"Refinement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... religiously observed by all others. No one who is at all acquainted with the Indian in his home can deny that we are a polite people. As a rule, the warrior who inspired the greatest terror in the hearts of his enemies was a man of the most exemplary gentleness, and almost feminine refinement, among his family and friends. A soft, low voice was considered an excellent thing in man, as well as in woman! Indeed, the enforced intimacy of tent life would soon become intolerable, were it not for these instinctive reserves and delicacies, ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... would be termed rich in New York; and Jason, spite of his provincial conceit, spite of his overweening notions of moral and intellectual superiority, could no more prevent this profound deference for wealth, than he could substitute for a childhood of vulgarity and neglect, the grace, refinement and knowledge which the boys of the more fortunate classes in life obtain as it might be without knowing it. Yes, Jason bowed down to the golden calf, in spite of his puritanism, his love of liberty, his pretension to equality and the general strut ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... the people of Iowa to be rather particular in his diet, (as all wise creatures are,) and to prefer a nice young spring chicken to almost any other "delicacy of the season"—a proof of wisdom and refinement that proved too much for the people of Iowa. And so they have left the poor old Owl out of the protective enactment; and it is not only legal to shoot him, but meritorious. The legislators could have stood the wisdom, perhaps by itself; and possibly they might have respected the taste; ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... is great, and the labourers are but few; while you have left the field of Ambition, where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carrying away. But of all kinds of ambition, what from the refinement of the times, from different systems of criticism, and from the divisions of party, that which pursues poetical fame is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... needed forgiveness, she took my mother from her dungeon, assumed the liveliest indignation at this horrible treatment, about which she appeared to have known nothing, wiped her tears, and by an abominable refinement of perfidy received the thanks of the victim whom she was ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... useless little hand which lay on her lap. "You will only be obliged to hear spelling- and reading-lessons, and teach the class of little girls who have not gone beyond the first four rules of arithmetic, and perhaps you will help them to play on their holidays: you could impart an element of refinement to their recreations more readily than an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... various enjoyments, I argued that a refinement of taste was a disadvantage, as they who have attained to it must be seldomer pleased than those who have no nice discrimination, and are therefore satisfied with every thing that comes in their way. JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir; that is a paltry notion. Endeavour to be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... that Venice is the seat of all elegance and refinement, and that no man who has not graduated in its school of gallantry is considered perfect in ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... with their crucifixes and candles, collected round them, exhorting them to repentance, and uttering prayers which none of them could understand. I looked anxiously for Manco, but he was not among them, and at last I discovered him standing apart, under charge of a file of soldiers. With a refinement of cruelty, it was intended that he should witness the execution of his friends and countrymen, before he himself was led forth to be shot. A priest stood by his side, endeavouring to make him listen to the words of exhortation he was pouring ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... books, chairs, window seats, &c., which he here has 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
... back the Gordon-Bennett Aviation Cup from America at a speed of 105.5 m.p.h.—a considerable improvement on the 78 m.p.h. of the preceding year, which was by no means accounted for by the mere increase in engine power from 100 horse-power to 140 horse-power. This machine was the first in which the refinement of 'stream-lining' the pilot's head, which became a feature of subsequent racing machines, was introduced. This consisted of a circular padded excresence above the cockpit immediately behind the pilot's head, which gradually tapered off into the top surface of the fuselage. ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... nations), should form the line of conduct for us all, in the present war, in the cases for which they provide. Where they are silent, the general principles of the law of nations must give the rule, as the principles of that law have been liberalized in latter times by the refinement of manners and morals, and evidenced by the declarations, stipulations, and practice of every civilized nation. In our treaty with Prussia, indeed, we have gone ahead of other nations, in doing away restraints on ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... reveries. She occasionally spoke to him at the common table, or as she passed the borders of the hay-field, where he and Henry were at work: but his words to her were always few and constrained. What was there in his eyes that haunted her? Not merely a most reverent admiration of her pure womanly refinement, although she read that also; not a fear of disparagement, such as his awkward speech implied, but something which seemed to seek agonizingly for another language than that of the lips,—something which appealed to her from equal ground, and ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... stupid rather than clever. Of manly bearing I possessed even less, since, although I was not exactly small of stature, and had, moreover, plenty of strength for my years, every feature in my face was of the meek, sleepy-looking, indefinite type. Even refinement was lacking in it, since, on the contrary, it precisely resembled that of a simple-looking moujik, while I also had the same big hands and feet as he. At the time, all this ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... by Osborn turned his glance from the window and fixed it on his son, who stood waiting across the big oak table. Gerald was a handsome lad, like his father, but marked by a certain refinement and a hint of delicacy. Although he felt anxious, his pose was free and graceful and his look undisturbed. Osborn threw the bills ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... know that Maria Anna Stein, daughter of Johann Andreas Stein, the piano maker, was a most successful business woman, carrying on the manufacturing of instruments. This she continued after her marriage to Herr Streicher. She was a person of rare refinement and a warm friend of Beethoven, whom she greatly admired. She was privileged to make his last years more comfortable than any he had previously experienced. Good servants were provided to look after his bodily needs and she always had one of her best pianos at his disposal. In a letter ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... conversation or in writing, express ourselves so gracefully, or employ so classic a diction, as the English. Our taste in language is less fastidious, and our licenses and inaccuracies are more frequently of a character indicative of want of refinement and elegant culture than those we hear in educated society in ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... long-spun-out lunches were as frequent and at times as Lucullan as in the days of the Regency. The outer, coarser attributes of luxury abounded in palatial restaurants, hotels, and private mansions; but the refinement, the grace, the brilliant conversation even of the Paris of the Third Empire were seen to be subtle branches of a lost art. The people of the armistice were weary and apprehensive—weary of the war, weary of politics, weary of the worn-out framework of existence, and filled with ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... as if a load had been taken off his mind. Once more he was among his old friends and associates, and, without confessing the fact to himself, he infinitely preferred being with them to enjoying all the luxury and refinement which Lady Elmore's house in London had afforded. So the days flew rapidly by till the party of seamen had once more ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... ago I owned a pair of foxhounds. Duke was the gentleman of the family, and Lady was his consort, and a lady she was indeed. I can hardly imagine a human creature of greater intelligence and refinement than this dumb beast. The attachment between herself and Duke was unique in its strength, and in its demonstration. He was fully as noble and as intelligent as she, but of a less lively, cheerful temperament. The arrival of six little Dukes was an occasion of anxiety and ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... disinterested benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagination, and has an intimate connexion with all the arts which add ornament, or dignity, or power, or stability to the social state of man. Virtue is thus entirely a refinement of civilized life; a creation of the human mind; or, rather, a combination which it has made, according to elementary rules contained within itself, of the feelings suggested by the relations established ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... word generally used to denote learning and refinement in manners and art. The development of culture—the acquisition of new knowledge and the creation of beautiful things—is ordinarily the work of a comparatively small number of scientists and artists. Now if in any particular period ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the sweetest melody and a refinement and grace incomparable, he sings with a most happy heart of various matters of the marriage day—of his love's waking, of the merry music of the minstrels, of her coming forth in all the pride of her visible loveliness, of that 'inward beauty of her lively spright' which no eyes ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... was able to tread in that magic circle only by an exquisite refinement of taste, and by a delicate sense of humour, which is the best preservative against all extravagance. Both qualities combine in that tender delineation of character which is, after all, one of his greatest ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... certain that the character of a nation will be elevated by the enlightenment and refinement of woman, it is much more than doubtful whether any advantage is to be derived from her entering into competition with man in the rough work of business and polities. Women can no more do men's special work in the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... see Uncle Denis married happily, though where to find a wife to suit him, or, as she would have said, "good enough for him," was the difficulty. There were no lack of excellent girls in Kentucky, daughters of settlers, but they could seldom boast of much education or refinement of manners, and Uncle Denis was a gentleman in every sense of the word; at the same time that he had as much spirit and ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... and upright, that he takes the heart by storm. There is nothing of the copy-book about his virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his fine, natural civility; he will sail near the wind; he is no district visitor—no Wesley or Robespierre; his conscience is void of all refinement whether for good or evil; but the whole man rings true like a good sovereign. Readers who have approached the "Vicomte," not across country, but by the legitimate, five-volumed avenue of the "Mousquetaires" and "Vingt Ans Apres," will not have forgotten d'Artagnan's ungentlemanly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... calling a cab, I drove to Captain Merton's. I was so fortunate as to find him at home. As I entered he threw on the table a number of letters and made me welcome with a certain cordiality which in its manner had both refinement and the open-air frankness of ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... subalterns could get drunk there, as speedily as in the centers of refinement, but there were no gentlemanly diversions at which an officer could dispel the gloom of his sour ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... end. I beg to differ from Mr. Edward Baxter Perry, who once declared that the Polish virtuoso played at his previous season no different from his earlier visits. The Paderewski of 1902 and 1905 is very unlike the Paderewski of 1891. His style more nearly approximates Rubinstein's plus the refinement of the Henselt school. He has sacrificed certain qualities. That was inevitable. All great art is achieved at the expense—either by suppression or enlargement—of something precious. Paderewski pounds more; nor is he ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... boy, as he and Harvey played during the afternoon, with no little concern of mind. What was I to do with him? Clean and neatly dressed, there was a look of refinement about the child which had nearly all been hidden by rags and dirt. He played gently, and his voice had in it a sweetness of tone, as it fell every now and then upon my ears, that was really winning. Send him back to Mrs. Flint's in Blake's Court? The change I had ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... would not attempt to answer, that the question is purely an academic one, that all these go hand in hand, but that historically the first of them—namely, progress in means of subsistence—had generally preceded progress in government, in literature, in knowledge, in refinement, and in religion. Though not itself of the highest importance, it is the foundation upon which the whole superstructure of civilization is built, and without which it could ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... graces, and secret charms, which none but the discerning can discover; nor are any capable of doing full justice, in their opinion to her excellencies, without giving the world, at the same time, an incontestable proof of refinement in their ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... fingers is not the only thing that one learns from Kalkbrenner's method, for there is also a refinement of the quality of the sound made by the fingers alone, a valuable resource which is unusual ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... degradation of the human being; this was no case of the free naked savage, hunting and devouring his prey in the primeval forests; here civilised man was found, sunk into brutishness, with all the stigmas of his fall, debased, disfigured, and enfeebled, amidst the luxury and refinement of that city of Paris which is one of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... region. If we understand that an extreme case may have been taken for the genuine and pure form, even so we do not comprehend the ground of its geographical limitation and location; for wherever dark, woolly-haired men dwell, this ugly type also crops up. We are here in the presence of a refinement of science which to an unprejudiced eye will ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... of it. I was glad to be able to answer truthfully that I had never seen a state pageant or ceremonial that I had enjoyed half so much, or that had impressed me so favourably. He has a very musical voice, and a natural nobility and refinement of manner, with an obvious tact and good feeling, rather, I should think, the result of amiable and gentlemanly instincts than of training or consideration, all which combine to make him interesting, altogether apart from his position as ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... way into the sitting-room; there was but one in the house. It proved a queer kind of place with rude furniture seated with strips of hide after the Boer fashion, and yet bearing a certain air of refinement which was doubtless due to Inez, who, with the assistance of a stout native girl, was already engaged in setting the table. Thus there was a shelf with books, Shakespeare was one of these, I noticed—over ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... lowly walks. Indeed, Mrs. Macdougal, having had no early training worth speaking of, had successfully modelled her manners upon those of a few favourite heroines. She fancied the expression, 'It is, is it not?' lent an air of exquisite refinement to ordinary conversation. She was naturally artificial. Artifice would have been her certain resort in whatever path it had pleased Fate to plant her small feet. Her temper was excellent so far as it went, and her manner tender and clinging. She would have preferred to have been ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... sitting limply in a chair crying bitterly. She was not a hardened looking creature. In fact, her face bore evident traces of refinement, and her long, slender fingers hinted at a nervous, artistic temperament. It was rather a shock to see such a girl under such ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... confidently to this assembly whether such things exhaust the demands of human nature? The very presence here for six inclement nights of this great audience, embodying so much of the mental force and refinement of this vast city,[26] is an answer to my question. I need not tell such an assembly that there are joys of the intellect as well as joys of the body, or that these pleasures of the spirit constituted ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... pretended[487].—But then, it is found that certain of the orthodox contented themselves with merely reversing the clauses, and so restoring the true order of the spiritual process discussed—regardless of the exquisite refinement of expression to which attention was called at the outset. Copies must once have abounded which represented our Lord as saying, 'I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knoweth Me and I know the Father'; for it is the order of the Old Latin, Bohairic, ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... large azure eyes, telling of her happiness and the kindly emotions of her soul. Her finely-cut nose gave an aristocratic expression to her countenance, while her crimson lips, in their voluptuous fulness, contrasted not unfavorably with the remarkable refinement of the rest of her features. An enchanting smile played about her mouth, and spoke of her noble simplicity ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... from excusable defilement to the light. "She does the honours of the house with great attention and desire to please," wrote Greville's correspondent of 1791, before quoted, "but wants a little refinement of manners, in which, in the course of six years, I wonder she has not made greater progress." "She is all Nature and yet all Art," said Sir Gilbert Elliot, in 1796; "that is to say, her manners are perfectly ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... inevitable black cigar between his teeth, Merrihew sauntered off toward the billiard-room, while Hillard picked up his letter and studied it. His fingers trembled slightly as he tore open the envelope. The handwriting, the paper, the modest size, all these pointed to a woman of culture and refinement. But a subtle spirit of irony pervaded it all. She would never have answered his printed inquiry had she not laughed over it. For, pinned to the top of the letter was the clipping, the stupid, banal clipping—"Will ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... "Talk of 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
... days. When you are weary of soaring with him, and wish to descend into common life, read the Comedies of Plautus. There is a tolerable translation in the City Library. Such books give the most lively and amusing, perhaps much the most just picture, of the manners and degree of refinement of the age in which they were written. I have agreed with Popham for his share ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... You have no trouble in keeping abreast of him as he ambles along on his hobby-horse, now pointing to a pretty view, now stopping to watch the motions of a bird or an insect, or to bag a specimen for the Honorable Daines Barrington or Mr. Pennant. In simplicity of taste and natural refinement he reminds one of Walton; in tenderness toward what he would have called the brute creation, of Cowper. I do not know whether his descriptions of scenery are good or not, but they have made me familiar with his neighborhood. Since I first ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... putting the higher class of Americans on one side—I refer to those who mostly belong to the older families, in some instances tracing back their descent to the days of the Puritan Fathers, and who, having learnt culture and refinement abroad, rarely mix in public life in the States—the general faith and morality of our Yankee "cousins" have never been so tersely described as in the "Pious Editor's Creed" of the Biglow Papers, which were written, as you are doubtless aware, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and melancholy temperament, are strongly expressed in his own portrait, which is in the Gallery of Paintings here. All his pictures are tinged by the morbid delicacy of his constitution, and the refinement of his character and habits. They have exquisite finish, but a want of power, degenerating at times into coldness and feebleness; his Madonnas are distinguished by regular feminine beauty, melancholy, devotion, or resigned ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... well filled did any one have the audacity to sit at the stranger's table. His elegance and refinement were as a barrier between him and all that was rude and coarse. If he glanced about the place, taking notes in his turn of this and that, it was covertly and quietly and without offence. His eyes passed across Daisy's without resting or any show of interest. Once or twice he spoke quietly ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... which seemed perfect, but was likely to grow and develop, for she was only seventeen. She wore an apron of violet silk, with the pinafore which our village women have made a great mistake in abolishing, and which imparted so much modesty and refinement to the chest. To-day, they spread out their fichus more proudly, but there is no longer that sweet flower of old-fashioned pudicity in their costume that made them resemble Holbein's virgins. They are more coquettish, more graceful. The correct style in the old days was a sort of unbending stiffness ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... labourer who became a prosperous farmer, the other did not disdain a chimney sweep, and both now possessed houses and children and warm places of their own in the world, while the prettiest still tripped with a rather over-bright smile about the Thorhaven streets, aware of really superior refinement, but not finding ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... become an original and vigorous poet, rather than for any one of "the herd of scholars and academical literati," who are depressed and discouraged by "perusing the most celebrated writers, and conversing with the most intelligent judges," is found to be, that "the literature and refinement of the age do not exist for a rustic and illiterate individual; and consequently the present time is to him what the rude times of old were to the vigorous writer who adorned them." In short the great ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... was a genius in his profession; he could get more speed out of a schooner than any other man afloat, and carry more canvas without losing a stick. He was also, fortunately for Lestrange, a man of refinement and education, and what was ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... already here the transition from Tasso's measured art to the fantastic prolixity of Marino. And though Guarini was upon the whole chaste in use of language, his rhetorical love of amplification and fanciful refinement not unfrequently betrayed him into Marinistic conceits. Dorinda, for instance, thus addresses Silvio ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... The imagination is the distinguishing characteristic of man as a progressive being; and I repeat that it ought to be carefully guided and strengthened as the indispensable means and instrument of continued amelioration and refinement. Men of genius and goodness are generally restless in their minds in the present, and this, because they are by a law of their nature unremittingly regarding themselves in the future, and contemplating the possible of moral and intellectual advance towards perfection. Thus we live by ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... leisurely way. "Not much of a Grey!" thought Rivers, as he observed the clean-shaven face, which was sallow, or what the English once described as olivaster, the eyes small and dark, the hair black and so long as to darkly frame the thin-featured, clean-shaven refinement of a pleasant and ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... outer door, rings the breakfast bell loudly, and exit to kitchen. Rhoda enters, wheeling Mrs. Beeler in an invalid chair. Mrs. Beeler is a woman of forty, slight of body, with hair just beginning to silver. Her face has the curious refinement which physical suffering sometimes brings. Annie lingers at the door, looking timidly at Michaelis, as he approaches Mrs. Beeler and takes her hand from the arm of ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... Island, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, formed with a burnt stick; but this performance, exceeding a hundred and fifty figures, which must have occupied much time, appears at least to be one step nearer refinement than those simply executed with a piece of charred wood. Immediately above this schistose is a superincumbent mass of sandstone which appeared to form the upper structure of ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... with rounded forms, and delicacy of limbs, nearly so incompatible as to be rarely if ever united; for where, with some rare exceptions, do we see roundness of contour accompanied by lightness, and those fairy hands and feet that are at once the type of beauty and refinement. I like to shut myself up, close my eyes, and fancy one of the creatures of my imagination, with taper and rose-tipped fingers, playing with my hair, touching my cheek, or resting its little snowy-dimpled hand on mine. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... the guest table in the refectory sat Etienne, and marvelled to see how well the ascetics fared. Yet there was refinement in their dishes; and there was little or no excess; they drank the light wines of France, not the heavier ale and ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... definition which every rhythmical sequence manifests between its inception and its close. This process is manifested equally in the facts of sensory apprehension and those of motor reproduction of rhythm forms. On the one hand, there is a progressive refinement in the discrimination of variations from temporal uniformity as the series of stimulations advances; and correspondingly, the sequence of motor reactions presents a clearly marked increase in cooerdination taking place parallel ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... Williamsburg, exceed, in attachment to their birthplace, if possible, the emigres from the metropolis. It is refreshing in these coster monger times, to hear them speak of it;—they remember it when the old burg was the seat of fashion, taste, refinement, hospitality, wealth, wit, and all social graces: when genius threw its spell over the public assemblages and illumined the halls of justice, and when beauty brightened the social hour with her unmatched ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Should he never have his reason again, I shall never forgive myself. That Whirlwind would adhere to so ridiculous a farce is not to be wondered at; but that we, born and bred among a civilized nation, educated, and with claims to intelligence and refinement, should consent to such mummery, is a libel ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... and extravagance, and in which men plunged headlong, without a single scruple of conscience, and with every possible resource at their command, into the pursuit of pleasure. There was no form of luxury, there was no refinement of vice invented by any foreign nation, which had not been eagerly adopted by the Roman patricians. "The softness of Sybaris, the manners of Rhodes and Antioch, and of perfumed, drunken, flower-crowned Miletus," were all to be found at ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... of the journey Miss Winchelsea talked little, and what she said was as pleasant and as stamped with refinement as she could make it. Her voice was always low and clear and pleasant, and she took care that on this occasion it was particularly low and clear and pleasant. As they came under the white cliffs the young man put his book of poetry away, and when at last the train stopped beside the ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... unreasonable to assume that many persons besides the wealthy will be able to enjoy the luxury of private residences here, which can be occupied only during the summer months of the year. Nevertheless, when the refinement and taste incident to the development of an older civilization shall have permeated the minds of the wealthy classes of citizens, this charming lake region will not only continue to be the favorite resort of tourists and artists, but will become, during the summer season, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... the Turanians, had everywhere begun that work, it was their inventions which the others took up and improved: and we must remember that it is very much easier to improve than to invent. Only there is that strange limitation to their power of progress and that want of natural refinement, which are as a wall that encloses them around. Even the Chinese, who, at first sight, are a brilliant exception, are not so on a closer inspection. True, they have founded and organized a great empire ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... survey of the woman's face convinced him that his ordinary loquaciousness would not serve him here. There was a refinement in her aspect quite out of keeping with the locality in which she lived, and he was hesitating how to proceed, when fortune favoured him by driving against his knees a small lad on an ill-directed sled, bringing ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... and cultural education. Traditionally, liberal culture has been linked to the notions of leisure, purely contemplative knowledge and a spiritual activity not involving the active use of bodily organs. Culture has also tended, latterly, to be associated with a purely private refinement, a cultivation of certain states and attitudes of consciousness, separate from either social direction or service. It has been an escape from the former, and a solace for the necessity ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... delicate and nourishing food upon earth, is, with people like them, liable to inconveniencies; for in such a group or Archipelago of islands, whose inhabitants are in such various gradations of refinement, from the gentle and polished Otaheitean, to the savage and cannibal Feegee, a war amongst them is often attended with devastation as well as famine. By cutting round the bark of the Bread-fruit tree, a whole country ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... while Ballister passed through these transitions of taste, and he found intervals to travel, and time to read, and opportunity to indulge, as far as he could with the eye only, his passion for knowledge in the arts. To all that appertained to the refinement of himself, he applied the fine feelers of a delicate and passionate construction, physical and mental, and, as the reader will already have included, wasted on culture comparatively unprofitable, faculties that would ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... mistaken, he was not of gentle birth or 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 he was given to ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... middle-aged. Du Maurier's picture of Society was largely falsified by his inability to appreciate variety in feminine genius. But we are quite prepared to believe that his treatment of the dainty parlour-maid, for instance, helped to confirm that tradition of refinement in table service which is the pleasant feature of English home life. All the servants shown in his pictures are ladies, and this before the fashion had made any headway of engaging ladies as servants. And we cannot help feeling such delightful child-life as he represents ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... people who are very pleasing to me. But words are not the instruments of our intercourse. I like Jane more and more, and I find Williams the most amiable of companions. She has a taste for music, and an eloquence of form and motions that compensate in some degree for the lack of literary refinement." ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... could only have been in name and not in reality, for those were the days of bull-fighting, bear-baiting, and like sports, the practice of which in those dark ages was thought to be the highest pitch of culture and refinement—no more instances of this kind were thrown into the balance, for the public conscience had become somewhat awakened; the days of enlightenment had begun to dawn, for by statute 23, George III., cap. 51, it was enacted that the Act of Eliz., cap. 20, is repealed; and the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... barn or the court-yard, according to the season. The ladies of the house joined in the festivity, and that without any airs of condescension or of mockery; for, in their own life, there was little splendour or luxurious refinement. They travelled on horseback, or in heavy carriages drawn by oxen; and had little other amusement than in the care of their dependants, and the familiar intercourse of neighbours among whom there was no ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... art, though the direct work of the Muses, received at the hands of the Graces an additional touch of refinement and beauty; for which reason they are always regarded as the friends of the Muses, with whom ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... life, through which we can see the extremes and excesses of the varied properties of the human heart. Wisdom and folly, refinement and vulgarity, love and hatred, tenderness and cruelty, happiness and misery, piety and infidelity, commingled with every other cardinal virtue or vice, are to be seen on the variegated pages of the history of human events, and are ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... strange compound of boisterous roughness and refinement in expression, and these odd contrasts surprised strangers such as Moore and Ticknor. The former was shocked, and the latter said his conversation was a perpetual contradiction to the exquisite delicacy ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... I haven't," muttered Miss Fancy weakly but with due refinement. The expression of fear was the right expression. Eve had put the generally brazen woman in a fright at the first effort. And the worst was that Miss Fancy did not even know what the Twelve and Thirteen was—or were. At the opening of ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... delivered to every parson, vicar, and curate," within their several dioceses, the more scrupulous among these might fairly argue that they accepted the order on the authority of the diocesan. But it may be doubted whether such a refinement occurred ...
— The Acts of Uniformity - Their Scope and Effect • T.A. Lacey
... color. There seems to be something in the chill breezes which scurry through the long, narrow thoroughfares productive of rueful thoughts. Not poets alone, nor artists, nor that superior order of mind which arrogates to itself all refinement, feel this, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... nurse imported from France. Nor did the Greeks merely ignore the Latin language. They refused to be romanized in any other respect. Even the Roman amusements tended to disgust them, and it is to the credit of his superior refinement that the average Greek was repelled by those brutal exhibitions of gladiatorial bloodshed and slaughter over ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... that the friends of God in this life are either exempted from pain and sorrow, or made insensible to them, either in themselves or in others. Of these and other evils they are truly more keenly aware than worldly men, if for no other reason than because of the superior refinement of their nature and the spiritual outlook of their vision. It is sin, after all, that hardens while it weakens. Sin closes the heart to love, it renders its victims cold, unsympathetic and selfish; whereas the gifts of grace and holiness are tenderness, ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... Vinsolving is the widow of a colonel in our Regular Army. My information is that she is a woman of culture and refinement. Since the death of her husband some eight years ago she has been residing in a small home which she owns in the outskirts of Pleasantdale village in this county. From the fact that she keeps no servants and from other ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... into cordiality. I found them well informed and agreeable, less demonstrative in their self-assertion than their Northern sisterhood, but latently wilful, and assumptive of a superior elevation hardly justified by their general air of languid refinement. It reminded me, on the whole, of what I had heard complacently eulogized in Charleston as a tendency toward 'Orientalism' on the part of the women, of which the characteristics were repose, fastidiousness, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... black dress, removed all traces of paint and powder from her face, remembering his former request and her experiment, tricked Jessie out in a bright yellow satin riband twisted into a bow almost larger than herself, and bought flowers—large ones, sunflowers—to give to her dingy room an air of refinement and of gaiety. Amid all this brilliancy of yellow satin and yellow flowers she waited uneasily in her simple black gown. The day was dull, not wet, but brooding and severe, iron-grey, like a hard-featured Puritan, and still with the angry peace of coming thunder. The ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... 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 wealthy, and ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... feelings as exemplified in our speech. And finally, highest of all, we must place our conduct as shown in written or printed language. This is a brief outline of our evolutionary and developmental ascent and of the increasing complexity and refinement of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... in the inn yard a stone trough, through which flowed a stream of water, in which he proceeded to wash his hands and face, and to wipe them in a coarse towel suspended nigh at hand. Certainly after handling sheep freely there was need, though such ablutions were a refinement not indulged in by all the company who assembled round the well-spread board of the White Hart for the meal after the market. They were a motley company. By the host's side sat a knight on his way home from pilgrimage to Compostella, or perhaps ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... said Mrs. Gillespie, "and there is a grace in her politeness that can only proceed from great natural delicacy and refinement of character. How she can have such manners, living and working in the way you say she does, I confess ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... an uneradicated predilection for her society. It was not an agreeable task; it was in fact a repulsive one. She asked herself with dismay whether Lord Warburton were pretending to be in love with Pansy in order to cultivate another satisfaction and what might be called other chances. Of this refinement of duplicity she presently acquitted him; she preferred to believe him in perfect good faith. But if his admiration for Pansy were a delusion this was scarcely better than its being an affectation. Isabel wandered among these ugly possibilities until she had completely lost her way; some ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... dreadful adjectives 'elegant' and 'genteel'!) you will not find them among the snobbish clique, who, with nothing but money, attempt to rule New York." The words are of the clerical visitor before quoted. "Talent, taste, and refinement do not dwell with these. But high life has no passport except money. If a man has this, though destitute of character and brains, he is made welcome. One may come from Botany Bay or St. James; with a ticket-of-leave from a penal colony or St. Cloud; if he has diamond rings and a coach, all places ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... stand the great ordeal when it came? If wealth, education, and breeding were to result in a class who could only carp and criticize, accumulate money, give way to self-indulgence, and cherish low foreign ideals, then would it have appeared that there was a radical unsoundness in our society, refinement would have been proved to be weakness, and the highest education would have been shown to be a curse, rather than a blessing. But Charles Lowell, and hundreds of others like him, in greater or less degree, all over the land, met the great test and emerged triumphant. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... symphony concert, and the director said of him: "His tall, handsome, manly presence, his flute breathing noble sorrows, noble joys, the orchestra softly responding. The audience was spellbound. Such distinction, such refinement! He ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... appropriate to all classes, ages, and conditions. No yard connected with a dwelling is complete without a flower-bed. The cultivation of flowers is eminently promotive of health, refinement of manners, and good taste. Constant familiarity with the most exquisite beauties of nature must refine the feelings and produce gentleness of spirit. Association with flowers should be a part of every child's education. Their cultivation is suitable for children and young ladies in ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... Asia, and Africa, even when led by great nations, and illuminated by marvellous minds, did not advance one inch beyond the arts of Egypt, we may conceive what lapses, what aeons, of time it must have required to bring savage man to that condition of refinement and civilization possessed by Egypt when it first comes within ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... known by that sobriquet than by the name which Christian had given to her on his wedding-day at Otaheite, was a very comely and naturally amiable creature, graceful in form, and although a so-called savage, possessing an air of simple dignity and refinement which might almost be termed lady-like. Indeed, several of the other native wives of the mutineers were similar to Mrs Christian in these respects, and, despite their brown complexions, were remarkably ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... certainty that they will not under any circumstances presume upon it. To Angelo Reanda it meant much more than to most men who could have been placed as he was. His genius raised him far above the class in which he had been born, and his education, with his natural and acquired refinement, placed him on a higher level than the majority of other Roman artists, who, in the Rome of that day, inhabited a Bohemia of their own which has completely disappeared. Their ideas and conversation, when they were serious, interested him, but their manners ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... sight in the morning produced in my mind. I have been told positively that the poor old creatures brought in with the other captives will not fetch a shilling a-head in the slave-market. It is, therefore, a refinement of cruelty not to let them die in their native homes,—to tear them away to a foreign soil, and subject them to the fatigues of the journey, and the insults of a rude populace, and ruder and crueller slave-dealers. Many die on the road ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... men to talk cant and Puritanism. Speaking as a very cynical Loafer, I can only say that if Puritanism turns fishing fleets and fishing towns from being hells on earth into being decent places; if Puritanism heals the sick, comforts the sufferers, carries joy and refinement and culture into places that were once homes of horror, and renders the police force almost a superfluity in two great towns—then I think we can ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... whom I had scarcely noticed on the night of the accident, was a charmingly pretty girl of eighteen, very chic and gay, with pleasant manners and a contagious laugh. She had arrived at obviously the turn of the Grossensteck fortunes, and might, in refinement and everything else, have belonged to another clay. How often one sees that in America, the land above others of social contrast, where, in the same family, there are often three separate ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... by oneself concerning another. The word is of classical refinement, and is even said to have been used in a fable by Georgius Coadjutor, one of the most fastidious writers of the fifteenth century—commonly, indeed, regarded as the founder ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... day or so after 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 all things, and ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... that pleased Alan. It did not occur to him to wonder why it should please him. If he had hunted that feeling down he might have been surprised to discover that it had its origin in a curious gratification over the thought that the woman who lived with Lynde had a certain refinement about her. He preferred her unsmiling dourness ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... best of every kind being rare. It is very disappointing to the imaginative youth when, coming up to London and going into society, he finds that so few of the men and women he meets, come within the charmed circle of his ideal refinement. ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... to this duck. They take chances, say nothin' of the hard work they do. This fellow won't take a chance and won't work a day. Billy, that's the meanest specimen of crook I ever run against, bar none, and that crook is produced and tolerated in a place that's said to be the centre of 'culture and refinement and practical achievement.' Billy, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Perhaps he would survive to tell us; but the animal cannot speak. No assurances suffice to clear our doubts; assurances prove nothing. It may be, to use the words of a great surgeon, that "in this relation, there exists a case of cruelty to animals far transcending in its refinement and in its horror, anything that has been known in the history ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... she called them with envious admiration, swept into the room, garnished with wonderful hats and fashionable furs. She had none of a Frenchwoman's gift for ignoring social differences, and she had the uneasy pride that is rare in a Celt, although she had all a Celt's taste for refinement and show and glitter. Miss Carew sat more and more stiffly at the tea-table, until she ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... a modification of Cautiousness, occupying its middle region, is much too large on the maps, and on that of Gall it is quite out of place—too far forward and too high up, occupying a region which produces modesty and refinement. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... Edwardes Square stands for the second period: the period of sober energy that led up to the Grand Attack. It was also the period of deliberate yet vehement refinement. Jevons was determined at all cost to be refined. And at considerable cost, with white-painted panelling throughout, with blue-and-white Chinese vases here and there, and more and more Bokhara rugs everywhere, and tussore silk curtains in the windows and every ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Province this heavy and degrading tax, compelling its Princes not only to render him and his successors immense herds of cattle, but also 150 male and female slaves, to do the menial offices about the palace of Tara. With a refinement of policy, as far-seeing as it was cruel, the proceeds of the tax were to be divided one-third to Ulster, one-third to Connaught, and the remainder between the Queen of the Monarch and the ruler of Munster. In this way all the other Provinces ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... eternal in the human breast, this will have an immense influence upon the evolution of the race to higher goals. I do not know any force of the future on which we can count more hopefully than on the refinement resulting from the struggle for offspring and the survival of the fittest to be parents. Undesirable families will become extinct. The unborn will subtly mould the born to higher things. Childlessness will become again what ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the ladies who had previously come on deck—a tall, grave-looking, refined woman of forty, and two handsome girls of about twenty, both very plainly dressed, but whose costume showed the many little touches of refinement peculiar ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... which ill-humour and solitude were oftentimes absurdly the fruit. He himself spoke of it, and used to say that he was not rational at the annual return of this epoch, which was stronger than he. He thought he pleased the King by this refinement of attention, without perceiving ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... sufficiently civilized to abolish duels and dismiss her standing army, she may have an opportunity of reaching the front rank in civilization and progress. Even at present France has many elements of the highest civilization in courtesy and refinement of manners, artistic skill, scientific progress and advancing wealth. The French might give some valuable lessons to Americans, especially in journalism. Mrs. J. C. Croly (Jennie June) in her recent address to the Women's Press Association ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... been fairly educated at a village school, and tenderly brought up at home till left an orphan, when she had been taken into her present place. She had much native refinement and imagination, which, half cultivated, produced a curious mixture of romance and simplicity. Her insatiable taste for reading was meritorious in the eyes of Mrs. Beckett, who, unlearned herself, thought any book better than 'gadding about,' and, after hearing her daily portion of the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sufficient working-force of their own, but always on conditions of strict equality. The assistant was to share the table, the family sitting-room, and every honor and attention that might be claimed by son or daughter. When families increased in refinement and education so as to make these conditions of close intimacy with more uncultured neighbors disagreeable, they had to choose between such intimacies and the performance of their own domestic toil. No wages could induce a son or daughter of New England to take the condition of a servant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... every country in Europe, universities, public libraries, picture galleries, museums, and laboratories, have been established by the State, and have done infinite service to the intellectual and moral progress and the refinement of mankind. ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the charming palsy of his victim, Carver Doone lowered, inch by inch, the muzzle of his gun. When it pointed to the ground, between her delicate arched insteps, he pulled the trigger, and the bullet flung the mould all over her. It was a refinement of bullying, for which I swore to God that night, upon my knees, in secret, that I would smite down Carver Doone or else he should smite me down. Base beast! what largest humanity, or what dreams of divinity, could make a man put up ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... 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 then placed on the ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... treated as if it were the victory of one pagan god over another—the final triumph being to him who is the most "gentle" and "beautiful" of all the gods. In the famous argument between the Lady and her Tempter, in Comus, we have an exquisite example of the sweet, grave refinement of virginal taste which shuns grossness as "a false note." The doctrine of Comus—if so airy a thing can be supposed to have a doctrine—is not very different from the doctrine of Marius the Epicurean. One were foolish ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... restricted to the highest classes, the articles being spoons, knives, plates, and goblets. There were no forks, for only one fork had ever then been heard of as a thing to eat with, and this had been the invention of the wife of a Doge of Venice, about two hundred years previous, for which piece of refinement the public rewarded the lady by considering her as proud as Lucifer. Forks existed, both in the form of spice-forks and fire-forks, but no one ever thought of eating with them in England until they were introduced ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... religious denominations who devote themselves to the task of their improvement, we may fondly hope that the remains of the formidable tribes which were once masters of this country will in their transition from the savage state to a condition of refinement and cultivation add another bright trophy to adorn the labors ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... to a big piece of ham and a great heap of fried potatoes. The guest was not very elegant in his manners; but what he lacked in refinement he made up in zeal. Fingers seemed to come handier to him than a fork, or, rather, a "slit spoon," as he called it. He did not often make two parts of a slice of potato, and his mouthfuls of ham were big enough ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... is! Why must people of refinement and elevation be forever tied down because of some distant relationship? Now there are our cousins the High-Flyers,—if we could get them, there would be some sense in it. Young Whisk rather promised me for Christmas; ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... person; when a woman is present, his tone changes; when he pours out wine, he first puts a little in his own glass and then helps the company; when he walks with a lady he takes her arm; in general he tries to show refinement. He does not laugh at other people's jokes: "You repeat yourself." "There is nothing new in that." Every one is sick of him; he sermonizes. The old ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... Vary weel: we'll attend his lordship. [Exit Sam.] I tell you, Charles, aw this conscientious refinement in politics is downright ignorance, and impracticable romance; and, sir, I desire I may hear no more of it. Come, sir, let us gang down ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... To the last his mind remained alert and active. He busied himself with the classical and theological studies which had been the delight of his young manhood, and the relaxation of his active years. His translations, his controversial pamphlets, his letters on public questions, showed the refinement and vigor of his remarkable intellect. When he died the English-speaking world paid a universal tribute ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... person particularly well fitted for a life in the wilderness. The other, Harry Crawford, though much older, looked at the first glance still less fitted for roughing it. Not that he wanted breadth of shoulders, strong muscles, or stout limbs; but that his countenance betokened intellect and refinement, rather than firmness, resolution, and the other qualities requisite for a person who has to go through the ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... Zealanders, in which, after the first onset, every man chooses his individual antagonist, and the field of battle presents merely the spectacle of a multitude of single combats, is the same which has, perhaps, everywhere prevailed, not only in the primitive wars of men, but up to a period of considerable refinement in the history of ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... multiplied without end. Like the ancient Romans and Greeks they acknowledge a supreme being, the first, the supreme, the intellectual, by which men have been reclaimed from rudeness and barbarism to elegance and refinement, and been taught through privileged men and women not only to live with more comfort but to die with better hope." Such a religion, however it may be described, seems to me ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... question, protest hardly thought of. One glance was broad enough to cover this business from end to end, and of resistance there was no demonstration. Her work now was to restore the room, denuded and desolate, to its late aspect of refinement and cheer. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... is, then, one of the centres of human knowledge and refinement, and if there are a thousand wonderful things to behold within its walls, yet it contains nothing more remarkable than the old Emperor. Not because he is so old, or because he still survives as one of the last of an almost extinct generation, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... and a coarse serge dress, the other young and fair, with large grey eyes, and a face which was freckled like a plover's egg. Her neat white blouse with its trim black belt, and plain, close-cut skirt, gave her an air of refinement which was wanting in her companion, but there was sufficient resemblance between them to show that they were mother and daughter. The one was gnarled and hardened and wrinkled by rough country work, .the other fresh and ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pay you the truest homage. Believe ME, for it is not possible that I can have any but the highest motive. If the evil of foreign customs is to be incorporated into American society, if foul freedom of manners is to defile our pure freedom of life, if the robes of our refinement are to be white only when relieved against the dark background revealed by polluted stage of a corrupt metropolis, on you will fall the burden of the consequences. Believe ME, for your weal and mine are one. Your glory is my glory. Your degradation ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton |
