Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Refined   /rəfˈaɪnd/  /rɪfˈaɪnd/   Listen
Refined

adjective
1.
(used of persons and their behavior) cultivated and genteel.  "Refined people with refined taste"
2.
Freed from impurities by processing.  Synonym: processed.  "Refined oil" , "To gild refined gold"
3.
Showing a high degree of refinement and the assurance that comes from wide social experience.  Synonyms: polished, svelte, urbane.  "Maintained an urbane tone in his letters"
4.
Suggesting taste, ease, and wealth.  Synonyms: elegant, graceful.
5.
Free from what is tawdry or unbecoming.  Synonyms: neat, tasteful.  "A neat set of rules" , "She hated to have her neat plans upset"



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Refined" Quotes from Famous Books



... manufacturers, here and in Europe, laughed at his idea. Why not give every poor man a Fifth Avenue house? Frenchmen and Englishmen scouted the idea that any one could make a cheap automobile. Its machinery was particularly refined and called for the highest grade of steel; the clever Americans might use their labor-saving devices on many products, but only skillful hand work could turn out a motor car. European manufacturers regarded each car ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... these premises concerning relation in general, I shall now proceed to show, in some instances, how all the ideas we have of relation are made up, as the others are, only of simple ideas; and that they all, how refined or remote from sense soever they seem, terminate at last in simple ideas. I shall begin with the most comprehensive relation, wherein all things that do, or can exist, are concerned, and that is the relation of CAUSE and EFFECT: the idea whereof, how ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... refreshingly earnest about everything. And as he doesn't care a snap for girls in general, it is all the more amusing that it is he who should have a charge of that sort left on his hands. I'd like to know what she looks like. Common, I dare say, for the ultra refined do not penetrate these wilds to help blaze trails; and she swam ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... the woods heard of this through the housecat, who was greatly admired by them because he was so learned, and so refined and civilized, and so polite and high-bred, and could tell them so much which they didn't know before, and were not certain about afterward. They were much excited about this new piece of gossip, and they asked questions, so as to get at a full ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... themselves of wild, turbulent nature, much given to deadly feuds and really dangerous in their enmities. Their amusements were all of the lowest order, and hard riding and deep drinking were the characteristics of all the male population, while cock-fighting and bull-baiting were thought refined amusements for both sexes. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... writ large," so is "agnostic" the mere Greek equivalent for the Latin "infidel." There is an attractive simplicity about this solution of the problem; and it has that advantage of being somewhat offensive to the persons attacked, which is so dear to the less refined sort of controversialist. The agnostic says, "I cannot find good evidence that so and so is true." "Ah," says his adversary, seizing his opportunity, "then you declare that Jesus Christ was untruthful, for he said so and ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... Mrs Gilmour, laughing. "But the criticism will not apply to the Romans, who were almost as civilised and refined ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... magnificent hall, drinking nothing less than champagne, while the court band discoursed bewitching music, and the electric lights flashed on myriads of jewels, Bee and Mrs. Jimmie would declare that sort of Bohemia to be quite in their line. And because that kind of refined stupidity would bore Jimmie and me to the verge of extinction, and because we really prefer an open-air concert-garden with beer, where the people are likely to be any sort of cattle whom nobody would want to know, yet who are interesting to speculate about, ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... these judges thus appointed become familiar with fraud, violence, cruelty, selfishness,—refined or brutal,—which comes before them; they study the technicalities of the statutes, balance the scruples of advocates; they lose their fresh intuitions of justice, becoming more and more legal, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... Elysium, O thou, the most pure, the most gentle, the most refined disciple of philosophy that the world in modern times has produced! Sage Fenelon, welcome!—I need not name myself to you. Our souls by sympathy must know ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... General, the Ordnance Department has had to deal with various increases of supply, increases far exceeding the organization and available capacity of the country for production. The products needed take longer to produce; for the most part they involved intricate machinery, and highly refined processes of manufacture. In addition to this the industrial agencies of the country have been devoting a large part of their capacity to foreign production which, in the new set of circumstances, it is ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... them, and astronomers who go there to observe eclipses are troubled by the fears of their native attendants, and by their endeavours to get into the water as the best place under the circumstances. In America the idea is that the sun and moon are tired when they are eclipsed. But the more refined Greeks believed for a long time that the moon was bewitched, and that the magicians made it descend from heaven to put into the herbs a certain maleficent froth. Perhaps the idea of the dragon arose from the ancient custom of calling the places in the heavens at which the eclipses of the moon ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... Western dwellings impertinent and unnecessary. In the eye of aesthetic Japanese a room crowded with luxurious upholstery is a specimen of barbaric pomp, delighting the savage and unrefined eye of the hairy foreigners, but shocking to the purged vision and the refined taste of one born in great Niphon. No such tradesman as an upholsterer or furniture-dealer exists in Japan. The country is a paradise for young betrothed couples who would wed with light purses. One sees love in a cottage on a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... from sweet and pure oils, refined by our own special process, it makes food more digestible. Its use insures light, flaky pie-crust; it makes deliciously crisp, tender doughnuts; for cake-making it creams up beautifully and gives results equal to the best cooking butter; muffins, fritters, ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller

... nephew Randall. He had always supposed that Randall was refined and that he had a good heart. And to think that he could break out like this, and be coarse and cruel, and say things before ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... of this provision may be apprehended if we note that the word rendered 'burn,' in verse 9, is not that which simply implies destruction by fire, but is a peculiar word, reserved for sacrificial burnings, and meaning 'to cause to ascend in smoke or vapour.' The gross flesh was, as it were, refined into vapour and odour, and went up to God as 'a sweet savour.' It expressed, therefore, the transformation of the sinful human nature of the worshipper, by the refining power of the fire of God, into something more ethereal and kindred with the heaven to which it rose. Or, to put the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... one of the most engaging pursuits in which a refined and artistic taste may be indulged. From the earliest times, and even before the days of printing, this pleasant diversion has been pursued by persons of moderate means as well as by those of wealth and distinction, and every succeeding ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper

... gentleman was done in the best style of this master; and the lady, an exceedingly lovely woman, was also an admirable as well as a most attractive portrait; but lacking, I imagined, that quiet simple grace which makes his female figures so refined, so inimitable. ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... moment he was conscious of the fact that Professor Barclay, who looked particularly neat, refined, and clean, was coming up to him with a most friendly smile and with ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... have left. Of books properly so called, she knew nothing, therefore had not a notion which to read now she might choose. She imagined them all attractive—but at the first assay turned from the burlesque with a kind of loathing. This made some of her new acquaintance, not refined enough to understand the peculiarity, as it seemed to them, set ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... events leading to Curley's capture. Then he took the paper and read it, alternately frowning and exclaiming. As he finished, he passed it to the New Englander. It was a letter neatly drawn up and written in Stede Bonnet's even, refined hand. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... sound even, and the other two chiming in with him and wanting to buy my ticket right then. But I hesitated some. Lon and Ben Sutton was all right to go with, but Jeff Tuttle was a different kittle of fish. Jeff is a decent man in many respects and seems real refined when you first meet him if it's in some one's parlour, but he ain't one you'd care to follow step by step through the mazes and pitfalls and palmrooms of a great city if you're sensitive to public notice. Still, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... assassin—produced in them an unexampled militancy. Latent sex-antagonism revealed itself. The man, by common consent was down; and, being down, the Miss Minetts jumped on him, pounded him, if terms so vulgar are permissible in respect for ladies so refined. For every sin of omission, committed against their womanhood by the members of his sex, they made him scapegoat—unconsciously it is true, but effectively none the less. From being his slaves they became his tormentors. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... in an appearance at the factory the other girls marked her down as being a little different from themselves; a little less rough and capable of looking after her own interests, a little more refined, and ready to shrink from jest ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres

... weeks with Frau von Tarowska, and took every excursion together. She was the most elegant of all the ladies at the Baths, and her daughters, too, made a great impression by their distinguished bearing. They are very lovely and refined." ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... As refined gold can be gilded, barbecue, common, or garden variety, can take on extra touches. As thus: Kill and dress quickly a fine yearling wether, in prime condition but not over-fat, sluice out with cool water, wipe dry inside and out with a soft, damp cloth, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... then she began to make love to me in a refined sort of way, or so I thought, looked at me and sighed, saying that we had known each other in the past—very well indeed I gathered—and implying that she wished to continue our friendship. I fenced with her as best I could; but a man feels fairly helpless lying on his back with ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... refined and penetrating part of mankind, who take wide surveys of the wilds of life, who see the innumerable terrours and distresses that are perpetually preying on the heart of man, and discern with unhappy perspicuity, calamities yet latent in their causes, are glad to close their ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... has entered the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Yes, the good man may have had opinions which the philosophical scorn, weaknesses at which the thoughtless smile; but death shall change him into all that is enlightened, wise, and refined; for he shall awake in "His" likeness, and ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... her home in Ferrara. The happy event was commemorated by a noble medal, designed by the Mantuan Sperandio, the most illustrious of a school of medallists employed at Ferrara in Duke Borso's time, while Leonora's refined features and expressive face are preserved in a well-known bas-relief, now in Paris. Ercole and his bride took up their abode in the Este palace, a stately Renaissance structure opposite the old Lombard Duomo, a few steps from the Castello, with which it ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... higher kind of periodical essays which made the reputation of the earlier Spectator. Attempts to follow in the wake of Addison and Steele had for so long ceased to be features in journalism; their manner had been so effectually superseded by less refined purveyors of light literature—Defoe himself going heartily with the stream—that the revival was opportune, and in point of fact proved successful, the Universal Spectator continuing to exist for nearly twenty years. It shows how quickly the Spectator took its place ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... been a hardening process tending in the direction of a crystallized selfishness the rules of etiquette are regarded with contempt and alluded to with a sneer. No more disheartening problem faces the social reformer than the question how to overcome the bitter hostility to refined manners which marks the ignorant "lower classes." On the other hand, there is no more hopeful sign of progress in civilization than the gradual softening of these hard natures under the influence of social amenities. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... with tight columns of it. The better burst aspiringly from the tops of columns on the first page and outsoared the very title of the paper. He saw there, for instance, to the left of the title, a new, refined tea-house in Piccadilly Circus, owned and managed by gentlewomen, where you had real tea and real bread-and butter and real cakes in a real drawing-room. ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... and a slim waist. Tall and slender was she in stature, with a face like the egg of a goose. Her eyes so beautiful, with their well-curved eyebrows, possessed in their gaze a bewitching flash. At the very sight of her refined and elegant manners all idea of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... reporters," he protested. "Those New York boys have joshed that whole bunch so they're afraid to say their prayers out loud. Then she's English and dead swell, and that combination's hard to open, unless you have a number in the Four Hundred, and then it ain't refined to try. I can make a pass at her, but it'll be a frost ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer

... with two fair gifts Created him endowed; with happiness, And immortality: that fondly lost. This other served but to eternize woe; Till I provided death: so death becomes His final remedy; and, after life, Tried in sharp tribulation, and refined By faith and faithful works, to second life, Waked in the renovation of the just, Resigns him up with Heaven and ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... tackling Tag-rag.—Satin Lodge, and its refined inmates, who all pay their duty to Titmouse; and he very nearly falls in love ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... paleness accentuated by her black hair. She was quiet, read much, and took little interest in out-of-door activities, entering into the play-life of the other children but rarely. Her father insisted, later, on her riding, and she became a fair horsewoman. She was refined in all her relations. Edith went to New Orleans at seventeen. The spring after, she developed a hacking cough and had one or two slight hemorrhages, but at twenty was better and married an excellent young merchant. The child was born when she was twenty-two; three weeks ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... herself. So I admire Siegfried, and at the same time enjoy Tolstoy's satire; for I like the latter's sturdy humour, which is one of the most striking features of his realism, and which, as he himself noticed, makes him closely resemble Rousseau. Both men show us an ultra-refined civilisation, and both are uncompromising apostles of a return ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... whimsical tale of a no less whimsical revenge taken upon a piece of pedantic lumber, the name of which is given in the title. The varying ring and swing communicated to the dactyls of these two pieces by the jolly humour of the one and the refined sentiment of the other, is a point worth noticing. The easy flow, the careless charm of their versification, is by no means the artless matter it may seem to a careless reader. Nor is it the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... Cuban reciprocity bill being before the House, the sugar-beet interest demonstrated its power. The House "insurgents," joining the Democratic members, overrode the Speaker and the Ways and Means chairman, and attached to the bill an amendment cutting off the existing differential duty in favor of refined sugar. A locking of horns thus arose, which outlasted the session, neither side being able to convince or outvote the other. Sanguine Democrats thought that they espied here a hopeful Republican ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... to observation by reflecting that I was passing through scenes which I should probably never see again, and consequently ought not to omit observing. Still I fell into reveries, thinking, by way of excuse, that enlargement of mind and refined feelings are of little use but to barb the arrows of sorrow which waylay us everywhere, eluding the sagacity of wisdom and rendering principles unavailing, if considered as a breastwork to secure ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... like refined sugar and passing several wagons carrying heavy blocks down the road, we arrived at the mouth of the principal quarry where the purest statuary marble is obtained. I could not but think how many exquisite ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... gallery was connected on the right with the modern brick mass by an ancient wood-work bridge, coeval at least with the oldest portion of the building as it stands. But the bridge is gone, and the lust of gold and the pride of life have so destroyed that spirit of reverence and refined superstitious love for the venerable which should characterize an advanced civilization, that it is greatly to be feared the rest of the structure will soon follow. Yet it was in this courtyard, and before this very inn, that Chaucer and his nine-and-twenty pilgrims stood in picturesque confusion ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... so loyally of his master when he found himself about to face a Higher King. The steel-clad hand had forsaken him; even the German God—the "made in Germany" one which German professors and German pastors were loud in proclaiming as distinct and more refined than the God who watches over England, France and America—had now forsaken him. He felt the same impulse to howl that Tim had felt, although love and self-condemnation were not a part of it; only hatred. The water had reached ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... as a refined man. He was imprudent enough to use words which expressed his thoughts. He had ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... Dareios. For having heard and seen that Dareios desired to leave behind him as a memorial of himself a thing which had not been made by any other king, he imitated him, until at last he received his reward: for whereas Dareios refined gold and made it as pure as possible, and of this caused coins to be struck, Aryandes, being ruler of Egypt, did the same thing with silver; and even now the purest silver is that which is called Aryandic. Dareios ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... wrong he taught Truths as refined as ever Athens heard; And (strange to tell!) he ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... sacrifice yourself, Lucy. You must not defraud society of its rights. In a more refined circle, whose chances of happiness will be more likely to command than yours? You must go with me and Edith—go to Carolina. There you will find the proper homage. You will see the generous and the noble;—they will seek you—honorable gentlemen, proud of your ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... hand to those scanty curls, and the usual charming delicate smile; you might take him— so engaging is his utterance—for a Glycera, a Malthace, or her comic and meretricious majesty, Thais herself. What has a refined bewitching orator to ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... travellers, and however much they may shock our sense of probability, as well-authenticated exhibitions of a power which sways the Indian mind, and which has ever prejudiced it so unchangeably against Christianity and civilization, they cannot be disregarded. Whether they too are but specimens of refined knavery, whether they are instigations of the Devil, or whether they must be classed with other facts as illustrating certain obscure and curious mental faculties, each may decide as the bent of his mind inclines him, for ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... he said with a refined vigor one would scarcely have expected from an individual of his birth and breeding. "I shall leave to-morrow, of course. What was my mother thinking of? Stupid business from ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... objections. It is not merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and circumstances that present themselves before you—these may recall a number of objects, and lead to associations too delicate and refined to be possibly communicated to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company seems extravagance or affectation; ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... nature of abstract meanings and the intellectual processes by which we arrive at them. Unlike such words as tree, house, etc., the ideas they contain are not the immediate result of perceptual processes, in which even childish intelligence is adept, but are a refined and secondary product of relationships between other ideas. They require the logical processes of comparison, abstraction, and generalization. One cannot see justice, for example, but one is often confronted with situations in which justice or injustice is an element; and given a certain degree ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... then in Brittany, but became, as soon as it left the provinces for the capital, nomadic, changing its base at will from the garrison of the officer to that of the official, seems to have narrowed and refined its stock and condensed all the power of its past, all its hopes for the ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... of "refined" love consists in promiscuous immorality carefully concealed! "On the subject of love," he sums up with an injured air, "no persons have been less understood than the Indians." Yet this writer is cited seriously as a witness by Westermarck ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... meanness, a self-devotion, an unshrinking patience under privation, and the moral courage, that constitute the hero of high life. I can also tell the admirers of the great, that the evil passions of the vulgar are as gigantic, their wickedness upon as grand a scale, and their notions of vice as refined, and as extensive, as those of any fashionable roue that is courted among the first circles, or even as those of the crowned despot. Then, as to the strength of vulgar intellect: True, that intellect is rarely cultivated by the learning which consists of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... settlement—almost a colony—which, hidden behind high, barb-wire-topped fences, carried on the many and complex activities of the partners' experiment station. Here were the several laboratories where new products were evolved and old ones refined, for Flint's and Waldron's greater profit. Here stood a complete electric power plant, for lighting and heating the works, as well as for current to use in the retorts and many powerful machines of the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... age, the gods sent this equivocal good thing of Archie's presence. She had known him in the cradle and paddled him when he misbehaved; and yet, as she had not so much as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his last serious illness, the tall, slender, refined, and rather melancholy young gentleman of twenty came upon her with the shock of a new acquaintance. He was "Young Hermiston," "the laird himsel'": he had an air of distinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, that abashed the woman's tantrums in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... one egg nine heaping tea-spoonsful of double refined sugar, and one of nice Poland starch. The sugar and starch should be pounded, and sifted through a very fine sieve. Beat the whites of eggs to a stiff froth, so that you can turn the plate upside down, without the eggs falling from it—then stir in the sugar ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous

... words altered or derived from that ancient dialect; that these words usually express the most familiar ideas—such as man, house, land, &c.; and that the French terms gradually introduced, being those of a more highly civilised people, were adapted to express the more refined ideas. This is true even of physical objects; thus, for instance, most of the names of the animals used for food are still Teutonic—such as ox, sheep, swine, &c. The Anglo-Saxons, like the modern Germans, had no objection to say ox-flesh, sheep-flesh, swine's-flesh; but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... Beams of Light indeed, Refined, subtil, piercing, quick and pure; And as they do the sprightly winds exceed, Are worthy longer to endure; They far out-shoot the Reach of Grosser Air, With which such Excellence may not compare. ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... unwholesome utterances. Of these are many of the long and short stories setting forth in melodramatic pictures exceptionally good or exceptionally bad children; or exceptionally pathetic and romantic careers of sweet and refined Magdalens; minute and prolonged dissections of the processes of spiritual growth; equally minute and authoritative formulas for spiritual exercises of all sorts,—"manuals of drill," so to speak, or ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... habit; and to that his death may, in some sort, and was then entirely ascribed. But circumstances appeared after his death which led to a conclusion that concealed sorrow, might have had some share in it. From refined motives of tenderness for a beloved wife's feelings, and that loftiness of spirit which clings to the perfect gentleman, he concealed the state of his affairs in England, which had for some time been ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... ladies of remarkable beauty and refinement, whose elegant dresses, graceful manners and rare accomplishment in conversation and address, are well in keeping with the charming brilliancy of the hall, and the merryand refined company around them. ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... Zinc, Quicksilver, &c., not a great deal. But not only are the Ores of the metals first named varied and abundant, with Native Copper, Silver, &c., but the metals are also shown in every stage of their progress, from the rude elements just wrenched from the earth to the most refined and perfect bars or ingots. This department will richly reward the study of ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... greatest English poet except Shakspere, was born in London in 1608. His father was a scrivener, an educated man, and a musical composer of some merit. At his home Milton was surrounded with all the influences of a refined and well ordered Puritan household of the better class. He inherited his father's musical tastes, and during the latter part of his life, he spent a part of every afternoon in playing the organ. No poet has written more beautifully of music than Milton. One of his sonnets was addressed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... asked the young man, looking with interest and admiration at the poorly clad but refined and beautiful girl ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various

... feed on human flesh, but after many generations learned to do better without it. We may have simply outgrown the craving, till at last we call it unnatural, whereas those ancient Mexicans, with all their wealth of food, had refined upon it. Let us again refer to ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... the most refined circles of our society exercised a beneficial influence on the general tone of Egremont, and may be said to have finished his education. He had the good sense and the good taste not to permit his predilection for ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... (knitters), women who attended political clubs—working whilst they listened—1871 refined upon the idea of 1793. The first revolution had its Tricoteuses, that ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... prescribed a more regular alternation of accented and unaccented syllables and recommended the use of the alexandrine verse. Under his influence German poetry became more regular and artistic, but lost touch with the general life, being more and more regarded as a refined diversion of the scholar class. The text of selections 1-4 follows Braune's Neudrucke, No. 1 and Nos. 189-192; for No. 5 see Tittmann's edition in Deutsche Dichter des ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... the men at White's.... I am ashamed to say I am of so young and fashionable society." The lady patronesses were of the very highest rank. Timbs quotes from a letter of Gilly Williams: "You may imagine by the sum, the company is chosen, though refined as it is, it will scarcely put old Soho [Mrs. Cornelys] out of countenance." The place steadily maintained its popularity. Captain Gronow in 1814 says: "At the present time one can hardly conceive the importance which was attached to ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... the bottom of hell, 1305 The workers of woe. To the [other] two parts It will be unlike. They may angels' Lord, Victories' God, see. They shall be cleansed, Sundered from sins, as smelted gold, That is in the flame from every spot 1310 Through fire of the oven thoroughly cleansed, Freed and refined. So shall each of those men Be freed and made pure from every sin, From heavy crimes through fire of that doom. Then afterwards they may peace enjoy, 1315 Eternal bliss. To them angels' Warden Shall be mild and gentle, for that they every evil Despised, sins' work, and to Son of their Maker They ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous

... Primrose obtained her first situation, for Mrs. Mortlock was glad to feel her soft young hand, and her gentle and refined tones had an instant and soothing effect on the ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... of not more than twenty-one or two, exceedingly thin and sallow. Otherwise he would have been good-looking. His voice and manner were refined. ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... world, acting and reacting, Friedrich has his connections, which obscurely emerge on us now and then. Literary Eminences, who are generally of Theological vesture; any follower of Philosophy, especially if he be of refined manners withal, or known in fashionable life, is sure to attract him; and gains ample recognition at Reinsberg or on Town-visits. But the Berlin Theological or Literary world at that time, still more the Berlin Social, like a sunk extinct object, continues very dim in those ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... Not by a very long chalk, my son. You're going through some of the most refined torture you've ever known. But be calm. I ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... the number, or perhaps a favoured gentleman in a pigtail, reads out a novel to the company. Peep into the cottage at Olney, for example, and see there Mrs. Unwin and Lady Hesketh, those high-bred ladies, those sweet, pious women, and William Cowper, that delicate wit, that trembling pietist, that refined gentleman, absolutely reading out Jonathan Wild to the ladies! What a change in our manners, in our ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... absent- mindedness, and at the end of the third race we went away. It is not well to trust an English day too far; this had begun with brilliant sunshine, but it dimmed as it wore on, and we could not know that it was keeping for us the surprise of a very refined sunset. My memory does not serve as to just how we had got out to the race-ground; I think, from our being set down at the very gate, that it was by hansom or by fly; but now we promised ourselves to walk back to town. We did not actually ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... think that," answered Peter. "She did seem dull and stupid when I was here last. But I had a good stare at her just now, and she seems rather bright. Why, her accent is quite refined—she must have picked it ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... vice versa, my habits connected with my bed, with my clothing, with conventional cleanliness,—which are downright impossible and oppressive with physical labor,—and my demands as to the quality of my food, were entirely changed. In place of the dainty, rich, refined, complicated, highly-spiced food, to which I had formerly inclined, the most simple viands became needful and most pleasing of all to me,—cabbage-soup, porridge, black bread, and tea v prikusku. {238} So that, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... first drew Cato, much against his will, into the forum; for he opposed the demand of the tribunes, and in so doing, gave a specimen both of his courage and his powers of speaking, which gained him great admiration. His speech had nothing youthful or refined in it, but was straightforward, full of matter, and rough, at the same time that there was a certain grace about his rough statements which won the attention; and the speaker's character showing itself in all he said, added to his severe language something that excited feelings ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... Publicola suddenly encountered two young ladies, who resembled nothing he had hitherto met with in his district; they were dressed in black, and with extreme simplicity; but their easy grace and composure, and the refined sentiment of their gentle faces, told at a glance they belonged to the high nobility. Publicola divined them at once, and involuntarily raised his hat to so much beauty and dignity, instead of poking it with a finger as usual. On this the ladies ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... the first experience of gallantry. The young officer even took dancing-lessons. Moreover, in the drawing-rooms of the Abbe Saint-Ruf and of his friends, for the first time he saw the manners and heard the talk of refined society—provincial, to be sure, but excellent. It was to the special favor of Monseigneur de Marbeuf, the bishop of Autun, that he owed his warm reception. The acquaintances there made were with persons of local consequence, who in later years reaped ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... opening Carter's face appeared. It was a pale, delicate face, over-sensitive, over-refined, with the stamp of weakness on every feature. His restless, nervous eyes were slightly bloodshot, and there was a constant twitching about his lips. But as he pushed back the shutter and leaned carelessly against ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... as a captain in the army with the Viceroy de Tracy, and was remarkable for his highly refined education, having been a pupil of the celebrated Fenelon, who was said to have been the pattern of virtue in the midst of a corrupt court, and who was entrusted by Louis the Fourteenth with the education of his grandsons, the Dukes of Burgundy, Anjou and Berri. ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... along the gallery into the dining-room with the Princess. Behind them came the Baroness, who watched them as they went: Thomery, big, muscular, broad-shouldered: Sonia Danidoff, slim, pliant, refined, dainty! ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... he was twenty-two. It was astonishing; he had gone away a pimply, overgrown boy, raw and callow as a fledgling, constrained in society, diffident, awkward. Now he returned, a tall, well-formed Harvardian, as careful as a woman in the matter of dress, very refined in his manners. Besides, he was a delightful conversationalist. His father was rejoiced; every one declared he was a ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... The sunshine seemed actually to fill up the cups and spill over into the gilt-bordered saucers, as Laura looked. "It is a 'sunset tea,' indeed," she said to herself; "and if Kitty Grant could see how pretty and refined were the simple arrangements, she wouldn't mix Esther up with any horrid common emigrants, if she does live on McVane Street. Esther a foreigner of any kind! Nothing could be more absurd. Esther ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry

... situated in the most fashionable part of the city, the West End. This is a most worthy institution, designed for ladies who have been reduced from affluence to poverty, affording them a home where they can mingle with a class of people congenial to their refined natures. This building is a beautiful brick structure, four stories high, erected at a cost of $200,000. Visitors are ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... never became a churchman, or that I never expected he would. All his memories of a religious childhood, all the sources of the influences which had refined and elevated him, were surrounded with other associations than those of the Church and her forms. The Church was his grandmother, not his mother, and he had not made any acquaintance with her till comparatively ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... he lived in, (which Arnoldus Vion saith, was about the Year 1346.) may pass with some praise, but others say he flourished a Century of years afterwards, viz. 1513. which if so, they are hardly to be excused, Poetry being in that time much refined; but whensoever he lived, Bale saith, he was (the Diamond in the Ring) Pro ea ipsa ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley

... have to be refined to pure aluminum oxide before it could be smelted," George said. "And you can't smelt aluminum ore in an ordinary furnace—only in an electric furnace with a generator that can supply a high amperage. ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... Primary emotions become refined, first by modifications of the motor response, by which socially acceptable reactions are substituted for the primitive crying, screaming, biting and scratching, guffawing, dancing up and down in excitement, etc.; second by new attachments ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... wide and keen observer and a hospitable entertainer of opinions, he does not force these upon us as final. Coming and going at ease, they leave a mysterious sense of greater wisdom with us, an indefinable residue of refined truth. ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... promoted on account of his virtuous life. He was a good example in his own village, and a great promoter of schools. The old man is candid enough to confess that he was happier among his rustic peasants than he is now in more refined society. We gave him the book of Genesis in Modern Greek; and it was highly gratifying to us to see the surprise and pleasure of his countenance on being presented with an account of the Creation and works of the Almighty ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... a master discoursing to his scholars; he frequently praises himself; he entertains a very poor opinion of the understanding of his companions. Certainly the boastfulness and rudeness of the Laws is the reverse of the refined irony and courtesy which characterize the earlier dialogues. We are no longer in such good company as in the Phaedrus and Symposium. Manners are lost sight of in the earnestness of the speakers, and dogmatic assertions take the place ...
— Laws • Plato

