|
|
|
More "Refinement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boy with a face of great refinement and delicacy, climbed out of the wagon and looked about. Dick busied himself with the work of making camp, letting Albert ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... during the time that our friend can be with us? Hospitality, to my thinking, is a virtue, a pleasure, and a luxury; but in whatever light it is considered, nay, even if you regard it as a speculation, ought not our guest or our friend to be made much of? Ought not every refinement of luxury ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... produce a conviction of declining virtue, which is unfavorable to generous emulation, yet a people at once ignorant and irreverential would necessarily become licentious. Nevertheless, such prejudices ought to be modified. It is untrue that in the period of a nation's rise from disorder to refinement it is not able to continually surpass itself. We see the present, plainly, distinctly, with all its coarse outlines, its rough inequalities, its dark blots, and its glaring deformities. We hear all its tumultuous sounds and jarring discords. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... please, it is more euphonious Yes, I was at school in Leicester two years, and was called the best grammarian there, but since I've sojourned with this kind of people, I've nearly lost my refinement. To be sure I aim at exclusiveness, and now you've come I shall cut them all, with the exception of Uncle Peter, who would be rather genteel if he ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... 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 have ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... live in the city, as he is so wealthy; Mary will have an opportunity of tasting the fascinations of high life. I shall introduce her to a clique of great refinement at once. Don't you think Saratoga the most delightful place in the world, Miss Wyllys? I am never so happy as when here. I delight so much in the gay world; it appears to me that I breathe more freely in a crowd—solitude oppresses me; do ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... royal if not divine. It is necessary to add that the upper lip beneath the nose is lightly shaded by a charming down. Nature would have made a blunder had she not cast that tender mist upon the face. The ears are delicately convoluted,—a sign of secret refinement. The bust is large, the waist slim and sufficiently rounded. The hips are not prominent, but very graceful; the line of the thighs is magnificent, recalling Bacchus rather than the Venus Callipyge. There we may see the shadowy line of demarcation which separates nearly every woman of genius from ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... "would be a refinement of cruelty, and I won't consent to its being done. Wanting to kill the man was bad enough. I never liked it. But what you propose now is infinitely worse. Why can't you forgive the wretched creature, and then ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... their fiery steeds, render them appropriate auxiliaries to royalty, in countries where such attributes of power are requisite to impress the people with the importance of their rulers, and where the milder aids of civilization and refinement are wanting to protect the sovereign ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... be sacred to God and to the church. It should be a true exponent of the social elements of Christianity. It should not be a hermitage, a state of seclusion from the world; but should conform to fashion, yet so far only as the laws of a sanctified taste and refinement will admit. ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... upon. And, third, that the world has a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations." These words sum up the gist of his international aims during the three following years. His later speeches are merely refinement ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... language, customs and laws. The river Garonne separates the Gauls from the Aquitani; the Marne and the Seine separate them from the Belgae. Of all these, the Belgae are the bravest, because they are farthest from the civilisation and refinement of [our] Province, and merchants least frequently resort to them and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind; and they are the nearest to the Germans, who dwell beyond the Rhine, with whom they are continually ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... best, but after it has passed its culmination, and is already on the verge of decline. This condition of things is exemplified in Beowulf; and the Sagas also, here and there, show signs of over-refinement and exhaustion. In the extant mass of old French epic this condition is enormously exaggerated. The Song of Roland itself, even in its earliest extant form, is comparatively late and unoriginal; while the remainder of French epic poetry, in all its variety, is much less ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... time while in the act of kissing her hand; and how, on the very eve of a proposal to beautiful Constance de Courcy, whose manner, bearing, and appearance, no less than her name, denoted the extreme of refinement and high birth, he had sustained a shock, galvanic but salutary, from her artless exclamation, "O my! whatever shall I do? If ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... certain stiffness of moral attitude derived from his mother.' He reveals already a wonderful palate for pure literary flavour. His prejudices are intense, their character being determined by the refinement and idealism of his nature. All this is profoundly significant, knowing as we do that this was produced when Gissing's worldly prosperity was at its nadir. He was living at the time, like his own Harold Biffen, in absolute ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... to come on board, and then conducted him to my state-room. He was not more than thirty-five, and was dressed rather jauntily in a suit of light-colored clothes. He looked and acted like a gentleman, and his speech indicated that he was a person of refinement. I gave him a chair, and took one myself. Washburn had gone ashore in one of the boats, and I had the room to myself. Before he seated himself he handed me a card, on which was engraved "Kirby Cornwood." There was nothing more ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... her most prosaic purposes. She liked to think of her beauty as a power for good, as giving her the opportunity to attain a position where she should make her influence felt in the vague diffusion of refinement and good taste. She was fond of pictures and flowers, and of sentimental fiction, and she could not help thinking that the possession of such tastes ennobled her desire for worldly advantages. She would not indeed have cared to marry a man who was merely rich: she was ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... or trusted her. Yet, little by little, during their last separation, his belief in her, and his respect for her, had grown in her estimation, because they alone still connected her with the maidenliness and feminine refinement in which she had grown up. Lushington had broken a link that ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... even before the Sybarite had had time carefully to test and swallow another mouthful of wine, the speaker, Kallias, the son of Phaenippus of Athens, was already standing by the side of Rhodopis. He was a tall thin man of over sixty, with a head of that oval form which gives the impression of refinement and intellect. One of the richest among the Athenian exiles, he had twice bought the possessions of Pisistratus from the state, and twice been obliged to surrender them, on the tyrant's return to power. Looking round with his clear keen eyes on this circle of acquaintances, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... English poetry, the circumstance was eminently propitious; since it is from the return of this noble traveller that we are to date not only the introduction into our language of the Petrarchan sonnet, and with it of a tenderness and refinement of sentiment unknown to the barbarism of our preceding versifiers; but what is much more, that of heroic blank verse; a noble measure, of which the earliest example exists in Surry's spirited and faithful version of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... congregation in the Tabernacle, Heber C. Kimball once alluded to his wives by the endearing epithet of "my heifers;" and on another occasion politely spoke of them as "his cows." The phraseology may possibly be a slight indication of the refinement of manners prevalent in Salt Lake City.) He says ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... daughters, as they rise to a position due to great wealth, the small questions of decorum, and the details of business take up a large part of the reader's attention; but they are treated with such ease, naturalness, repressed humor, refinement of art, and truth in sketching provincial types of character, that the story is a triumph of realistic creation. A Modern Instance is not so pleasant a book, but the attention is firmly held by the strong, realistic presentation of the jealousy, the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... who are making their way slowly and surely to competence and wealth, who would gladly compromise for one-third of such a summer vacation. These are men of intelligence, and sometimes of a good deal of social and intellectual culture and refinement. Many of them were born, and their boyhood nurtured amongst the hills. They love the country with the intensity and purity of a first love, and they long for communion once more with nature in all her moods of ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... me vaguely ask myself whether he were henpecked,—a shocking conjecture, which I instantly dismissed. Mrs. Ambient was quite such a wife as I should have expected him to have; slim and fair, with a long neck and pretty eyes and an air of great refinement. She was a little cold, and a little shy; but she was very sweet, and she had a certain look of race, justified by my afterwards learning that she was "connected" with two or three great families. I have seen poets married ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... family, the Christianity which they received was so thoroughly imbibed and so completely carried out that any thing in the least opposed to it was sternly rejected by the whole nation. Hence they became a people of peculiar habits. Rejecting the harsh features of feudalism, not caring for the refinement of the so-called revival of learning, sternly opposed at all times to Protestantism, they would have naught to do with what was rejected or even suspected by the Church, until in our days they offer to ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... continual specialisation, subdivision, and refinement in the arts of distribution. The multiplication of merchants, agents, retailers, which, in spite of forces making for centralisation in distributive work, is so marked a feature in the English industry of the last forty years, is a natural result of the influence of machinery, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... lack refinement, but they palpitate with life. His pages present a wonderful variety of characters, chosen from almost all walks of life. He could draw admirable portraits of women. Thackeray says of Amelia, the heroine of the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... position. She often said to herself, "I am thankful that I don't belong to the common folk; it would grate on my nerves to witness their vulgarities,—their bad taste would torture me; their want of refinement would act upon my nature like a blister. But I am not proud, I uphold my dignity, I respect myself and my family, but with sinful, unholy ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... Alabama, in a part of the country that boasted of the refinement and intelligence of its society. When I was alone with boys much younger than myself I could say smart things, and I had a hope that when I should go into formal "company" I would, with one evening's achievement, place myself high above the numbskulls who had giggled at me. The time came. ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... from seraphic spheres. She inhaled with delight the fragrance wafted from the graceful curls of that brilliant head. She would have liked to touch the soft kid of the delicate gloves. She envied Charles his small hands, his complexion, the freshness and refinement of his features. In short,—if it is possible to sum up the effect this elegant being produced upon an ignorant young girl perpetually employed in darning stockings or in mending her father's clothes, and whose ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... throng is thickest, where the lights are brightest, where all the senses are ministered to with the greatest delicacy and refinement, Lady Dedlock is. From the shining heights she has scaled and taken, she is never absent. Though the belief she of old reposed in herself as one able to reserve whatsoever she would under her mantle ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... he seemed desirous, by his assiduities and attentions, to show us, that we stood in need of no other favourite or companion. But at the same time he showed no animosity whatever towards his supposed rival. Here was reason and refinement too. Besides the friends whom he meets in my house, Rover also forms attachments of his own, in which he shows a great discrimination. It is not every one who offers him a bone that he will trust as a friend. He has one or two intimate acquaintances ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... irresistible, and justify all the rapture with which his successors speak of his "gold dew-drops of speech." Johnson misses the point entirely when he finds fault with Dryden for ascribing to Chaucer the first refinement of our numbers, and says that Gower[94] also can show smooth numbers and easy rhymes. The refinement of our numbers means something far more than this. A nation may have versifiers with smooth numbers and easy rhymes, and yet may have no real poetry ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... was a great orator, a concise orator, serious and yet full of piercing eloquence; he resembled Berryer in his fervor and in the impetus which commands the sympathy of the masses, and was like Thiers in refinement and skill; but he would have been less diffuse, less in difficulties for a conclusion. He had intended to rise rapidly to power without burdening himself first with the doctrines necessary to begin with, for a man in opposition, but an ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... received admiration, and is familiar with the graceful little arts of social intercourse. In short, she has acquired a high external polish; and that is precisely what she most needed. Evidently, too, there is an increased mental refinement corresponding to the outward manner. She has mellowed, sweetened—whether deepened or not I should hesitate to affirm. But I am quite sure that I find her more charming to talk with, more supple in ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... 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
... stretched out his long legs, someone was sure to tumble over them: "Peter, how stupid you are!" If he opened his mouth to speak he said something laughable, and if to eat, there was something vulgar in his manners which called down a sharp reproof from Bella, who considered herself a model of refinement and good taste. He took all this in unmoved silence, and seldom said a word except to talk to his father on farming matters; but Lilac, looking on from her quiet corner, often felt sorry for him, as she would have done ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... are taken for granted: there is often a bath-room and always a kitchen. The father's occupation may be local, but a good many fathers will go to town; there is generally a family holiday to the sea, or less often to the country. In the house the degree of refinement varies; there are nearly always pictures of a sort, books of a sort, and the children are supplied with toys of a sort. They visit each other's houses, and the observances of social life are kept variously. Often the horizon is very narrow; the mother's interest is very local and timid; the father's ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... horned moon, which heretofore Upon their shoes the Romans wore, Whose wideness kept their toes from corns, And whence we claim our shoeing-horns, Shows how the art of cobbling bears A near resemblance to the spheres. A scrap of parchment hung by geometry (A great refinement in barometry) Can, like the stars, foretell the weather; And what is parchment else but leather? Which an astrologer might use Either for almanacs or shoes. Thus Partridge by his wit and parts At once did practise both these arts: And as the boding ...
