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adjective
Refined  adj.  Freed from impurities or alloy; purifed; polished; cultured; delicate; as; refined gold; refined language; refined sentiments. "Refined wits who honored poesy with their pens."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Refined" Quotes from Famous Books



... daughter, who lived about four or five miles from Oxford. Some service he had rendered them, of sufficient importance as to make him an ever welcome and acceptable guest within the precincts of that cottage, which proclaimed a refined and elevated taste, although its inmates were not of the highest class. Both Percy fancied were widows, although he scarcely knew the foundation of that fancy, except the circumstance of their living together, and the husband of the younger lady never appearing; nor was his name ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... generally, men of very extensive views; and, therefore, we cannot expect that they should prefer the general good of their country before their own present interest; a motive of such power, that even in men of curious researches, refined sentiments, and generous education, we see, too often, that it ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... along with an easy book; but if I come to a hard word, I cry 'Wheelbarrows,' and skip him." On his own topics he was very sensible, and no owner could have found fault with him had he not been just a little racketty on shore. In my refined days I remember reading in one of Thackeray's books about a young lord who was much loved by one Henry Esmond: My friend Jack was very like that young man, and you could not get vexed with him,—or, at any rate, you could not ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... ministers who sat herded on a sort of platform together, to address the Almighty and the congregation in prayers and discourses, interspersed with psalms sung by the whole assembly. There was no want of piety, depth, force, or fervour. These were men refined by persecution, who had struggled to the light that had been darkened by the popular system, and, having once been forced into foregoing their scruples as to breaking the unity of the Church, regarded themselves even as apostles of the truth. Listening to them, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... easy tone of good society. The author who sets out to address a crowd defeats his own object; he eliminates the essence of good writing—frankness. You cannot be frank with men of low condition. You must presuppose a refined and congenial listener, a man or woman whom you would not hesitate to take by the hand and lead into the circle of your own personal friends. If this applies to literature of every kind, it applies to history ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... a refined, familiar way, and Jeanne fell in love with her at once. "In her I might, indeed, find a ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... earth it is dissolved in cold water, and afterwards drawn off into salt-pans, and refined in the same manner as the ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... composed by the elder Milton. He also harmonized the Norwich and York psalm tunes, which were adapted to six of the Psalms in Ravenscroft's Collection. Such performance bespeaks not only musical accomplishment, but a refined nature; and we may well believe that Milton's love of learning, as well as his love of music, was hereditary in its origin, and fostered by his contact with his father. Aubrey distinctly affirms that Milton's skill on ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... beauty has not arrived yet, nor is it possible to tell whether she will appear from the female or male branches. But in the fifth generation appear she does, with the original features so moulded and softened by time, so worked and refined and sweetened, so delicate and yet so rich in blood, that she seems like a new creation that has suddenly started into being. No one has watched and recorded the slow process which has thus finally resulted. No one could do so, because it has spread ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... reddish tinge in the duskiness, purple-red lips, and liquid black eyes with orange-brown reflections in them—the eyes called tortoiseshell in America. Her crisp cast-iron coloured hair was worn like a fleece round her small head, and her features were so refined one could only suppose that her father had been a singularly handsome as well as a white man. Adelina and Liberata were inseparable, except at meal-times, when the dusky little girl had to go back among her own tribe on the mother's side; and they formed an exquisite picture as one often saw ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... of cultivating their taste, and displaying their critical powers. Many of them are so much in the habit of attending the theatres when favourite plays are acted, that they know almost every word of the principal scenes by heart. All their favourite amusements are in some measure of a refined kind. It is not in drinking clubs, or in sensual gratifications alone, that men of these ranks seek for relaxation, as its too often the case with us; but it is in the society of women, in conversation, in music and dancing, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... naturally suppose that Cain's offering of fruit indicated a more refined and spiritual idea of the fitness of things than Abel's of animal food. Why Cain's offering was rejected as ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... of the fixed stars from the small apparent shift of their positions when viewed from widely separated positions of the earth in its orbit was one of the most refined operations of the observatory. The great precision with which this minute angular quantity, a fraction of a second only, had to be measured, was so delicate an operation with the ordinary micrometer, though, indeed, it was with this instrument that the classical observations of Sir Robert ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... mother's and his maiden aunt's feelings could they see him fighting with a common bargeman, he managed to guard off the blow. But he was not so fortunate in the second round, for the bargee knocked him down, but was happily knocked down in turn by the Putney Pet. The language of this gentle and refined scholar ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... Scott's young men (the young men to several of whom Thackeray would have liked to be mother-in-law), and if he is not worthy of Rebecca, he does not get her. As for Richard, no doubt, he is not the Richard of history, but what does that matter? He is a most admirable re-creation, softened and refined, of the Richard of a romance which, be it remembered, is itself in all probability as ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... wonder, he has been promoted on account of his virtuous life. He was a good example in his own village, and a great promoter of schools. The old man is candid enough to confess that he was happier among his rustic peasants than he is now in more refined society. We gave him the book of Genesis in Modern Greek; and it was highly gratifying to us to see the surprise and pleasure of his countenance on being presented with an account of the Creation ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... dress-suit and tried it on again. Certainly he felt more at home in it than of yore. The collar caused him less torture, and he managed to keep the "breastplate" of the shirt from buckling, which it seemed to delight in doing. He had lost some of his facial sun-brown, and this lent him a more refined appearance. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... provincial town? Can we imagine a grand seignior, once a gay and gallant abbe and now a bishop with a hundred thousand livres income, voluntarily burying himself for the entire year at Mende, at Comminges, in a paltry cloister? The interval has become too great between the refined, varied and literary life of the great center, and the monotonous, inert, practical life of the provinces. Hence it is that the grand seignior who withdraws from the former cannot enter into the latter, and he remains an absentee, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... We forget in the vitality and artistic grouping of the picture, in the nobility of the author's purpose and the lasting moral effect of the story, the occasional stiffness of the style. It is the style of the refined scholar, perhaps also of the bookman and the too conscious critic. Occasionally it lacks spontaneity, directness and naturalness. It might unbend more and forget ceremony. But it is picturesque, forcible, clear, and bears us along with its ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... had an intent look about them, yet that heavy expression which some people affirm to be a peculiarity as well as evidence, of an epileptic subject. His face was decidedly a pleasant one for all that; refined, but quite colourless, except for the circumstance that at this moment it was blue with cold. He held a bundle made up of an old faded silk handkerchief that apparently contained all his travelling wardrobe, and wore thick shoes ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... of which stood an enormous salt-cellar, as a sort of boundary between such as were of gentle birth, and those of lower degree; the former sitting above, the latter below the salt. The style of living in those days would appear very uncivilised to us in this more refined age, for the dishes were set on the board without any cloth, and the people ate off wooden or pewter plates, and used their fingers instead of forks, while many of the nobles would have their favourite hounds ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... this, it being even more true than appears. So you must dress the part, Jane, and endeavour to look the part, so far as your five foot eleven will permit; for please remember that I have described you to Dr. Mackenzie as 'a pretty, dainty little thing, refined and elegant, and considerably more capable ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... ball costume sat in a magnificent hall, drinking nothing less than champagne, while the court band discoursed bewitching music, and the electric lights flashed on myriads of jewels, Bee and Mrs. Jimmie would declare that sort of Bohemia to be quite in their line. And because that kind of refined stupidity would bore Jimmie and me to the verge of extinction, and because we really prefer an open-air concert-garden with beer, where the people are likely to be any sort of cattle whom nobody ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... billiard-room chairs were quite the most noted possessions in the basement and three-story brick house on West Adams Street. She had followed the chairs in the course of the Hitchcock evolution until her aunt had insisted on her being sent east to the Beaumanor Park School. Two years of "refined influences" in this famous establishment, with a dozen other girls from new-rich families, had softened her tones and prolonged her participles, but had touched her not essentially. Though she ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... seemed to be clear of all prejudices against me, and I verily believe was fully persuaded that he had been imposed upon. But I was too much beloved in Paris to continue long in favour at Court. This was a crime that rendered me disagreeable in the eyes of a refined Italian statesman, and which was the more dangerous from the fact that I lost no opportunity of aggravating it by a natural and unaffected expense, to which my air of negligence gave a lustre, and by my great alms and bounty, which, though very often ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... reaches a final conclusion, indicated that many human beings will pass through the trouble. (Matthew 24:21,22) The prophet Zechariah informs us that a portion of the people will be brought through the fiery trouble, and refined, and then will call upon the name of the Lord and he will hear them. (Zechariah 13:8,9) Those who learn of the Lord's kingdom and readily put themselves under its direction and become obedient to the laws and rules of his new kingdom will be the ones ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford

