from legitimate use. Before the prisoner was a toilet-glass, in which he could not help seeing his own pale, haggard, frightened face whenever he looked up,—a refinement of barbarism I was not prepared for in a British court of justice. I occupied a seat in the gallery, surrounded by professional pickpockets, burglars, and highwaymen, I dare say; for they talked freely of the poor fellow's chances, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... all-pervading. The warriors are hidalgos, gentlemen of a lofty courtesy; the Moorish chieftains are not "heathen hounds," but chivalrous adversaries, to be treated, in defeat, with a certain generosity. This refinement and magnanimity are akin to that ideality of temper which makes Don Quixote at once so noble and so ridiculous, and which is quite remote from the sincere realism of the British minstrelsy. In style the Spanish ballads ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Chandra, who held it for sixteen months. Harsha Dev’ could no longer suffer this, but attacked his enemy, and, having taken him and his son prisoners, he put them both to death. In this he vented his hatred on the father by a barbarous refinement of cruelty. Under pretence of not shedding royal blood, he kept his unfortunate rival without food, and daily beat him, until he expired. It is said that he suffered for seventeen days, but this seems incredible. The Brahman ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... distinguished appearance. Lord Chetwynde was of about the medium size, with slight figure, and pale, aristocratic face. His hair was silver-white, his features were delicately chiseled, but wore habitually a sad and anxious expression. His whole physique betokened a nature of extreme refinement and sensibility, rather than force or strength of character. His companion, General Pomeroy, was a man of different stamp. He was tall, with a high receding brow, hair longer than is common with soldiers; thin ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... method, so as to secure the pains but to take away the glories of martyrdom, was also slightly discussed, and here again Egmont was so unfortunate as to misconceive the royal meaning, and to interpret an additional refinement of cruelty into an expression of clemency. On the whole, however, there was not much negotiation between the monarch and the ambassador. When the Count spoke of business, the King would speak to him of his daughters, and of his desire to see them provided with brilliant ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... refinement," said he, one day, when discussing Dubois' merits with Mr. Wallis; "I saw a bit to-day as bangs everything. A cadger sweeping a crossing fell out with a dustman. Wasn't there some spicy jaw betwixt 'em. Well, nothing ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... veterinary surgeon of the neighbourhood of Amiens. At forty-five he had already produced twenty masterpieces: statues all simplicity and life, flesh modern and palpitating, kneaded by a workman of genius, without any pretension to refinement; and all this was chance production, for he furnished work as a field bears harvest, good one day, bad the next, in absolute ignorance of what he created. He carried the lack of critical acumen to such a degree that he made no distinction between the most glorious offspring of his hands and the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... spoke of pride both of birth and position. She often said to herself, "I am thankful that I don't belong to the common folk; it would grate on my nerves to witness their vulgarities,—their bad taste would torture me; their want of refinement would act upon my nature like a blister. But I am not proud, I uphold my dignity, I respect myself and my family, but with sinful, unholy pride I have ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... strangers, as if they had been their familiar friends for years; and their conversation was by turns tender, sentimental and gay. Madame, though she had no taste for such conversation, and whose coarseness and selfishness sometimes exhibited a ludicrous contrast to their excessive refinement, could not remain wholly insensible to the captivations ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... More than a century and a half has passed away since its founders, the French refugees, emigrated to the spot; but their noble and holy principles have left good, undying influences, now seen in the refinement, morals, and religion of their descendants, in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... aristocracy of knowledge of the present age, yet, sir, I would level up, and equalize, and thus create, if I may be allowed the expression, a democracy of knowledge. In this way, and in this way only, can men be made equal in fact—equal in their social and political relations—equal in mental refinement, and in a just appreciation of what constitutes man the brother of his ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... was another girl, also pretty, though in a florid way, with great blue eyes, a full mouth, and a mouse-coloured fringe down to her eyebrows. She was more elaborately dressed than the others, with a lot of coarse lace on her blouse, and a pink skirt. But she hadn't the look of simple refinement which the first two had in spite of their plain clothes and rolled-up sleeves. All three waved something excitedly. One had a huge kitchen spoon, another a book, and ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the girls' odd names. The mother is one of those "comfy," fat little women who remain happy and bubbling with fun in spite of hard knocks. I had already fallen in love with Regalia, she is so jolly and unaffected, so fat and so plain. Sedalia has a veneer of most uncomfortable refinement. She was shocked because Gale ate all the roast she wanted, and if I had been very sensitive I would have been in tears, because I ate a helping more than ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Harrisonii, also green and yellow, Moneywort, German Ivy, Tradescantia, Thunbergia, and Othonna. A combination