"Refined" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have sat in country churches this circular read as a piece of most refined sarcasm, so bitter because of its truth. Where had been the clerical eye all these years that Hodge had sat and coughed in the draughts by the door? Was it merely a coincidence that the clerical eye was opened just at the moment ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... austere but kind and affable. Kimble was also a nice, genteel, genial, redheaded gentleman. Smith was a heavy man with a very large abdomen, dark hair full beard, exceedingly jovial and apparently always happy. Pratt was a small, rather slim, quick and athletic man, rather austere, refined, active and energetic. Taylor was a large man, highly intellectual, and rather unsocial. Kimble was my favorite notwithstanding the fact that he had fifteen wives, mostly young and handsome, all in one house, and my impression is that none of them had any children. I think ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... a multitude of useful hints and suggestions regarding the proper care of the person and the formation of refined habits and manners. The subject is treated with good sense and good taste, and is relieved from tedium by an abundance of entertaining anecdotes and historical incident. The author is thoroughly acquainted with the laws of hygiene, and wisely ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... sarcasm; their jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners. Whether he represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to determine; the reign of Elizabeth is commonly supposed to have been a time of stateliness, formality, and reserve; yet, perhaps, the relaxations of that severity were not very elegant[11]. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... to face a Higher King. The steel-clad hand had forsaken him; even the German God—the "made in Germany" one which German professors and German pastors were loud in proclaiming as distinct and more refined than the God who watches over England, France and America—had now forsaken him. He felt the same impulse to howl that Tim had felt, although love and self-condemnation were not a part of it; only hatred. The water had reached ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... of the Franks,[110] and singularly happy in one particular, that he never preferred a man who has not proved remarkably serviceable to his country. Philander[111] is mentioned with particular distinction; a nobleman who has the most refined taste of the true pleasures and elegance of life, joined to an indefatigable industry in business; a man eloquent in assemblies, agreeable in conversation, and dextrous in all manner of public negotiations. These letters add, that Verono,[112] who ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... works on various topics,[113] but it is by his Life of Jesus that he has gained greatest celebrity. God, Providence, and immortality are, with him, dull words about which philosophy has long played and finally interpreted in the most refined sense. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... lovely winged woman Youwarkee! Prudish people may be scandalised at the unreserved frankness shown in the account of the consummation of Wilkins' marriage with this fair creature; but the editor was unwilling to mutilate the book in the interests of such refined readers. A man or a woman who can find anything to shock his or her feelings in the description of Youwarkee's bridal night deserves the commiseration of sensible people. Very charming is the picture of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... subject to the limitations of our faculties; and however we may aid observation by microscopes and micrometers, it is still observation; and however we may correct our observations by repetition, comparison and refined mathematical methods of making allowances, the correction of error is only an approximation to accuracy. Outside of Formal Reasoning, suspense of judgment is your ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... was mistaken in him! He has no delicacy, no true manliness of character. I'm glad he has thrown down the challenge. Father may not be well-educated nor refined, but he's strong. Professor Roberts shall find out what it means to attack us. I hope he'll be turned out of the University; I hope he will. Let me think. I have a copy of that lecture of his; perhaps there's something in it worse than ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... sacred events, as well as by the tone of easy and intimate familiarity with which he spoke of those whose names are generally mentioned with bated breath, and printed with capital letters; but the most refined women seemed to find in all this an additional fascination. His sermons dealt in language which was at the same time plain and highly-coloured. He denounced his congregation roundly as the meanest of sinners. To the women he was particularly merciless. He tore to rags their little vesture of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... sensibility, or a mere animal ferocity of passion, and an imagination creative chiefly because unbridled: it was, what true poetry is always, the quintessence of general mental riches, the purified result of strong thought and conception, and of refined as well as powerful emotion. In his writings, we behold him a moralist, a philosopher, a man of universal knowledge: in each of these capacities he is great, but also in more; for all that he achieves ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... in deep mourning, is brought by a professional opera singer: a babe in arms, a boy and girl aged two and four, evidently born in a much higher sphere—pretty, refined children. At their mother's death this young woman took charge of them, their father having promised to pay 1 pound a week for their support;—an empty promise it proved, for the 'gentleman' absconded, ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... have been a refined and artistic development of a style of building different from that of any other people, which began with ruder forms, but in all the periods of its history preserved the same general conception. They show us the idea of the Mound-Builders wrought out in stone and ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... Jehoiachin, and thought they should be safe and secure in Jerusalem when their brethren were in Babylon: I will gather you, saith the Lord, even in the midst of Jerusalem, and when you think you are out of one furnace, you shall fall into another; and, if you will not be refined from your dross, you shall never come out of that furnace, but I will melt you there, and leave you there: which did so come to pass; for the residue that escaped to Egypt, and thought to shelter themselves there, as likewise those that remained in ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... procureur, he was lost in admiration of the wisdom of the testator, who had so judiciously bestowed his wealth upon the most necessitous and the most worthy, with a delicacy that none among the most refined courtiers and the most noble hearts could have displayed more becomingly. When Porthos enjoined Raoul de Bragelonne to give to D'Artagnan all he would ask, he knew well, did that worthy Porthos, that D'Artagnan would ask or take nothing; and in case he did demand anything, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of feeling began to act like an obsession, a sort of witchcraft, which alarmed him. What was she really, this strange creature? A peasant indeed, apparently; but there was also something more refined and cultivated about her, due, doubtless, to her having received her education in a city school. She both felt and expressed herself differently from ordinary country girls, although retaining the frankness ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Yakaga awaiting him, too, grinning at him even now in anticipation—Yakaga, whom only last week he had kicked out of the fort, and upon whose face he had laid the lash of his dog-whip. Yakaga would attend to him. Doubtlessly Yakaga was saving for him more refined tortures, more exquisite nerve- racking. Ah! that must have been a good one, from the way Ivan screamed. The squaws bending over him stepped back with laughter and clapping of hands. Subienkow saw the ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... Freddie; git yore chores done, an' then come in to supper." Her voice was menacingly quiet. The boy had learned to read the signs of her face too well to think that he was to get off so easily as this. Evidently, he would "get it" after supper, or Miss Prime had some new, refined mode of punishment in store for him. But what was it? He cudgelled his brain in vain, as he finished his chores, and at table he could hardly eat for wondering. But he might have spared himself his pains, for he learned all ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... see the little girls playing in the courtyards of the houses near the temple, gracious little maidens, winsome in their ways, almost always more refined in manner than ordinary children, and often beautiful. One longs to help the little things, but no hand of ours can stretch over the wall and lift even one ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... of nature," answered Tom laughingly. "A lumberjack dance is no place for a refined woman, or man either, for that matter. Where ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... dipterous allies. She draws near and softly alights upon the hand of the charmed beholder, subdues her trumpeting notes, folds her wings noiselessly upon her back, daintily sets down one foot after the other, and with an eagerness chastened by the most refined delicacy for the feelings of her victim, and with the air of Velpeau redivivus, drives through crushed and bleeding capillaries, shrinking nerves and injured tissues, a many-bladed lancet of marvellous fineness, of wonderful ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... for its own sake, and would no sooner have come tamely into school with a prepared lesson than a sportsman would shoot a sitting bird. It was not the marks that he cared for. He despised them. What he enjoyed was the refined pleasure of swindling under a master's very eye. At the trial the judge, who had, so ran report, been himself rather badly bitten by the Ham Sandwich Company, put the case briefly and neatly in the words, 'You appear to revel in villainy for villainy's sake,' and I am almost certain ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... difference?" she queried. She was very much interested in this question, for the subtleties of refined comfort held no place in her life. Knowledge of luxuries was quite outside the ken of the younger members of ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... spirit, which holds in solution an essential oil, more or less volatile, more or less powerful, and more or less characteristic of each kind of wine. This aroma is a sign of real quality in the wine, and is generally very strong and very noticeable during the first years; it becomes concentrated, refined, and attenuated as the wine ages. The second kind of odour the bouquet, on the contrary, is developed with age, and would appear to be owing to the reaction of vinous acids on the spirit, which gives rise to ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... prose, with a severe structure and sequence of thought underlying it, but with an entire irregularity of outline. The pleasure to be derived from perfectly proportioned lucid prose is a far subtler and more refined pleasure than that derived from the rhythmical beat of verse. Take, for instance, such works as The Ring and the Book and Aurora Leigh. Is there anything whatever to be gained by the relentless drumming, under the surface of these imaginative narratives, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his nephew Randall. He had always supposed that Randall was refined and that he had a good heart. And to think that he could break out like this, and be coarse and cruel, and say things before ladies that were ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... while there was absolutely nothing to recommend this identification of the unknown author. The intellectual characteristics of the work present a trenchant contrast to the refined scholarship and cautious logic of this accomplished prelate. Only one point of resemblance could be named. The author shows an acquaintance with the theological critics of the modern Dutch school; and a knowledge of Dutch writers was known, ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... superfluous accessories of her bequest, a noble residue still remained. Mysia, Lydia and Caria with their magnificent coast cities, rich in art, and inexhaustible in wealth, formed, with most of the islands off the coast,[551] that "corrupting" province which became the Favourite resort of the refined and the desperate resource of the needy. Its treasures were to add a new word to the Roman vocabulary of wealth;[552] its luxury was to give a new stimulus to the art of living and to add a new craving ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... you some of the beautiful things Henry's daughter told me about her mother. Agatha had such a refined and beautiful taste and manner that though, from her parents' poverty, she had not had the benefit of an education, yet it was a common saying of the many who knew her, that she would have graced a court. She never said or did any thing that was not delicate and beautiful. Her dress, even ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... one of those rare natures who combine a love of outdoor life, cricket and sport of every kind, with a refined and scholarly taste for literature. He had, like his father, a keen observation for every detail in nature; and from a habit of patient watchfulness he acquired great knowledge of natural history. From his grandfather, the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... elegant wit with which we amused and attracted the audience. Perhaps, had we been more refined, we should not have ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... the best. In books and gardens thou hast placed aright, - Things which thou well dost understand, And both dost make with thy laborious hand - Thy noble, innocent delight, And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet Both pleasures more refined and sweet: The fairest garden in her looks, And in her mind the wisest books. Oh! who would change these soft, yet solid joys, For empty shows and senseless noise, And all which rank ambition breeds, Which seem such beauteous flowers, and are such ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... eighteenth century. Dr. Johnson, who died in 1784, had already noted their decline. There was a general approach towards external equalization of ranks, and that approach was accompanied by a general diffusion of material enjoyment. The luxury of the period was prodigal rather than refined. There lies before me as I write a tavern bill for a dinner for seven persons in the year 1751. I reproduce the items verbally and literally, and certainly the bill of fare is worth studying as a record of gastronomical exertion on ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... can make a shift to get along with an easy book; but if I come to a hard word, I cry 'Wheelbarrows,' and skip him." On his own topics he was very sensible, and no owner could have found fault with him had he not been just a little racketty on shore. In my refined days I remember reading in one of Thackeray's books about a young lord who was much loved by one Henry Esmond: My friend Jack was very like that young man, and you could not get vexed with him,—or, at any rate, you could not keep vexed ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... the coup d'oeil on entering an anderoon. With such surroundings, one would expect to find refined, if not beautiful women; but, though the latter are rare enough, the former are even rarer in Persia. The Persian woman is a grown-up child, and a very vicious one to boot. Her daily life, indeed, is not calculated to improve the health of either mind or ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... solution, highly impregnated with sodium nitrate, potash and other salts. The country for many miles around is covered with a white precipitate which has been carried by the moist air and deposited on the Martian earth. These chemical compounds are refined and used to replenish the ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... in the western part of New York State. Your grandfather was a man of wealth, but your father incurred his displeasure by his marriage to a poor but highly-educated and refined girl. A cousin of your father took advantage of this and succeeded in alienating father and son. The estate that should have descended to your father ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... face cleanly shaven, hair long, cut square and falling to his black stock. He was the only son of Boston's first Mayor, both to the manor and to the manner born, rich in his own right; proud, handsome, strong, gentle, refined, educated—a Christian gentleman, heir to the best that Boston had to give—a graduate of the Boston Latin School, of Harvard College, of the Harvard Law School—living with his widowed mother in a mansion on Beacon Hill, overlooking Boston's ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... forcible in life "degenerate." But back to the very earliest writings, in the most bloodthirsty outpourings of the Hebrew prophets, for example, you will find that at the base of the warrior spirit is hate for more complicated, for more refined, for more ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... incidental notes of life and color and here and there, afar, the tall chimneys of factories stained the sky. About them in the nearer fields were hay-wagons and workers, men and women, their shouts and songs floating up the hill refined and ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... round—lack the organ that enables them to see that divine Spirit moving round about them. Whether you have put your eyes out by fleshly lusts, or, as many men in this generation have done, by intellectual self-sufficiency and conceit, if the world, in its grosser or in its most refined forms, is your master, you are stone blind to all the best realities of the universe, and you cannot see the things that are. If you look out upon the history of the Church, or upon the present condition of Christendom, and say, 'I see no divine Spirit working there'; well, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... her form, My fancy sees, by love refined, A warmer and a dearer charm By wedlock's mystic hands entwined, - A golden coil of wifely cares That years have forged, the loving joy That guards the curly-headed boy Asleep ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... as though they implied that our poor love would be superseded by higher attributes possessed by the angelic hosts, of which we knew nothing. Now I know that they mean that our human love shall be refined from all the dross of earthly passion, purified and exalted above mortal conception. I prayed that my love for you might be in some such measure refined and purified, and I know that prayer has been answered. I pledge you that love, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... this was not done in a moment. At first I certainly was occasionally annoyed by Pussy's inconsistencies. She would profess to be so refined, that a speck of dirt on her white coat made her unhappy; so delicate, that she could not endure to wet her feet; so modest, that she could not bear to be looked at while she was eating; while at the same time she would scamper into ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... simple truths; to teach them that forgiveness, and charity, and the endeavor for life better and purer than each has lived, are the principles upon which alone the world holds together and gets forward. It was well for the comfortable and the refined to be put in mind of the savagery and suffering all round them, and to be taught, as Dickens was always teaching, that certain feelings which grace human nature, as tenderness for the sick and helpless, self-sacrifice and generosity, self-respect and manliness and womanliness, are the common ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... inertrans lining. Jupiter gas is hellishly reactive at room temperature. The metallic complexes especially; but think what a witch's brew the stuff is in every respect. Once it's been refined, of course, we have less trouble. That particular pipe is ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... were all of them engaged in occupations which were remote from official work. The eldest of them, Cephalus by name—a man who was distinguished from the others by a certain refined sobriety both in his dark dress and in his quiet demeanour—was reading a treatise on algebra; the second, Theophilus, a musician, whose tunic was as bright as his flaming hair, was mending a small organ; and the third, Rufinus, a rather pale, short-sighted, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... almost as a matter of course!—his late successes. And yet!—does he, in writing to these old people, purposely underrate his great good fortune and seeming happiness, not to shock them too much by the contrast between the delicate enjoyments of the life he now leads among the wealthy and refined, and that bald existence of theirs in his old home? A life, agitated, exigent, unsatisfying! That is what this letter really discloses, below so attractive a surface. As his gift expands so does that incurable restlessness one ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... and form. The result is, a certain boldness of detail not always excusable by grace of expression, in his description of a beautiful woman; too lively an enthusiasm for the flesh; too great a satisfaction in drawing lines and contours not to shock the refined. A woman poses before him like a statue or rather like a Georgian in a slave-market, and from the manner in which he analyzes and dissects her, you would say that he wanted either to sell or buy her. I allude now to his speech only, which is lively, animated but rather French its picturesque ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... eldest daughter, Jane, was sent, at nine years of age, to Europe to be thoroughly educated under the care of his relatives there, and, when she returned to America, was placed at the head of her father's household, where her refined dignified manners and accomplishments attracted the notice and admiration of numerous visitors to that seat of noble hospitality. Mr. Schoolcraft was among the first suitors for her hand, and married ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... for the coarse and vigorous features of the schoolmaster had been refined to that peculiar nobleness which, perhaps, the sharp tool of suffering—used to its highest ends—can alone produce. And the smile of patience, like a victor's wreath, lay now where hot passions and imperious temper had ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... picture, and on this!—the one, refined, delicate, sensitive, fastidious, severe, never repeated; the other, thoughtless, vulgar, mathematical, common-sense, sensuous, reappearing ever with a stolid monotony. And such is the sentiment pervading all Roman Art. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Andrew's favorite sans souci was to take a drive into the country with some friend, and after he had passed the thickly settled suburbs to talk, laugh and jest as young men do on a yachting excursion,—but his talk was always refined. There was no recreation that Professor Francis J. Child liked better ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... ingenious, but the refined sentiment of cruelty revealed in it is deserving of the severest censure. It is true that the introduction of German cookery into France by the Prussians, as you propose, would in a short time decimate the population, but what a fearful precedent it would ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... lady, over sixty, rather tall, in a brown silk skirt, and a white burnoose that showed the shrunken slimness of her arms, came eagerly forward. She was rather pretty, with small refined features, large expressionless blue eyes, and long whitish-yellow ringlets down her cheeks, in the fashion of ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... flashed with an indignant sense of the cold-blooded manner in which he advised her to select another husband. She was an illiterate girl, but the purity of her feeling supplied the delicacy which reading and a knowledge of more refined society would ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... canal, and that this house were a canal-boat. The canal could run down as much as it pleased, the neighborhood could deteriorate eternally, but it could not affect the value of this house as the home of refined people as long as it was possible to hitch up a team of horses to the front stoop and tow it into a better locality. I'd like to wager every man at this table that Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't take five minutes ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... made Martha fairly overflow with praises of the boy. She told Mr. Hellmut that she had never known a boy who was so polite and friendly to simple folks as this boy had been; he had been well brought up, had the most refined and charming manners, and was well educated, and at the same time so simple and childishly devoted to old, plain Martha. She had never read letters like the mother's letter to her son, so beautiful, ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... is the one word to describe this volume adequately. Dr. Doyle's crisp style and his rare wit and refined humor, utilized with cheerful art that is perfect of its kind, fill these chapters with joy and ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the male sex; but while this would be a gratification to a large number of very worthy and excellent ladies who take a different view of the question from that which we entertain, we feel that it would be a great cruelty to a much larger number of the cultivated, refined, delicate, and lovely women of this country who seek no such distinction, who would enjoy no such privilege, who would with woman-like delicacy shrink from the discharge of any such obligation, and who would sincerely regret that, what they consider the folly of the state, had imposed upon ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... however, could look in the refined face of Walter Colman and imagine him cherishing sordid views of life. Asked what of all things he most admired, he might truly answer, "The imaginative intellect." He was a fledgling poet. He worshiped what he called thoughts, would rave about ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... relations of human life,—but one of those exceptional conditions, which, like the hours that often precede dissolution, seem to impart to the subject of them a peculiar aptitude for delicate and refined spiritual impressions. We could not afford to have it always night,—and we must think that the broad, gay morning light, when meadow-lark and robin and bobolink are singing in chorus with a thousand insects and the waving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... myself,' she said wildly, 'before I tell any such story! You have no heart, Captain Burnett; you are treating me with refined cruelty; you want to bring me to shame because you ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... news was Makaraig, the young man at the head of the movement. This student occupied in that house, by himself, two rooms, luxuriously furnished, and had his servant and a cochero to look after his carriage and horses. He was of robust carriage, of refined manners, fastidiously dressed, and very rich. Although studying law only that he might have an academic degree, he enjoyed a reputation for diligence, and as a logician in the scholastic way had no cause to envy the most frenzied quibblers of the University faculty. Nevertheless ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... is not merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and circumstances that present themselves before you—these may recall a number of objects, and lead to associations too delicate and refined to be possibly communicated to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company seems extravagance or affectation; and, on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... society. The human heart, properly organised, seeks communion with the human heart; and the mind, especially when refined and polished by education, loves the intercourse of social life, and, when deprived of it, will always yearn ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... fight against temptations manifold? He was the Sir Galahad of Princes. Being human, he must have been tempted,—if not to a life of sybaritic pleasure, to one of ease, through his delicate organization,—and, through his refined tastes, to one of purely artistic and esthetic culture, which for him, where he was, would ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... repugnant to the first impressions of right and wrong. What adds to the wonder is, that this abominable practice has been introduced in the most enlightened ages. Times, that seem to have pretensions to boast of high improvements in the arts and sciences, and refined morality, have brought into general use, and guarded by many laws, a species of violence and tyranny, which our more rude and barbarous, but more honest ancestors detested. Is it not amazing, that at a time, when the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... such morbid extravagances, so much from which sober reason and cultivated intellect shrank with instinctive repulsion, that even an exaggerated distrust of the good effected was natural and pardonable. Wesley's mind, though not by any means of the highest order of capacity, was refined, well trained, and practical; Whitefield was gifted with extraordinary powers of stirring the emotions by his fervid eloquence. But they often worked with very rude instruments; and defects, which were prominent enough ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... which the most vivid pen would fail to portray the graceful and fascinating voluptuousness. They commenced with the bolero, and thence glided, with a stamping of the feet and whirling of the arms, into the more licentious fandango. But the sensual character of the latter dance was so far veiled and refined by the grace and elegance of the dancers, that what is usually a mere appeal to the senses, became in their performances the very poetry of motion. The young noblemen remained as though entranced, their eyes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... as one flies from death—a refined woman, too, whose life had hitherto been passed ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... visits always with a smile that seemed to make her soul stand out upon her face. She was what one might call a woman of the world. That is, she had travelled much, read much, studied people much, and mingled all her previous life in intelligent and refined society. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... do honour to the illustrious stranger, and, together, we all accompanied him to Gresham House. He was a remarkably handsome, courteous man, excessively insinuating in his manners, at the same time with a firm and determined look. He was said to be a refined courtier and a consummate politician. Probably the Romanists had no more watchful enemy. His eagle eye was everywhere, and his great aim was to counteract all their plots and machinations, at this time especially so rife in England for the destruction ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... known a very highly refined state of civilization. The barbarian was not buried very deep. To him the voice of the wind through the trees, the roar of the river, the fine, free air of the mountains had a charm which he could ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Refined conversation is Piddie's strong hold. It bubbles out of him like steam out of the oatmeal kettle. Sounds that way, too. You know these mush eaters, with their, "Ah, I'm su-ah, quite su-ah, doncher know"? He's got that kind of lingo down to an art. I'll bet he could talk it in his sleep. I've ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... point; but have you attempted this? What has been done by you for the elevation of your brethren? But let all that is practicable in this respect be attained, and you will ascend with them; as the majority become refined in their manners, talented in their professions, known in their dealings, so will you, always the most conspicuous, be exalted with them. Honour will emanate from the people and be reflected upon the leaders. Every onward movement of the middle and lower orders must press ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... of the Restoration and Louis Philippe. A pretty, winsome blonde with blue eyes and a melodious voice; she had an air of the utmost frankness, yet was profoundly depraved and expert in refined vice. In 1821 she transmitted a terrible and fatal disease to Crottat, the notary. At that time she lived on rue Feydeau. Euphrasie pretended that in her early youth she had passed entire days and nights ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... also degraded, rejected, the offscum and the offscouring of the very dregs of your society.... All hands are extended to thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues, the most vulgar as well as the self-styled most refined, have learned to turn the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach."[51] Marshall Hall expressed himself as "utterly at a loss to imagine the source of that prejudice which subsists against him [the negro] in the Northern states, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... heart got hardened and iced in the world. My aunt seemed necessary to his comfort, his convenience, his vanity: however he might be disliked by others he was certain of her fidelity and attachment. His respect for her was the one bright spot in his character, and even that was tarnished by a refined system ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... society, and I think his presence, on the other hand, increased their effects. As no one knows better than you do, his belief in his own country and in its institutions at their best was so passionate and intense that it was a part of his nature, yet his refined and fastidious tastes were deeply gratified by the influences of his life in England, and the spontaneous kindness which he received added much to his happiness. At that time Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister; the weekly receptions ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... school, in the collection of which we speak, there is but one of academic excellence in drawing,—the "King Lear" of Ford Madox Brown. All the others have errors, and some of them to a ludicrous degree; but wherever refined drawing is needed to convey the idea of the picture, no school can furnish drawing more subtile and expressive. The head of the "Light of the World" is worthy in this respect to be placed beside Raphael and Da Vinci; and the "Ophelia" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... by nature, and had all the quickness of perception to carry it out successfully; and yet he had cultivated the most refined manners of that wild, romantic age. He was fond of hunting, as the abundance of game and furred animals gave the hunter a rich reward. Mayall had reached his majority, and had become enamored of a beautiful young ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... to South the press found these reformers wonderfully ridiculous people. The 'hen convention' was served up in every variety of style, till refined women dreaded to look into a newspaper. Hitherto man had assumed to be the conscience of woman, now she indicated the will to think for herself; hence all this odium. But, however the word was preached, whether for wrath or conscience ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... for the French theatre, and that taste has perhaps abated my idolatry for the gigantic genius of Shakespeare, which is inculcated from our infancy as the first duty of an Englishman. The wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre, refined, in a visible degree, the manners of Lausanne; and, however addicted to study, I enjoyed my share of the amusements of society. After the representation of Monrepos I sometimes supped with the actors. I was now familiar in some, and acquainted in many houses; and my evenings were generally devoted ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... functions and degrees as the angelic hierarchy of the Areopagite, where his contemplative eye could crowd itself with various and brilliant pictures, and whence his impartial brain—one lobe of which seems to have been Normanly refined and the other Saxonly sagacious—could draw its morals of courtly and worldly wisdom, its lessons of prudence and magnanimity. In estimating Shakspeare, it should never be forgotten, that, like Goethe, he was essentially observer and artist, and incapable of partisanship. The passions, actions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... occasions above described, so far as it is any index to the intelligence of the several congregations, is certainly a high commendation. The language used, would not offend the taste of any congregation, however refined. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... business qualities—all have helped him to the equivalent of a liberal education. His love of the humorous and the ridiculous is unbounded; but he has serious moments, as well, and at such times is as dignified and refined in speech and manner as any man you'd find in a thousand. He is a good speaker, can stir a political convention to highest excitement when he gets fired up; and can write an article for the press that goes spang to the spot. ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... well 'gild refined gold.' I know it: your request is granted then—for the time. I will remand the order I despatched to my banker. But you have not yet asked for anything; you have prayed a gift to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... seventeenth century, Boyer's collections were part of the final surge before the character was taken over by Steele and handed on to the novelists. The first was Characters of the Virtues and Vices of the Age; or, Moral reflections, maxima, and thoughts upon men and manners. Translated from the most refined French wits ... and extracted from the most celebrated English writers.... Digested alphabetically under proper titles (1695). The second, resembling the first in design but considerably enlarged, was published in ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... of infamous life," but rather, "Such-and-such has a fine ear for music, or can make a complicated risotto." I learned, with astonishment, that with the most deplorable degradation of life there could consist an ability to share the interests of the most refined persons. These associates of ours made no secret of their avocations (except to the police), nor were they abashed or confounded if I happened to meet them in the exercise of them; but, business done, they were to be treated like Mr. Councillor or My Lady. Nor was this ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... subjects he writes upon; and had he painted as he has written, or used his pencil equally well with his pen, two more delightful volumes, to any lover of Greece, it would be difficult to name. With an evidently refined taste, and a perfect acquaintance with the ancient history of the country he traveled through, and the ever famous characters that made its history what it is, his descriptions combine most pleasingly together, the past with the present. He peoples the scenery with the men whose deeds give to that ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... ingenuity to invent torments for their victims—how useless—the rack, the boot, tire,—all that they have imagined are not to be compared to the torture of extreme thirst. In the extremity of agony the sufferers cry for water, and it is not refused: they might have spared themselves their refined ingenuity of torment, and the disgusting exhibition of it, had they only confined the prisoner in his ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... which were quagmires a foot deep, and where the clothing was specially ragged and dirty. Hinokiyama, a village of samurai, on a beautiful slope, was an exception, with its fine detached houses, pretty gardens, deep-roofed gateways, grass and stone-faced terraces, and look of refined, quiet comfort. Everywhere there was a quantity of indigo, as is necessary, for nearly all the clothing of the lower classes is blue. Near a large village we were riding on a causeway through the rice-fields, Ito on the pack-horse in front, when we ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... wisdom are accumulating. Though soldier-bigots and priestly schemers have burnt books and converted old libraries to base uses; though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious records; though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if spared, would have solved many a riddle of history; though Omar lit the fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of the Serapeum; though the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and Greece were destroyed in war; though the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... agreeable tongue, with which he could turn all the gentlemen at court any way he liked. He was beloved and honored by the whole community." His manner was graceful, familiar, caressing, and yet dignified. He had the good breeding which comes from the heart, refined into an inexpressible charm from his constant intercourse, almost from his cradle, with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... taste ran rather to a chaster form of decoration; the large cabochons of the Romanesque, combined with a liquid gold surface, gave place to refined ornaments in niello and delicate enamels. The bowls of the earlier chalices were rather flat and broad. When it became usual for the laity to partake only of one element when communicating, the chalice, ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... mornings, to acquire the knowledge hereafter to be given to her child. Her mind was uncultivated, her reading scant; beyond the mere mechanical arts of education she knew nothing; but she had a refined taste, and excellent sense and judgment to separate the true from the false. With these qualities, she set to work under Mr Benson's directions. She read in the early morning the books that he marked ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a time, very far from England, there lived three men who loved each other so greatly that neither man nor woman could come between them. They were in no sense refined, nor to be admitted to the outer- door mats of decent folk, because they happened to be private soldiers in Her Majesty's Army; and private soldiers of our service have small time for self-culture. Their duty is to keep themselves and their accoutrements specklessly clean, to refrain ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... the method of selecting its inmates, and the manner of inducting them into their new home, were somewhat unique and may be of interest to the reader. I had noticed among the brave and true men, who were working in the mud and rain, many refined-looking gentlemen, who were, before this great misfortune carried away most of their belongings, the wealthiest and most influential citizens. Never having had to struggle amid such hardships and deprivations, their sufferings were more acute than those of the poorer and more hardy ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... only. Every intelligent father and mother, anxious for the development of their sons and daughters should study this book night and day. It should be translated into every European language, and also into Chinese and other Eastern tongues; the refined, aesthetic, and knowledge-loving people of Japan, were the work translated into their language, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... not knowing which way to turn or of whom to ask information. Passersby jostled him roughly, and a policeman made a warning gesture with his club. This frightened Jerry. He was about to retreat to the shelter of the depot, when a tall, well-dressed lad, with a handsome, refined face, suddenly caught him ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... crossing a stream, or getting over a stile, and so forth. The dog was never left out; and these things he would sell for twenty, thirty, even fifty francs. He painted very quick and very well. He was also a capital good fellow, industrious and cultivated and refined, and full of self-respect. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Water" for musk and civet. The less said about the origin of these three animal perfumes the better. Fortunately they are becoming too expensive to use and are being displaced by synthetic products more agreeable to a refined imagination. The musk deer may now be saved from extinction since we can make tri-nitro-butyl-xylene from coal tar. This synthetic musk passes muster to human nostrils, but a cat will turn up her nose at it. The synthetic musk is not only much cheaper than the natural, but a dozen ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... (1479-1516) and the country entered upon a period of internal homogeneity and tranquility which might be expected to foster artistic production. Such was the case; but literature was not the first of the arts to reach a highly refined state. The first half of the sixteenth century is a period of humanistic study, and the poetical works coming from it were still tentative. JUAN DEL ENCINA (1469-1533?) is important in the history of the drama, for his eglogas, ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... Costermonger Songs seems to me a significant phenomenon. While no humane person would deny to the itinerant vendor of comestibles that sympathy which is accorded to the joys and sorrows of his more refined fellow-creatures, it is impossible to view without alarm the hold which his loose and ungrammatical diction is obtaining in the most cultured salons of to-day. Anxious to minimise the danger, yet loth to check a sentiment of fraternity so creditable to our common ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... Magazine and other profound works, to the same purpose; they patronize the London University, and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as far as lending their names; for, being mostly of the class of fashionable screws, they take care never to subscribe to any thing. They have a refined taste in shawls, and are consequently in the confidence of dressy old women, who hold them up as examples of every thing that is good. They take chocolate of a morning, and tea in the evening; drink sherry with a biscuit, and wonder how people can eat those hot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... with the others, and works, plays and sings under the wise and loving care of his "other mother," the teacher. He is living, not simply preparing to live. All life should be joyous, spontaneous, natural. The Rousseau Idea, which was modified and refined by Froebel, is the utilization ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... simplicity which is the extremest development of refined sybarism," the Wanderer said, smiling again. "I know your simplicity of old. It consists of getting precisely what you want, and in producing local earthquakes and revolutions when you cannot get it. Moreover you want what is good—to the ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... making herself so much respected, esteemed and loved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify her wishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. But this is to be all accomplished in the domestic and social circle. There let every woman become so cultivated and refined in intellect, that her taste and judgment will be respected; so benevolent in feeling and action, that her motives will be reverenced;—so unassuming and unambitious, that collision and competition will be banished;—so "gentle ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... that town and sweet, fine girls with the highest ideals. There are wretched hovels in that town with wicked and criminal inmates. But neither the girl with the highest ideals, nor the girl with the lowest, can stamp that town; neither the sweet, refined, cultured girl, nor the immoral and vicious one can stamp that town. The average girl ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... or the exaltation of a high ideal. They go meekly and even cheerfully to their death, without rebellion or even objection. It is most exceptional that they make a fight for their lives, as that woman did a few years ago at Dannemora, and disgusted all refined people with capital punishment." ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... the wide extent of this slavery system, I appeared in visible form to a rich dignitary on one of the most refined highlands. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... greatly refined by reading and association with educated people, and especially improved by the happy influence of true religion, yet retains enough of the characteristics of her nation to make her an acceptable visitor in the humblest cottage in New Dublin. It was long after the death of her ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... desolate, Muffles the world. The moaning of the wind Is piteous with sobs of saddest kind; And laughter is a phantom at the gate Of memory. The long-neglected grate Within sprouts into flame and lights the mind With hopes and wishes long ago refined To ashes,—long departed friends await Our words of welcome: and our lips are dumb And powerless to greet the ones that press Old kisses there. The baby beats its drum, And fancy marches to the dear caress Of ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... few nobles from his own province, both old and young, who, thanks to a respectable fortune, were able, like himself, to come and spend the winter in Paris. He had, moreover, kept up a slight intercourse with a more brilliant set, among whom Edmee's beauty and refined manners were noticed as soon as she appeared. Being an only daughter, and passably rich, she was sought after by various important matrons, those procuresses of quality who have always a few young proteges whom they wish to clear from debt at the expense of some family in the provinces. And then, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... was right. Mr. Jameson was the proprietor of the hotel, and Mr. Jameson was a pleasant, refined, quiet man of middle age. He appeared from somewhere or other, ascertained our wants, stated that he had a few vacant rooms and could ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... million (f.o.b., 1992) commodities: mostly transshipments of refined petroleum products, construction materials, fish, food and beverage products partners: US 25%, former Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands 63%, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... fullness of beauty pervades all. The forests—those moss-like fields are forests, and mighty ones, too—are all aflame with the burnished gold of sunset, brightening the gold of autumn; for gold twice refined, as it were, gilds the splendid landscape. Only think of that picture, shining through the mellow haze of Indian Summer, and flashing with the lambent glimmer of a myriad glassy leaves. You can not see them moving, yet they twinkle incessantly, and the warm air trembles about them ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... cannot blame meat eaters for rejecting the average chef d'{oe}uvre set before them by a mediocre cook who has learned little besides the roasting or broiling of meats. Once the average man has acquired a taste for the refined compositions made by a talented and experienced cook, say, a composition of meats, vegetables or cereals, properly "balanced" by that intuition that never fails the real artist, the fortunate diner will ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... I followed too, as the man led the way to the little room, the door of which was immediately opened by his wife, who motioned to us to enter. Never shall I forget the sight that greeted my eyes. Upon the bed lay a childish form, with a small, refined face, the pallor of which was intensified by contrast with the large dark eyes, that now had a half startled, expectant, indescribable expression. The sufferer had evidently reached the crisis of a malarial fever; reason had returned ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... that of a man refined, A man, one well could feel, of mind, Quite winning in its musical ease; But in mould maligned By some disease; And I asked again. But he shook his head; Then, as if more were ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... that beautiful open air museum, the national dances, the characteristic art of Sven Scholander and his daughter Lisa, gave us a deeper understanding of the people whose guests we were and showed us some of the roots from which it draws its strength. Another aspect also, the refined culture of modern Sweden, was the dominant note of the dinner at Hasselbacken with the heartfelt speech of the venerable Bishop ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... almost exclusively associated with very refined ethereal matters, stars and flowers and such like—happily, in actual life it is often associated with much humbler objects. Lovers, like children, can make their paradises out of the quaintest materials. Indeed, our paradises, if we only knew, are always cheap enough; it is ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... right and wrong he taught Truths as refined as ever Athens heard; And (strange to tell!) he practised ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... accustomed to hear women speak to promiscuous audiences on any and every subject, and to hear them applauded too, can scarcely realize the prejudice which, half a century back, sought to close the lips of two refined Christian ladies, desirous only of adding their testimony against the greatest evil of any age or country. But those who denounced and ridiculed them builded better than they knew, for then and there was laid the corner-stone of that temple of equal rights for ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... masked speaker, in a low, refined voice, and with a faint, elusive accent, "you will oblige me, Mr. Rohscheimer, by stepping forward so that your guests can see you? Sir Richard Haredale—may ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... the little schoolhouse, a swarm of midgets in pink dresses, pink sun-bonnets, and brown legs, came rushing to meet their teacher, with that peculiar devotion the children in the country develop for a refined teacher. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... in "The Hermit," the narrative, as it is less airy, is less pleasing. Of his other compositions it is impossible to say whether they are the productions of nature, so excellent as not to want the help of art, or of art so refined ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... affirmed, and is still believed, by many in both galleries, that there would be a tame lion sent from the tower every opera night in order to be killed by Hydaspes. This report, though altogether groundless, so universally prevailed in the upper regions of the playhouse, that some of the most refined politicians in those parts of the audience gave it out in whisper that the lion was a cousin-german of the tiger who made his appearance in King William's days, and that the stage would be supplied with lions at the public expense during the whole session. Many likewise ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... clean and well dressed persons coming out of the church? Our dear brother Yusef Ahtiyeh, the native preacher, and his wife Hadla, and Miriam, the teacher of the girls' school. Yusef is one of the most refined and lovely young men in Syria. What a clear eye he has, and what a pleasant face! He too has borne much for his Master. In 1865, when he left the Greek Church, he was living with his brother in Beirut. His brother turned him out of the house at night, with ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... 1989); commodities—raw cotton, crude and refined petroleum, cotton yarn, textiles; ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... twenty-two miles without a halt, during which we twice had to wade knee-deep through rivers. By midday most of the men were so exhausted that they could hardly crawl along. It was remarkable that the comparatively weaker and more refined city-bred people who had done little physical work in their lives, most of them being professional men, withstood hardships better than the sturdy and, to all appearances, stronger peasants; the only explanation for it being perhaps that the. city-bred people, in consequence ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... atmosphere. Adolph A. Weinman's admirable "Descending Night" is so familiar to all Exposition visitors, in its adaptation in a fine fountain in the Court of the Universe, that no more reference need be made to it. Here in bronze on a small scale, it is even more refined. Mrs. Saint Gaudens' charming family group, in burnt clay, is not so well in harmony with this gallery of older work, but infinitely more appealing than J. Q. A. Ward's "Hunter" or Cyrus Dallin's "Indian". ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... The Japanese show a refined taste in the coloring and decoration of rooms; natural woods, painted and polished, are common; every post and board standing erect must stand in the position in which it grew. A Japanese knows at once whether a board or post is upside down, though it would often puzzle a Westerner to decide ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... country; everything around is rich and substantial. The residence is a stately mansion in the Elizabethan style, and the lady who, accompanied by two sweet children, walks the broad piazza, is evidently a refined gentlewoman. The colonel himself, like a gallant (but mistaken) knight, has ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... themselves as disgusting as they could desire. And in many cases they succeed in inflicting a good deal of pain. A very low, vulgar, petty, and uncultivated nature may cause much suffering to a lofty, noble, and refined one,—particularly if the latter be in a position of dependence or subjection. A wretched hornet may madden a noble horse; a contemptible mosquito may destroy the night's rest which would have recruited a noble brain. But without any evil intention, sometimes with the very kindest intention, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... of governing by debts, was the most refined system of tyranny. It seemed to be a contrivance devised by politicians to succeed the old system of feudal tenures. Both were tyrannical, but the objects of their tyranny were different. The one operated on the person, the other operates ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Though their poems did not, at least at first, lack sincerity and spontaneity, their tendency to theorizing about the ideals of courtly life, especially about the nature and practice of love as the ideal form of refined conduct, was not favorable to these qualities. As lyrical expression lost in directness and spontaneity it was natural that more and more attention should be paid to form. The external qualities of verse were ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... personal observation has given us different ideas on this subject. Within those lofty, and sometimes sullen-looking walls which enclose the convents of the sisterhoods we speak of, we have spent some of the most agreeable hours of our life, conversing with refined and enlightened women on the works of beneficence in which they were engaged; everything bearing an aspect of that cheerfulness and animation which only can be expected in places where worthy duties ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... noted possessions in the basement and three-story brick house on West Adams Street. She had followed the chairs in the course of the Hitchcock evolution until her aunt had insisted on her being sent east to the Beaumanor Park School. Two years of "refined influences" in this famous establishment, with a dozen other girls from new-rich families, had softened her tones and prolonged her participles, but had touched her not essentially. Though she shared with her younger brother the feeling that the Hitchcocks were ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... front of it, in her long white dress, with her white hands clasped loose in front of her, and her auburn hair pushed back careless from her beautiful face, I see the girl in the picture, or as she would be if she had grown refined and beautiful by sorrow and a sweet patience and reasonableness, which is the twin of Patience, both on 'em ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Greenway, who's staying with her, and—yes! here's one from Mr. Welling! Oh, how glad I am! Willis, dearest, if I could be the means of bringing those two lovely young creatures together, I should be so happy! Don't you think, now, he is the most delicate-minded, truly refined, exquisitely modest young fellow that ever was?" She presses the unopened note to her corsage, and leans eagerly forward entreating a ...
— A Likely Story • William Dean Howells
... branches reigns an obscurity almost equalling night. What he sees may be some straying animal, or perhaps it is only fancy. His thoughts are engrossed with that which carries him on towards the house. There one will be awaiting him, in whose refined presence he will soon forget the uncouth spectacle of courtship at which he ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid |
