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verb
Refine  v. t.  (past & past part. refined; pres. part. refining)  
1.
To reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; to free from impurities; to free from dross or alloy; to separate from extraneous matter; to purify; to defecate; as, to refine gold or silver; to refine iron; to refine wine or sugar. "I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined."
2.
To purify from what is gross, coarse, vulgar, inelegant, low, and the like; to make elegant or exellent; to polish; as, to refine the manners, the language, the style, the taste, the intellect, or the moral feelings. "Love refines The thoughts, and heart enlarges."
Synonyms: To purify; clarify; polish; ennoble.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Refine" Quotes from Famous Books



... can not always be admitted for political lying; I shall therefore desire to refine upon it, by adding some circumstances of its birth and parents. A political lie is sometimes born out of a discarded statesman's head, and thence delivered to be nursed and dandled by the rabble. Sometimes it is produced a monster, and licked into shape; at other times it ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... creep in, creep in, Afar from the fret, the toil and the din, Where the spring of love forever flows, As clear as light and as sweet as the rose; (Creep into my heart), Where the dreams never wilt but their tints refine, Rooted in beautiful thoughts of thine; Where morn falls cool on the soul, like sleep, And the nights are tranquil and tranced and deep; Where the fairest thing of all the fair Thou art, who hast somehow crept in there, Deep into my ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... for heroes proved, In liberating strife. Who more than self their country loved. And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And ev'ry gain divine! America! America! God shed His ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... more imaginary than real, for the stems of the accented notes give us the binary metre. But the illustration serves to show how Dr. Riemann is disposed to refine upon the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... separation in motives must lead also to a distinction in the machinery of the work. The philanthropists address themselves, not to the artisan merely, but to the laborer in general, desiring in any possible way to refine the habits or increase the happiness of our whole working population, by giving them new recreations or new thoughts: and the principles of Art-Education adopted in a school which has this wide but somewhat indeterminate aim, are, or ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... will leave them all even more bewildered than the boldest definition would have done. But that's quite a different thing. The furthest we have gone in the way of definition—unless indeed this too belongs but to our invincible tendency to refine—is by the happy rule we've made that Lorraine shall walk with me every morning to the Works, and I shall find her there when I come out to walk home with me. I see, on reading over, that this is what I meant by "our" in speaking above of our little daily heroism in that ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... it Grafts or Buds the Tree; In other things we count it to excel, If it a Docile Scholar can appear To Nature, and but imitate her well; It over-rules, and is her Master here. It imitates her Makers Power Divine, And changes her sometimes, and sometimes does refine: It does, like Grace, the fallen Tree restore To its blest State of Paradise before: Who would not joy to see his conquering hand O'er all the vegetable World command? And the wild Giants of the Wood receive What Law he's pleas'd to give? He bids th' ill-natur'd ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... Honoria, 'why have you been so unfaithful to your original? why have you, like all artists, been trying to soften and refine ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... to feel intuitively the drift of sentiment and conviction, and so to adjust the uses of art to life as to exalt the one, and enrich and refine the other, involved not only the possession of gifts of a high order, but that training which puts a man in command of himself and of his materials. Addison was fortunate in that incomparably important education which assails a child through every sense, and above all through ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... not how to make fine sugar; they only used to boil and skim the juice, which when cold left a black paste. But after they came under the Great Kaan some men of Babylonia who happened to be at the Court proceeded to this city and taught the people to refine the sugar with the ashes ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... privacy was invaded by some patronizing, loud-voiced nouvelle-riche with a low-bred physiognomy that no millions on earth could gild or refine, and manners to match; some foolish, fashionable, would-be worldling, who combined the arch little coquetries and impertinent affectations of a spoilt beauty with the ugliness of an Aztec or an Esquimau; some silly, titled old frump who frankly ignored his tea-making wife and daughters and talked ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... Mechanics' Institute— And in its praises I would not be mute. Mechanics! It deserves your best support, And to its rooms you often should resort. There you may learn from books to act your parts, While they refine and elevate ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... helped to soften and refine manners by the stress which it laid upon such "Christian" virtues as humility, tenderness, and gentleness. By dwelling on the sanctity of human life, Christianity did its best to repress the very common practice ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... circumstances, and wondered at them in her own simple way. Her ambition was a little quickened, and the answer was as much out of the usual course of things as the question; the poor girl attempting to refine ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... indeed. As many as sixty heats have been taken off in succession without giving the lining any attention. The absence of any reagent leaves the iron simply pure and homogeneous to a degree never realized in muck bars made by the old puddling process. Thus the expense of a reheating and rerolling to refine the iron is obviated. It was such iron as here results that Bessemer, in his early experiments, was seeking to obtain when he was diverted from his purpose by his splendid discoveries in the art of making steel. So effective is the new process, that even from the poorest grades of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... the pages of this narrative, I discover some places in which I certainly appear to justify her opinion. I even justified it at the time. Before she and Mr. Keller were out of my hearing, I began to see "under the surface," and "to refine" on what ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... creation—to tread humbly in the footsteps of the Maker—to reproduce the images that revolve within it, and to form, from its own ideas, a mimic representation of the actual world. This is the source of all art and all poetry; of every thing, in fact, which tends to adorn and refine our nature. It is this uncontrollable desire to work on and fashion the rough materials that lie under our hands that gives the first impulse to civilization, and impels us onward in the progress of improvement. And wherever we discern the faintest indication that such a principle is at ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... unconscionable, after so many years of cohabitation, as to take exceptions to an expedient by which she would not only enjoy the conversation of her husband, but even the fruits of those talents which the knife would so remarkably refine. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... action bearing on their brows the impress of their noble origin, and cultivating in their hearts the pure and exalted feelings that should ever distinguish those who bear the image of their Maker. Association is destined to do much for poor, suffering humanity—to elevate, refine, redeem the race and restore the purity and love that made the bowers of Eden so surpassingly beautiful. You, sir, and your associates are pioneers in a noble reform. May the blessing ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... thus far found in the world. It is most easily converted into kerosene or lamp oil, and contains a larger proportion of such oil. It is the finest petroleum in the world, except that found in Indiana and Ohio, and that costs more to refine. ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... the end of the wonderful net, where all the arteries close in a terminating point; which arteries taking their rise and origin from the left capsule of the heart, bring, through several circuits, ambages, and anfractuosities, the vital spirits, to subtilize and refine them in the ætherial purity of animal spirits. Nay, in such a studiously meditating, musing person, you may espy so extravagant raptures of one, as it were out of himself, that all his natural faculties for ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... is complete without a flower-bed. The cultivation of flowers is eminently promotive of health, refinement of manners, and good taste. Constant familiarity with the most exquisite beauties of nature must refine the feelings and produce gentleness of spirit. Association with flowers should be a part of every child's education. Their cultivation is suitable for children and young ladies in all ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... of the Bible is to be loved and prized for this, as for a thousand other things,—that it has preserved a purity of meaning to many terms of natural objects. Without this holdfast, our vitiated imaginations would refine away language to mere abstractions. Hence the French have lost their poetical language; and Mr. Blanco White says the same thing ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... orgies did those log-walls witness. Such is generally the life in a lumber-camp: hard, wholesome labour in the day, loud revelling at night. The rough, adventurous life, with no home charm or female influence to refine or restrain, is probably the principal reason of such low practice of ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... of water sheathes electric power sufficient to charge 100,000 Leyden jars and blow the Houses of Parliament to atoms. Farraday amazes us by his statement of the energy required to embroider a violet or produce a strawberry. To untwist the sunbeam and extract the rich strawberry red, to refine the sugar, and mix its flavor, represents heat sufficient to run an engine from Liverpool to London or from Chicago to Detroit. But because nature does her work noiselessly we must not forget that each of her gifts also involves ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... me with bounteous treasure You tyrants think 'twas all to serve your pleasure. Why should my person, throne, and wealth be booty To one harsh, jealous master? No, all beauty Is heaven's gift, and like the sun, should shine To glad earth's children, and their souls refine. I hate proud man, and like to make him feel He may not crush ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... personality, had an air of distinction and destiny. The drawing had been done by a wandering duchess who had seen the girl sketching in the foothills, when on a visit to that "Wild West" which has such power to refine and inspire minds not superior to Nature. Its replica was carried to a castle in Scotland. It had been the gift of Diana Welldon on a certain day not long ago, when Flood Rawley had made a pledge to her, which was as vital to him and to his future as two thousand dollars ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... each other from the first moment they met, and tried to make out that they neither had ever since had a thought that was not the other's; they believed this. The commonplaces of the passion ever since it began to refine itself from the earliest savage impulse, seemed to have occurred to them for the first time in the history of the race; they accused themselves each of not being worthy of the other; they desired to be very good, and to live for the ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... We will behold a brighter world than this, With less of curse and much of noble bliss; For God's kind hand in all our conflicts here Is clearly seen and doubts must disappear; The end He has in view is most benign; The fire will dross consume and gold refine. ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... to polish the manners, refine the taste, or impart accomplishments, but to renovate the character by a permanent inward change. The main dependence for bringing this about was the power of the Holy Ghost—the only power that can impart or maintain spiritual life in man. This ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... the place of truth; If so divinely sweet thy numbers flow, And thy young heart melts with such tender woe; What {p.107} praise, what admiration shall be thine, When sense mature with science shall combine To raise thy genius, and thy taste refine! ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... is to be thwarted in what would best raise and refine him. That great, bright leading star of a well-placed affection is not to be allowed to help him through all the storms and quicksands ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... it, as little a gainer by the revolution as morals. The pieces which were best calculated to form and refine the minds of the people, all abound with maxims of loyalty, with respect for religion, and the subordinations of civil society. These are all prohibited; and are replaced by fustian declamations, tending to promote anarchy and discord —by vulgar and immoral ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... man, This marred one heedless day, This heart take Thou to scan Both within and without: Refine with fire its gold, Purge thou its dross away— Yea, hold it in Thy hold, Whence none ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... pronounced a crime whose penalty was death. And Bruno, who, from the depths of infamous superstition, had risen into the pure light of heaven, to a theory whose principles, though they might not satisfy, could not fail to refine, elevate, and encourage the soul long groveling in the mire of ignorance, or languishing in the dark dungeons of Scholasticism,—Bruno died for the truth. More foolish than the savages of whom Montesquieu speaks, who cut down trees to reach their fruit, these judges of Bruno destroyed ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... beast, and the object of his pursuit, once a woman, may also become a beast, and then shift shapes to a tree or a bird or a star. But in the civilised races the genius of the people tends to suppress, exclude and refine away the wild element, which, however, is never wholly eliminated. The Erinyes soon stop the mouth of the horse of Achilles when he begins, like the horse in Grimm's Goose Girl, to hold a sustained conversation.(1) But the ancient, cruel, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... no great collection of wits of several parts or nations, so neither could there be any succession of wits of several times, whereby one might refine the other, in regard they had not history to any purpose. And the manner of their traditions was utterly unfit and unproper for amplification of knowledge. And again the studies of those times, you shall find, besides wars, incursions, and rapines, which were then almost every where betwixt states ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... Carlyle and Emerson play upon these words, they are at once removed from mechanical definition, and we dimly perceive that each word is larger than the outreach of the thought of man. Another generation than ours shall define and refine them. In heaven, in some other aeon, we shall find out what they ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... than patch them with fancy work or with heterogeneous matter. The learned, indeed, as Lane tells us (i. 74; iii. 740), being thoroughly dissatisfied with the plain and popular, the ordinary and "vulgar" note of the language, have attempted to refine and improve it and have more than once threatened to remodel it, that is, to make it odious. This would be to dress up Robert Burns in plumes borrowed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... build ships, refine sugar, dredge oysters, distill liquor and brew beer. They manufacture carpets, leather and paper goods, make chocolate, cut diamonds as well as produce gold and silver articles and pottery. The farmer uses his cow like one of the family. He keeps her in the house when the weather is cold, ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... Gonzales had invented. None of the harshness and squeakiness of tone that you associate with the ordinary instrument. Partly a new method of making the records and partly a system of qualifying chambers that refine and purify the tones. It is wonderful enough to deceive anybody, and, of course, he had all his records ready ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... forbidding divorce, in extending or restricting what a man may dispose of by testament, in favoring or interdicting substitutions, it is chiefly in view of some political, economical or social advantage, either to refine or consolidate the union of the sexes, to implant in the family habits of discipline or sentiments of affection, to excite in children an initiatory spirit, or one of concord, to prepare for the nation a staff of natural chieftains, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... great many reasons against copious profanity of speech. Here you have the artistic reason, and, by implication, that which forbids its use in literature—namely, its ineffectiveness. But though she selects, Mrs. Woods does not refine. She exhibits the life of the travelling show in its habitual squalor as well as in its occasional brightness. How she has managed it passes my understanding: but her book leaves the impression of confident familiarity with this kind of life, of knowledge not merely accumulated, but assimilated. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... artists having done all that is possible in realizing the national conceptions of the Gods, the younger ones, forbidden to change the scheme of existing representations, and incapable of doing anything better in that kind, betake themselves to refine and decorate the old ideas with more attractive skill. Their aims are thus more and more limited to manual dexterity, and their fancy paralyzed. Also, in the course of centuries, the methods of every art continually improving, and being made subjects of popular inquiry, praise ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Purity divine, From ev'ry least corruption free; Our ev'ry sense from sin refine, And purify our ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various

... courts, no fine buildings. They had no magistrates to administer law; no avarice to carry them to court. In fine, although without vices, they knew nothing of the arts,—of splendid virtues,—nor of any of the things which refine a people. They appeared to be rather an oak forest than a ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... cultivate their morals, refine their tastes, manners, habits. I wish to lift from them that ever-depressing sense of hopelessness which ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... preferment, with the proviso that they should resign their English benefices when restored to 'those they had been obliged to relinquish. The statute of Henry IV. against multiplying gold and silver was now repealed; the subjects were allowed to melt and refine metals and ores, and extract gold and silver from them, on condition that it should be brought to the Mint, and converted into money, the owners receiving its full value in current coin. These, and several other bills of smaller importance being passed, the two houses adjourned ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... their views, and to weigh them in the light of reason, is at the same time the surest way to win their confidence and to refine one's own information and judgments. However, to leave final decision to them in matters which are clearly in the area of one's own responsibility, is fatal to the character of self and to the integrity of ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... Operation, and to look on very attentively, and that they may have the less Reason to doubt, to perform the whole Operation with their own Hands, while I stand at a Distance, and don't so much as put my Finger to it. I put them to refine the melted Matter themselves, or carry it to the Refiners to be done; I tell them beforehand, how much Silver or Gold it will afford: And in the last Place, I bid them carry the melted Mass to several Goldsmiths, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... a scale and with a distinctness that cannot be mistaken. To this end he keeps a deep hold of the savage, the unrefined, and marshals the elements and influences that make for the virile, the heroic, the sane, the large, and for the perpetuity of the race. We cannot refine the elements,—the air, the water, the soil, the sunshine,—and the more we pervert or shut out these from our lives the worse for us. In the same manner, the more we pervert or balk the great natural impulses, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... I have been able to indicate how, by its essential nature, by the primordial power it embodies, all Beauty, and particularly Beauty in art, tends to fortify and refine the spiritual life of ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... We seek not to refine; but all moral power issues out of moral forces. And it may be well, therefore, rapidly to sketch the history of religion, which is the greatest of moral forces, as it sank and rose in this island through ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... can the sense refine Till not a pulse rebellious stirs, And, since she never can be mine, Makes it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... she contributes unwillingly to the world, would fain ignore the God-given law to "be fruitful and multiply." Regardless of the affected horror of anaemic prudes and ancient wall-flowers, the woman of to-day insists upon being recognized as a vital force—is even beginning to comprehend that, refine it as you will, differentiate it as you may, it is the same vital force which fills the cradle that sways the scepter. As she aspires to share with man the regency of this world, she will scarce thank Carpenter and Maxwell for a premise from which ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... seemed to him the sordid tragedy of his sister's life, and he resented as a monstrous thing his daughter's involvement in such an affair. This was the natural man; the scientific observer took another side, urging that life was life and could not be escaped, refine ourselves as we may; also that a sensible girl of mature years would benefit rather than otherwise by being made helpful to a woman caught in ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... if a whirlwind of enlightenment should waft it to the skies, although each thread would be immeasurably above its present condition, the relation of one to another would still be the same. If the baser wool should be transmuted into gold, the very same process would refine and sublimate the precious metal, in a corresponding ratio; and the equilibrium of God's ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... wrongly, that they are preparing the esthetics of the future). It must be here admitted that there exists an altogether special manner of feeling, dependent on temperament at first, which many cultivate and refine as though it were a precious rarity. There lies the true source of their invention. Doubtless, to assert this pertinently, it would be necessary to establish the direct relations between their physical and psychical constitution and that of their work; to note even the particular states ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... for salvation by sending perfection embodied in Christ. We may not attach ourselves to any system or effort as absolutely true or good, nor condemn any as utterly false. All knowledge and arts are related to religion. They refine man and aid him in his emancipation from whatever is sinful ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair. Face down on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Refine Pedauque, and just before he fell asleep he had been thinking: 'As a people shall we ever really like the French? Will they ever really like us!' He himself had always liked the French, feeling at home with their ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... might be schools of design for improvement in ornamental manufacture, the development of architecture, and whatever aids to refine and give beauty to social life, including a simple academic system for the elementary branches of drawing and coloring, upon a scientific basis of accumulated knowledge and experience, providing models and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... the awe of Nature, the awe of the unseen dies out in him. Meeting with no visible superior, he is apt to become not merely unpoetical and irreverent, but somewhat of a sensualist and an atheist. The sense of the beautiful dies out in him more and more. He has little or nothing around him to refine or lift up his soul, and unless he meet with a religion and with a civilization which can deliver him, he may sink into that dull brutality which is too common among the lowest classes of the English lowlands, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... by some great armed demonstration, to exhibit the Riseholme spirit in its full panoply, and then crush into dazzled submission any potential rivalry. She meant also to exert an educational influence, for she allowed that Olga had great gifts, and she meant to train and refine those gifts so that they might, when exercised under benign but autocratic supervision, conduce to the strength and splendour of Riseholme. Naturally she must be loyally and ably assisted, and Georgie realized that the tableau ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... design, discovers new prospects of advantage, and possibilities of improvement, will not easily be persuaded that his project is ripe for execution; but will superadd one contrivance to another, endeavour to unite various purposes in one operation, multiply complications, and refine niceties, till he is entangled in his own scheme, and bewildered in the perplexity of various intentions. He that resolves to unite all the beauties of situation in a new purchase, must waste his life in roving to no purpose from province to province. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... said: "We must have two sexes and if the women insist on becoming men I suppose the men must refine themselves into women.... I dread the effect of this woman's movement upon civilization because I know what happened to the Roman republic when women attained their full rights. They married without going to church and were divorced without going to court." After having discussed ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... them," he said, "it is no longer the fault of religion. There have been times when the church seemed afraid, but she is so no longer. Analyze, dissect, use your microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is reached; reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made clear; the church now knows with the certainty of science what she once knew only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind all thought and matter only one central idea,—that idea which the church has never ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... being hissed and pelted by the mob, and it is hard for a minister to convince himself of the admiration of a nation when a strong bodyguard is necessary to secure him from the constant danger of personal attacks. Bute's character did not refine under the tests imposed upon it. His objectionable qualities grew more and more unpopular. The less he was liked the less he deserved to be liked. Adversity did not magnify that small soul. In his mean anger he sought for mean revenge. Every person who ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... happen to one than anywhere else. And he gave Rowland to understand that he meant to live freely and largely, and be as interested as occasion demanded. Rowland saw no reason to regard this as a menace of dissipation, because, in the first place, there was in all dissipation, refine it as one might, a grossness which would disqualify it for Roderick's favor, and because, in the second, the young sculptor was a man to regard all things in the light of his art, to hand over his passions to his ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... cil pardon, fut issi gran, si s'en esmeurent mult li cuers des genz, et mult s'en croisierent, porce que li pardons ere si gran. Villehardouin, No. 1. Our philosophers may refine on the causes of the crusades, but such were the genuine feelings of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... a friendship such as mine Such feelings must thy heart refine As seldom mortal mind gives birth, 'Tis love, without a stain of earth, Fratello del ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks

... flowers, such as I like for Aimee. You should wear a light-coloured muslin dress, very low and very short, up to the knees, your arms bare, and the skirts exceedingly full (the body of which would be transparent, and refine and reveal the divine shape of your angelic bosoms), your legs, perfectly naked, would be visible amongst a mass of folds of muslin, and would be covered by little open-work stockings of rose-coloured silk, fastened at the instep by bows, like the dress, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... source, and delivering men from the power of it. Unless you do that, I do not say you do nothing, but you pour a bottle full of cold water into Vesuvius, and try to put the fire out with that. You may educate, you may cultivate, you may refine; you may set political and economical arrangements right in accordance with the newest notions of the century, and what then? Why! the old thing will just begin over again, and the old miseries will appear again, because ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... came to this country. I had everything to learn; I could not even speak my own language; my speech was a dialect heard in that part of the country where I was brought up. I have had to cultivate and refine myself. I had to study other languages, Italian, French and German. I learned them all in America. So you see there is no need for an American to go out of his own country for vocal instruction or languages; all can be learned right here at home. I am a living proof of this. What ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... upon themselves, are mistaken. All those Dissenters