"Refinement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 |