of plants with richly-colored foliage is especially desirable for boxes on the porch or veranda, where showiness seems to be considered as more important than delicacy of tint or refinement of quality. In these boxes larger plants can be used than one would care to give place to at the window. Here is where Cannas and Caladiums will be found ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... here, burning with a clear, bright blaze. Madame's face was illuminated by it. It was a coarse, sullen face, with an expression of low cunning about it. There was not a trace of refinement or culture about her, not even the proverbial taste of a Frenchwoman in dress. The kitchen was a picture of squalid dirt and neglect; the walls and ceiling black with smoke, and the floor so crusted over with unswept refuse and litter that I thought ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... velvets; her soil yielded corn and wine; her warriors were adventurous and brave; her soldiers inherited the gallantry of the followers of Charles V.; her cities were the splendid abodes of luxury, refinement, and elegance. She was the court of Europe, the acknowledged leader of ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... and his convoy. He had every reason to be so, for though there were many gayer and more fashionably dressed ladies present than his cousin, and cousin by courtesy, there were none there whose faces, figures and dresses carried more unmistakably the marks of that thorough quiet high breeding, that refinement which is no mere surface polish, and that fearless unconsciousness which looks out from pure hearts, which are still, thank God, to be found in so many homes of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... very name caused him to clench his hands. Fortunately, he knew the truth, therefore that dastardly attempt upon the girl's life should not go unpunished. As he sat there chatting with her, admiring her refinement and innate daintiness, he made a vow within himself to seek out that cowardly fugitive and meet ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... essays," he replied. Said I, "Did you ever know anybody to be saved by that kind of thing, did you ever convert anybody by them?" "I never aimed at that kind of conversion; I meant to get men to heaven by culture—by refinement." "Well," said I, "If I didn't preach those texts, and only preached culture, the whole thing would be a sham." "And it is a sham to me," was his reply. I tell you the moment a man breaks away from this ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... Gipsy, but he spoke better English, as well as better Rommany, than his neighbours, and had far more refinement of manner. And singularly enough, he appeared to be simpler hearted and more unaffected, with less Gipsy trickery, and more of a disposition for honest labour. His brother and uncle were, indeed, hard at work among the masons in a new ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... might occasion greater danger to liberty, than could ever reasonably be dreaded from the possibility of a perpetuation in office, by the voluntary suffrages of the community, exercising a constitutional privilege. There is an excess of refinement in the idea of disabling the people to continue in office men who had entitled themselves, in their opinion, to approbation and confidence; the advantages of which are at best speculative and equivocal, and are overbalanced by disadvantages far ...
— The Federalist Papers
... no sign of the tumult that raged within her. The eyes of the audience burned into the back of her head, and she seemed to read a knowledge of her secret in every careless glance thrown in her direction. This was a vengeance worth of Olga—the refinement of cruelty. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... of taste, are in themselves equal. In all ages there have been some excellent workmen, and some excellent work done. The question he asks is always:—In whom did the stir, the genius, the sentiment of the period find itself? where was the receptacle of its refinement, its elevation, its taste? "The ages are all equal," says William Blake, "but genius is ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... Lionel now found himself was singularly quaint. An antiquarian or architect would have discovered at a glance that at some period it had formed part of the entrance-hall; and when, in Elizabeth's or James the First's day, the refinement in manners began to penetrate from baronial mansions to the homes of the gentry, and the entrance-hall ceased to be the common refectory of the owner and his dependants, this apartment had been screened off by perforated panels, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... affirm, that no false one will ever be able to endure it. The common defect of those systems, which philosophers have employd to account for the actions of the mind, is, that they suppose such a subtility and refinement of thought, as not only exceeds the capacity of mere animals, but even of children and the common people in our own species; who are notwithstanding susceptible of the same emotions and affections as persons of the most accomplishd genius and understanding. Such a subtility is a dear proof ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... arriving at Bolivar the word came to me in some way, I think from Enoch Wallace, that our first lieutenant, Dan Keeley, had spoken disapprovingly of my conduct in that regard. He was a young man, about twenty-five years old, of education and refinement, and all things considered, the best company officer we had. I was much attached to him, and I know that he liked me. Well, I learned that he had said, in substance, that a non-commissioned officer should set a good example to the men in ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... I shall never have a dearer friend. His odd ways, his lank, possibly ungainly figure crowned by a head of scholarly refinement, his amiability when pleased, his irascibility when crossed, formed a character attractive to me from its very contradictions; and after my wife's death and before my son Oliver reached a companionable age, it ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... value of that Goodness which, as we say, 'saves the soul' with the relative values of the various good things that soothe or beautify life. For, if there is any value at all—I will not say in health and happiness, but in art, poetry, knowledge, refinement, public esteem, or human affection, and if their claims do clash, as in common opinion they sometimes do, with the demands of absolute sanctity, how is the balance to be struck? Are we to be content with the principle of accepting ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... people heartily believed and loved. Nor when we come to examine the favourite amusement of later royalty, do we find that the interludes brought forward in the pauses of the banquets of Henry VIII. have a claim to any refinement upon those old miracle-plays. They have gained in facility and wit; they have lost in poetry. They have lost pathos too, and have gathered grossness. In the comedies which soon appear, there is far more ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... the civilizations which vibrated between the Bosphorus and the Tiber, to yield at last to triumphant Barbarism swooping down from Tyrol crag and Alpine height, from the fastnesses of the Rhine and the Rhone, to swallow luxury and culture. Refinement had done its perfect work. It had emasculated man and unsexed woman and brought her to the front as a political force, even as it is trying ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... others; where all are willing to help one another when necessary,—in this atmosphere egoism, as well as altruism, can attain their richest development, and individuality find its just freedom. As the evolution of man's soul advances to undreamed-of possibilities of refinement, of capacity, of profundity; as the spiritual life of the generation becomes more manifold in its combinations and in its distinctions; the more time one has for observing the wonderful and deep secrets of ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... jester of the first water, and a creature of the Marshal d'Estrees, was lacking neither in wit nor knowledge; but he was deficient in a sense of order and refinement. He was a pleasant companion, for his gaiety was inexhaustible and he had a large knowledge of the world. He attained the rank of field-marshal in 1768, and went to Naples to marry a rich heiress, whom he left a widow a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the "sweet eager face" that he had seen in the first-class carriage belonged to Hetty! Long-continued love to human souls had given to her face a sweetness—and sympathy with human spirits and bodies in the depths of poverty, sorrow, and deep despair had invested it with a pitiful tenderness and refinement—which one looks for more naturally among the innocent in the higher ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... place, from another world, where the people are very clever, and very learned, and have refined manners, and a witty way of talking, and an air—perhaps I am not making myself clear. I mean that you are accustomed to live among people of refinement; you know a great deal. Here there is not what you need; here the people are not learned or very polished. Every thing is plain, Pepe. I imagine you will be bored, terribly bored, and that in the end you will have ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... from the rear, from the left and from the right side, from the orchestra and from the balcony, while the picture which the camera has fixated is the same from every corner of the picture palace. The greatest skill and refinement can be applied to make the composition serviceable to the needs of attention. The spectator may not and ought not to be aware that the lines of the background, the hangings of the room, the curves of the furniture, the branches of the trees, the forms of the mountains, ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... properly his off might fill half a page very prettily. For is not a young mother one of the sweetest sights which life shows us? If she has been beautiful before, does not her present pure joy give a character of refinement and sacredness almost to her beauty, touch her sweet cheeks with fairer blushes, and impart I know not what serene brightness to her eyes? I give warning to the artist who designs the pictures for this veracious story, to make no attempt at this subject. I never would be satisfied with it were ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lads, and the first training of boys in general. But there certainly comes a period in the life of a well-educated youth, in which one of the principal elements of his education is, or ought to be, to give him refinement of habits; and not only to teach him the strong exercises of which his frame is capable, but also to increase his bodily sensibility and refinement, and show him such small matters as the way of handling things properly, and treating ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... refined; and as Dorian stood and looked about, there came to him more forcibly than ever the barrenness of the room and of the house in general. True, his own home was very humble, and yet there was an air of comfort and refinement about it. The Duke home had always impressed him as being cold and cheerless and ugly. There were no protecting porches, no lawn, no flowers, and the barn yard had crept close up to the house. It was a place to ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... four gods who preside over the four houses of the world had come forth alive from his mouth without bodily effort on his part, and without spoken evocation. Creation by the voice is almost as great a refinement of thought as the substitution of creation by the word for creation by muscular effort. In fact, sound bears the same relation to words that the whistle of a quartermaster bears to orders for the navigation of a ship transmitted by a speaking trumpet; it simplifies speech, reducing ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... important and instructive research than the natural history of religion. Some sort of religious service has been found to prevail in all ages and nations, from the most rude and barbarous periods of human society, to those of cultivation and refinement. In these periods are to be traced specimens strongly marked with exertions of the feelings, and faculties of men in every situation almost that can be supposed. It is from the contemplation of these exertions ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... fading monuments—are silent and mouldering below: mayhap these things will speak to thy heart, and repress the full gush of a sorrow that may not be controlled! And if—the martyr to o'er-sicklied refinement—to sentiment too etherialised for the world, where God hath placed thee—ideal woes have stamped a wrinkle on the brow, and ideal dreams now constitute thy pleasure and thy bane: for such as thou art! living on feeling's excess—soaring to rapture's heights—or ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... to be regretted that the most renowned and ancient families of France have, in society and politics, yielded their places to another class. That refinement of perception, sensitiveness, and gentle bearing, which take three or four generations to produce, are no longer the characteristics of Parisian society. The gilded saloons of the Tuileries, and those magnificent hotels whose architects have not been geniuses ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... the infatuated votaries of the gaming god in England, towers the mighty intellectual giant Charles James Fox. Nature had fashioned him to be equally an object of admiration and love. In addition to powerful eloquence, he was distinguished by the refinement of his taste in all matters connected with literature and art; he was deeply read in history; had some claims to be regarded as a poet; and possessed a thorough knowledge of the classical authors of antiquity, a knowledge of which he so often and so happily availed himself in his ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... they are genuine, somehow; but I suppose our bringing up has made us old-fashioned, for I seemed to shrink inwardly every time they opened their lips. Surely it must be wrong to lose all feminine refinement in one's language. There were no young men here, happily, to hear them; but if there had been, they would have expressed themselves in the same manner. That is what I cannot understand, now girls can lay ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... copied, remind one of Carpaccio's study of S. Benedict at Venice. It is all sweet, tender, delicate, and carefully finished; but without depth, not even the depth of Perugino's feeling. In S. Francesco, Pinturicchio, with the same meticulous refinement, painted a letter addressed to him by Gentile Baglioni. It lies on a stool before Madonna and her court of saints. Nicety of execution, technical mastery of fresco as a medium for Dutch detail-painting, prettiness ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... did a room in a palace after it had been occupied by Peter and his clever spouse. Some of his best-authenticated acts could not be paralleled outside of a piggery. The Prussian court, one hundred and sixty years since, was not a very nice place, and its members were by no means remarkable for refinement; but they were shocked by the proceedings of the Czar and the Czarina, some of which greatly resembled those which are not uncommon in a very wild "wilderness of monkeys." The last of Peter's descendants who reigned and ruled was his daughter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... the story I have just related to you," continued Miss Tredgold. "You think that the courtly grace, the sweet refinement, the elegant manners, the words that speak of due knowledge of life and men and women, represent a state of fetterdom; but you must ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... breeding.[109] He does not strike one as a degraded man of culture: for all his great powers, he is vulgar, and his probable want of military science may well be significant. He was married to a wife who evidently lacked refinement, and who appears in the drama almost in the relation of a servant to Desdemona. His manner was that of a blunt, bluff soldier, who spoke his mind freely and plainly. He was often hearty, and could be thoroughly jovial; but he was not seldom rather rough and caustic of speech, and ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... to most of us, in our unruffled lives; where from year's-end to year's-end we hardly even hear a word spoken in anger. In consequence it is difficult for us to understand the indifference with which in the sixteenth century men of the most advanced refinement regarded the sufferings of others. Between rival combatants and claimants for thrones fierce measures are more intelligible; especially in days when stone walls did not a prison make—such a prison, at least, as the prisoner might not some day hope to break. Things had improved somewhat since ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... of encouragement, and probably had never realized how much the daily sight of him had touched them. The priestly dress, which may once have provoked a sneer at his effeminacy, had now a suggestion of refinement, of unselfish devotion, of consecration to the service of the unfortunate, his spiritual face appealed to their better natures, and the visible heroism that carried his frail figure through labors that would ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... few months the Bretton family prospered in their careers in the Paterson mills. Madame Bretton, whose deftness and care in handling material was quickly recognized, was promoted to a position much better suited to her age and refinement, and also one that was more lucrative. In addition Marie, skilful too of touch, was put in the labeling department. But with undaunted spirit Pierre still drudged at the heavier work of the mill, mastering ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett |
