Refinement Quotes - Page 7

• There is a certain beauty and refinement that is often found in our world and it is expensive. It shouldn't necessarily be so. It is just the way our economic system is.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Our World, Way

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• The way our world is set up, a higher economic priority is given to things that bespeak a greater refinement. It is just a determination that was made, to make money.

  Frederick Lenz

  Success, Determination, Buddhism

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• How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.

  Winston Churchill

  Dog, Men, Agriculture

  Winston Churchill (2012). “Churchill: The Power of Words”, p.50, Hachette UK

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• Far better, and more cheerfully, I could dispense with some part of the downright necessaries of life, than with certain circumstances of elegance and propriety in the daily habits of using them.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Elegance, Habit, Certain

  Thomas De Quincey, James Thomas Fields (1851). “De Quincey's Writings: Life and manners; from The autobiography of an English opium-eater. 1851”, p.14

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• We all originally came from the woods! it is hard to eradicate from any of us the old taste for the tattoo and the war-paint; and the moment that money gets into our pockets, it somehow or another breaks out in ornaments on our person, without always giving refinement to our manners.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Tattoo, War, Giving

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1875). “Success and Its Conditions”, p.290

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• A semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Civilization, Luxury, Selfishness

  Charles Caleb Colton (1821). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.227

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• The expression of a gentleman's face is not so much that of refinement, as of flexibility, not of sensibility and enthusiasm as of indifference; it argues presence of mind rather than enlargement of ideas.

  William Hazlitt

  Presence Of Mind, Expression, Ideas

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• No improvement that takes place in either sex can possibly be confined to itself. Each is a universal mirror to each, and the respective refinement of the one will always be in reciprocal proportion to the polish of the other.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Sex, Mirrors, Improvement

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• The expressive word "quiet" defines the dress, manners, bow, and even physiognomy of every true denizen of St. James and Bond street.

  Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Bows, Dresses, Quiet

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• Real good-breeding is independent of the forms and refinements of what has assumed to itself the name of society.

  George MacDonald

  Real, Independent, Names

  George MacDonald (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)”, p.202, Delphi Classics

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• The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build the most important function that software builders do for their clients is the iterative extraction and refinement of the product requirements. For the truth is, the clients do not know what they want. They usually do not know what questions must be answered, and they have almost never thought of the problem in the detail that must be specified.

  Fred Brooks

  Important, Details, Want

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• Good engineering is characterized by gradual, stepwise refinement of products that yields increased performance under given constraints and with given resources.

  Niklaus Wirth

  Yield, Engineering, Resources

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• Manners or etiquette ('accessibility, affability, politeness, refinement, propriety, courtesy, and ingratiating and captivating behavior') call for no large measure of moral determination and cannot, therefore, be reckoned as virtues. Even though manners are no virtues, they are a means of developing virtue.... The more we refine the crude elements in our nature, the more we improve our humanity and the more capable it grows of feeling the driving force of virtuous principles.

  Immanuel Kant

  Determination, Communication, Mean

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• The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or there will be no blessings.

  John Adams

  Blessing, Government, Vices

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.418

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• dance is simply the refinement of human movement - walking, running, and jumping. We are all experts. There should be no art form more accessible than dance, yet no art is more mystifying in the public imagination.

  Twyla Tharp

  Dance, Running, Art

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• Tis mighty easy o'er a glass of wine
  On vain refinements vainly to refine,
  To laugh at poverty in plenty's reign,
  To boast of apathy when out of pain,
  And in each sentence, worthy of the schools,
  Varnish'd with sophistry, to deal out rules
  Most fit for practice, but for one poor fault
  That into practice they can ne'er be brought.

  Charles Churchill

  Pain, Wine, School

  Charles Churchill (1855). “The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill: With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes”, p.377

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• 'Monsieur,' Madame d'Arestel, Superior of the convent of the Visitation at Belley, once said to me more than fifty years ago, 'whenever you want to have a really good cup of chocolate, make it the day before, in a porcelain coffeepot, and let it set. The night's rest will concentrate it and give it a velvety quality which will make it better. Our good God cannot possibly take offense at this little refinement, since he himself is everything that is most perfect.'

  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

  Food, Night, Years

  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (2009). “The Physiology of Taste: or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy”, p.124, Vintage

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• That alone can be called true refinement which elevates the soul of man, purifying the manners by improving the intellect.

  Hosea Ballou

  Men, Soul, He Man

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• Riches are valuable at all times, and to all men, because they always purchase pleasures such as men are accustomed to and desire; nor can anything restrain or regulate the love of money but a sense of honor and virtue, which, if it be not nearly equal at all times, will naturally abound most in ages of knowledge and refinement.

  David Hume

  Men, Honor, Age

  David Hume (1809). “Essays and treatises on several subjects in two volumes: Essays, moral, political, and literacy”, p.293

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• We built the iPod in weeks. It had to be what I thought it was going to be because there wasnt time for endless refinements.

  Tony Fadell

  Ipods, Week, Endless

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• EXTREME LUXURY ISN'T THE MOST BLING-BLING, IT'S EXTREME REFINEMENT, WHICH IS COUTURE AT ITS FINEST.

  Karl Lagerfeld

  Luxury, Bling, Finest

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• True delicacy, as true generosity, is more wounded by an offence from itself--if I may be allowed the expression--than to itself.

  Sir Fulke Greville

  Expression, Generosity, Delicacy

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• There is nothing so catching as refinement.

  Emily Eden

  Catching

  Emily Eden (1861). “The Semi-attached Couple”, p.356

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• In life we only try to produce, to win, and enjoy the more we can; in science, to discoverand invent the more we can; in religion, to dominate (or rule over) on the greatest number of people we can; whereas the forming of the character, the further development (or in-dept analysis, "appronfondissement", Fr.) of the faculties of the intelligence ("les facultés de l'intelligence", Fr.), the refinement of the consciousness and of the heart, are considered incidental (or subordinate) things.

  African Spir

  Character, Heart, Winning

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 52), 1937.

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• It is in the stomach of plants that development begins, and ends in the circles of the universe. 'Tis a long scale from the gorilla to the gentleman,--from the gorilla to Plato, Newton, Shakespeare,--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legislation, the summit of science, art, and poetry. The beginnings are slow and infirm, but it is an always accelerated march.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Plato, Circles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1905). “The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”

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