— English Satires • Various
... they had not arrived at that period of affection when there was danger of their fall,—their love had not passed the golden portal where Heaven ceases and Earth begins. Everything for them was the poetry, the vagueness, the refinement,—not the power, the concentration, the mortality,—of desire! The look—the whisper—the brief pressure of the hand, at most, the first kisses of love, rare and few,—these marked the human limits of that sentiment which filled them ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... are all southern in sentiment, and with the exception of those born in Europe were born and raised in the south. Believing the southern to be the highest type of civilization this continent has seen, the young ladies are trained according to the southern ideas of delicacy, refinement, womanhood, religion, and propriety; hence we offer a first-class female college for the south and solicit ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... persons to return thanks for an injury was a refinement in tyranny frequently practised by the worst of the Roman emperors. Thus Seneca informs us, that "Caligula was thanked by those whose children had been put to death, and whose property had been confiscated." (De Tranquil, xiv.) And again;—"The reply of a person ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... from a distance, people were apt to fancy her affected, and somewhat inclined to be fantastic; but on approaching her, their minds were speedily disabused of this fancy. The purity of her countenance, her air of refinement and thorough modesty, speedily dispelled any suspicious thoughts, and those who had for a moment harboured them would say mentally, "Pardon me, mademoiselle, I mistook." Such, at least, was the mental comment of ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... in America are free from haughtiness, awkwardness, or formality, but they do not display the elegance and refinement of the higher classes in England or France. As for the common people, they are serious, shrewd, and industrious; but often seem rude and uncourtly to strangers, for they wish to show their independance by an annoying surliness of behaviour. A ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... instinctiveness which characterised Antoine's; he meant to cultivate and gratify them honourably and openly. In his plump person of medium height, in his long pale face, in which the features derived from his father had acquired some of the maternal refinement, one could already detect signs of sly and crafty ambition and insatiable desire, with the hardness of heart and envious hatred of a peasant's son whom his mother's means and nervous temperament had turned into a ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... I produce a horror worthy of myself,' I thought. 'The mist dagger was melodrama to be smiled at. But this—ah, here we have a refinement that reduces death to a minor obscenity. She attacks me now with a weapon worthy my indifference. It is true, my senses writhe less frightenedly. But I, Mallare—yes, Mallare the Supreme One—honor her assault ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... Spain walked out-of-doors and looked reflectively up the Sleepy Cat road. One further refinement in his appeal for Nan's favor suggested itself. She would be hungry, possibly faint in the heat and dust, when she arrived. He returned to McAlpin: "Where can I get a good cup of coffee when the stage ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... accustomed to do when about to say anything emphatic, and replied in his most energetic manner: "I have been a great deal in the South as well as in the North, and know both sections equally well, and I tell you, gentlemen, that there is more intelligence, more refinement, more cultivation, more virtue, and more good manners in one New England village than in all the South together." This decision put an end to the discussion. The South-Carolinian retreated in dudgeon, and Gurowski, chuckling, returned to his book or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... his last interview with Windham, [3] a few days before the fatal operation which sent "that gallant spirit to aspire the skies." [4] Windham,—the first in one department of oratory and talent, whose only fault was his refinement beyond the intellect of half his hearers,—Windham, half his life an active participator in the events of the earth, and one of those who governed nations,—he regretted,—and dwelt much on that regret, that "he had not entirely devoted ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... said Marion, panting. "Is their brutalization the price we pay for our refinement?" Then, as she sank back: ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Refinement had more power over the soul of Valentine Cresswell than religion. It governed him with a curious ease of supremacy, and held him back without effort from most of the young man's sins. Each age has its ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... to-morrow and always. He longed to go to Zada and help her and let her revile him and scratch him, perhaps, provided only that she would throw her arms about him afterward. He never imagined that a duel of self-control, a mortal combat in refinement, was being fought over him ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the centre of the room—to right and to left of it are comfortable armchairs. Against the right wall is a long sofa; above it hang a few good, water-colours and engravings; on the piano and the table there are flowers. A general appearance of refinement and comfort pervades the room; no luxury, but evidence everywhere of good taste, and the countless feminine touches that make a room homelike ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... fencing might soon resolve themselves into a question of mere strength; yet, in the opening of great conflicts, it is well, even when a resort to force is inevitable, to throw on the opposing party the responsibility of violence; and Henry had been led, either by a refinement of policy, or by the plain straightforwardness of his intentions, into a situation where he could expect without alarm ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... Cnidus, to be jostled by the gay crowd at the Olympic games. It was indeed a golden age, when all that was beautiful in nature was reverently and assiduously nurtured, and all that was noble and natural in art was magnificently encouraged; an age in which refinement and nobility were not accidents, but necessities; when politics had reached the high grade of an art, and oratory attained a beauty and power beyond which no Pitt, Canning, or Brougham has ever yet aspired; an age when the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... indeed, untutored in the cold charities of an outside world—I doubt much if they ever saw the sun shine beyond their own native hills. In the summer time the children brought berries to the nearest station to sell, and with the money they bought a few of the necessities of the outside refinement. ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the fashion of the previous century, plain, but as neat as everything around her—a spotless white apron seeming to bid defiance to the approach of anything that could soil its purity. The countenance of this old woman certainly did not betoken any of the refinement which is the result of education and good company; but it denoted benevolence, a kind nature, and feeling. We were saluted without surprise, and invited in, to ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... appearance only, few would have given Villiers credit for being the man of penetrative and almost classic refinement he really was,—he looked far more athletic than aesthetic. Broad-shouldered and deep-chested, with a round, blunt head firmly set on a full, strong throat, he had, on the whole, a somewhat obstinate and pugilistic air which totally belied his nature. His features, open and ruddy, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... transported enormous timber from the still virgin forests—timber of the most valuable kind, whether for ornament, for building or for dyeing purposes. Nor was the city more remarkable for its advantageous situation and the importance of its commerce than for the refinement of its society. Unlike the generality of inland towns in South America, where the constitution of society is apt to be rather heterogeneous, Cua was the residence of many of the principal families of the country—gentlemen at the head of wealthy commercial establishments, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... depth to which an ordinary house might rise above it. These grounds, it is said, formed the country residence of the Emperor Galba, and he was buried here after his assassination. It is a sad thought that so much natural beauty and long refinement of picturesque culture is thrown away, the villa being uninhabitable during all the most delightful season of the year on account of malaria. There is truly a curse on ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... status, however, of these writers has never been recognized by the public, nor have they enjoyed the same degree of honor as scholars of a different description. Their style of composition, moreover, has never reached the same degree of refinement which distinguished the ancient works. This last is a strong reason for our appreciation of true classical works such as that ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... 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 ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... guards opened the taps of the reservoirs, and allowed the whole of their contents to run away into the sand. Whether Jemal the Great planned that, or whether it was but a humorous freak on the part of the officials, I cannot say. But as a refinement of cruelty I have, outside the page of Poe's tales, only once come across anything to equal it, and that in a letter from the Times' correspondent at Berne on April 11, 1917. He describes the treatment of English ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... and instructive research than the natural history of religion. Some sort of religious service has been found to prevail in all ages and nations, from the most rude and barbarous periods of human society, to those of cultivation and refinement. In these periods are to be traced specimens strongly marked with exertions of the feelings, and faculties of men in every situation almost that can be supposed. It is from the contemplation of these exertions that we learn what sort of creature ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... negative, wholly without the embarrassment of one performing an unusual action. Her companion felt the awakening of curiosity. Zealously though she had, to all appearance, endeavoured to conceal the fact, she was without a doubt personable. Her voice and manner lacked nothing of refinement. Yet her attraction to Francis Ledsam, who, although a perfectly normal human being, was no seeker after promiscuous adventures, did not lie in these externals. As a barrister whose success at the criminal bar had been phenomenal, he had attained ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the scenes of suffering and tyranny that led up to it and ensued from it, they clapped their hands to their ears, and cried out that he was a shockingly coarse person, and quite too horribly indelicate for refined society. Because, indeed, they cared only about a surface and outside refinement, and not a whit for that which is inward and profound. For beauty of being—they had neither desire nor power of reverence; all their enthusiasm was spent over forms and words and appearances of beauty. In them the senses ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... over-reflexion and self-consciousness which checks the dramatic life and turns it into matter of edification or sentiment. The best of them also give many indications to show how near they were to over-elaboration and refinement. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... world's upward struggle, we search in vain for our kind of a home. The home of the American workman to-day is provided with more comforts and conveniences, has in it more of the elements of culture and refinement, is more eloquent of love and the higher life than was the home of the ruler of a few generations ago. And the chief factors in it all, those which bind all together and give meaning, are the honored place given the wife and mother and, springing from that, love, love of parent for child ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... the same. In the autumn, when the quay is piled high with golden melons and flaming tomatoes, the sight is perhaps the most splendid. The strangest of the fish to English eyes are the great cuttle-fish, which are sold in long slices. It strikes one as a refinement of symmetrical irony that the ink which exudes from these fish and stains everything around should be used for indicating ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... sage, He filled many a pliant page With the philosophic wisdom and refinement of his age, And his letters to his peers Through a life of smiles and tears Make me often quite ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... "he thought it could not be the maid!" On his first surprise at hearing the keys touched in somewhat an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted on Jenny. But a grace, snatched from a superior refinement, soon convinced him that some being,—technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed from a principle common to all the fine arts,—had swayed the keys to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less-cultivated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from them. I mention this ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... after inflating Ripton with this rapturous prospect, "they got her away, and I recovered. It was Mister Adrian's work. What's my father's objection to her? Because of her birth? She's educated; her manners are beautiful—full of refinement—quick and soft! Can they show me one of their ladies like her?—she's the daughter of a naval lieutenant! Because she's a Catholic? What has religion to do with"—he pronounced "Love!" a little modestly—as it were a blush in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tradespeople, however well educated, must necessarily be under-bred, and as such unfit to be inmates of OUR dwellings, or guardians of OUR children's minds and persons. WE shall ever prefer to place those about OUR offspring, who have been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinement as OURSELVES.' I was one of those unhappy women who, mercifully for the upper classes, inherit manners and misery in order that the children of these superior creatures may not put an 'r' at the end of 'idea' and may ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... veranda, with rugs and rattan furniture that made of it one large outside room. Tables, on which rested books and magazines, with here and there a vase of flowers fresh cut from the garden, showed that the inmates of the house were people of intelligence and refinement. ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... flickered across his lips. It was a grim transition, this, from the luxury, the wealth and refinement of New York's most exclusive club, which he had left but half an hour ago! The smile faded, and he passed his hand a little wearily across his eyes. The strain seemed to grow heavier every day—the underworld more prone to suspicion; ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... 1780, only twenty-five thousand was paid by the following April; his outstanding acceptances amounted to two hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars—the greater part of which was due in two months. A more painful situation for a gentleman of refinement and honor can scarcely be imagined than that of John Jay—living without any salary, living on credit, scarcely recognized by the proud court to which he had been accredited; and yet maintaining his self-respect, persistent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... distressed by the dull season, and had witnessed unjust impositions, was Katia Markelov, a young operative on corsets. She was a tiny, grave-looking girl of nineteen, very frail, with smooth black hair, a lovely refinement of manner, and a very sweet smile. Like many other operatives, she wore glasses. Katia was a good manager, and an industrious and clever student, a ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... 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 ...
— 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
... state, are constantly within the sight and hearing of the most unobservant person alive. In short, charity must have its romance, as the novelist or playwright must have his. A thief in fustian is a vulgar character, scarcely to be thought of by persons of refinement; but dress him in green velvet, with a high-crowned hat, and change the scene of his operations, from a thickly-peopled city, to a mountain road, and you shall find in him the very soul of poetry and adventure. So it is with the one great cardinal virtue, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... happy condition of human affairs; and although mankind have been gradually verging from a state of simplicity to a more social refinement, yet the governments of those primitive times laid open an analogy for licentiousness; and we find, by pursuing the history of man, that slavery was again introduced, and stained the annals of all the ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... however, a few counter-balancing advantages in his early life. With all her weaknesses, his mother was a lady, and order, refinement, and elegance characterized his home. Though not a gentleman at heart, on approaching manhood he habitually maintained the outward bearing that society demands. The report that he was a little fast was more than neutralized ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... restaurant was well filled did any one have the audacity to sit at the stranger's table. His elegance and refinement were as a barrier between him and all that was rude and coarse. If he glanced about the place, taking notes in his turn of this and that, it was covertly and quietly and without offence. His eyes passed ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... recently he knew no other, have ever got beyond chopsticks, the use of which was first taught China, while most of them don't even have them yet.) Let us not forget that our ancestors were using their fingers—barbarians that they were—when the Chinese had risen, centuries before, to the refinement of these sticks, for the fork is only about three hundred years old. Shakespeare probably, Spenser certainly, had only a knife at his girdle to carve the meat he ate, the fingers being important auxiliaries. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... it's difficult. I'll confess I'm fond of ease and comfort and refinement. I like to be looked after and waited on; to have somebody to keep unpleasant things away. That's dreadfully weak, isn't it? And because I haven't more courage, I'm sending you back ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... rooms devoted to social amelioration; to the mental, physical and spiritual redemption of sordid lives. To these rooms men from the universities, impelled by a new conscience, bring their learning and their refinement. In these rooms men from the docks—the flotsam and jetsam of humanity—receive their first ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... 'what'—-you must try to talk as I talk. No one in the world speaks any language faultlessly, but there are certain more or less obvious irregularities of grammar and pronunciation that are particularly distasteful to people of refinement, and which are easy to guard against if one ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... where you will be welcome.' Thinking even a cripple might find favor and fortune in the country, I came over not long since, and sought the city of Boston, it being, as many had told me, the great center of America's learning and refinement. There I gave a lecture or two; but being a stranger, and deformed withal, the reception I met was cold and discouraging. Against such men as Lowell, and Curtis, men born on the soil, and of such goodly person ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... years. He is a first-rate man in talent and character,—a strong abolitionist, and a thorough gentleman in his appearance—showing that the active and adventurous habits of his nation are quite consistent with the highest polish and refinement. He is deeply involved in the politics of his country, and, as I said before, is a candidate for the next presidentship. His strong views on the question of slavery will probably be a bar to his success, but unfortunately another hindrance may be that very high ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... 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
... been branded and tortured publicly in the plaza at La Guayra—with every refinement of cruelty that yet stopped short of permanent injury,—and thence had been sent to Mexico to undergo similar treatment in its cities; after which they were to be returned to La Guayra to undergo the final punishment of burning ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... born it was strange now to peruse, for the first time, the records of a mind whence my own sprang; and most strange, and at once sad and sweet, to find that mind of a truly fine, pure, and elevated order. They were written to papa before they were married. There is a rectitude, a refinement a constancy, a modesty, a sense, a gentleness about them indescribable. I wished that she had lived, and that I had known her. . . . All through this month of February, I have had a crushing time of it. I could not escape from or rise above certain most ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... an excess of refinement in the idea of disabling the people to continue in office men who had entitled themselves, in their opinion, to approbation and confidence; the advantages of which are at best speculative and equivocal, and are overbalanced by disadvantages far ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... explanation is remarkable. It was because the later dramatists 'understood the conversation of gentlemen much better,' whose wild 'debaucheries and quickness of wit no poet can ever paint as they have done.' In a later essay he explains that the greater refinement was due to the influence of the court. Charles II., familiar with the most brilliant courts of Europe, had roused us from barbarism and rebellion, and taught us to 'mix our solidity' with 'the air ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... with myself for allowing this tall, simple-hearted country fellow to puzzle me so much. And yet, was he a simple-hearted country fellow? City bred he certainly was not; but his manner, in spite of his awkwardness, had an indescribable air of refinement. Now and then, too, he dropped a word or a phrase that showed his familiarity with unexpected lines of reading. "The other day," said Curtis, with the slightest elevation of eyebrow, "he had the cheek to correct my Latin for me." In short, ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... when, in nations of some refinement, there was such a reaction against the injustice and degradation to which woman had so long been subjected that she suddenly became an object of sentimental regard among courtly men. Her noble qualities ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... must not, however, imagine that all Russian priests are of the kind above referred to. Many of them are honest, respectable, well-intentioned men, who conscientiously fulfil their humble duties, and strive hard to procure a good education for their children. If they have less learning, culture, and refinement than the Roman Catholic priesthood, they have at the same time infinitely less fanaticism, less spiritual pride, and less intolerance towards the adherents ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... escorted to their pinnace with many apologies from Lafitte, who now wrote a letter to Captain Lockyer, which shows him to have been a man of considerable cultivation, and not a mere "rough and tumble" pirate—without education or refinement. He said: ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... Newton. He was the calmest and gentlest of human beings, and to his calmness was attributable the fact that he lived till 1858, although when he was twenty the offices refused to insure his life for a year on any terms. Those who knew him best regarded him as a man of singular wisdom and refinement. He lived, till he came to London for the later education of his boys, in a small country house at Claybrook, near Lutterworth, and was proprietor of the 'Northampton Mercury,' one of the oldest papers in England, founded, I believe, by his grandfather. This Claybrook house was the scene of some ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... 'saves the soul' with the relative values of the various good things that soothe or beautify life. For, if there is any value at all—I will not say in health and happiness, but in art, poetry, knowledge, refinement, public esteem, or human affection, and if their claims do clash, as in common opinion they sometimes do, with the demands of absolute sanctity, how is the balance to be struck? Are we to be content with the principle of accepting a little moral wrong ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... 'Virgin and Child' hanging on the plaster wall, the fragments of a rough cradle overturned in a corner, a few coarse china crocks and ornaments and figures chipped and broken and scattered about the mantel, and the bare board floor. Another house had plainly been a home of some refinement. The rooms were large, with lofty ceilings; there were carpets on the floors, although so covered with dirt and dried mud and the dust of fallen plaster that they were hardly discernible as carpets. In one room a large polished table had a broken leg replaced by an up-ended barrel, ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... never seemed to be preaching or lecturing, although he had so much of the talk to himself. He was particularly charming when "chaffing" any one, and in high spirits over it. His manner at such times was light-hearted and boyish, and his refinement of nature came out most strongly. So, when he was talking to a lady who pleased and amused him, the combination of raillery and deference in his manner was ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... him infinite credit: yet never were two men more dissimilar as they advanced in life. Gray had no aristocratic birth to boast; and Horace dearly loved birth, refinement, position, all that comprises the cherished term 'aristocracy.' Thomas Gray, more illustrious for the little his fastidious judgment permitted him to give to the then critical world, than many have been in their productions of volumes, was born in Cornhill—his father being a worthy ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... And by an exquisite refinement in torture the possible father of several of his children not only dictated to the Queen perpetual outbreaks of frantic jealousy against her husband, but moved her to refuse with suspicion any food and drink offered her ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all her natural refinement, "to be happy in these homes, they must be able to read a pleasant book or to sing a beautiful song, else their lives, spite of all their waterfalls, would be ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... the highest rank, his manners were entirely free from vulgarity and coarseness: he was uniformly self-possessed, and with the tact and ease of deportment which marked the poet of the heart, and which are falsely supposed to be the result of civilization and refinement only, he readily accommodated himself to the novelties of his new position, and seemed more ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... had occasion to deal with Vendome, and sent the Bishop of Parma to confer with him. The Duc de Vendome was a man who affected roughness and brutality of manners, and made it his pride to set all rules of decency at defiance. Peter the Great, Potemkin, Suwarrow, would have seemed men of ultra-refinement when compared with him. His manner of receiving the bishop was such that the bishop quitted his presence abruptly and without saying a word, and returning to Parma, told his master that no consideration on earth should induce him ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... no listeners except the bushes and the reeds by the edge of the Charente, let me tell you about my anxiety as to Lucien's present step, dear Eve. After all that I have just said, I hope that you will look on my fears as a refinement of friendship. You and your mother have done all that you could to put him above his social position; but when you stimulated his ambition, did you not unthinkingly condemn him to a hard struggle? How can he maintain himself in the society to ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... but congratulate Mr. Hirst on his success in producing a poem conceived with so much force and refinement of imagination, and finished with such consummate art, as the present. It is a valuable addition to the permanent poetical ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... sunshine, apparently an opera-glass. I had never heard that opera-glasses were used for observing birds, but this was evidently what she was doing at this moment, and the proceeding quickened my sense not only of her intellectual refinement, but also of her ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... principles upon which the individuals acted, however unconsciously, amid the intercourse of life. Lessons could thus be taught, which could not, perhaps, be communicated with the same effect by any other means. This pleasing agency of education in the school of moral refinement Lady Nairn has exercised with genial tact and great beauty; and, liberally as she bestowed benefactions on her fellow-kind in many other respects, it may be said no gifts conferred could bear in their beneficial effects a comparison ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... your nature," responded the other, "and I am glad to meet with one of your age, who, having lived among the beauties of Nature, has not allowed them to become commonplace and unworthy of notice. Many in the cities show less refinement." ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... ladies of Versailles on the sward of the Swiss village near the Trianon, the other like the march of the maenads with Theroigne de Mericourt. Ramsay adds to the rough tunes and words of the ballads the refinement of the wits who in the "Easy" and "Johnstone" clubs talked over their cups of Prior and Pope, Addison and Gay. Burns inspires them with a fervour that thrills the most wooden of his race. We may clench the contrast by a representative ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... themselves and their surroundings. Civilized mankind chooses tints and shades predominantly to live with, that is, for the decoration of his surroundings. However, civilized man and the savage appear to have the same fundamental preference for pure colors and apparently culture and refinement are responsible for their difference in choice of colors to live with. This is an interesting discovery and it has its applications in lighting, especially in spectacular ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... Widow Langford possessed a shrewdness and penetration of character, which we sometimes find in persons of her class, but which was in her case so combined, from long residence in Mr. Hamilton's family, with a delicacy and refinement, that she generally kept her remarks very much more secret than persons in her sphere of life usually do. It was fortunate for our poor Emmeline that it was so, for the widow had chanced to be an unseen witness of Arthur's impassioned farewell. She heard the concluding words of both, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... discipline, there is an inward and fundamental cause for the disorder. These people are too susceptible. They are Frenchmen, and Frenchmen of the eighteenth century; brought up in the amenities of the utmost refinement, accustomed to deferential manners, to constant kind attentions and mutual obligations, so thoroughly imbued with the instinct of good breeding that their conversation seems almost insipid to strangers.[2106]—And suddenly they find themselves on the thorny soil of politics, exposed to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a reception in Jerusalem given by a native lady in her own home, surrounded by every luxury and refinement as these are known in Asia Minor. She received us very graciously, with a distinguished, high-bred air, knowing just what to say and do at the psychological moment. She treated Mrs. Galley-West with the same impartiality that she showed toward some of the aristocratic members of the ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... is, in fact, an hereditary school of metaphysics) requires men set apart for the purpose, whose leisure tempts them to invention, whose interest prompts them to imposture. A symbolical religion is a proof of a certain refinement in civilization—the refinement of sages in the midst of a subservient people; and it absorbs to itself those meditative and imaginative minds which, did it not exist, would be devoted to philosophy. Now, even allowing ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fond of it. He always brought his book to the table; he liked to eat slowly, to gaze out and digest one or two thoughts at his leisure, as well as the delightful breakfast set before him. He was a man of delicate tastes and much refinement, for with all the New England sturdiness, hardness one might say, there was in many families a strain of what we might term high breeding. His face, with its clear-cut features, indicated this. His hair was rather light, fine, with a few waves in it that gave it a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fall, even through modesty,—of either endeavouring to admire a grandeur with which we have no natural sympathy, or losing the pleasure we might take in the study of familiar things, by considering it a sign of refinement to look for what is of higher ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... 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
... could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern provinces, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... countries—who, in short, is not better versed in every branch of practical knowledge applicable to the ordinary purposes of life, than the average of the most intelligent classes in Great Britain or France. If we are deficient in the dandyism of dress and the puppyism of manners, which so generally pass for refinement and politeness on the Continent of Europe, there is scarcely a boor among us who would not be hooted out of the lowest society for the indifference, rudeness, and disrespect toward women, which form ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... entered, a child, into a society "rotten before it was ripe." She was surrounded with a court long demoralized by a succession of drunken and dissolute czarinas, which aped the corruption of Versailles more consummately than its refinement. The age was that of Louis XV, of Lord Sandwich, of Augustus the Strong: in it even a Burke had persuaded himself that "vice lost half its evil by losing all its grossness." The reader of Bayle and Brantome had been introduced to a bizarre sort of morality; her ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... lady was. "Mrs. Porcher Brewton!" he exclaimed. "Have you never met her socially? Why she—why she is the most intellectual lady in Bee Bayou." "Indeed!" I said. "Why she visits New Orleans, and Charleston, and all the principal centres of refinement, and is welcomed in Washington. She converses freely with our statesmen and is considered a queen of learning. Why she writes po'try, sir, and is strong-minded. But a man wouldn't want to pick her up for a fool, all the samey." "I shouldn't; I don't," said I. "Don't you do it, sir. She's run ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... last. But this discovery in nowise disconcerted the sturdy lads of Devon, who had long ago learned to regard themselves as invincible, so far as the Spaniards were concerned; so they continued with the utmost calmness to add here and there some refinement of finish to the preparations which had been completed an hour or more ago. Even the ship's cook, whom nobody regarded as a fighting man, must needs add his little quota to the general preparations, the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... at home, Jeff had to admit. Calaxian calm-crystals did what no refinement of Terran therapeutics had been able to manage. They erased the fears of the neurotic and calmed the quiverings of the hypertensive—both in alarming majority in the shattering aftermath of the Fourth War—with no ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth; he is a priest, an husbandman, and the father of a family. He is drawn as ready to teach, and ready to obey, as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity. In this age of opulence and refinement whom can such a character please? Such as are fond of high life, will turn with disdain from the simplicity of his country fire-side. Such as mistake ribaldry for humour, will find no wit in his harmless conversation; and such as have been taught to deride religion, will laugh at one whose chief ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... me a poacher," answered the man; and his voice was something of a surprise coming from such a scarecrow; it had that hard fastidiousness to be found in those who have made a fight for their own refinement among rough surroundings. "I consider I have a perfect right to shoot game in this place. But I am well aware that people of your sort take me for a thief, and I suppose you will try to land me ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... around the room as the four men who had been playing with the girl got up and prepared to leave. The place was spotless. Oh, the furnishings weren't costly, but they were chosen with that sense of fitness, of refinement of color and decor that is curiously Psi. I suppose that's one of the little things that annoys Normals so much. Stigma powers seem to go beyond telepathy, clairvoyance and telekinesis—they extend in some hard to define way into the aesthetic. ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... sensitive, noticed that her voice was pleasant to listen to, and her speech marked by a simple, unaffected refinement. He lingered because he was interested in her work. He found a kind of fascination in watching her as she took a moist red flower-pot from one end of the table, threw in a handful or two of earth from the heap at the other end, then ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... credit equal, if not superior, to that of the oldest, richest and most powerful nations. It has, by a policy of fostering and protecting our home industries, so diversified our productions that every article of necessity, luxury, art or refinement can be made by American labor, and the food and fruits of a temperate climate, and cotton, wool and all the textile fibres, can be raised on the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... designs for piano cases, the element of economy, though recognized, played but a small part in the decision of the judges. The qualities which made the premiated designs superior to others, were those of refinement, beauty of line, and of ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various
... She loves you so much she would endure even this to become your comrade as well as wife, to fit herself that she may take her place beside you in your world, serene and assured, to become the woman you can revere for her intellect and refinement. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... of respectable gravity, however, when he presented himself before Mademoiselle Euphrosyne Delande, at her Institute, when the bells clanged ten in the morning. Major Hawke at once impressed the sleek door-opener, Francois, by the ultra refinement of his demeanor, and the suave elegance of his French. "Evidently the one necessary Adam in this Garden of undeveloped young Peris," thought Hawke, as he gazed around the cheerless room, with its globes, busts of departed sages, topographical maps, and framed samples of the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... sincerity by five years' adherence to their new form of religion before they could be regarded as having washed off the defilement of their old heresy sufficiently to be thought worthy to wear a gown in the Four Courts. No Roman Catholic might keep a school; while a strange refinement of intolerance had added a statute prohibiting parents from sending their children to Roman Catholic Schools ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... No. —— Gramercy Park, was one of those dignified, old-fashioned residences that still remain in New York to remind our vulgar, ostentatious nouveaux riches of the days when culture and refinement counted for something more than mere wealth. Overlooking the railed-in square with its green lawns, pretty winding paths and well-dressed children romping at play, it had a high stoop which opened into a wide hall, decorated with obsolete weapons and trophies of the hunt. On ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... drollery, her ringing laugh, her arch sayings with some blame, but more admiration. After all, what had he a right to expect in this remote corner of the land, cut off by twenty leagues of bog and mountain from modern refinement, culture, thought, in this old tribal house, the last refuge of a proscribed faith and a hated race? Surely, no more than he found—nay, not a tithe of that he found. For, listening with a kindlier heart—even he, hurt by her neglect, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... out of the mountain heights with the elemental vigor of wind and sun and soil about him like an aura. A man of great natural refinement, he had grown strong and simple and masterful in his close contact with Nature. The clay that might have brutalized another nature had made ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... uncommonly handsome man. While not the equal of Gall in magnificence and imposing stature, he was physically perfect, an Apollo in symmetry. Furthermore he was a true type of Indian refinement and grace. He was modest and courteous as Chief Joseph; the difference is that he was a born warrior, while Joseph was not. However, he was a gentle warrior, a true brave, who stood for the highest ideal of the Sioux. Notwithstanding ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... was not unconscious that it might strike her as mistimed. Certainly that reserve was something of a shock to me—certainly it puzzled me the more I thought of it and even though I tried to explain it (with moments of success) by an imputation of exalted sentiments, of superstitious scruples, of a refinement of loyalty. Certainly it added at the same time hugely to the price of Vereker's secret, precious as this mystery already appeared. I may as well confess abjectly that Mrs. Corvick's unexpected attitude was the final tap on the nail that ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... was the equal in age and height of his red comrade, but was built a little more heavily. His face, tanned red instead of brown, was of the blonde type and bore an aspect of refinement unusual in the woods. The blue eyes were thoughtful and the chin, curving rather delicately, indicated gentleness and a sense of humor, allied with firmness of purpose and great courage. His dress was similar in fashion ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... SIR, - SAPRISTI, COMME VOUS Y ALLEZ! Richard III. and Dumas, with all my heart; but not Hamlet. Hamlet is great literature; Richard III. a big, black, gross, sprawling melodrama, writ with infinite spirit but with no refinement or philosophy by a man who had the world, himself, mankind, and his trade still to learn. I prefer the Vicomte de Bragelonne to Richard III.; it is better done of its kind: I simply do not mention the Vicomte in the same part of the building ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his career, when he, in a manner, devoted himself to elegant pursuits and enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and sensibility, and refinement. While this lasted he was sacred from injury; the very schoolboy would not fling a stone at him, and the merest rustic would pause ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... 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 and perfectly ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... English may be in manner, they are warm at heart; that, however averse they may be from forming new acquaintance, their esteem and confidence once gained, they make the most solid friends. He had formed friendships in England; he was fully sensible of the superior comforts, refinement, and information, of English society; but his own country was endeared to him by early association, and a sense of duty and patriotism attached him to Ireland. And shall I too be an absentee? was a question which ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... looking up to Government for an American Episcopate and a pair of lawn sleeves"—a very soft, polite man, "insinuating, adulating, sensible, learned, insidious, indefatigable," with art enough, "and refinement upon art, to make impressions even upon Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Reed." In Pennsylvania, as in every colony, Mr. Adams found, there was a tribe of people "exactly like the tribe, in the Massachusetts, of Hutchinsonian Addressers." ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... she, to say, or imply all this?—and say it to a man whom she praises for humanity, and prefers to myself for that virtue; when all the humanity he shows, and she knows it too, is by my direction—so robs me of the credit of my own works; admirably entitled, all this shows her, to thy refinement upon the words resentment and revenge. But thou wert always aiming and blundering at some thing thou never ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... is yet lingering in the air, even at the dead of winter, in the latitude of London, and when the enjoying section of the day is barely commencing, everything is left which a man would care to retain. A mere dilettante or amateur student, having no mercenary interest concerned, would, upon a refinement of luxury—would, upon choice, give up so much time to study, were it only to sharpen the value of what remained for pleasure. And thus the only difference between the scheme of the India House distributing his time for Lamb, and the scheme of a wise voluptuary ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... character as spies and eavesdroppers he was too high-minded to suspect. But no caution could have protected him against a slanderer who hated the place he came from, the company he kept, the name he had made famous, to whom his very look and bearing —such as belong to a gentleman of natural refinement and good breeding —must have been a personal grievance and an ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... antithesis of vocational 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 ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... training in academies of native inspiration. Even now English voices, with violent commonplace, are constantly calling upon America to begin—to begin, for the world is expectant. Whereas there is no beginning for her, but instead a continuity which only a constant care can guide into sustained refinement and can ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... of the strengths of the Catholic Church is the semi-clericalising of the laymen who live in or near any religious centre. It flatters the uneducated to feel themselves akin to their spiritual dictators, and it gives them a spurious refinement. Undoubtedly, the host of the Roemischer Kaiser was an excellent ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... But I cannot believe it of you.—All idle refinement!—Women may be as comfortable on board, as in the best house in England. I believe I have lived as much on board as most women, and I know nothing superior to the accommodations of a man-of-war. I declare ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... stirring ominously. In the silence he examined the handwriting till he felt that a living creature was with him, whereas he, because his child had died, was dead. He perceived more clearly the cruelty of Nature, to whom our refinement and piety are but as bubbles, hurrying downwards on the turbid waters. They break, and the stream continues. His father, as a final insult, had brought into the world a man unlike all the rest of them, a man dowered with coarse kindliness and rustic strength, a ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... to Africa and succeed with all our ignorance and poverty. Let our big men set out to break down immorality among Negroes. Get Negroes to have more refinement and race pride, use Negro books and papers, hang Negro pictures on their walls, get up Negro industries, and give deserving colored men and women employment; break down superstition and mistrust. Get Negroes to act decently, both publicly ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... certain sort of miscellaneous life, a knowledge of which is highly valuable to a youth, but which is seldom attained without risk. Endymion, on the contrary, was always guarded from danger. Through his most unexpected connection with the Neuchatel family, he had seen something of life in circles of refinement and high consideration, and had even caught glimpses of that great world of which he read so much and heard people talk more, the world of the Lord Roehamptons and the Lady Montforts, and all those dazzling people whose sayings and doings form the taste, and supply the conversation, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... South while the sky was yet heavy with the clouds of war; they went to the rude dwellings where those people sat in stupor and in darkness after the first thrill of the new found liberty; they went from homes of refinement and culture and wealth and religion; they bore to this darkness light, to this dullness life; they carried down there in their white hands the great tree of Calvary, the cross of Christ, and planted it in the land of the magnolia and the palm. I say that the history of this Association ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 1, January, 1890 • Various
... marked the shape of her slender waist, 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 ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... many of the hitherto essential delicacies of refinement, which, however, the American instantly resumes upon landing upon the New York pier; it being, I think, simply the instinct of "when in Rome do as the Romans do," which compels us to pretend that we do ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... that pleasure—is a gentleman of highest breeding. My brother assures me that he has most delightful manners. I know I shall adore him. If there's anything I wholly admire it is an old-school English gentleman—they have so much refinement, so much elevation!" ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... you have ever read even the laws concerning them that now disgrace your statute-books? In cruelty and tyranny, they are not surpassed by any slaveholding code in the Southern States; in fact they are worse, by just so far as woman, from her social position, refinement, and education, is on a more equal ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... there ever witnessed even in that home of art and refinement a scene of greater charm. In the spacious corridor of the club a Hungarian band wafted Viennese music from Tyrolese flutes through the rubber trees. There was champagne bubbling at a score of sideboards where noiseless ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... that can scarce be expressed, connected nobility with the cast of Athens, wisdom with madness, rage for novelty with a bigotry for antiquity, the politeness of a monarchy with the roughness of a republick, refinement with coarseness, independence with slavery, haughtiness with servile compliance, severity of manners with debauchery, a kind of irreligion with piety. We shall do this in reading; as, in travelling through different nations, we make ourselves masters ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... hotel near that part of London called Seventh Way, and had very large and comfortable apartments on the seventeenth floor. Households and family life had long since disappeared with the progressive refinement of manners; and indeed the steady rise in rents and land values, the disappearance of domestic servants, the elaboration of cookery, had rendered the separate domicile of Victorian times impossible, even had ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... the case of spires and towers, it is just to ascribe to the devotion of their designers that dignity which was bestowed upon forms derived from the simplest domestic buildings; but it is ridiculous to attribute any great refinement of religious feeling, or height of religious aspiration, to those who furnished the funds for the erection of the loveliest tower in North France, by paying for permission to eat butter ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... has one which overshadows all the rest,—the faculty of inspiring a universal want of confidence. As a popular leader, the advantage which daring would have given him is more than counterpoised by an acuteness and refinement of mind which have no sympathy with the mass of men, and which they in turn are likely to distrust from imperfect comprehension. Ill-adapted for the rough-and-tumble contests of a Democracy, he is admirably fitted to be the minister or the head of an oligarchical Republic. We wish all our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... information, but destitute of libraries. Such is the origin of ballad poetry, a species of composition which scarcely ever fails to spring up and flourish in every society at a certain point in the progress towards refinement.”— Macaulay. ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... back from her upflung arm, his refinement of feature incongruous under the rush of ox-blood red, his teeth showing whiter ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Alice Greggory's first visit to Hillside was in every way a delight and a satisfaction. To Alice, it was even more than that. For the first time in years she found herself welcomed into a home of wealth, culture, and refinement as an equal; and the frank cordiality and naturalness of her hostess's evident expectation of meeting a congenial companion was like balm to a sensitive soul rendered morbid by long years ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... to hear you talk this way," Mrs. Salisbury said, with dignity. "I don't know whether modern girls realize how dreadful they are," she went on, "but at least I needn't have my own daughter show such a lack of—of delicacy and of refinement." And in the dead silence that followed she cast about for some effective way of changing the subject, and finally decided to tell Sandy what she thought ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... the drawing itself to the Urbinate. Indeed, at first sight, one might almost conjecture that the original chalk study was a genuine work of Raffaello, aiming at rivalry with Michelangelo's manner. The calm beauty of the statue's classic profile, the refinement of all the faces, the exquisite delicacy of the adolescent forms, and the dominant veiling of strength with grace, are not precisely Michelangelesque. The technical execution of the design, however, makes its attribution certain. Well ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... of oblivion," he said, still in a low voice, and speaking with a delicate refinement that was almost mincing. "In the desert one forgets everything; even the little heart one loves, and the desire of ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... perfection the splendour of her magnificent black eyes, with their darkly-fringed lids and brows, while it also relieved, in an equal degree, the jetty lustre of her hair. Her features were exquisitely chiselled, delicate and classical in mould, and stamped with refinement and intelligence. Perfect simplicity, combined with a total absence of personal ornament, distinguished her attire; and her raven hair was plainly, but by no means unbecomingly, braided over her snowy forehead. Something in this simplicity of costume and in her manner inclined Jocelyn ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... American critical journal, must needs conceive the United States, says H. G. Wells, as "a vain, garrulous and prosperous female of uncertain age and still more uncertain temper, with unfounded pretensions to intellectuality and an ideal of refinement of the most negative description ... the Aunt Errant of Christendom."[80] There is always that blushful shyness, that timorous uncertainty, broken by sudden rages, sudden enunciations of impeccable doctrine, sudden ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... higher up in the scale we find our conduct and 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 ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... next day's papers. "Festivities in High Life" headed the column, in which the beauty and accomplishments of the bride were dwelt upon at large, while free scope was given to the imagination and the pen when it came to the elegant manners of the hostess, the air of refinement and cultivation perceptible among the guests, and the signs of wealth and perfect taste everywhere visible. The great popularity of the family was also dwelt upon as proven by the immense crowd thronging the streets, and Lord Hardy was congratulated ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... indeed," said Darrell. "But that nameless refinement in expression—that arch yet tender elegance in the simple, watchful attitude—these, Mr. Vance, must be ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in preparation. Was a great orator going to address the assembly? Was a glorious anniversary to be commemorated? Was a religious service to be performed? He looked round him to apply for information once more. Two gentlemen—who contrasted favorably, so far as refinement of manner was concerned, with most of the spectators present—were slowly making their way, at that moment, through the crowd near him. He respectfully asked what national solemnity was now about to take place. They informed him that ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... a dream Of happiness so sweet awaken me not! from a plan Of felicity so attractive turn not away! If one part of it is unpleasant, reject not therefore all; and since without some drawback no earthly bliss is attainable, do not, by a refinement too scrupulous for the short period of our existence, deny yourself that delight which your benevolence will afford you, in snatching from the pangs of unavailing regret and misery, the gratefullest of men in the humblest and most devoted ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... a high-bred English lady is the most complete of all Heaven's subjects in this world. In whom else do you see so much grace, and so much virtue; so much faith, and so much tenderness; with such a perfect refinement and chastity? And by high-bred ladies I don't mean duchesses and countesses. Be they ever so high in station, they can be but ladies, and no more. But almost every man who lives in the world has the happiness, let us hope, of counting ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... forced to leave Paris. Locating at Amsterdam, he began his lasting and respectable relations with Madame de Nehra, daughter of Zwier van Haren, a Dutch writer and politician. She was a woman of education and refinement, who exercised a valuable influence over his rapidly growing celebrity, bringing out his good qualities, subduing his undesirable characteristics, and encouraging all of his better ambitions. It was at her suggestion that he went to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... as on pillows. The sweetness of the spirit,—the trembling beauty of the sentences, like that of a twilight wave just touched by the west wind's balmy breath,—the nice strokes of humour, so gentle, yet so overpowering,—the feminine delicacy and refinement of the allusions,—the art which so dexterously conceals itself,—the mild enthusiasm for the works of man and God which glows in all its serious effusions,—the good nature of its satire,—the geniality of its ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... certain words which have been singled out and misused by the undiscriminating until their value is destroyed. Long ago "elegant" was turned from a word denoting the essence of refinement and beauty, into gaudy trumpery. "Refined" is on the verge. But the pariah of the language is culture! A word rarely used by those who truly possess it, but so constantly misused by those who understand nothing of its meaning, that it is becoming a synonym for vulgarity and imitation. To ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... false charges that he is getting very tired of being fathered with every stupid trick which any one chooses to play, and will probably drop that form of wit, so really unworthy of his great genius and true refinement, for the man who could invent Dundreary and who can play Garrick is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... includes every quality that kindles admiration and delight; all gentleness, all goodness, all simplicity, the refinement of the scholar, the insight of the seer, the courage that makes the youth a hero. In luminous hours men behold visions of ideal perfection hanging like stars in a midnight sky. Unfortunately for many, these ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... best. All this, and much more to the same effect, may be admitted without demur, but all these admissions will avail the traveller nothing. He will be expected to congratulate them on the elegance of their manners, the copiousness of their literature, and the refinement of their tastes. He will be confidentially informed that "Lord Morpeth's manners were much improved by mixing with our first circles, sir;" and what is worse, he will be expected to believe it, and to carry himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... liked it better had it been "mother," and "grandmother," and that the "sis" had been called Betsey or Molly; but we do not wish to be understood as exhibiting these amiable and good-looking strangers as models of refinement. "Ma" and "sis" did well enough, all things considered, though "mamma" would have been better if they were not sufficiently polished ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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, by ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... happy, although greatly restrained by the apprehension of going a little too far with these persons of singular refinement ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... surrounded by friends,—good and intelligent society, and some of the noblest specimens of Christian philanthropy in the world. My wife and children, had not only been accustomed to the comforts, if not the luxuries of life, but also to associate with persons of refinement and cultivation; and although they had willingly accompanied me to Canada, where they had experienced little less than care, labor and sorrow, it cannot be thought very strange that they should desire to return. We were colored people to be sure, and were too often made to feel the weight of ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... the lady of whom Major Favraud had spoken so admiringly, and to whose kindness he had committed me, a group had gathered, chiefly of the young, not to be surpassed in any land for manly bearing, graceful feminine beauty, gayety, wit, and refinement. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... their singular lack of intelligence than for their extraordinary excess of brutality. It is true that a nation's greatest activity for good is developed in the time of its transition from coarseness to refinement. It may also be true that its period of greatest harmfulness is when, from a fictitious refinement, it is dragged down again by the natural brutality of its nature; when the ideal has ceased to correspond ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... certainly parts of the country comparatively, but only comparatively, free from this vice. Here at the north, there is much less than at the west and the south, though here enough of it to disgust one with his race. In proportion as general refinement prevails, the custom abates. At the south, no carpets, no rooms, no presence, affords protection.[6] Here, in the best rooms, the best society, there is partial exemption, though not often enough from the presence of that ingenious, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... and outlines which are an outward expression of ourselves. A hat, as well as any article of clothing, may express many things—dejection, happiness, decision, indecision, gayety, dignity, graciousness, a trained or an untrained mind, forethought, refinement, generosity, cruelty, or recklessness. How often we hear some one say, "That hat looks just like Mrs. Blank!" Clothing of any kind is an index to the personality of the wearer. A friend once said in my presence to a saleswoman who was trying to sell her ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... ready to drop with exhaustion, on the eve of each engagement; and at the ends of all our practising-grounds brick walls had been set up, at which every officer made it a point of honour to tilt head-foremost once a day. There was no refinement preserved from the good old wars of chivalry which was not familiar to our gallant fellows, and I had expressly forbidden every species of cerebral exercise. Nothing, I have always said, is so hurtful to the temper of an army ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... critical in her intellectual developement. As yet English literature had lagged behind the literature of the rest of Western Christendom. It was now to take its place among the greatest literatures of the world. The general awakening of national life, the increase of wealth, of refinement, and leisure that characterized the reign of Elizabeth, was accompanied by a quickening of intelligence. The Renascence had done little for English letters. The overpowering influence of the new models both of thought ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... by her mistress from girlhood as a petted and indulged favourite. The traveller in the south must often have remarked that peculiar air of refinement, that softness of voice and manner, which seems in many cases to be a particular gift to the quadroon and mulatto women. These natural graces in the quadroon are often united with beauty of the most dazzling ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... it is difficult for many of us who live in the world to realize the effect of luxury and over-refinement upon society! We live too close to it. Mr. Benham is an anachronism. I would have given much if he had not become interested in Marcia. She is not for him nor he for her. But I think it is his mind ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... shepherds, weary and overcome with the fatigue of flight, calls upon his companion to review the length of way they had passed. This is certainly painting from nature, and the thoughts, however obvious, or destitute of refinement, are perfectly in character. But as the closest pursuit of nature is the surest way to excellence in general, and to sublimity in particular, in poetical description, so we find that this simple suggestion of the shepherd is ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... to the following source: Nations which are pleased to term themselves civilized have one sort of faith which they hold to one another, and another sort which they entertain towards people less advanced in refinement. The faith which they entertain towards the latter is, very often, treachery, in the vocabulary of the civilized. It was treachery towards Toussaint that caused the massacre of Santo Domingo; it was treachery towards Osceola that brought bloodhounds ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... majestic in the very way he had of eating cold meat at supper, and whose height of six feet three towered, almost without the drooping heaviness of age, till his seventy-ninth year. Notwithstanding the adverse comparison with his parent, one has but to see Gustave's face, with its determination and refinement, to feel a certain assurance as ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... mean abilities from amongst the natives; one named Julius Florens is styled by Quintilian the Prince of Eloquence. In fact a brilliant era appeared as if beginning to dawn throughout the greater portion of Gaul, academies were establishing, learning was revered, when suddenly every spark of refinement and civilisation was banished, by the successful aggression and permanent occupation of the country by hordes of barbarians; the natives being obliged to have recourse to arms for their defence against the common enemy, and the constant excitement of continued hostility ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... but with a brighter lustre, was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a writer whose works are remarkable for purity of thought and refinement of language. Surrey was a gay and wild young fellow—distinguished in the tournament which celebrated Henry's marriage with Anne of Cleves; now in prison for eating meat in Lent, and breaking windows at night; again we find him the English marshal when Henry ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... devoted to a physical labor which left no room for anything else. But Jeff knew that for all his roughness of manner and speech, a roughness which left his own partner, Bud, a man of education and refinement beside him, he counted his wealth, as he, Jeff, could only hope to count his in the distant years ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... Europeanized in the best sense of the term, not only in their methods of doing business, but also in many other respects. Their homes are becoming more comfortable and elegant according to modern ideas, refinement is gradually permeating their daily life, and the sons of not a few of them are being sent abroad to complete their education ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Would he marry her without so much as looking at another girl? was the question on every lip, and in the jealousy thus created the appraisers of Violet's beauty grew bolder. Her thinness was condoned, and her refinement insisted upon. Nor were May Gould and her chances overlooked by the gossips of Merrion Square. Her flirtation with Fred Scully was already a topic ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... employed a nurse imported from France. Nor did the Greeks merely ignore the Latin language. They refused to be romanized in any other respect. Even the Roman amusements tended to disgust them, and it is to the credit of his superior refinement that the average Greek was repelled by those brutal exhibitions of gladiatorial bloodshed and slaughter over which the coarser ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... cock-fighting, rat-catching or prize-fighting, should be preferred to games of skill and strength, to the drama, literature, works of art, public walks, gardens, and museums; the comparative influence of all these upon the health, strength, courage, activity, humanity, refinement and happiness of society; how people may be led to prefer such as tend to general well-being to those which have a tendency to brutalize and debase. All these also should be dwelt upon in ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... All the volumes were beautifully bound and nearly all were standard classics. He was surprised at the culture of this little spot, tucked away in the intellectual desert of rural France, and at the refinement of this man, who had been a farmer all his life. All the while a great battle was being fought outside; one could not be sure of life for a consecutive hour; at such a time it was amazing to be fingering fine old books, in the quiet, sombre library, by the side of an ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... must say some dull things, and a comic journal can hardly help letting some dreary attempts at mirth slip into its columns. We could point out paragraphs in this serial which are most chaotic and unmeaning, and some, indeed, which fall below its own excellent standard of refinement; but we do not remember ever to have met in its pages a double-entendre or a foulness of speech. We must advise its conductor (who, we may say in passing, is a gentleman whose writings have not infrequently appeared in the "Atlantic") never to allow his paper ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... she wanted. I speak lightly, but, if you think all this made for comedy, your conception of Miss MEYNELL's methods is very much at fault. Love to her is very much what it was to Patience in the opera—by no means a wholly enviable boon. I can hardly praise too much the exquisite refinement and restraint of her treatment of commonplace things. But one small point baffled me: Oliver appears to have been a professional diver and bath-keeper—we are told, indeed, that he had occupied that position at Rugby (a statement that I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... was that of a man of education and even of refinement, and his tone polite enough; there was something of apology in it. But it was also sharp, business-like, compelling; I saw at once that this was a man whose character was essentially matter-of-fact, and who would ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... sulky as a bear at the idea of coming, but something in the quaintly pathetic refinement of the poor and splendid old house pleased him, and the aroma of untouched early-Victorian prudish grace which the ancient ladies threw around them appealed to his imagination, as any complete bit of art or nature always did. He found himself seated between Miss ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... strange, weak, inconsistent being: who would believe, Sir, that in this our Augustan age of liberality and refinement, while we seem so justly sensible and jealous of our rights and liberties, and animated with such indignation against the very memory of those who would have subverted them—that a certain people under our national protection should complain, not against our monarch and ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... entered into the game with enthusiasm—for over a week. Then he grew tired of the mechanical repetition of that which he had acquired so painfully. It no longer interested him to set the type, to lock the form, to ink and clean the ink plates. He had carried these things to their last refinement of skill. As for the actual printing—the endless insetting of paper, pulling down on the lever, removing the paper—this he could no longer stand for more than half an hour at a time. Then a deep lethargy seized his every faculty. ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... as though propelled by some potent moral force that imminently threatened to become physical. Behind him closely followed the impetus—a hotel detective, if ever white Alpine hat, hawk's nose, implacable watch chain, and loud refinement of manner spoke the truth. A brace of uniformed porters at his heels preserved the smooth decorum of the hotel, repudiating by their air of disengagement any suspicion that they formed a ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... 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
... but then it is the government of barbarians over barbarians, and the feeling of oppression is, of course, not so keen. There the oppressed are perhaps not better than their oppressors; but in the case of Greece, there are millions of Christian men, not without knowledge, not without refinement, not without a strong thirst for all the pleasures of civilized life, trampled into the very earth, century after century, by a pillaging, savage, relentless soldiery. Sir, the case is unique. There exists, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... like a giant, some seven-foot prodigy, whiskered, savage of eye, terrible of voice. And, turning toward him, Andrew saw him in profile with the scar obscured—and his face was of almost feminine refinement. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... absolutely sure. And how he did eat, saying nothing at all, while Harriet plied him with food and talked to me of the most disarming commonplaces. I think it did her heart good to see the way he ate: as though he had had nothing before in days. As he buttered his muffin, not without some refinement, I could see that his hand was long, a curious, lean, ineffectual hand, with a curving little finger. With the drinking of the hot coffee colour began to steal up into his face, and when Harriet brought out a quarter of pie saved over from our dinner ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... southern in sentiment, and with the exception of those born in Europe were born and raised in the south. Believing the southern to be the highest type of civilization this continent has seen, the young ladies are trained according to the southern ideas of delicacy, refinement, womanhood, religion, and propriety; hence we offer a first-class female college for the south and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of a month, and to clear a small patch of ground for purposes of culture would require the combined efforts of a tribe. For the same reason, dwellings could not be erected; and without dwellings domestic tranquillity, security, culture, and refinement, especially in a rude climate, were all but impossible. Mr. Emerson well observes, that "the effect of a house is immense on human tranquillity, power, and refinement. A man in a cave or a camp—a nomad—dies with ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... save the absolutely necessary, and for six weeks at a stretch, lived on nothing but mush and milk. Their clothes were of the cheapest kind, countrified in cut and make, a decided contrast to those of their fellow students, who came from homes of wealth and refinement It is very easy for outsiders and older heads to talk philosophically of being above such things, but young, sensitive boys feel such a position keenly and none but those who have actually endured such a martyrdom of pride know what they suffer. ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... to the refinement of the surroundings, and liked the gentle but self-possessed tones of the old lady. She ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one. Almost as soon as my sentence period began I had a heart-broken letter from my sister. She and my mother had returned from Canada, only to find me dead and buried to the world. I answered the letter, begging her not to write again, or to expect me to write. It seemed a refinement of humiliation to have the home letters come addressed to me in a prison; and besides, I was like the sick man who turns his face to the wall, wishing neither to see nor to hear until the paroxysm ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... was no "flapper" here. What she lacked in culture was made up in refinement. He had felt that yesterday—the day before. She belonged elsewhere. And yet to Peter it would have seemed a pity to have changed her in any particular. Her lips were now drawn in a firm line and her brows bore ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... observations. Yet, in reality, we have few writers whose works, both as to substance and manner, are more different from each other than those of Hippocrates and Galen, the simplicity of the former being strongly contrasted with the abstruseness and refinement of the latter."[23] ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... his place by pleasing the favorite; but he kept it through his own ability and the necessities of the time. The Englishman Stanley, whom Pitt sent to negotiate with him, drew this sketch of his character: "Though he may have his superiors, not only in experience of business, but in depth and refinement as a statesman, he is a person of as bold and daring a spirit as any man whatever in our country or in his own. Madame Pompadour has ever been looked upon by all preceding courtiers and ministers as their tutelary deity, under whose ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... attractive about the man. In an age when many German and Netherland nobles were given to drunkenness and debauchery, and were distinguished rather for coarseness of manner and brutality of intellect than for refinement or learning, Count Renneberg, on the contrary, was an elegant and accomplished gentleman—the Sydney of his country in all but loyalty of character. He was a classical scholar, a votary of music and poetry, a graceful troubadour, and a valiant knight. He was "sweet and lovely ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... author of a novel called "A Crown of Lilies," which was much talked of just now, and excited no less ridicule than admiration, On the one hand, it was lauded for delicate purity and idealism; on the other, it was scoffed at for artificiality and affected refinement. Mrs. Lessingham had met him for the first time a week ago. Her invitation was not due to approval of his book, but to personal interest which the author moved in her; she was curious to discover how ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... In fact, in huge free milling works, where hydraulic machinery crushes the gold-bearing quartz and screens it to fineness before catching the gold on delicate sieves, the process is only a complex refinement of ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... admitted. "Diplomacy is all bluff, bluster, buncombe, and bullying; the degrees of refinement of the aforesaid bluff, et cetera, depending on the occasions, and the particular parties ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... been a celebrity, though no-one remembered for what. Miss Myra Mooney, formerly a beauty, had known her days of success. She had been the supreme performer of ladylike parts. She had been known as the very quintessence of refinement. It was assumed when she first came out that a duke would go to the devil for her in her youth, and that in her late maturity she would tour the provinces with The Three Musketeers. Neither of these prophecies had, however, been ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... was to acquire the power to make his father and mother comfortable for the balance of their lives; and to surround his sisters with those luxuries which go far towards making existence a thing of grace and refinement. When, therefore, he worked during the warm days of summer, aiding his father in the care of the farm, the summer evenings found him poring earnestly over his books—practical and useful ones now—and the harvest once gathered, he was back again in his old place at school, where he studied ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... of the illustrious Coleridge exerted himself on behalf of the church of England, and based his chief appeal on the inadequacy of the penal laws at home; the misery endured by the poor; the numerous crimes originated by the refinement of society; and the principle of compensation, which bound the English people to supply in colonies not less instruction than they must have furnished ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... manners of Mr. Mudge. He had a coarse hard face, while his head was surmounted by a shock of red hair, which to all appearance had suffered little interference from the comb for a time which the observer would scarcely venture to compute. There was such an utter absence of refinement about the man, that Paul, who had been accustomed to the gentle manners of his father, was repelled by the ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... Burns expressed himself as being "charmed," was first published in the second volume of Johnson's "Musical Museum." It is not only gay and animating, but has the merit of being free of blemishes in want of refinement, which affect the others. The "Bogie" celebrated in the song, it may be remarked, is a river in Aberdeenshire, which, rising in the parish of Auchindoir, discharges its waters into the Deveron, a little distance below the town of Huntly. It gives its name to the extensive and rich ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... different habits and society—with no family to give weight to her name and honour to his choice,—all that Philip pondered; and, on the other side, the loveliness, the freshness, the intellect, the character, and the refinement, which were undoubted. He pondered and pondered. A girl who was nobody, and whom society would look upon as an intruder; a girl who had had no advantages of education—how she could express herself so well and so intelligently ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... disputed that a slave is rendered less capable of performing his master's service when he finds himself exposed by law to the capricious violence of every turbulent man in the community. Mitigated as slavery is by the humanity of our laws, the refinement of manners, and by public opinion which revolts at every instance of cruelty towards them, it would be an anomaly in the system of police which affects them if the offense stated in the verdict [the striking of a slave] were ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... for a bride, she lay heroically bearing pain, lacking the devotion she should have had, finding her reward in the memory of her husband's appreciation of her courage, and her occupation, perhaps her pleasure, in a refinement ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... Mrs. Turner took her aside, and begged to know which was Mary's old room, "for I should like to put you there, as if nothing had happened." "Oh, do not put me there!" Mary cried, "so much has happened." But this seemed a refinement to the kind woman, which it was far better for her young guest not to "yield" to. The room Mary had occupied had been next to her godmother's, with a door between, and when it turned out that Connie, with an elder sister, was in Lady Mary's room, everything ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... held forth to the crowd on the evils of kings, priests and mutton chops, the "plain man" turned up at intervals like the "theme" of a symphonic movement. "I am only a plain man and I want to know." It was a phrase that sabered the spider-webs of logical refinement, and held them up scornfully on the point. When Crowl went for a little recreation in Victoria Park on Sunday afternoons, it was with this phrase that he invariably routed the supernaturalists. Crowl knew his Bible better than most ministers, and always ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... grievances? No; for, after all, these are the very things by which I have profited. So I finally concluded I should expunge, instead of my mistakes, my triumphs. I could not afford to dismiss the tonic of mortification, the refinement of sorrow; I needed ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... where gas is not available, kerosene, which is produced by the refinement of petroleum, is used extensively as a fuel for cooking, especially in hot weather when the use of a coal or a wood stove adds materially to the discomfort of the person who does the cooking. Kerosene is burned in stoves especially ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... prisoners, I learned that in Lima there were a number of Chilian officers and seamen taken on board the Maypeu, whose condition was even more deplorable than their own, the fetters on their legs having worn their ancles to the bone, whilst their commander, by a refinement of cruelty, had for more than a year been lying under sentence of death as a rebel. Upon this, I sent a flag of truce to the viceroy, Don Joaquim de la Pezuela, requesting him to permit the prisoners to ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... still rough, and had little to say on matters of great interests. Circumscribed he was of necessity, ignorant and prejudiced. Conscious of power, however, he was proud and insolent to inferiors. He was merely a physical man,—ruddy, healthy, strong indeed, but without refinement, or knowledge, or social graces. His castle was a fort and not a palace; and here he lived with boisterous or sullen companions, as rough and ignorant as himself. His wife and daughters were more interesting, but without those attainments which grace ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... duties to her—no thoughtful persons now doubt this,—is to secure for her such physical training and exercise as may confirm her health, and perfect her beauty; the highest refinement of that beauty being unattainable without splendour of activity and of delicate strength. To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its power; it cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light too far: only remember that all physical freedom is ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... knock at her door. He would talk gaily and laugh with her. He would choose moments when Amalia and Rosa could see him. Amalia would avenge herself with angry words. But the innocent Rosa's heart was rent and torn by this refinement of cruelty: she felt that he detested them and wished to avenge himself: and she ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... If Thomas Gordon had been a man like Robert Williamson I shouldn't have waited to see your Kilmeny. But they are all right—rugged and grim, but of good stock and pith—native refinement and strong character. But I must say candidly that I hope your young lady hasn't got her ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... acclimatising itself in England; while, on the other hand, the parish church continued to be planned by local men, open to receive the improvements which more skilled foreign masons had introduced. Consequently, while local art received a continually increasing refinement, the plan of the church developed upon traditional lines, and not upon those novel lines which foreign masons would have laid down for it. The chief proof of this is seen in the persistence of the aisleless plan with rectangular chancel and western tower. The ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... colour and shape do make a difference. I have a notion that about 1840 was the Zenith, the Meridian Hour, the Golden Age of the Passion. Those tight-waisted, whiskered Beaux, those crinolined Beauties, adored one another, I believe, with a leisure, a refinement, and dismay not ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... have not left you all by yourself?" said Barret, struck not only by the appearance of the girl, but by the comparative refinement ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... From the days of Elizabeth to our own there has never been so absolutely barren a period. People had become fairly tired of the jingle of Pope's imitators, and the new era had not dawned. Goldsmith and Gray, both recently dead, serve to illustrate the condition in which the most exquisite polish and refinement of language has been developed until there is a danger of sterility. The 'Elegy' and the 'Deserted Village' are in their way inimitable poems: but we feel that the intellectual fibre of the poets has become dangerously delicate. The critical faculty could not be stimulated further ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Christian who doesn't understand Christ. Christ despised sin but he didn't despise sinners. And that brings us back to Mrs. Tresslyn,—Constance Blair that was. You will have to be exceedingly well fortified, my boy, if you expect to withstand the clever Constance. She is the refinement of maternal ambition. She will not be satisfied to have her daughter married to a mere practice. She didn't bring her up for that. She will ask me to come and see her within the next few days. What am I to say to her when she asks me if ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... than a cart track, was now graded and macadamized. I passed multitudes of teams, struggling up the slopes, and the carcasses of mules littered every rod of the way. The profanity of the teamsters was painfully apparent. I came unobserved upon one who was berating his beasts with a refinement of cruelty. He cursed each of them separately, swinging his long-lashed whip the while, and then damned the six in mass. He would have made a dutiful overseer. The soldiers had shown quite as little consideration for the residences along ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... associated with shabby people, and appeared as much as possible in the company of my financial betters. It was the easier for me to do this because my name was not Irish, German or Hebraic. I had a good appearance, manners and an agreeable gloss of culture and refinement. I was tactful, considerate, and tried to strike a personal note in my intercourse with people who were worth while; in fact I made it a practice—and still do so—to send little mementos to my newer acquaintances—a book or some such ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... accomplice, and locked him in the trap so that the police should arrest him, and thus give him time to escape—for Silas P. Hoggan and Ralph Ansell were one and the same person—things had prospered with him, and he had cultivated an air of prosperous refinement, in order to move in the ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... States on an emergency basis, and its full potential for industrial use has yet to be explored. However, the indications are that towns' and cities' reliance on it during anything but temporary emergency conditions is going to depend on expensive methods of refinement and "fail-safe" overdesign, plus dilution with new water, which means again that it will probably not be competitive in price with natural water where enough good natural water can be had. To this may be added the observation that the consuming public ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... that of some, was well perfected by grace. Seeking usefulness in needy fields, she offered herself to the A. M. A., and last year began her work in Talladega, where she proved herself a devoted and successful teacher, a woman of great refinement and goodness, and a faithful servant of Christ. Herself a disciple sitting at Jesus' feet, she never forgot her Master in her teaching, while her unconscious influence was powerful for good. Her illness was but of a few days' duration, nor was it considered fatal ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... civilization, this selfish refinement of barbarous propensities, this clashing of nervous systems instead of the clashing of weapons, which has been largely, if not entirely, the cause of such a variety and extent of nervous trouble throughout the so-called civilized world. It is not ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... happening), she was in a measure independent, and it was one of the proudest moments of her life, when she placed before her husband bread of her own making, which he pronounced the most delicious he had ever eaten. Let not my young readers suppose that Mrs. Manly sacrificed any part of her refinement by becoming a skilful and useful housewife. She still dearly loved music, and drawing, and literature, and communion with cultivated minds, and was not less a lady in the parlour because she had learned the uses and importance of the kitchen. But we will let her speak for herself, of the change ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... last four or five decades have witnessed a phenomenal extension in the use of flowers by all classes of the community, for the decoration of the house no less than for beautifying the garden. Primarily, this advance of refinement in the popular taste is traceable to the skill and enthusiastic devotion of the florists who have supported in all their integrity the true canons of floral perfection, and whose labours will continue to be imperative for maintaining the ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... pages of the Arab. Here we have nothing of that most immodest modern modesty which sees covert implication where nothing is implied, and "improper" allusion when propriety is not outraged; nor do we meet with the Nineteenth Century refinement; innocence of the word not of the thought; morality of the tongue not of the heart, and the sincere homage paid to virtue in guise of perfect hypocrisy. It is, indeed, this unique contrast of a quaint element, childish crudities and nursery indecencies and "vain and amatorious" phrase ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Misses Moodle came to establish a young ladies' seminary in the village of Mungerville, on whose outskirts our own school was situated, bringing along with them, as the county paper stated, "that charming atmosphere of refinement and intellectuality in which they ever moved"; and, what was of more consequence, a capital of twenty girls to start with. Professional politeness inspired Mr. Barker to make a call on the fair strangers, which the personal fascinations ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... little blue-eyed woman with uneven shoulders and a delicate sweet profile. Hers was that type of face that under even the most pleasant and luxurious circumstances still looks bravely and patiently enduring. Her refinement threw a tinge of coarseness over his eager consumption of ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... the University, his father sent for him to London. He stayed there a short time, and mingled partially in its festivities; but the pleasures of English dissipation have for a century been the same, heartless without gayety, and dull without refinement. Nor could Mordaunt, the most fastidious, yet warm-hearted of human beings, reconcile either his tastes or his affections to the cold insipidities of patrician society. His father's habits and evident distresses deepened his disgust to his situation; for the habits were ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... subject, he referred to Harris; whose work is not an English grammar, but "A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar." Lowth's Grammar was first published in 1758. At the commencement of his preface, the reverend author, after acknowledging the enlargement, polish, and refinement, which the language had received during the preceding two hundred years, ventures to add, "but, whatever other improvements it may have received, it hath made no advances in grammatical accuracy." I do not quote this assertion to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... mentally. Never in any public school have I seen such a splendidly equipped Domestic Science room as the one in the McKinley Park School. Its beautiful open, airy Assembly Hall with its hardwood floors and stage for private theatricals and other social affairs is the acme of modern refinement. In this hall the "Mothers' Club" holds its meetings, and the children have ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... it. A force of Boers, supposed to number about two thousand men, came down in the night, bringing with them several heavy guns, and with the early morning opened a brisk fire upon the camp. The surprise was complete. But the refinement of the Boer tactics lay in the fact that they had a surprise within a surprise—and it was the second which was ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "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 would suit, but the ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... learn refinement in our entertaining. Your modern hostess issues her invitations and seems overcome with consternation at her gathering. 'What shall I do with all these people?' she seems to ask. So she dabs cakes upon ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... difficult things for us of the present day to imagine is, how persons of refinement and sensibility, living in comfort and without a care, could take any pleasure in life when they knew that within a stone's throw of their doors were human beings who, very often through no fault of their own, were so destitute ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... the immediate Care of Parents, or essential Attention of Guardians, by the Laws of the Land; in order that Gentlemen should, to the Antiquity of Birth and Possession, add the important Dignity of Learning, and social Refinement of Arts: Since a Man at the Head of an original Estate, who should want the necessary Cultivation of Letters, was considered only as a Peasant in Disguise, and not more respected than a Hewer of ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... was cast in a different mould. He was tall, spare, almost aesthetic. The clean-shaven face, the well-moulded nose and chin hinted at a refinement which his shabby threadbare suit and his collarless shirt freakishly accentuated. Now and again he would raise his deep-set eyes from the book he was reading, survey the absorbed professor with a speculative glance and ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... strengthen our enfeebled minds, that so we may patiently abide in our allotments, and look forward with a cheering hope, that, whatever trials and besetments may await us, they may tend to our further refinement, and more close union in the heavenly covenant. And when the end comes, may we be found among those who through many tribulations have washed their garments white in the blood of the Lamb, and be found worthy to stand ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... indeed been freely adopted by numerous poets from that early date down to the present day; but since the 2nd century B.C. it has been displaced from pre-eminence by the seven-word and five-word measures which are now, after much refinement, the accepted standards for Chinese poetry. The origin of the seven-word metre is lost in remote antiquity; the five-word metre was elaborated under the master-hand of Mei Sheng, who died 140 B.C. Passing over seven centuries of growth, we reach the T'ang dynasty, A.D. 618-905, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... subdivision, and refinement in the arts of distribution. The multiplication of merchants, agents, retailers, which, in spite of forces making for centralisation in distributive work, is so marked a feature in the English industry of the last forty years, is a natural result of the influence of machinery, in ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... and Cape Charles. The industrious and thriving built good houses, raised good crops, sent their surplus abroad and bought English goods with it, went to church, and discussed politics. In education, in refinement, in literature and art, most of the colonists had made about the same advance as the present farmers of Utah. The rude, restless energy of modern America was not ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... beings, and to his calmness was attributable the fact that he lived till 1858, although when he was twenty the offices refused to insure his life for a year on any terms. Those who knew him best regarded him as a man of singular wisdom and refinement. He lived, till he came to London for the later education of his boys, in a small country house at Claybrook, near Lutterworth, and was proprietor of the 'Northampton Mercury,' one of the oldest papers in England, founded, I believe, by his grandfather. This Claybrook house ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... lives? And mining—how's that for risk? And look at the elevator business—there's danger, if you like! Didn't I take my risk when I bought her? She might have been too far gone; and where would I have been? Loudon," he cried, "I tell you the truth: you're too full of refinement for ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... diligent reading, that the mind is encumbered by the thought that most things worth saying have been so beautifully said that repetition is out of the question. Partly, too, a false and fastidious refinement lays hold of the mind; and an intellect trained in the fine perception of ancient expression is unable to pass through the earlier stages through which a writer must pass, when the stream flows broken and turbid, when it appears impossible ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... few statements which agree with our own feelings. They say that "Mr. Jones sang in a pure and cultured manner, and deserves special attention for his sweet tenor voice and the refinement of the sentiment in his songs" (whatever that may mean!) "Mr. Smith played two violin solos with remarkable precision of touch and with the greatest ease;" while "Miss. Blank, with a good contralto, was all that could be desired in both her songs!" They were ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... 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 ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... his own affair, and no business of yours. I must ask you to refrain from saying anything of this matter to anyone. Understand? Not a word of it! My husband would be deeply outraged to know that a young friend of his daughter's, a man of refinement and position, had been the object of scandal by one who should honor anyone whom he honors. I really cannot spare ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... had certainly always thought her astonishingly lady—like for a peasant girl, but attributed this to the superior refinement of the ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... cottage was humble and unpretentious, and in keeping with the wildness of the landscape, its interior gave evidence of the cultivation and refinement of its inmates. An aquarium, containing goldfishes, stood on a marble centre-table at one end of the apartment, while a magnificent grand piano occupied the other. The floor was covered with a yielding tapestry carpet, and the walls were adorned with paintings from the pencils of Van Dyke, Rubens, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... of the slaves in America will find them in a state of the most uncultivated rudeness. Not instructed in any kind of learning, they are grossly ignorant of all refinement, and have little else about them, belonging to the nature of civilized man, than mere form. They are strangers to almost every idea, that doth not relate to their labour or their food; and though naturally possessed of strong sagacity, and lively parts, are, in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... the primitive slave, the black hypnotized by the white, the unfreed being produced by centuries of servitude; while in a Madame Gorka you recognize beneath her smiling amiability the fanaticism of truth of the Puritans; beneath the artistic refinement of a Lincoln Maitland you find the squatter, invincibly coarse and robust; in Boleslas Gorka all the nervous irritability of the Slav, which has ruined Poland. These lineaments of race are hardly visible in the civilized person, who speaks three or four languages ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... over from Sir John Lubbock's for a Sunday afternoon call he never seemed to be preaching or lecturing, although he had so much of the talk to himself. He was particularly charming when "chaffing" any one, and in high spirits over it. His manner at such times was light-hearted and boyish, and his refinement of nature came out most strongly. So, when he was talking to a lady who pleased and amused him, the combination of raillery and deference in his ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... middle rank, and has something citizen-like, nay, if I may so say, something of the manners of a small town about it, which is not at all to the taste of those who would have comedy to portray the manners of a court, and the refinement or ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... surpassed, and are not even equaled in any of the imperial capitals of Europe. The oriental artists and architects of the Mohammedan dynasties lavished money upon their homes and tombs in the most generous manner, and the refinement of their taste was equal to their extravagance. And where do you suppose they obtained all the money for these buildings, which cost millions upon millions of dollars? The architectural remains of Akbar and Shah Jehan, the two most splendid of the Moguls, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... throws light on its crude predecessors. It is no disparagement to the higher forms of thought that they have grown from feeble beginnings, and it does not detract from the historical value of primitive life that we must decline to credit it with depth and refinement. Every phase and every stadium of human experience has its value, and the higher stages must be estimated by what they are in themselves. In the history of religion the outward and the inward elements have stood side by side in ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... much to see them," she said to Maggie, "and know whether they are worthy to be related to the Conways—but of course they are, as much so as any American family. George has every appearance of refinement ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... Ryerson's personal friends, and gave him an active support. This was particularly the case with the late Rev. Dr. Stinson, a man of noble and generous impulses; Rev. W. H. Harvard, always kind and courteous; Rev. Dr. Richey, a man of much refinement and culture, and others. In the important crisis of 1838, both Dr. Stinson and Dr. Richey voted for Dr. Ryerson as Editor. The former wrote a strong letter urging his appointment as Editor. (Page 201.) The latter, on his way to Halifax, after the Conference of 1839, wrote from ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... take from old age a finer touch than those of men, and poverty does not interfere with this, where there is no actual exposure to the elements. From the windows of these old houses there often look forth delicate, faded countenances, to which belongs an air of unmistakable refinement. Nowhere in America, I fancy, does one see such counterparts of the reduced gentlewoman of England,—as described, for instance, in "Cranford,"—quiet maiden ladies of seventy, with perhaps a tradition of beauty ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... notwithstanding his resolution, did commit his sentiments to paper, and in one of his notes affixed to his Collection of Old Scottish Poetry, he says, that 'to doubt the authenticity of those poems is a refinement ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
