Refinement Quotes - Page 5

• The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.

  Eugene Delacroix

  Art, Imagination, Genius

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• I think chemistry is being frittered away by the hairsplitting of the organic chemists; we have new compounds discovered, which scarcely differ from the known ones and when discovered are valueless-very illustrations perhaps of their refinements in analysis, but very little aiding the progress of true science.

  Michael Faraday

  Knowledge, Science, Thinking

  Michael Faraday, Christian Friedirich Schoenbein (1899). “The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862: With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters”

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• It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary; and it is one among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Simple, Men, Path

  Alexander Hamilton (1831). “The Federalist on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788, with an Appendix Containing the Letters of Pacificus and Helvidius on the Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793”, p.58

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• Sometime in the eternities to come, we will see that our trials were calculated to cause us to turn to our Heavenly Father for strength and support. Any affliction or suffering we are called upon to bear may be directed to give us experience, refinement, and perfection.

  Delbert L. Stapley

  Strength, Father, Blessing

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• There are many true ladies, and they differ somewhat from society generally. So does a true gentleman, on the same principle of refinement and nobility of character.

  Maria Jane McIntosh

  Character, Gentleman, Principles

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• A cell of a higher organism contains a thousand different substances, arranged in a complex system. This great organized system was not discovered by chemical or physical methods; they are inadequate to its refinement and delicacy and complexity.

  Herbert Spencer Jennings

  Cells, Substance, Delicacy

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• Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival's doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Educational, Ideas, Words Of Wisdom

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• The surest hindrance of success is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the judgment of the public. He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection will never do anything to please himself or others.

  William Hazlitt

  Perfection, Mind, Determined

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• The biggest big business in America is not steel, automobiles, or television. It is the manufacture, refinement and distribution of anxiety.

  Eric Sevareid

  America, Anxiety, Steel

  Eric Sevareid (1964). “This is Eric Sevareid”

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• Women bring with them into the world a certain virtue, a divine gift that makes them adept at instilling such qualities as faith, courage, empathy and refinement in relationships and in cultures.

  D. Todd Christofferson

  Empathy, Being A Mother, Quality

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• One should put forth great effort in matters of learning. One should read books concerning military matters, and direct his attention exclusively to
  the virtues of loyalty and filial piety. Reading Chinese poetry, linked
  verse, and waka is forbidden. One will surely become womanized if he gives
  his heart such knowledge of such elegant and delicate refinements. Having
  been born into the house of a warrior, one's intentions should be to grasp
  the long and the short swords and to die

  Kato Kiyomasa

  Loyalty, Military, Reading

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• The process of design starts with exploration, but ends with refinement. The best designers carefully move from one to the other, making sure they spend enough time exploring before locking themselves into a design approach.

  Jared Spool

  Moving, Design, Enough Time

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• If the national park is, as Lord Bryce suggested, the best idea America has ever had, wilderness preservation is the highest refinement of that idea.

  Wallace Stegner

  Ideas, America, National Parks

  Wallace Earle Stegner (1995). “Where the bluebird sings to the lemonade springs: living and writing in the West”, Random House Value Pub

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• American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood, to make laws for you and your daughters awake to the danger of your present position and demand that woman, too, shall be represented in the government!

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Daughter, Order, Law

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ann Dexter Gordon, Susan Brownell Anthony (2000). “The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Against an aristocracy of sex, 1866 to 1873”, p.237, Rutgers University Press

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• Love is the creative refinement of sex energy. And so, when love reaches perfection, the absence of sex automatically follows. A life of love, an abstinence from physical pleasures is called brahmacharya, and anyone who wishes to be free from sex must develop his capacity to love. Freedom from sex cannot be achieved through supersession. Liberation from sex is only possible through love.

  Rajneesh

  Sex, Love Is, Capacity To Love

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• All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all living things whatsoever.

  Ashley Montagu

  Life, Education, Equality

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• Yale's greatness carries an urgent need to guard against the fall of excellence into exclusivity, of refinement into preciousness, of elegance into class and convention.

  Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.

  Fall, Greatness, Yale

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• Does power bring happiness? Does it bring refinement? Does it bring humor? Does it bring a good-heartedness, or is it just cold? Power is never cold. Cold people may use power in cold ways.

  Frederick Lenz

  Power, People, May

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• A man who from the beginning has long been soaked in the languid atmosphere of a woman, the scent of her hands, her bosom, her knees, her hair, her lithe and flowing clothes,
  Sweet bath, suavely
  Scented with ointments,
  
  has acquired a delicacy of skin, a refinement of tone, a kind of androgyny without which the toughest and most virile of geniuses remains, when it comes to artistic perfection, an incomplete being.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Women, Hair, Hands

  "Les paradis artificiels". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1860.

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• As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures, American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The Egyptian is so of the cavern and the mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Country, House, Tree

  Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Julian Hawthorne (2015). “Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of “The Scarlet Letter”, “The House of Seven Gables” and “Twice-Told Tales””, p.225, e-artnow

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• A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence and refinement so they think they will impress others with their command of obscure words.

  Barbara Walters

  Thinking, People, Obscure

  "How to Talk With Practically Anybody About Practically Anything". Book by Barbara Walters, 1970.

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• That which men suppose the imagination to be, and to do, is often frivolous enough and mischievous enough; but that which God meant it to be in the mental economy is not merely noble, but supereminent. It is the distinguishing element in all refinement. It is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Eye, Men, Civilization

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.56

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• Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Expression, Ideas, Office

  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Beecher STOWE (2016). “Collected Works (Complete and Illustrated Editions: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Queer Little Folks, The Chimney-Corner, ...)”, p.580, Harriet Beecher Stowe

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• The blessing which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent.

  Jane Addams

  Blessing, Hull House, Made

  Jane Addams, Jean Bethke Elshtain (2002). “The Jane Addams Reader”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut each others throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing a modus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.

  William James

  Believe, Heart, Cutting

  Letter to John Jay Chapman, April 5, 1897.

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