... are gentlewomen, thorough gentlewomen,' said Lady Myrtle, musingly. 'That makes a difference. And I suppose a good many of the pupils are really nice—lady-like and refined?' ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... of that refined policy to which he was mainly indebted for his elevation. He left the sovereign priesthood to his brother Simon, who, wisely abstaining from all interference in the disputes which embroiled Egypt and Syria, directed his whole attention to ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... than 50% self-sufficient; food shortages—fish, refined sugar, fats and oils (other than butter), grains, ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... private life instead of satirizing noted persons by name, and which, as Aristotle says, produced laughter by innuendo rather than by scurrility, was preferred to the "terrible graces" of her elder sister by the gentle and refined Plutarch, or the critic who has usurped his name in the 'Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander.' The old Attic Comedy has been variously compared to Charivari, Punch, the comic opera of Offenbach, and a Parisian ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... machinery, military supplies, metal works, foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals, technical services, refined ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Readers with such Originals, both in Prose and Verse, as will please the FANCY and instruct the JUDGMENT. And here we beg leave to observe that we shall have nothing so much at heart as the support of VIRTUE and MORALITY and the noble cause of LIBERTY. The refined amusements of LITERATURE, and the pleasing veins of well pointed wit, shall also be considered as necessary to this collection; interspersed with chosen pieces, and curious essays, extracted from the most celebrated authors; So that, blending ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... constructive material in the blood is distributed to every part of the body. "From this distribution of blood in these minute vessels," he says, "the structure of organs derive their constituent parts; through these vessels brain matter, muscle, gland, membrane, are given out from the blood by a refined process of selection of material, which, up to this time, is only so far understood as to enable us to say that it exists. The minute and intermediate vessels are more intimately connected than any ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... at that time a boy only about nine years old, as the prospective heir to Friar's Park was cherished as an only child is always cherished in these circumstances. I pictured to myself the meeting of brother and sister! Yes! because of the refined and deliberate cruelty which Sir Burnham displayed towards myself, I retaliated with a poisoned blade. Having led the conversation in the direction of the heir, I threw away the scabbard ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... possibility, then he is able to begin sifting his pleasures and taking away from his consciousness those which belong absolutely to the man of clay. When those are put back, there is the next range of more refined pleasures to be dealt with. The dealing with these which will enable a man to find the essence of life is not the method pursued by the stoic philosopher. The stoic does not allow that there is joy within pleasure, and by denying himself the one ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... at the moment the French were apotheosing an obscure demagogue, the celebrated Condorcet expired, through the neglect of a gaoler; and now, the coarse and ferocious Marat, and the more refined, yet more pernicious, philosopher, are both involved in ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... ape," the word "Drill" or "Dril" having been anciently employed in England to denote an Ape or Baboon. Thus in the fifth edition of Blount's "Glossographia, or a Dictionary interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined English tongue...very useful for all such as desire to understand what they read," published in 1681, I find, "Dril—a stone-cutter's tool wherewith he bores little holes in marble, etc. Also a large overgrown Ape and Baboon, ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... an ancient wood-work bridge, coeval at least with the oldest portion of the building as it stands. But the bridge is gone, and the lust of gold and the pride of life have so destroyed that spirit of reverence and refined superstitious love for the venerable which should characterize an advanced civilization, that it is greatly to be feared the rest of the structure will soon follow. Yet it was in this courtyard, and before ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... Forrest in his suggestive, insinuating way, and excusing his references to the lieutenant on the ground of his extreme regard for her widowed mother, her impoverished but amiable relatives, and her own refined, intellectual, and accomplished self, she shrank still more and strove to silence him,—a difficult matter. She had, however, a trait that proved simply exasperating to a man of Elmendorf's calibre,—a faculty of listening ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... his assistance, but apparently without much effect, and being a German scholar, I then offered to come to the rescue. The moment I went up to the figure she seemed to gain strength, and came quite out of the cabinet, and said to me in the most refined German (any readers who have studied the language know that there is as wide a difference between the highest and lowest type of German accent as between an educated Irish "accent" and an ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... a significant portion of my annual caloric intake has gradually refined my eating habits. Years ago I learned to like cabbage salads as much as lettuce. Since lettuce freezes out many winters (19-21 degree F), this adjustment has proved very useful. Gradually I began to appreciate kale, too, and now value it as a salad ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon

... His self-appointed vicars kindled about them. The Rincons of that day had not been thinkers. But the centuries had finally evolved from their number a man of thought. Alas! the evolution had developed intellect, it is true—but the process had refined away the rugged qualities of animal strength which, without a deeper hold on Truth and the way to demonstrate it than Jose possessed, must leave him the plaything ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... digested. This Zeno will avouch for me, and Crato too, who confine sick persons to a fish diet, as of all others the lightest sort of meat. And it stands with reason, that the sea should produce the most nourishing and wholesome food, seeing it yields us the most refined, the purest and therefore ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... Well accomplished in all the superficial but engaging graces of a court, she afforded, when better known, still more promising indications of her character; and men prognosticated both humanity from her soft and obliging deportment, and penetration from her taste in all the refined arts of music, eloquence, and poetry.[**] And as the Scots had long been deprived of the presence of their sovereign, whom they once despaired ever more to behold among them, her arrival seemed to give universal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... rock like refined sugar and passing several wagons carrying heavy blocks down the road, we arrived at the mouth of the principal quarry where the purest statuary marble is obtained. I could not but think how many exquisite statues here lay entombed for ages, till ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... upon the excellence of a gazette according to its merits, I should have much to say of the Morning Chronicle, a paper established in this city in the year 1802. The leading editor was Dr. Peter Irving, a gentleman of refined address, scholastic attainments, and elegant erudition. It exhibited great power in its editorial capacity, and was the vehicle of much literary matter from the abundance and ability of its correspondence. If I do not greatly err, in this paper Washington ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... that a language, in which no books are written, but which is only spoken by a people chiefly devoted to arms and agriculture, and consequently not cultivated by the criticisms of men of taste and learning, is by no means exposed to the vicissitudes of those that are polished by refined nations;[AF] and that, however paradoxical it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that the degeneracy of a language is more frequently to be attributed to an extravagant refinement than to the neglect ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.

... shebeen house, to be played for by the country gamblers at the five and ten, or spoil'd five, Phelim always took a hand and was generally successful. On these occasions he was frequently charged with an over-refined dexterity; but Phelim usually swore, in vindication of his own innocence, until he got black in the face, as the phrase among ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... fascinated, cut to the heart by the dumb suffering in her eyes, he was reminded of one of the exquisite Madonnas he had seen in an exhibition not long ago. The draperies had been dainty and cloud-like, and the face refined and wonderful in its beauty, but there had been the same sorrowful mother-anguish in the eyes. It passed through his mind that this girl and he were kin because of a mutual torture. His face softened, and he felt a great pity for her ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... curious specimen of his taste and sensibility, was a man of humane studies and humane feelings, describes the refined and elegant manner in which the operation is performed, by way of mitigating the indignation which such a usage ought to excite. He assures us that the stamp is not a branding iron, but a silver instrument; and that it is heated ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... her little stately manner, and salutes you with a formal curtsey; and then, under all this air of dignity, you discover the very merriest-hearted little romp that ever existed. You must be fond of her. As refined in mind and in manner as the most fastidious could require, she has, at the same time, the humour, the native fun of her country—it sparkles in her eyes—it bubbles in her laugh. She is a little patriot, too: when Ireland is mentioned, you will see her cheek flush, and ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... down by the Woolworth Building. By the time I reached that bindery there were only two girls ahead of me. A man interviewed the younger. She had had a good bit of bindery experience. The man was noncommittal. The very refined middle-aged woman had had years of experience. She no sooner spoke of it than the man squinted his eyes at her and said: "You belong to the union then, don't you?" "Yes," the woman admitted, with no hesitation, "I do, but that makes no difference. I'm perfectly willing to work with nonunion ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... 'Tis not to brand them, that their faults are shown, But, by their errors, to excuse his own. 20 If love and honour now are higher raised, 'Tis not the poet, but the age is praised. Wit's now arrived to a more high degree: Our native language more refined and free. Our ladies and our men now speak more wit In conversation, than those poets writ. Then, one of these is, consequently, true: That what this poet writes comes short of you, And imitates you ill (which ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... me frequently; I could show you many letters, for I have preserved a large number—letters filled with beautiful and exalted thoughts, expressed in noble and poetic language. They show that Pugno possessed a most refined, superior mind, and was ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... and frequented. Being contiguous to the Bear Garden, it is probable that those who resorted there went to the theatre, when the bear-baiting sports were over, and such persons were not likely to form a very refined audience. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various

... was rolling before him. Hawkeye, who feared his voice would betray him to his subtle enemies, gladly profited by the interruption, to break out anew in such a burst of musical expression as would, probably, in a more refined state of society have been termed "a grand crash." Among his actual auditors, however, it merely gave him an additional claim to that respect which they never withhold from such as are believed to be the subjects of mental alienation. The little knot ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... became known in the West. However, in an account of the house of the Dauphin Viennois (1333) mention is made of "white sugar;" and the author of the "Menagier de Paris" frequently speaks of this white sugar, which, before the discovery, or rather colonisation, of America, was brought, ready refined, from the Grecian islands, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... neighborhood of Scotland Yard," put in Holmes, quickly, observing a sneer on Hawkshaw's lips, and hastening to overwhelm him by further evidence of his ingenuity. "When he gets his bill he will open his piratical eyes so wide that he will be seized with jealousy to think of how much more refined his profession has become since he left it, and out of mere pique he will leave the hotel, and, to show himself still cleverer than his modern prototypes, he will leave his account unpaid, with the result that the affair will be put in the hands of the police, under which ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... piece by piece, and admires and handles between his arms the helmet, dread with plumes and spouting flame, as when a blue cloud takes fire in the sunbeams and gleams afar; then the smooth greaves of electrum and refined gold, the spear, and the shield's ineffable design. There the Lord of Fire had fashioned the story of Italy and the triumphs of the Romans, not witless of prophecy or ignorant of the age to be; there all the race of Ascanius' future seed, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... costly precious stones, noble bronze statues, beautiful paintings, and between them the rarest ornaments, glistening with jewels, which modern times have designated by the name of ribs; there were delicate little trifles of inestimable value, and with refined taste and judgment every thing was sought out which luxury and convenience could demand. With childish astonishment and ecstasy, Natalie wandered through these rooms, which she hardly recognized in their splendid ornamentation, and stood before these treasures ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... He was refined in manner and always a gentleman. In his campaigns he was careless of his clothing through necessity, but when in the cities he liked to have all the refinements. He never thought of money; he would spend it if he had it, and if he did not ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... upon its efficacy as a prize held up before the poet, spurring him on to express himself. In this aspect poetry is often a form of spiritual display comparable to the gay plumage upon the birds at mating season. In the case of women poets, verse often affords an essentially refined and lady-like manner of expressing one's sentiments toward a possible suitor. The convention so charmingly expressed in William Morris' lines, Rhyme Slayeth Shame, seems to be especially grateful to them. At times the ruse fails, as a writer ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... wan and ghastly. The very air is sickly with the odor of their cosmetics. And with flaunting cambrics they bend over carriage sides, salute each and every pedestrian, and receive in return answers unsuited to refined ears. They pass into the dim vista, but we see with the aid of that flickering gas, the shadow of that polluting hand which hastens ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... looked so beautiful before! Jeff had only seen her in those soft enwrappings and half-deshabille that belong to invalid femininity. Always refined and modest thus, in her present walking-costume there was added a slight touch of coquettish adornment. There was a brightness of color in her cheek and eye, partly the result of climbing the staircase, partly the result of that audacious impulse ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte

... desire to do Thy will always! Make pure our hearts like thrice-refined gold, And these, our prayers, accept as in the ...
— Hebrew Literature

... of religion, though more subtle and refined in its creations, had still its origin in the same human causes as the first, viz., anticipation of good and apprehension of evil. Of deities so created, many, however, were the inventions of poets— (poetic metaphor is a fruitful mother of mythological fable)—many also were the graceful ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a somewhat original manner. We must, however, keep pace with the times—be up to date. The simple life is all very fine in books, but, my friends, 'tis the strenuous life that produces the stuff. Excuse slang, but it is much employed nowadays, and vigorous emphasis is used even by the most refined. If we don't get new attractions I am afraid we may have to resort to giving away souvenirs. Souvenirs have, in their day, had all the potency of a bargain counter in a popular department store well ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... Charles Flower, Lord Mayor of London, in 1809—had filled the position of Lady Mayoress, when 18 years of age, her father being a widower; she brought her husband L40,000 and subsequently inherited L100,000. She was eminently fitted to grace Spencer Wood—her beauty, her refined and cordial manners made her receptions eminently attractive. Her education was perfect, she was mistress of four languages, English, French, Italian and Latin, which studies she took great trouble in keeping up and which she herself taught to her children, ten in number, besides teaching them ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... Mr. Edwards was married to Sarah Pierrpont, aged seventeen. She had an inheritance even more refined and vigorous than that of Mr. Edwards. She was descended on her father's side from the choicest of the Pierrpont family of England and New England. Her father was one of the most famous of New Haven clergymen, one of the principal founders, and a trustee and lecturer of Yale College. ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship

... would be the crowning joy of her old age. At first Harold puzzled and perplexed her, he was so changed from the Harold who had shingled roofs and painted barns and worked in Peterkin's furnace. Foreign travel and prosperity set well upon him, and one could scarcely have found a more refined or polished young man than Harold as he moved about the premises, every inch a gentleman and every inch the master, with a bright smile and pleasant word for everyone, whether of high or low degree. He had known ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... Mildred says she is. I wish she hadn't been so familiar with those motormen. That wasn't very ladylike to go up and engage them in conversation. Perhaps Mildred is right. You could hardly expect old Dick Buck's granddaughter to be very refined—but, gee, ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... work of Tocqueville ("De la Democratie en Amerique.") My impression is as yet a mixed one. A fine book, but I feel in it a little too much imitation of Montesquieu. This abstract, piquant, sententious style, too, is a little dry, over-refined and monotonous. It has too much cleverness and not enough imagination. It makes one think, more than it charms, and though really serious, it seems flippant. His method of splitting up a thought, of illuminating ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... only takes his images as visible representations of his unseen God or gods, but the refined idolater, in worshipping, considers that the idol contains in its substance a ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott

... who reads the works of the ancients will enjoy the acquaintance of the greatest men and the noblest souls who ever lived, and will get in this way, as it happens in all refined conversation, beautiful ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... thought Chaldea, although she had no notion of permitting such an elopement to take place. That Agnes would hold to her bargain all her life, because Hubert had fulfilled his part, never occurred to the girl. She was not civilized enough to understand this problem of a highly refined nature. ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... Saint George and the Dragon, which, by the way, was taken from England when Cromwell ordered the sale of the art treasures of Charles I., and may now be seen at the Louvre. The old Count Federigo had made all this refined magnificence possible, it is true, and Guidobaldo had been in every way a worthy successor to his father, though lacking his rugged strength; but to Guidobaldo's wife, the gracious and wise Elizabetta Gonzaga, belongs ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... keenly; and who shall say that the rough old man did not appreciate the refined tact of ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... pleasant, however, to find him in another mood, writing, "Since I have known God in a saving manner, painting, poetry, and music have had charms unknown to me before; I have received what I suppose is a taste for them, for religion has refined my mind, and made it susceptible of impressions from the ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... always been beautiful; but her beauty had been of the earth, earthy; it had had a certain insolent quality in it, as if it flaunted itself in the beholder's eye; spirit had never shone through it, intellect had never refined it. But death had touched it and consecrated it, bringing out delicate modelings and purity of outline never seen before—doing what life and love and great sorrow and deep womanhood joys might have done ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Restrained by these refined sentiments, Esther and Sir Donald waited until afternoon before taking any action. Then they started out together, and procuring a boat, rowed up the Thames in the direction which Oswald and Alice had taken, the keeper going ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... bumble-bee. John Pike perceived that to offer such a thing to Crocker's trout would probably consign him—even if his great stamina should over-get the horror—to an uneatable death, through just and natural indignation. On the other hand, while the May-fly lasted, a trout so cultured, so highly refined, so full of light and sweetness, would never demean himself to low bait, or any coarse son ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... feeding his lambs. And I have learned a great lesson. The soul cannot be ministered to till the stomach is appeased. His lambs must be fed bread and butter and potatoes and meat; after that, and only after that, are their spirits ready for more refined nourishment." ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... there strange in the fact that Sir Percy should have chosen to use the device as a seal-ring? He might easily have done that . . . yes . . . quite easily . . . and . . . besides . . . what connection could there be between her exquisite dandy of a husband, with his fine clothes and refined, lazy ways, and the daring plotter who rescued French victims from beneath the very eyes of the leaders of a ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... sense of natural order, and the instinctive and common repugnance to a palpable violation of it, have been forged and refined into the philosophical objection to miracles. Two great thinkers of past generations, two of the keenest and clearest intellects which have appeared since the Reformation, laid the foundations of it long ago. Spinoza urged the uselessness of miracles, and Hume their ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... only one hundred and fifty names. The first issue appeared on the 21st June, printed on four folio pages of 18 by 12 inches, each containing two columns of small type. The first article was the prospectus in larger type, in which the promoters promised to pay particular attention 'to the refined amusements of literature and the pleasant veins of well-pointed wit; interspersed with chosen pieces of curious essays, extracted from the most celebrated authors, blending philosophy with politics, history, &c.' The conductors also pledged themselves to give no place in ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot

... who had betrayed such agitation at sight of him lingered naturally enough with the newcomer. Though, as I stated, not much less than thirty years of age, Mademoiselle V—, one of his own nation, and of highly refined and delicate appearance, had kindled a singular interest in the middle-aged gentleman's breast, and her large dark eyes, as they had opened and shrunk from him, exhibited a pathetic beauty to which hardly any ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... which ran for the greater part of its course* upon an embankment raised above the neighbouring ground. This temple was in fair condition in the early years of the eighteenth century,** and so much of it as has escaped the ravages of the Mameluks, bears witness to the scrupulous care and refined art employed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... I never felt better impulses, more humble, more thankful, more religious, than I do now. That the happiness of this soft, gentle, fragile creature is to be henceforth in my hands is to me a solemn and inspiring thought. What man is worthy of a refined, delicate woman? I feel my unworthiness of her every hour; but, so help me God, I shall try to be all to her that a husband should; and you, my sister, I know, will help me to make happy the future which she so confidingly ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... modernize it entirely in the spring, Maddy objected at once. "They were already indebted to him for more than they could ever pay," she said, and she would not suffer it. So Guy submitted, though it grated upon his sense of the beautiful and refined terribly, to see Maddy amid so humble surroundings. Twice a week, and sometimes oftener, he rode down to Honedale, and Maddy felt that without these visits life ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... critical insight. We can take him as a good example of that intelligent class of English travellers whose intercourse with the Continental litterati has so well contributed to establish the good reputation of British culture and refined ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... and Austerities; and when he had rooted these Things in the Heart of his credulous Proselyte, he proceeded to declare to her, that Chastity was a Virtue absolutely necessary to merit the divine Favours; strongly insisting, that this Chastity must be so refined and abstracted, as not to be awed, or seduced by human Engagements. The unhappy Queen, misled by the pathetic Discourse, and the feigned Piety of the Dervise, greedily swallowed the Poison he was administring. She passed whole Days and Nights in ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... talking to Madame Wachner. She was a little bit ashamed that this was so, for this cosmopolitan woman's conversation was not always quite refined, but she was good-natured and lively, and her talk was invariably amusing. Above all, she knew how to flatter, and after a chat with Madame Wachner Sylvia Bailey always felt pleased both with herself and ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... withered love does shoot, Like the faint herbage on a rock, wants root. Love is a tender amity, refined: Grafted on friendship it exalts the kind. But when the graff no longer does remain, The dull stock lives, but never ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... symbolism. They planted the lotus, and the monastery ponds became seats of splendor, and delights to the eye. Their teachings, metaphysical and mystical, poetical and historical, scientific and literary, created, it may be said, the Japanese garden, which to the refined imagination contains far more than meets the eye of the alien.[9] Indeed, the oriental imitations in earth, stone, water and verdure, have a language and suggestion far beyond what the usual parterres and walks, borders and lines, fountains and statuary ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... feel that we adore With such refined excess, That though the heart would burst with more, We could not live ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... their internal economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the mantelpiece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and honest though earthy foundation. I cannot but perceive that this so-called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do not get on in the enjoyment of the fine arts which adorn it, my attention being wholly occupied with the jump; for I remember that the greatest genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... astonishing; he had gone away a pimply, overgrown boy, raw and callow as a fledgling, constrained in society, diffident, awkward. Now he returned, a tall, well-formed Harvardian, as careful as a woman in the matter of dress, very refined in his manners. Besides, he was a delightful conversationalist. His father was rejoiced; every one declared he was a ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... she rather reluctantly descended to the parlor, where her first glance at her visitors made her half regret that she had not followed Sophy's advice. Mrs. Judge Howell and her daughter-in-law were refined, cultivated women, and ere Ella had conversed with them five minutes, she felt that if there was between them any point of inferiority, it rested with herself, and not with them. They had traveled much, both in the Old and New World; and though ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes

... us were we to illustrate the various horrors which attended these amusements, designed to entertain the most refined population of Rome. Time would fail us were we to enumerate the various classifications in the art of murder on the stage, the signals which were made by the multitude in token of relenting clemency, the more usual ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... later again in the Napoleonic wars. The large, strongly fortified cities of Koenigsberg and Danzig seemed to hold out the only hope for life and security, and toward these they flocked in ever-increasing masses. Even Berlin itself had brought home to it some of the more refined cruelties of war by the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life." And again we read in the diary of Evelyn,—another writer who reflects with wonderful accuracy the life and spirit of the Restoration,—"I saw Hamlet played; but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age, since his Majesty's being so long abroad." Since Shakespeare and the Elizabethans were no longer interesting, literary men began to imitate the French writers, with whose works they had just grown familiar; and here begins the so-called period of French influence, which shows itself in English ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... charming creatures will neither strain at a camel nor swallow a gnat. Not publicly. These operations, without which the world they have such a large share in could not go on for ten minutes, are left to us—men. And then we are chided for being coarse. This is a refined objection but does not seem fair. Another little girl—or perhaps the same little girl—wrote to him in Cordova, "I hope Poste-Restante is a nice place, and that you are very comfortable." Woman again! ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... trial because she was scared into it by the officials, and, being naturally of a weak nervous organization, she gave in. He was certain he was going to die if he had to serve out his sentence, because prison life is so different from the life he has led in the past. He is entirely too refined to be able to stand the rough life of imprisonment. Referred the examiner to the Austrian Embassy, which could readily establish his noble descent and get him out of this terrible predicament. When, later in his sojourn here, he was interviewed by several gentlemen from the Austrian Embassy ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... reasons against cultivating him as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game, is by no means the greatest indignity that can be offered to a nose. It is a rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease or putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose tingle. It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare medicinal qualities. I do not recommend its use as eye-water, though an old farmer assures me it has undoubted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... exceptions understood and observed by all, while civil practice varies according to the character and habits of the chief in authority, from those of the illustrious Stanton, now well known in history,( 1) to the opposite extreme of refined courtesy. Long observation and experience have led to the belief that such rasping of feelings, too sensitive perhaps, even more than substantial difference, has often been the cause of discord. A single example may suffice to illustrate what is meant. In the arrangements of the room especially ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... among even the most cultured of peoples to-day. By themselves the drums, triangles, and cymbals of an orchestra represent music but one remove from noise; but everybody knows how marvellously they can be utilized to glorify a climax. Now, in a very refined degree, every melody on the pianoforte, be it played as delicately as it may, is a melody with drum-beats. Manufacturers have done much toward eliminating the thump of the hammers against the strings, ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... young lives. Unregulated, impulsive characters, who live for the moment, and are very sensitive to all material delights, have often an air of generosity and joviality which hides their essential baseness; for it is base to live for flesh, either in more refined or more frankly coarse forms. It is base to be incapable of seeing an inch beyond the present. It is base to despise any good that cannot minister to fleeting lusts or fleshly pleasures, and to say of high ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... of feeble tension is sent through the vat between the plates. The water carries along the impurities separated by the current, and the sugar is further whitened and refined. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various

... to the boat, whence his father with the rest had been bringing up her lading. Who could have recognised in the energetic, high-spirited backwoodsman Philip had become, the refined and somewhat sedate and stiff young student of a year ago. By-the-bye, the kitchen of which he spoke was a lean-to of birch-bark, under which a camp stove had been placed; near it was a shed prepared for the reception of the stores, ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston

... and because there had always been a Dr. Hawley in Bursley, and because he was acquainted with the pathological details of their ancestral history on both sides of the hearth. His patients, indeed, were not individuals, but families. There were cleverer doctors in the place, doctors of more refined appearance and manners, doctors less monotonously and loudly gay; but old Hawley, with his knowledge of pedigrees and his unique instinctive sympathy with the idiosyncrasies of local character, could hold his own against the most assertive young M.D. that ever came out of Edinburgh to monopolise ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... improvement of the fair wearer's appearance. These Friends were entertained at Mr. Fry's house heartily, and almost religiously. And doubtless many people who were of the "salt of the earth" were numbered among Mr. Fry's guests, while his young wife moved among them the embodiment of refined lady-like hospitality and high principle. Doubtless, too, the quiet home-talk of these worthy folks was only one degree less solemn and sedate than their ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... but it was suspected occasionally in the twelfth century. We know at the present day to what horrible and loathsome rites Madame de Montespan submitted for the sake of love and hatred. That was done in the most refined and enlightened court in Europe, in the best days of the French intellect, in the home of Bossuet and Racine. It is not difficult to imagine what was believed and what was attempted in ignorant and criminal classes five centuries earlier. Now a witch was, by the hypothesis, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... what barbarians!" cried the little doctor, as they walked down the Bridges. "And this is my dream of refined quiet and ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... continued prosecution of the civil war works to isolate Sudan. In 1999, Sudan began exporting oil and in 1999-2000 had recorded its first trade surpluses. Current oil production stands at 185,000 barrels per day, of which about 70% is exported and the rest refined for domestic consumption. Despite its many infrastructure problems, Sudan's increased oil production, the return of regular rainfall, and recent investments in irrigation schemes should allow the country to achieve economic growth of 6% ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... linens and hemp $600,000,— making a total of $18,200,000 on seven articles. The amount of revenue, then, is lower in proportion as the article of merchandise from which it is derived is less generally used, more rarely consumed, and found accompanying a more refined degree of luxury. And yet articles of luxury are subject to much the highest taxes. Therefore, even though, to obtain an appreciable reduction upon articles of primary necessity, the duties upon articles of luxury should be made ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... heart, that I scarcely saw any thing besides them. But, in truth, can man, little as man always is, and accustomed to littleness, ever make himself equal to all that here surrounds him of the noble, the vast, and the refined? Even tho he should in any degree adapt himself to it, then how vast is the multitude of objects that immediately press upon him from all sides, and meet him at every turn, of which each demands for itself the tribute of his whole attention. How is one ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... leave you where you are, and allow the Red Margrave to save me the trouble. The loss of his castle will not make him more compassionate, especially if he learns you were the cause of it. You will then experience some refined tortures, I imagine; for, like myself, he may think hanging too good for you. I should never have fired his castle had it not ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... Even at the time, no comparison was made between the military skill of the mareschal d'Etrees, and that of the duke de Richelieu; but, however that may have been, this last, who, if he had not shone in the character of a soldier, excelled all, or at least most of his contemporaries in the more refined arts of a courtier, was, just before the battle we have been speaking of, appointed to supersede the former in the command of the French army in Lower Saxony, where he arrived on the sixth of August, with the title of mareschal of France; and M. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... when he could talk his prospects over quietly with his mother. These four years had altered him at least as much for the better as Elfie. He would not now begin in thoughtless self-indulgence, refined indeed and never vicious, but selfish, extravagant, and heedless of all but ease, pleasure, and culture. Some of the enervation of his youth had really worn off, though it had so long made him morbid, and ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... quietly,—indeed, with great appearance of relief. The life of the mind-readers while yet they are in the body is so largely spiritual that the idea of an existence wholly so, which seems vague and chill to us, suggests to them a state only slightly more refined than they already know ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... vision underwent a swift metamorphosis. The stiff- rim and the square-cut vanished, being replaced by milder garments; the toughness went out of the face, the hardness out of the eyes; and, the face, chastened and refined, was irradiated from an inner life of communion with beauty and knowledge. The apparition was very like his present self, and, as he regarded it, he noted the student-lamp by which it was illuminated, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... apples, tomatoes, greens, oranges, and practically all the fresh fruits and vegetables, especially the small berries. Melons and starchy vegetables in large quantities are suitable for muscular workers. Use as little as possible of so-called pure chemical substances, such as refined sugar and flour. ...
— Food for the Traveler - What to Eat and Why • Dora Cathrine Cristine Liebel Roper

... cheaper to build new; and so the steamships will be provided with stoking machinery, and so the dangerous trades will be made safe, or substitutes will be found for their products. In exactly the same way, as the citizens of our Industrial Republic become refined, year by year the cost of slaughterhouse products will increase; until eventually those who want to eat meat will have to do their own killing—and how long do you think the custom would survive then?—To go on to another item—one of ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... ripple in their silken spirals swaying to the breeze. Fanny O'Brien was one of those sylphs,—strong in tenderness, invincible under misfortune, soft as the music of her voice, pure as the azure of her eyes, of a delicate, refined beauty, blessed with a skin that was silken to the touch and caressing to the eye, which neither painter's brush nor written word can picture. Beautiful still at forty-two years of age, many a man would have thought it happiness to marry her as she ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... dissolvent, made by pouring a strong spirit of Nitre on the rectified Oyl of the Butter of Antimony, and then distilling off all the liquor, that would come over, &c. This Menstruum (called by the Author Peracutum) being put to highly refined Gold, destroyed its Texture, and produced, after the method prescribed in the book, a true Silver, as its whiteness in colour, dissolublenes in Aqua fortis, and odious Bitterness, did manifest: which change of a Mettal, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... their poems did not, at least at first, lack sincerity and spontaneity, their tendency to theorizing about the ideals of courtly life, especially about the nature and practice of love as the ideal form of refined conduct, was not favorable to these qualities. As lyrical expression lost in directness and spontaneity it was natural that more and more attention should be paid to form. The external qualities of verse were industriously cultivated. Great ingenuity was expended upon the invention of intricate ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... own room with the Dutch tiles, looking out on her garden with the box walks, and seemed a fragile creature to a boy who sometimes brought her a note or a message, and took distinct pleasure in looking at her delicate face under what seemed to him very becoming caps. He liked her refined figure ; her gentle voice and manner; her vague effect of not belonging there, but to Washington or to Europe, like her furniture, and writing-desk with little glass doors above and little eighteenth-century volumes in old binding, labelled ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... is always the sense of their laws. And they argue thus: all laws are promulgated for this end, that every man may know his duty; and therefore the plainest and most obvious sense of the words is that which ought to be put upon them; since a more refined exposition cannot be easily comprehended, and would only serve to make the laws become useless to the greater part of mankind, and especially to those who need most the direction of them: for it is all one, not to make a law at all, or to ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... delicate and quasi-finicking preciseness which characterises all compositors and printers; and the continual monotonous performance of similar tasks that employed his faculties while never absorbing or straining them, had soothed and dulled the fever of life in him to a beneficent calm, a calm refined and beautified by the pleasurable exercise of song. Big James had seldom known a violent emotion. He had craved nothing, sought ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... wickedness and falsehood. And Sholto, too! Who would have believed that he could break out in that coarse way? Do you remember the day that Fleming, the coachman, lost his temper with Auntie down at the Cottage. Sholto was exactly like that; not a bit more refined or dignified." ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... wit that vanished in the refined ages of the world, discovered themselves again in the ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... intelligent, refined girls more frequently choose house service as a support?" The replies here given are as nearly ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... Petrolia Oil Exchange provide that refined kerosene shall be of the odor "locally known as inoffensive," and shall "absolutely stand the test of oxide of lead in a strong solution of caustic soda ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... of poems, have been better if he had used quite the Goody's own language? Now and then a home rusticism is fresh and startling; but when nothing is gained in expression, it is out of tenor. It may make folks smile and stare; but the ungenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases will prevent you in the end from being so generally tasted as you desire to be. Excuse my freedom, and take the ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... many in both galleries, that there would be a tame lion sent from the tower every opera night in order to be killed by Hydaspes. This report, though altogether groundless, so universally prevailed in the upper regions of the playhouse, that some of the most refined politicians in those parts of the audience gave it out in whisper that the lion was a cousin-german of the tiger who made his appearance in King William's days, and that the stage would be supplied with lions at the public ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... desolate, Muffles the world. The moaning of the wind Is piteous with sobs of saddest kind; And laughter is a phantom at the gate Of memory. The long-neglected grate Within sprouts into flame and lights the mind With hopes and wishes long ago refined To ashes,—long departed friends await Our words of welcome: and our lips are dumb And powerless to greet the ones that press Old kisses there. The baby beats its drum, And fancy marches to the dear caress Of mother-arms, and ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... the door by which we had entered, where he remained, slowly and noiselessly pacing backwards and forwards in the semi-obscurity. By the light of the candle I saw an elderly man with good features and a refined, intelligent and even attractive face, but dreadfully emaciated, bloodless and sallow. He lay quite motionless except for the scarcely perceptible rise and fall of his chest; his eyes were nearly closed, his features relaxed, and, though he was not actually asleep, he seemed to be in a dreamy, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... succeeded—too well!—until at last we could not get enough of the dough. The unkindest cut of all, however, did not come until pies, pastry, and sweet cakes of all kinds were pronounced indigestible. The refined cruelty of this revolutionary decree was bitterly resented; not only by the confectioners, whose shop windows were works of art, but also by the public, who loved art. Even gouty subjects and folk with livers protested. As for the ladies, the war on sponge ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... torches. No one would have believed that behind that impenetrable shadow to the west, in the heart of the forest, the throbbing saw-mill of James Bradley was even at that moment eating its destructive way through the conserved growth of Nature and centuries, and that the refined proprietor of house and greenwood, with the glow of his furnace fires on his red shirt, and his alert, intelligent eyes, was the genie of that devastation, and the toiling leader of the shadowy, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... flute. In process of time the Roman youth began to imitate these dancers intermixing raillery with unpolished verses, their gestures corresponding with the sense of the words. Thus were these plays received at Rome, and being improved and refined by frequent performance the Roman actors acquired the name of Histriones, from the Etruscan Hister, meaning a dancer or a stage player. (From this we obtain our words histrion and histrionic). But their dialogue ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... desirable thing to begin the day thus, with a delicate hallowing of the hours; to put one gentle thought into the heart, perfumed by the sweet music. But then my reflections took a further drift; beautiful as the little ceremony was, noble and refined as the thought of the tender hymn was, I began to wonder whether we do well to confine our religious life to so restricted a range of ideas. It seemed almost ungrateful to entertain the thought, but I felt a certain ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... following six years, the house in St. David's Street was the centre of the accomplished and refined society which then distinguished Edinburgh. Adam Smith, Blair, and Ferguson were within easy reach; and what remains of Hume's correspondence with Sir Gilbert Elliot, Colonel Edmonstone, and Mrs. Cockburn gives pleasant glimpses of his social surroundings, and enables us to understand ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... wholesome, and particularly well adapted to refined life. It is safe to add that she is the best English prose writer for children. A new volume from Mrs. Molesworth ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... appearance in Antioch Paul seems to have occupied a very influential position among his brethren. In that refined and opulent city his learning, his dialectic skill, his prudence, and his pious ardour were all calculated to make his ministry most effective. About a year after his arrival there, he was deputed, in company with a friend, to visit Palestine on an errand of love. "In ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... among the citizens of a refined community that penal laws, which are in the hands of the rich, are laid upon the poor. Government, while it grows older, seems to acquire the moroseness of age; and as if our property were become dearer in proportion as it increased, as if the more enormous our wealth, the more extensive ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... not a confession, but a denial, of the crime which was the object of their inquiry. The monks of succeeding ages, who, in their peaceful solitudes, entertained themselves with diversifying the deaths and sufferings of the primitive martyrs, have frequently invented torments of a much more refined and ingenious nature. In particular, it has pleased them to suppose, that the zeal of the Roman magistrates, disdaining every consideration of moral virtue or public decency, endeavored to seduce those whom they were unable to vanquish, and that by their orders ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... a face very closely resembling that of Ramesses II., with fine delicate features, and altogether of an elevated type. "The nose, mouth, chin, in short all the features," says M. Maspero, "are the same; but in the father they are more refined, more intelligent, more spiritual, than when reproduced in the son. Seti I. is, as it were, the idealized type of Ramesses II." (Letter of M. Maspero in The Times of July 23, 1886.) It may perhaps be doubted whether the shrunken mummy, 3300 years old, is better evidence of ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... Convent school at Gueldersdorp, where the Sisters of Mercy took in and taught and trained coltish girl-children, born in a strongly stimulating climate, and accustomed to lord it over Kaffir and Hottentot servants to their hearts' content. These they tamed, these they transformed into refined, cultivated, accomplished young women, stamped with the indefinable seal of high breeding, possessed of the tone and manner that ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... is twenty-six years of age, and tall, lacking one-half inch of being six feet in height. He is slender, broad-shouldered, upright; fair skin, blue eyes, brown hair; features regular and refined; hair worn very short, but inclined to curl close to skull; strong in athletic sports; a graduate of Queen's College; has small, aristocratic feet and hands; a skilled horseman; sings a fine and unusually high tenor; has a singularly strong control over all animals. ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... short time after the landing on Plymouth Rock, the great republican poet, John Milton, wrote his "Comus," so wonderful for beauty and truth. His nature was more refined than that of the Pilgrims, and yet it requires little effort of imagination to catch from one of them, or at least from their beloved pastor, the exquisite, almost angelic ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... nature and absence of social relations with them. But in the human communities known to us, even the lowest, the relations with extrahuman beings appear to be in general of a mixed nature, sometimes friendly, sometimes unfriendly, but neither pure love nor pure hatred. So refined a feeling as love for a deity is not found among savages. As religion springs from the human demand for safety and happiness as the gift of the extrahuman Powers, hostility to them has been generally felt to be opposed to common sense.[3] Coercion there has been, as in magical ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy



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