who deprecate it as a judgment, or would vote against it as such if it were in their power, are mistaken." In short, though he did not suppose that the movers of the Bill "did it in mere kindness to the Dissenters, in order to refine and purge them from the scandals which some people had brought upon them," nevertheless it was calculated to effect this object. The Dissenter being a man that was "something desirous of going to Heaven," ventured the displeasure of the civil magistrate at the command ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... ground-windows will stand open all the summer noon, and the flower stands will be gay and fragrant; and the shaded parlour will be the cool retreat of the wearied husband, when he comes in to rest from his professional toils. There will stand the books destined to refresh and refine his higher tastes; and there the music with which the wife will indulge him. Here will they first feel what it is to have a home of their own—where they will first enjoy the privacy of it, the security, the freedom, the consequence in the eyes of others, the sacredness in their own. Here ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... been aiming to have, so far as could be, two suits to a man, a common, every day suit, and one better for Sabbaths, &c., it being thought that this would tend to refine and elevate the prisoners. Hence, he left them with a generous supply, well fitted up. But it would need more or less renewing and refitting in the fall, which it did not receive, but was made to answer by patching. Hence, patched and ragged clothes would ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby

... of the finest grain and marking, and to have it French-polished. It would be too fine to be of use; and its possessor would fear to scratch it, and would preserve it as a show, seeking some plainer vehicle to carry his coals. In like manner, do not refine too much either the products of the mind, or the sensibilities of the taste which is to appreciate them. I know an amiable professor very different from Dr. Dryasdust. He was a country clergyman,—a very interesting plain preacher. But when he got his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... shall gather home my crops in season due, Lies a joy, which he may never grasp, who rules in gorgeous state Fertile Africa's dominions. Happier, happier far my fate! Though for me no bees Calabrian store their honey, nor doth wine Sickening in the Laestrygonian amphora for me refine; Though for me no flocks unnumbered, browsing Gallia's pastures fair, Pant beneath their swelling fleeces, I at least am free from care; Haggard want with direful clamour ravins never at my door, Nor wouldst ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... majority of women who for a great length of time have shirked this problem by any one of these methods. By individuals and by groups woman has always been seeking to develop the business of life to such proportions, to so diversify, refine, and broaden it that no half failure or utter failure of its fundamental relations would swamp her, leave her comfortless, or prevent her working out that family which she knew to be her part in the scheme of things. ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... was glad to find he had established Sunday schools over all the islands. I talked to him of Europe, and his former voyage to England. "Ah!" said he, most emphatically, "the English, the cruel English, to murder me with goodness, and refine upon my torture—took me to Europe, and showed me the court of England, the delicacy of exquisite life; they showed me gods, and showed me heaven, as if on purpose to make me feel the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... and the reptile glimmeringly adumbrate man, so do these yearnings and desires adumbrate what man in himself calls "love," spelled all out in capitals. I repeat, the need is the same. From the amoeba, up the ladder of life to you and me, comes this passion of perpetuation. And in yourself, refine and sublimate as you will, it is none the less blind, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... a maiden as her mother must have been, one of Nature's own ladies, but more refined in type, texture, and form, as the American atmosphere and food and life always refine the children of European stock,—slenderer, more delicate, finer of complexion, and with a soft, exquisite sweetness of voice, more thrilling than her mother's, larger and more robust heartfeltness of tone,—and with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... for mate. It's no use; they can't spake the language, and it's no use t'achin' thim. They're good min to wurruk—all bone and sole leather, but ye can't refine thim." ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... it the most helpful conditions for its full growth and development. Education should be the complete preparation of the young thing for fullness of life; involving the evolution and the balanced training of all its faculties, bodily, mental and spiritual. It should train and refine senses, instincts, intellect, will and feeling; giving a world-view based on real facts and real values and encouraging active correspondence therewith. Thus the educationist, if he be convinced, as I think most of us must be, that all isn't quite ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... at least chose to begin it once. Her idea of self-improvement ruled her even at school. It was to cultivate her tastes. She always said there was enough of hard practicality and useful knowledge forced on us by necessity, and that the thing most needed was to soften and refine our minds. She picked up every scrap of information concerning painting, sculpture, poetry, music, &c., as if ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... household; those who by nature and training should be its helpers hinder it instead. Why do they do this? Because their fastidious, aesthetic natures are outraged by a crudeness which they themselves could easily refine away if they chose; because also they recoil at a lack of conformity to existing conventions—conventions so hampering to the inner spirit of the Newness, that in order to incarnate at all it must of necessity sweep ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... numerous, stationary, civilized societies, where man's wants are multiplied, where his interests clash, that he is obliged to have recourse to government, to laws, to public worship, in order to maintain concord. It is then, that men approximating, reason together, combine their ideas, refine their notions, subtilize their theories; it is then also, that those who govern them avail themselves of invisible powers, to keep them within bounds, to render them docile, to enforce their obedience, to oblige them to live peaceably. It was thus, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... ranks that sacrifice themselves for women with bundles or children in arms, for old ladies, or for very young and pretty ones—to the men who give no odds to the most helpless creature alive. These are the men who do not act upon the promptings of human nature like the laborer, and who do not refine upon their duty like my young gentlemen, and make it their privilege to befriend the idea of womanhood; they are men who have paid for their seats and are going to keep them. They have been at work, very probably, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... of Greater Greece, as if anticipating Plato, he has, like the philosophic kings of the Platonic Republic, already something of the monk, of monastic ascesis, about him. Its purpose is to fit him for, duly to refine his nature towards, that closer vision of truth to which perchance he may be even now upon his way. The secrecy again, that characteristic silence of which the philosopher of music was, perhaps ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... Bill J., in the waning of that first winter, began actually to refine his own superlative elegance by spraying his superior garments with perfume, by munching tiny confections reputed to scent the breath desirably, by a more diligent grooming of the always superb moustache, the little boy suspected no motive. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... may be sung by soldiers on the march, by the artisan at the loom, by the peasant following his team, by the mother among her children, and by the maiden sitting at her wheel listening for the step of her lover. Religion is thus brought in to refine and hallow the sweet necessities and emotions of life, to cheer its weariness, and to exalt its sordidness. The German life revolves like the village festival with the pastor in the midst—joy and laughter and merry games do not fear the holy man, for he wears no unkindness in his eye, but ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... been very largely due to the instinct of democracy (and the instinct of democracy is like the instinct of one woman, wild but quite right) that the people who were trying to purify the Press were also trying to refine it; and to this the democracy very naturally and very justly objected. We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... fear of lust or license. Men will, on the whole, continue to prefer one partner, and friendship will refine the grossness of sense. There are worse evils than open and avowed inconstancy—the loathsome combination of deceitful intrigue with the selfish monopoly of property. That a child should know its father is ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... don't you see, then, that you must stand up for art all the more unflinchingly if you intend to write plays that will refine the theatre-going public, or create a new one? That is why I can't endure to have you even seem to give ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... the means. When an intense effort is applied, the melodramatic tendency is to honor that effort, despite its uselessness, instead of honoring the product of the effort rather than the effort itself. But, you are right, I admit, for we have still a few places left to refine in the ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... individual member, and that in return for this protection each individual should submit to the law of the community. Faith lets God down into the hearts of lawmakers, and a sense of accountability to him must, most certainly, have a grand tendency to refine laws in their first conception. At least it happens to be true that wherever God is feared and law made the basis of the legislation and policy of a nation, that nation is, in fact, found to excel in those ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various

... or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... rich beds of coal furnished the coal-oil that was worth pumping, and then he found how it came up with the living springs. He studied until he knew what it looked like, smelled like, tasted like, and how to refine it. Now said he in his letter to his cousin, "I understand the oil business." His cousin answered, "All right, ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... a great many changes during the last few weeks. He had begun to grow rather captivated by Miss Chivvey and in his efforts to polish, refine and educate her had become rather carried away himself. But towards the end she began to show signs of rebellion; she was bored, though impressed. He took her to a serious play and explained it all the time, during which she openly yawned. Finally, when she insisted ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... certain phases of religion. We will purify, refine and beautify our religion, just as we have our table etiquette and our housekeeping. The millennium will come only through the scientific acceptance of piety. When Church and State separated it was well, but when Science ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... with his own good-faith the inadequacy of their appeal. Music alone hitherto had really helped HIM, and taken him out of himself. To music, instinctively, more and more he was dedicate; and in his desire to refine and organise the court music, from which, by leave of absence to official performers enjoying their salaries at a distance, many parts had literally fallen away, like the favourite notes of a worn-out spinet, he was ably seconded by a devoted youth, the deputy organist of the grand-ducal chapel. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... year 2022 without permission from the Board. Gulflex and other oil companies protest to Number One as they say we might open up a hole that will spill all the petroleum out of the earth all at once, so fast they couldn't refine it. A spark could ignite it and set the globe on fire like it was a brandied Christmas pudding. But then another earthquake shakes Earth from the rice fields of China to the llamas in Peru just when it looks as if we were about to be tossed into an ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald

... religious instruction permissive in other Indian schools which are not wholly or mainly supported by private endeavour? Is not the "harmonious combination of secular and religious instruction" for which the Maharajah of Jaipur pleads better calculated than our present policy of laisser faire to refine and purify Indian religious conceptions, and to bring about that approximation of Eastern to Western ideals, towards which the best Indian minds were tending before the present revolt ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... harmonious thoughts-to a million-year Goal. It needs twelve years of normal healthful living to effect even slight perceptible change in brain structure, and a million solar returns are exacted to sufficiently refine the cerebral tenement for ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... on the female side, was not only excusable, but expedient; and, finally, my uncle held that whereas a man is a rude, coarse, sensual animal, and requires all manner of associations to dignify and refine him, women are so naturally susceptible of everything beautiful in sentiment and generous in purpose that she who is a true woman is a fit peer for a king. Odd and preposterous notions, no doubt, and capable of much controversy, so ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the hottest Sun, from May till Michaelmas: Then pressing them well, Tun the Liquor up in a very strong Iron-Hooped Vessel to prevent its bursting. It will appear very thick and muddy when newly press'd, but will refine in the Vessel, and be as clear as Wine. Thus let it remain untouched for three Months, before it be drawn off, and it will ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn

... of our literary development which corresponds to that of other peoples when the short story pre-eminently flourished among them. But when one has said a thing like this, it immediately accuses one of loose and inaccurate statement, and requires one to refine upon it, either for one's own peace of conscience or for one's safety from the thoughtful reader. I am not much afraid of that sort of reader, for he is very rare, but I do like to know myself what I mean, if I mean ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... to observe the steps by which, were it only through impulses of self-conservation, and when searching with a view to more effectual destructiveness, war did and must refine itself from a horrid trade of butchery into a magnificent and enlightened science. Starting from no higher impulse or question than how to cut throats most rapidly, most safely, and on the largest scale, it has issued even at our own stage of advance into a science, magnificent, oftentimes ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... artificial ones; and though the great rivers are commonly more or less turbid, if you will look long enough, you may find a spring that sparkles as no water does which drips through your apparatus of sands and sponges. So there are families which refine themselves into intellectual aptitude without having had much opportunity for intellectual acquirements. A series of felicitous crosses develops an improved strain of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection at last in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... to cure and prevent redness and roughness, and to make the skin soft, smooth, white and delicate, producing a perfectly natural appearance. It teaches how to cure and refine a coarse skin, so that it ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... is hugely animal still, that is because primitive men abound and will have their pasture. Since the lead is ours, the leaders must bow their heads to the sentence. Jealousy of a woman is the primitive egoism seeking to refine in a blood gone to savagery under apprehension of an invasion of rights; it is in action the tiger threatened by a rifle when his paw is rigid on quick flesh; he tears the flesh for rage at the intruder. The Egoist, who is our original male in giant form, had no bleeding ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... years ago it seemed, as regarded all aesthetic creation, that man had exhausted the old models, and knew not where to look for new. Now the aim of Art is to interest or please, by gratifying the sense or taste for the beautiful or human genius in making; also to instruct and refine; and it is evident that Science is going to fulfill all these conditions on such a grand scale in so many new ways, that, when man shall be once engaged in them, all that once gratified him in the past will seem as childish things, to be ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland

... the knowledge of languages, enabling her to penetrate into the mysteries of the older world, she had become a sorceress, like the Celtic druidesses; and how as Abelard and Heloise sat together at home there, to refine a little further on the nature of abstract ideas, "Love made himself of the party with them." You conceive the temptations of the scholar, who, in such dreamy tranquillity, amid the bright and busy spectacle of the "Island," lived in a world of something like shadows; and ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... would refine her; prune away all that reminded him of her wild growth, so that it might no longer humiliate him to think to what a companion he had sunk. How happy they would be! Of course the world would censure him if it knew, but the world was stupid and prosaic, ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... pathetic side, the prose, mixed with the elevated language of verse, serves to mark the contrast between vulgar and ideal sentiments; it is a positive means of exhibition. Continued prose in Comedy is nothing but the natural language, on which the poet has failed to employ his skill to refine and smoothe it down, while apparently he seems the more careful to give an accurate imitation of it: it is that prose which Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme has been speaking his whole ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... if in heaven a hell we find, 'Tis all from thee, O Jealousy! 'Tis all from thee, O Jealousy! Thou tyrant, tyrant Jealousy, Thou tyrant of the mind! All other ills, though sharp they prove, Serve to refine, and perfect love: In absence, or unkind disdain, Sweet hope relieves the lover's pain. But, ah! no cure but death we find, To set us free From Jealousy: O Jealousy! Thou tyrant, tyrant Jealousy, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... Fie, Collonel, refine your Tast;——A common Woman! I'd as soon dine at a common Ordinary: Give me a Woman of Condition, there's Pride as well as Pleasure in ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker

... me to-night not to REFINE in the education of my children. 'Life (said he,) will not bear refinement: you must ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... and trifles, fly; Where God resides appear no more; Omniscient God, thy piercing eye Can every secret thought explore: O may thy grace our hearts refine, And fix our ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... whose every thought is born of Beauty, Truth and Love. I envy not the one who looks with a cold and indifferent spirit on these immortal creations of the old masters—these poems written in marble and on the canvass. They who oppose every thing which can refine and spiritualize the nature of man, by binding him down to the cares of the work-day world alone, cheat life of half ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... harmonious; wont so oft In outward things to meditate the charm Of sacred order, soon she seeks at home To find a kindred order, to exert Within herself this elegance of love, This fair-inspired delight; her temper'd powers Refine at length, and every passion wears A chaster, milder, more attractive mien. But if to ampler prospects, if to gaze On Nature's form, where, negligent of all 610 These lesser graces, she assumes the ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... attributes which beautify and refine human existence were personified by the Greeks under the form of three lovely sisters, Euphrosyne, Aglaia, and Thalia, the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome (or, according to later ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... pictures, and ornaments, and so resting satisfied in a somewhat indolent feeling of goodness, and not troubling ourselves with too much effort of reason. A love of the beautiful undoubtedly tends to elevate and refine the mind, but the follies of the false love and the dangers of an inordinate love are numerous and deadly. It is absurd that a man should either be or pretend to be absolutely absorbed in the worship of a dado or a China tea cup so as to ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... never been touched by those forces in our civilization which so dwarf and cripple the race, but who had been taught to find in their natural environment those things that alone have the power to truly refine and glorify life. ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... foremost of the three in that executive efficiency which did so much to give their plans the uniform success already mentioned. Kindness and warm affection, clearness of moral vision, and purity of heart, with a lively relish for quiet intellectual pleasures, for society and books adapted to refine, improve and elevate, were among the characteristics common ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... the monstrous Effects of Passion! Say rather, Oh, the foolish Effects of a mean Education! (interrupted his Majesty of Bantam.) For Passions were given us for Use, Reason to govern and direct us in the Use, and Education to cultivate and refine that Reason. But (pursu'd he) for all his Impudence to me, which I shall take a time to correct, I am oblig'd to him, that at last he has found me out a Kingdom to my Title; and if I were Monarch of that Place (believe ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... is that von Schoenvorts and Olson while out hunting the other day discovered oil about fifteen miles north of us beyond the sandstone cliffs. Olson says there is a geyser of oil there, and von Schoenvorts is making preparations to refine it. If he succeeds, we shall have the means for leaving Caspak and returning to our own world. I can scarce believe the truth of it. We are all elated to the seventh heaven of bliss. Pray God we ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... make this Powder Mill a school of instruction for a few selected men, so as to have them ready for service at the Augusta Powder Works when they should commence operations—similarly to what had been done at the Refinery at Nashville, where men were being taught to refine saltpetre and distill charcoal. Before the occupation of Nashville by the Federal forces, these men, together with the machinery and articles of the Refinery in that city, were removed to the Augusta Works; ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains

... cease to be the pure, the delicate, and timid creatures that they now are—if they should cease to overawe profligacy, and to win and to shame men into decency, fidelity, and love of unsullied virtue—it is easy to see that this influence, which has hitherto been exerted to strengthen and refine our society, will operate entirely to its corruption and debasement; that domestic happiness and private honour will be extinguished, and public spirit and national industry most probably ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... elevation upon the human mind, and to teach it to regard the things of this world with generous feelings, to inspire men with a scorn of mere temporal advantage, to give birth to living convictions, and to keep alive the spirit of honorable devotedness; if you hold it to be a good thing to refine the habits, to embellish the manners, to cultivate the arts of a nation, and to promote the love of poetry, of beauty, and of renown; if you would constitute a people not unfitted to act with power upon all other nations, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... which for a while do trouble the Aire, do withall purge and refine it: And our trust is that through the most wise Providence and blessing of GOD, the Truth by our so long continued agitations, will be better cleared among us, and so our service will prove more acceptable to all the Churches of Christ, but more especially to you, while we have ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... buzzard, tickled wid de compliment, 'I'm so larnid in dat music, I disdains to sing; I criticises de birds dat does.' 'Den,' says Mars Milburn, 'I needn't say to ye, P'ofessor Buzzard, dat dis little bell will be very pleasin' to yo' refine taste.' Wid dat he takes a little piece o' wire an' fastens de tea-bell to de bird's foot an' says, 'Buzzard, let me hear ye play!' De buzzard flew and de bell tinkled, an' all de other buzzards hear ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... have no making power; Then give us making will, adopting thine. Make, make, and make us; temper, and refine. Be in us patience—neither to start nor cower. Christ, if thou be not with us—not by sign, But presence, actual as the wounds that bleed— We shall not bear ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... day to die, So heavenly, that on high Change could not glorify Nor death refine her: Pure gold of perfect love, On earth like heaven's own dove, She cannot wear, above, ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... detail of stately colonnade, and shady perspective of quay and boulevard. After years of this subtle training the eye instinctively revolts from the vulgar and the crude. There is little in the poorer quarters of our city to rejoice or refine the senses; squalor and all-pervading ugliness are not least among the curses that ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... own intractable character, without religious faith to ennoble it, without even imagination to refine it—the unconscious disclosure of the one tender and loving instinct in her nature still piteously struggling for existence, with no sympathy to sustain it, with no light to guide it—would have touched the heart of any man not incurably depraved. Amelius spoke ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... the poets of the Renaissance: they determined to sing not only with beauty, but with care. The movement began in the verse of MAROT, whose clear, civilized, worldly poetry shows for the first time that tendency to select and to refine, that love of ease and sincerity, and that endeavour to say nothing that is not said well, which were to become the fundamental characteristics of all that was best in French poetry for the next ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... possessed of peculiar dignity, and points out a propriety of conduct, which men of station are obliged to maintain. In the commerce of superiors and inferiors, it is the object of ambition, and of vanity, to refine on the advantages of rank; while, to facilitate the intercourse of polite society, it is the aim of good breeding to ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore and did refine it; and thus ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... Christian churches and congregations, heirs of Heaven and children of God, to preach the truth, to administer the rites of baptism, communion, and marriage, to dispense charities, and in every way to quicken and refine the religious life of individuals and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... tongue recoils from speaking the horrors and atrocities of war thus brought into the bosom of a peaceful home. All the amenities and charities of domestic life are outraged, are annihilated. All that is dearest to man; all that tends to refine, to soften him—to make him a noble and a better being—all these are trampled under foot by a brutal soldiery—all these are torn from his heart for ever! He will tell you that he detests war so much that he almost despises its glories; and that he detests it because he has known its evils, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... something to be accomplished that can be accomplished in no other way, and that he is pleased for the sake of that gain to let us suffer? The things that are worth while come through pain. Joy does not make us stronger nor bring us nearer God; nor does it refine, ennoble, or enrich us. The pure gold comes from the fire only and the tempered steel also must have passed through the flame. God would have us pure as gold and as strong as steel, and to have us so he can not spare the flame. We must pass through the furnace ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... the coincidence that while the Virgin was miraculously using the power of spiritual love to elevate and purify the people, Eleanor and her daughters were using the power of earthly love to discipline and refine the courts. Side by side with the crude realities about them, they insisted on teaching and enforcing an ideal that contradicted the realities, and had no value for them or for us except in ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... ignorant in anything, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted, and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university in less volume; whither they came not so much for repose as study, and to examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and consent made current in vulgar ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... wise men." Montaigne tells us that "Pausanias, an ancient player on the lyre, used to make his scholars go to hear one that lived near him, and played ill, that they might learn to hate discords." He says again of himself, "A clownish way of speaking does more to refine mine than the most elegant. Every day the foolish countenance of another is advertising and advising me. Profiting little by good examples, I make use of them that are ill, which are everywhere to be found. I endeavour to render myself as agreeable ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate



Words linked to "Refine" :   polish, attenuate, ameliorate, distill, over-refine, better, educate, train, refining, refinement, school, improve, rectify, develop, civilize, involve, modify, civilise, make pure, treat, sublimate, fine-tune, overrefine, purify, change, alter



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