Refined Quotes - Page 2

• This group had a kind of dark glamour within the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty.

  J. K. Rowling

  Dark, Leader, Ambitious

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• You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice neighborhood, very refined. You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone's yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district. The tree knew. It came there first. Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out on the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished. That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.

  Betty Smith

  Nice, Sunday, Air

  Betty Smith (2009). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, p.6, Harper Collins

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• Sometimes success demands a certain refined insanity.

  Isobelle Carmody

  Success, Insanity, Demand

  Isobelle Carmody (2011). “The Keeping Place: Obernewtyn Chronicles: Book Four”, p.701, A&C Black

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• In the end things must be as they are and have always been--the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Profound, Delicacy, Ends

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2017). “The Essential Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals”, p.46, Chartwell Books

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• How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.

  Ian Mcewan

  Self, Guilt, Rosary

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• Every accomplishment, every refined talent, every useful attainment in mathematics, music, and in all sciences, and art belong to the Saints.

  Brigham Young

  Music, Art, Accomplishment

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• The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Spiritual, Punishment, Dangerous

  D. H. Lawrence (2016). “Fantasia of the Unconscious: Top Novelist Focus”, p.29, 谷月社

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• Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.

  Thomas Chandler Haliburton

  Contentment, Indolence

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• The thing about playing percussion is that you can create all these emotions that can be sometimes beautiful, sometimes really ugly, or sometimes sweet, sometimes as big as King Kong and so on. And so there can be a real riot out there, or it can be so refined.

  Evelyn Glennie

  Beautiful, Sweet, Kings

  "Beat of a Different Drummer". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. June 14, 1999.

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• People are complex. You can be smart and still look hot. You can be a punk rocker yet have a refined vocabulary. It's all about this mashup that makes us who we are and I think that's a beautiful thing.

  Nadia Giosia

  Beautiful, Smart, Thinking

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• The eye is the most refined of our senses, the one which communicates most directly with our mind, our consciousness.

  Robert Delaunay

  Eye, Mind, Consciousness

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• There are only Epicureans, either crude or refined; Christ was the most refined.

  Georg Buchner

  Christ, Crude, Epicurean

  "Danton's Death". Play by Georg Buchner, Act I, 1835.

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• The use of refined petroleum as fuel, which began in the 1850s, freed hundreds of millions of people from the toil of centuries, gave hundreds of millions more a life of ease and plenty, and, by allowing great cities to feed themselves from every corner of the world, multiplied the population of the earth fivefold.

  James Buchan

  Cities, People, Toil

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• In general, the more food we eat in its natural state - without additives - and the less it is refined, the healthier it will be for us. Food can affect the mind, and deficiencies of certain elements in the body can promote mental depression.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Mind, Elements, Body

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• The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.

  George Saunders

  Jobs, Artist, Thinking

  "This Week in Fiction: George Saunders" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. October 4, 2012.

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• Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.

  Laurence Sterne

  Motivational, Forgiveness, Brave

  Laurence Sterne (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Laurence Sterne (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

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• You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.

  Dorothy Parker

  Jobs, Book, Reading

  Dorothy Parker (1970). “A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by "Constant Reader"”

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• While boasting of our noble deeds we're careful to conceal the ugly fact that by an iniquitous money system we have nationalized a system of oppression which, though more refined, is not less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery.

  Horace Greeley

  Historical, Liberty, Bankers

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• Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please, With too much spirit to be e'er at ease, With too much quickness ever to be taught, With too much thinking to have common thought: You purchase pain with all that joy can give, And die of nothing but a rage to live.

  Alexander Pope

  Wise, Pain, Women

  Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson (1822). “The poems of Alexander Pope”, p.91

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• How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners.

  Nikolai Gogol

  Savages, Manners, Concealed

  Nikolai Gogol (2011). “The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol”, p.397, Vintage

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• My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!

  Oscar Wilde

  Girl, Sweet, Nice

  Oscar Wilde (1994). “The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.21, Heinemann

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• The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight and well-being.

  Andrew Weil

  Weight, Carbohydrates, Well Being

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• Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment.

  Morihei Ueshiba

  Sports, Enlightenment, Body

  "Inspire! What Great Leaders Do" by Lance Secretan, (p. 45), 2004.

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• The more refined and subtle our minds, the more vulnerable they are.

  Paul Tournier

  Mind, Vulnerable, Subtle

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• He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

  Arthur Balfour

  Funny, Art, Book

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