... halves. She promises to be a most attractive, not to say beautiful, girl. I have seen that for years; and if her face is not her fortune, her face and her brains together will be, if I observe and contrive aright. That she should be, every inch of her, an accomplished and refined woman, was indispensable for the fulfilment of her destiny, and for moving onwards and upwards with us; and she'll do it, you will see. I'd half starve myself rather than take her ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... what barbarians!" cried the little doctor, as they walked down the Bridges. "And this is my dream of refined quiet and ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... such a virtuous and discreet people! And thus does one's very notions of what is right become a marketable article. Where neither money nor place is wanted, a gracious look and an invitation to dinner may have quite a telling effect. In fact, the more refined men have become, through the action of circumstances, such as education and position, the more abstracted and attenuated is the equivalent they demand for their virtue; till we reach the highest grade of all, whose noble natures, as they are called, can be seduced only by affection and gratitude. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... Rokens that evening that he had rashly entered into ladies' society, for he was a nervous man in refined company, though cool and firm as a grounded iceberg when in the society of his messmates, or when towing with the speed of a steamboat in the wake of ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... acquaintance, my heart now quite yearned towards him. He talked about love and sentiment in a manner which made me recollect that I was in love myself; and you know that when a man is in that condition, his taste is not very refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse appearing sublime to him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... LANGUAGES.—During the five centuries of their subjection to Rome, the natives of Spain and Gaul forgot their barbarous dialects and came to speak a corrupt Latin. Now in exactly the same way that the dialects of the Celtic tribes of Gaul and of the Celtiberians of Spain had given way to the more refined speech of the Romans, did the rude languages of the Teutons yield to the more cultured speech of the Roman provincials. In the course of two or three centuries after their entrance into the empire, Goths, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... road. It is perhaps the privilege of genius to see the goal by intuition: the road and the vehicle are subsidiary and may be varied to suit the minds of different nations. Christ, being a Jew, took for his basis a refined form of the old Jewish theism. He purged Jehovah of his jealousy and prejudices and made him a spirit of pure benevolence who behaves to men as a loving father and bids them behave to one another as loving brethren. Such ideas lie outside the sphere ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... peace, and love of her pure, refined, if saddened home, everything went well with Princess Victoria, of whom we can only tell that we know the old brick palace where she dwelt, the playground that was hers, the walks she must have taken. We have sat ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... unbefitting their importance. In short, the tone of the American newspaper has been elevated without the loss of its popular characteristics, and the tastes of its readers have thereby—unconsciously, perhaps, but none the less surely—been refined. For at least the length of time mentioned at the beginning of this article, journalism has been regarded as worthy to rank beside, if not exactly to be classed with, the "learned professions." The newspaper writer has emerged ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... far from England, there lived three men who loved each other so greatly that neither man nor woman could come between them. They were in no sense refined, nor to be admitted to the outer-door mats of decent folk, because they happened to be private soldiers in Her Majesty's Army; and private soldiers of our service have small time for self-culture. Their duty is to ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... civilisation, because nature comes from God, and His works are good; culture from man, whose works are bad in proportion as he is remoter from natural innocence, as his desires increase upon him, as he seeks more refined pleasures, and stores up more superfluity. It promotes inequality, selfishness, and the ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... refined lips, arched like the love-god's bow and many times as dangerous; not those cheeks—those soft peach-tinted cheeks, telling in ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... most rare and refined and precious in this vision, told as it is with a sweet serenity. But it does not touch the heart like the ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... systematic as a country cemetery, and, worst of all, the whole time desperately in love. Every verse is as flat, thin, and regular as a lath, and their poems are nothing more than bundles of such tied trimly together. They are said to have refined our language. Let us devoutly hope they did, for it would be pleasant to be grateful to them for something. But I fear it was not so, for only genius can do that; and Sternhold and Hopkins are inspired men in comparison with them. For Sternhold was at least ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... language we have used has been purposely delicate, that Cynthia was already in love with—somebody else. Shame of shames and horror of horrors—with Jethro Bass! With Strength, in the crudest form in which it is created, perhaps, but yet with Strength. The strength might gradually and eventually be refined. Such was her hope, when she had any. It is hard, looking back upon that virginal and cultured Cynthia, to be convinced that she could have loved passionately, and such a man! But love she did, and passionately, too, and hated herself for it, and prayed and struggled to cast out what ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... these tragedies are so uniform, not only in their borrowed phraseology—a phraseology with which writers like Boethius and Saxo Grammaticus were more charmed than ourselves—in their freedom from real poetry, and last, but not least, in an ultra-refined and consistent abandonment of good taste, that few writers of the present day would question the capabilities of the same gentleman, be he Seneca or not, to produce not only these, but a great many more equally bad. With equal sagacity, Father Hardouin astonished ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... mother, refined and white and delicate as she was, did not appeal to him; but Sarah, in her radiant youth, with her brilliant colouring—fresh as a May morning, buxom as a dairymaid, scornful as a princess—had struck Sir Peter dumb with admiration, though he ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... collector inveighed against the dirty hands of readers, and against their habit of marking their place in a book with filthy straws, or setting down a beer pot in the middle of the volume to keep the pages open. But the amateur, however refined himself, must beware of men who love not fly leaves neither regard margins, but write notes over the latter, and light their pipes with the former. After seeing the wreck of a book which these persons have been busy with, one appreciates the fine Greek hyperbole. The Greeks did not ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... is now happy by the arrival of Carlos. This was not wishing you a happy Christmas, but actually making it so. Let all our compliments be henceforth practical. The language of the world sounds fulsome to tastes refined by ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... of the hotel is a spacious dining room. The Spaniard doesn't want breakfast. He wants coffee and fruit—maybe a small banana—something sweet, and a crumb of bread. The necessity of the hour is a few cigarettes. His refined system does not require food until later. At 12 o'clock he lunches, and eats an abundance of hot stuff—fish, flesh and fowl—fiery stews and other condolences for the stomach. This gives strength to consider the wrongs of Spain and the way, when ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... so delicate that th' workmen iv th' West can't undherstand thim? We make our lies be machinery; they tur-rn out theirs be hand. They imitate th' best iv our canned lies to deceive people that likes that kind, but f'r artists they have lies that appeals to a more refined taste. Sure I'd like to live among thim an' find out th' kind iv bouncers they tell each other. They must be gr- rand. I on'y know their export lies now—th' surplus lies they can't use at home. An' th' kind they sind out ar-re betther thin our best. ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... that the bowing and kneeling of the servants looks much more natural and less servile when you see people seated on the floor, and the servants have to kneel to hand them anything. His personality is that of a scholarly type, rather ascetic, not over refined, but not in the least sleek like some of our Hindu swamis, and very charming. When we left he thanked us for coming and expressed his great satisfaction that he had made some friends. His talk was largely moral but with a high metaphysical flavor, somewhat elusive, and reminding ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey

... slightly lustrous. The eyes were set in so dark, that one expected them to be black and flashing. And then one met the yellow pupils, sulphureous and remote. It was like meeting a lion. His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and curling lips seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture. He was waiting: silent there, with something muscular and remote about his very droop, he was waiting. What for? Alvina could not guess. She wanted to meet his eye, to have an open understanding with him. But he would not. When she went up to talk to him, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... it to you if that wasn't enough to get me scrapin' my front hoof. How you goin' to break it to a gent sittin' by your own fireside that maybe he's a bit rough in the neck, or too much of a yawp to fit into the refined and exclusive circle that patronizes the 8:03 bankers' express? As I see it, the thing can't ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... split up as it is into numerous metaphysical teachings, possesses, when united to Indian ontological doctrines, such a well developed logic, such a wonderfully refined psychology, that it might well take the first rank when contrasted with the schools, ancient and modern, idealist or positivist, and eclipse them all in turn. That positivism expounded by Lewis, that makes each particular hair on the heads of Oxford ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... ranting or declamation, they were very effective. If the Rev. Henry Maxwell that morning felt satisfied with the conditions of his pastorate, the First Church also had a similar feeling as it congratulated itself on the presence in the pulpit of this scholarly, refined, somewhat striking face and figure, preaching with such animation and freedom from all ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... heavy weight fell on Jo's heart as she saw her sister's face. It was no paler and but littler thinner than in the autumn, yet there was a strange, transparent look about it, as if the mortal was being slowly refined away, and the immortal shining through the frail flesh with an indescribably pathetic beauty. Jo saw and felt it, but said nothing at the time, and soon the first impression lost much of its power, for Beth seemed happy, no one appeared to doubt that she was better, and presently ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott



Words linked to "Refined" :   cultivated, dainty, genteel, gentlemanly, suave, sophisticated, superfine, finespun, polished, gracious, civilized, ladylike, well-bred, unrefined, debonaire, cultured, couth, twee, polite, debonnaire, well-mannered, debonair, mincing, patrician, gentlemanlike, civilised, niminy-piminy, prim, delicate, fastidious



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com