Refinement Quotes - Page 9

• 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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• 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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• Whenever education and refinement carry us away from the common people, they are growing towards selfishness, which is the monster evil of the world. That is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of human life, and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement. Refinement that carries us away from our fellow people is not God's refinement.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  People, Evil, Giving

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• The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Sick, Sickness, Ruling

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

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• The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.

  William Hazlitt

  Relief, Sometimes, Natural

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1336, Delphi Classics

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• No sane person, I hope, would accuse me of saying that every Distributist must drink beer; especially if he could brew his own cider or found claret better for his health. But I do most emphatically scorn and scout the vulgar refinement that regards beer as something unseemly and humiliating. And I would shout the name of beer a hundred times a day, to shock all the snobs who have so shameful a sense of shame.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Beer, Names, Cider

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• The crimes of extreme civilization are probably worse than those of extreme barbarism, because of their refinement, the corruption they presuppose, and their superior degree of intellectuality.

  Jules Amedee Barbey d'Aurevilly

  Civilization, Degrees, Corruption

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• Modesty in dress and language and deportment is a true mark of refinement and a hallmark of a virtuous Latter-day Saint woman.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Dresses, Saint, Modesty

  Ezra Taft Benson (1990). “Come, Listen to a Prophet's Voice”, Shadow Mountain

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• It belongs among the refinements of totalitarian government in our century that they don't permit their opponents to die a great, dramatic martyr's death for their convictions.

  Hannah Arendt

  Government, Opponents, Dramatic

  Hannah Arendt (2006). “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”, p.206, Penguin

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• We know the degree of refinement in people by the matter they laugh at and the ring of the laugh.

  George Meredith

  Laughter, People, Laughing

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• Luxury and excessive refinement are sure forerunners of the decadence of states, because when all individuals seek their own interests they neglect the public weal.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Luxury, Lifestyle, Individual

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• Collective guilt is borne by what is conventionally called the scapegoat. Now the scapegoat for white society - which is based on myths of progress, civilization, liberalism, education, enlightenment, refinement - will be precisely the force that opposes the expansion and the triumph of these myths. This brutal opposing force is supplied by the Negro.

  Frantz Fanon

  Civilization, White, Guilt

  Frantz Fanon (1967). “Black Skin, White Masks”, p.194, Pluto Press

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• A feast not profuse but elegant; more of salt [refinement] than of expense.

  Lord Byron

  Salt, Expenses, Elegant

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• Although our "gentle air" cannot improve the way hate and envy look, it does seem not to encourage firmness and decision. All is compromise; caution and refinement are everywhere. Everything has to "make a good impression" - whether or not it is any good: the impression is the main thing.

  Arnold Schoenberg

  Hate, Air, Envy

  Arnold Schoenberg, Leonard Stein (1975). “Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg”, p.196, Univ of California Press

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• As to the pure all things are pure, so the common mind sees far more vulgarity in others than the mind developed in genuine refinement.

  George MacDonald

  Mind, Common, Genuine

  George MacDonald (2015). “The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more”, p.5197, e-artnow

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• To become balanced, meditate on the heart center in the center of the chest. There you will experience happiness, refinement, sensitivity, beauty, laughter.

  Frederick Lenz

  Laughter, Heart, Buddhism

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• Mixed dinner parties of ladies and gentlemenare very rare, which is a great defect in the society; not only as depriving themof the most social and hospitable manner of meeting, but as leading to frequent dinner parties of gentlemen without ladies, which certainly does not conduce to refinement.

  Frances Trollope

  Party, Gentleman, Doe

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• My friend had a brilliant idea. This impressed me. It reflected an immense deal of credit on his brain. But when he expressed it,it lost all value, and enjoyed but a commonplace status. My friend blamed this devaluation on the language. "I hate English," he said. So he studied another language. He mastered it so perfectly that there was no room left in his brain for a brilliant idea. Now he has a grudge against words. He refuses to use them. He prefers to shrug or grunt. A new crop of ideas is growing. They show promise of future refinement.

  Marvin L. Cohen

  Hate, Ideas, Brain

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• In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result,but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man.... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Art, Nature, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.335

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• The refinement of morality increases together with the refinement of fear. Today the fear of disagreeable feelings in other people is almost the strongest of our own disagreeable feelings.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  People, Feelings, Together

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.53, Penguin

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• All technical refinements discourage me. Perfect photography, larger screens, hi-fi sound, all make it possible for mediocrities slavishly to reproduce nature; and this reproduction bores me. What interests me is the interpretation of life by an artist. The personality of the film maker interests me more than the copy of an object.

  Jean Renoir

  Photography, Artist, Perfect

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• Yoga is meant for the purification of body and its exploration as well as for the refinement of the mind.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Yoga, Mind, Body

  B.K.S. Iyengar (2006). “Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom”, p.50, Rodale

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• The feeling of an evolution is a constant for every artist who is pursuing the search of refinement and enlargement of his/her own means of expression.

  Andrea Bocelli

  Mean, Artist, Expression

  "Opera Star Andrea Bocelli On Finishing His Master’s And His ‘Passion For Life’". Interview with Kia Makarechi, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 3, 2013.

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• I don't know if the music moves forward anymore. I haven't heard anything for years - except refinement - coming out of the jazz world.

  Paul Smoker

  Moving Forward, Years, World

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