Refinement Quotes - Page 8

• He almost said to himself that he did not like her, before their conversation ended; he tried so hard to compensate himself for the mortified feeling, that while he looked upon her with an admiration he could not repress, she looked at him with proud indifference, taking him, he thought, for what, in his irritation, he told himself - was a great fellow, with not a grace or a refinement about him.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Irritation, Grace, Feelings

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• There are many other little refinements too, Mr. Bohlen. You'll see them all when you study the plans carefully. For example, there's a trick that nearly every writer uses, of inserting at least one long, obscure word into each story. This makes the reader think that the man is very wise and clever. So I have the machine do the same thing. There'll be a whole stack of long words stored away just for this purpose." Where?" In the 'word-memory' section," he said, epexegetically.

  Roald Dahl

  Wise, Clever, Memories

  Roald Dahl (1991). “Collected Stories”, Everyman's Library

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• In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art--the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard's canvases--beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden.

  Anne Rice

  Art, Men, Garden

  Anne Rice (2003). “The vampire Lestat”

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• Conciseness in art is essential and a refinement. The concise man makes one think; the verbose bores. Always work towards conciseness.

  Edouard Manet

  Art, Men, Thinking

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• Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Nature, Children

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “The Most Alive is the Wildest – Thoreau’s Complete Works on Living in Harmony with the Nature: Walden, Walking, Night and Moonlight, The Highland Light, A Winter Walk, The Maine Woods, A Walk to Wachusett, The Landlord, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples…”, p.817, e-artnow

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• This is not a new world - it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements...technological advances...and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like everyone of the super-states that preceded it - it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.

  Rod Serling

  Iron, Enemy, Boots

  "The Twilight Zone: The Obsolete Man". TV Series, www.imdb.com. 1961.

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• The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life,in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Faith, Art, Truth

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.155

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• The British have their own conception of what constitutes the typical American. He must have a flavor of the Wild West about him. He must do spectacular things. He must not be punctilious about dignity, decorum and other refinements characteristic of the real British gentleman. The Yankee pictured by the Briton must be a bustler. If he is occasionally flagrantly indiscreet in speech and action, then he is so much more surely stamped the genuine article. The most typical American the British ever set their eyes on was, in their judgment, Theodore Roosevelt.

  B. C. Forbes

  Real, Eye, America

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• Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civilized history appears the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of luxury. But the civilized man misses no real refinement in the poetry of the rudest era. It reminds him that civilization does but dress men. It makes shoes, but it does not toughen the soles of the feet. It makes cloth of finer texture, but it does not touch the skin. Inside the civilized man stands the savage still in the place of honor. We are those blue-eyed, yellow-haired Saxons, those slender, dark-haired Normans.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fashion, Art, Real

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Journeys, Adventures & Life in Harmony with Nature – 6 Book Collection (Illustrated): Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada & Canoeing in the Wilderness - North American Highlands Series”, p.257, e-artnow

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• It was a wise and useful provision of the ancients to transmit their thoughts to posterity by recording them in treatises, so that they should not be lost, but, being developed in succeeding generations through publications in books, should gradually attain in later times, to the highest refinement of learning.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Wise, Book, Generations

  "De architectura (Ten Books on Architecture)". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Book VII, Introduction, Section 1), circa 15 BC.

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• If they who understand the utmost refinement of any art will enjoy the perfection of it in a manner superior to other men, will they not amply pay for that advantage in feeling more than other men the imperfection of it, which in the natural course of things must so much oftener fall in their way?

  Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

  Art, Fall, Men

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• A woman must be truly refined to incite chivalry in the heart of a man.

  Suzanne Curchod

  Heart, Men, Chivalry

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• Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?

  William Morris

  Wall, Thinking, Two

  William Morris (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of William Morris (Illustrated)”, p.6494, Delphi Classics

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• What is the highest of all goods achievable by action? ...both the general run of man and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness ...but with regard to what happiness is they differ.

  Aristotle

  Running, Men, People

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “Nicomachean Ethics”, p.18, Aeterna Press

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• So, in the tulip, we have a flower of beauty and grace of charm, refinement and distinction. It is a powerful flower and it knows it

  Tadashi Shoji

  Powerful, Flower, Grace

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• Rawness and refinement are not opposite ends of a luxurious spectrum they are two complementary features with which to populate a luxe environment.

  Kelly Wearstler

  Opposites, Two, Rawness

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• Agriculture is the foundation of manufactures; since the productions of nature are the materials of art. Under the Roman empire, the labour of an industrious and ingenious people was variously, but incessantly employed, in the service of the rich. In their dress, their table, their houses, and their furniture, the favourites of fortune united every refinement of conveniency, of elegance, and of splendour, whatever could soothe their pride or gratify their sensuality.

  Edward Gibbon

  Art, Pride, Agriculture

  Edward Gibbon (1841). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1: With Maps”, p.33

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• It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Savages, Elegance

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Edmond Malone (1824). “The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., comprehending an account of his studies, and numerous works, in chronological order: a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published; the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished”, p.272

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• The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Art, World, Taste

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 605-09, Literary Character of Men of Genius, Vers de Société, 1922.

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• Refinement is just as much a Christian grace in a man as in a woman; but he is not such a hateful, unsexed creature without it as a woman is.

  Charlotte Mary Yonge

  Christian, Men, Grace

  Charlotte Mary Yonge (1890). “Womankind”

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• That only can with propriety be styled refinement which, by strengthening the intellect, purifies the manners.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Manners, Strengthening, Intellect

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• In its broad sense, civilization means not only comfort in daily necessities but also the refining of knowledge and the cultivation of virtue so as to elevate human life to a higher plane... It refers to the attainment of both material well-being and the elevation of the human spirit, [but] since what produces man's well-being and refinement is knowledge and virtue, civilization ultimately means the progress of man's knowledge and virtue.

  Fukuzawa Yukichi

  Mean, Men, Civilization

  "An encouragement of learning". Book by Fukuzawa Yukichi and Obata Tokujirō, 1872-1876.

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• Although the progress of civilisation has undoubtedly contributed to assuage the fiercer passions of human nature, it seems to have been less favourable to the virtue of chastity, whose most dangerous enemy is the softness of the mind. The refinements of life corrupt while they polish the intercourse of the sexes. The gross appetite of love becomes most dangerous when it is elevated, or rather, indeed, disguised by sentimental passion.

  Edward Gibbon

  Sex, Passion, Love Is

  Edward Gibbon (1998). “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.191, Wordsworth Editions

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• The general notions about human understanding...which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture, they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Encouragement, Buddhist, Discovery

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• You know that your toddler needed love and approval but he often seemed not to care whether he got it or not and never seemed to know how to earn it. Your pre-school child is positively asking you to tell him what does and does not earn approval, so he is ready to learn any social refinement of being human which you will teach him....He knows now that he wants your love and he has learned how to ask for it.

  Penelope Leach

  Children, School, Asking

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