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Refined   /rəfˈaɪnd/  /rɪfˈaɪnd/   Listen
Refined

adjective
1.
(used of persons and their behavior) cultivated and genteel.  "Refined people with refined taste"
2.
Freed from impurities by processing.  Synonym: processed.  "Refined oil" , "To gild refined gold"
3.
Showing a high degree of refinement and the assurance that comes from wide social experience.  Synonyms: polished, svelte, urbane.  "Maintained an urbane tone in his letters"
4.
Suggesting taste, ease, and wealth.  Synonyms: elegant, graceful.
5.
Free from what is tawdry or unbecoming.  Synonyms: neat, tasteful.  "A neat set of rules" , "She hated to have her neat plans upset"



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"Refined" Quotes from Famous Books



... accomplish'd orator appear, Refined in judgment, and in language clear: Thou only, Foster, hast the pleasing art At once to charm the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various

... said Bessie, taking Jack's proffered arm. "Odors are too delicious for anything. They are so refined and spiritual I'm sure I could live on them. I would far prefer the fragrance of a dish of strawberries ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... mead, meade[obs3], metheglin[obs3], honeysuckle, liqueur, sweet wine, aperitif. [sources of sugar] sugar cane, sugar beets. [sweet foods] desert, pastry, pie, cake, candy, ice cream, tart, puff, pudding (food) 298. dulcification|, dulcoration|. sweetener, corn syrup, cane sugar, refined sugar, beet sugar, dextrose; artificial sweetener, saccharin, cyclamate, aspartame, Sweet'N Low. V. be sweet &c. adj. render sweet &c. adj.; sweeten; edulcorate[obs3]; dulcorate|, dulcify|; candy; mull. Adj. sweet; saccharine, sacchariferous[obs3]; dulcet, candied, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... strength, disregard of the soul, a want of generosity, of reverence, of nobility, which shows itself in spite of all protestations to the contrary; in a word, it is inhumanity. No man can be a naturalist with impunity: he will be coarse even with the most refined culture. A free mind is a great thing no doubt, but loftiness of heart, belief in goodness, capacity for enthusiasm and devotion, the thirst after perfection and holiness, are greater ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the process of distillation, hereinbefore described, to the re-distillation of fire-distilled oils, for the purpose of producing an oil similar to the refined oil of commerce, substantially ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... cereals; and athletic Greece rose to her greatest culture upon two meals a day, consisting principally of maize and vegetables steeped in oil. Don't you think you ladies would find it of advantage to copy them in this laudable abstemiousness? There is something repugnant to a refined taste in the idea of eating flesh whose constituent particles partake largely of the nature ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... of the metals first named varied and abundant, with Native Copper, Silver, &c., but the metals are also shown in every stage of their progress, from the rude elements just wrenched from the earth to the most refined and perfect bars or ingots. This department will richly reward the study of the mineralogists, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... crime of carrying out the very shibboleth of Protestantism—the exercise of private judgment, and of obeying the dictates of their conscience, by embracing the Catholic faith! Is not this the most exquisite torture that can be inflicted on refined natures? ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... placed her in the front rank of contemporary singers, no role, till Marguerite fell to her lot, had afforded her opportunity to show in such measure "the superior phases of her talent, so sure, so refined, so steady, so tranquil—its ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... watched her, 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

... mind are borrowed from the sense of smell; and the conspicuous place which its sensations occupy in the poetical language of all nations shows how easily and naturally they ally themselves with the refined operations of the fancy and the moral emotions of the heart." Helen certainly derives great pleasure from the exercise of these senses. On entering a greenhouse her countenance becomes radiant, and she will tell the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... retreats for the weary dancers from the crowded halls. In short, this magnificent conservatory was furnished with every beautiful rarity which the proprietor's immense wealth could procure, and every classic and graceful adornment which his refined and superior taste ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... refined and luxurious Romans, after the introduction of parchment, vellum, and paper, insisted on an improvement in quality and appearance is certain. This appears from various passages in their best authors. Ovid, writing to Rome ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... had absolutely nothing in common with them, except a talent for giving false impressions! With regard to the devotion to him which certain gentle and old-fashioned ladies have—one's great-aunts, for instance—I am inclined to think that much more might be said. There is a quality, a super-refined, exquisite quality, and one with a pinch of true ironic salt in it, which the more thick-skinned among us sensationalists ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... the Angel to look for a taxi-cab. The fog was lifting, and crowds were emerging from the cinemas and a music-hall with the fatigued look of people who have paid in vain to be entertained. Outside the music-hall some taxi-cabs were waiting for the more opulent patrons of refined vaudeville who had been drawn within by the rare promise of an intellectual baboon, reputed to have the brains of a statesman, which shared the honours of "the top of the bill" with two charming sisters from a West End show. The drivers of the taxi-cabs said they were engaged, and uncivilly ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... large, but so prettily fitted up, and bore the stamp of refined taste, in every minute detail. I always think a room shows the character of its owner; one can judge in an instant, by looking round and noticing the little ornaments and small ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... cold alcohol and in twice its weight of benzin. Cacao butter is obtained by grinding or mashing the roasted seeds in a hot apparatus and mixing the mass with a fifth or tenth of its weight of boiling water. It is then pressed between two hot iron plates and the butter thus obtained is refined by boiling water. It is then put aside in earthen pans, or still better, in moulds, where it solidifies. It does not easily become rancid and, for this reason, enters into the composition of many ointments and pomades, or is used alone. It serves ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... high-born lady must, in their earlier youth, have exercised over both brothers, so dis-similar to each other. For charm was the characteristic of Lady Ellinor,—a charm indefinable. It was not the mere grace of refined breeding, though that went a great way, it was a charm that seemed to spring from natural sympathy. Whomsoever she addressed, that person appeared for the moment to engage all her attention, to interest her whole mind. She had a gift of conversation very peculiar. She made what ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... beneficial mechanically and imparts bulk to some foods otherwise too concentrated. The mechanical action of cellulose on the digestion of food is discussed in Chapter XV. Cellulose usually makes up a very small part of human food, less than 1 per cent. In refined white flour there is less than .05 of a per cent; in oatmeal and cereal products from .5 to 1 per cent, depending upon the extent to which the hulls are removed, and in vegetable foods from .1 to 1 per cent. The cellulose content of foods ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder

... it is amazing, when one sees how small a part of Herculaneum has been uncovered, to consider the number of fine works of art in the Museo Borbonico which were taken thence, and which argue a much richer and more refined community than that of Pompeii. A third of the latter city has now been restored to the light of day; but though it has yielded abundance of all the things that illustrate the domestic and public life, and the luxury and depravity of those old times, and has given ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... companions. The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among themselves and separation from the world at large which in every domestic circle should still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Cardinal's reputed sanctity, and he was astonished and in a manner irritated to find himself completely mistaken. He had opened the conversation by the usual cordial trivialities of ordinary greeting, to which Bonpre had responded with the suave courtesy and refined gentleness which always dignified his manner,—and then the Archbishop had ventured to offer a remonstrance on the unconventional—"Shall we call it eccentric?" he suggested, smiling amicably,—conduct ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... The refined tastes that are supposed to accompany gentle blood, his love of art, his talent for music and drawing, had accidentally attracted the attention of the little travelling-party which old Lady Harbottle ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... Banjara caste of carriers, who have taken to agriculture and been promoted into the Kunbi community. The Lonhare take their name from Lonar Mehkar, the well-known bitter lake of the Buldana District, whose salt they may formerly have refined. The Ghatole are those who dwelt above the ghats or passes of the Saihadri range to the south of the Berar plain. The Baone are an important subcaste both in Berar and the Central Provinces, and take their name ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... young man, of not more than twenty-one or two, exceedingly thin and sallow. Otherwise he would have been good-looking. His voice and manner were refined. ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... her bequest, a noble residue still remained. Mysia, Lydia and Caria with their magnificent coast cities, rich in art, and inexhaustible in wealth, formed, with most of the islands off the coast,[551] that "corrupting" province which became the Favourite resort of the refined and the desperate resource of the needy. Its treasures were to add a new word to the Roman vocabulary of wealth;[552] its luxury was to give a new stimulus to the art of living and to add a new craving or two to the insatiable appetite for enjoyment; while the servility of its population ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... 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 ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... her former husband, finding herself sitting opposite the divorced wife of her present husband, who has at one time or another been married to two or three other ladies at the board, is not likely to be able to comport herself with that degree of savoir faire that is the ear-mark of the refined.... ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... general language prevailed (however mutilated and changed in the course of time) throughout all this portion of the world, from Madagascar to the most distant discoveries eastward; of which the Malay is a dialect, much corrupted or refined by a mixture of other tongues. This very extensive similarity of language indicates a common origin of the inhabitants; but the circumstances and progress of their separation are wrapped in the darkest veil of obscurity."—History of Sumatra, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... with his song; the hermit's is a quick, sotto voce, sometimes almost inaudible chuck; the Swainson's is a mellow whistle; while that of the Alice is something between the Swainson's and the Wilson's,—not so gentle and refined as the former, nor so ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... whose hearts are not so hard, whose spirits are not so brutal, as those of others who come into our houses, who sit at our tables, with smiles on their lips and poison in their tongues, whose language is refined, and whose ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... Raw Head and Bloody Bones; I am going to tell you, Miss, my Marster's people were cultured and refined, and they wouldn't allow such things told to their own children or to their slaves' children. They didn't want anything said or done to frighten any little children, and if a nurse or anyone else ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... gathered, but not perhaps entirely, from what has been written of his life; for some of his earlier letters shew him to have been not quite so grave and refined in his way of talking as readers of the Jerusalem might suppose. He was probably at that time of life not so scrupulous in his morals as he professed to be during the greater part of it. His mother is thought ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... speech on this occasion was masterly; English jurisprudence had never before witnessed so striking a combination of refined knowledge with clear arrangement and unanswerable facts. It had one disadvantage, it was overwhelmingly long; it lasted nine hours, a period, if not beyond the strength of the advocate, palpably beyond any power of attention in the jury. But even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... her the faculty of response; to rouse in her the gentle, diffident humour which seemed to him a much rarer and more distinguished thing than other women's brilliance; to watch the ways of a personality which appeared to many people a little cold, pale, and over-refined, and was to him supreme distinction; to search for pleasures for her, as a botanist hunts rare flowers; to save her from the most trifling annoyance, if time and brains could do it;—these things, for three years, had made the charm of Welby's life. And Eugenie knew it—knew it ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... we could not endure it for more than a few minutes, and pitied the men who have to spend their lives in this work. They make panoja on this estate, cakes of coarse sugar, which the common people prefer to the refined sugar. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... we return from these criticisms to the real merit of the piece, we find in it a charm of musical language, a subtlety of musical movement, which are irresistibly fascinating. Thought and feeling seem alike refined to a limpidity that suits the flow of melody in song. The very words evaporate and lose themselves in floods of sound." Surely, here is the description of an ideal ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... unbridled desires. God does not limit us to mere naked necessaries—He giveth liberally, and means life to be beautiful and adorned. That which is over and above bread is to a large extent that which makes life graceful and refined, and I have no wish to preach a crusade against it; but I have just as little hesitation in declaring what it is not left to pulpit moralists to say, that the falsely luxurious style of living among ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... pillow I paused involuntarily, only just controlling an explanation of surprise. There was absolutely nothing in the surroundings to mark her as a lady, yet I felt in a moment that she was one. There lay a delicate, refined face, white as the linen, with beautiful lips almost as white; and a mass of light, shining, silky hair tossed about the pillow; and large dark-gray eyes gazing at me beseechingly, with an expression that made my heart leap as it had ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... chandelier suspended from the ceiling. Her quick eye soon noticed more than one little accessory, which showed that the room was habitually occupied by a lady, and one moreover with wealth at her command, and apparently of refined taste. Any further speculations, however, were interrupted by the entrance of a personage whose dress and bearing seemed to indicate that she must be the Lady Superior of the place. The poor girl's first impulse was to spring towards her new protectress ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach

... is a mode of thought that runs through the whole history of religion—only, in the earliest stages of human life, it is superficial and narrow. The earlier ceremonial customs contain the germs and the essential features of the later more refined procedures. ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... Bessie!" exclaimed a voice, and a fine-looking young fellow in an ulster ran lightly down the platform as Bessie waved her handkerchief. He was followed more leisurely by a handsome, gray-haired man with a quiet, refined-looking face. ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... become important accurately to determine what relations and circumstances impress a hostile character upon persons and property. According to Chancellor Kent, "the modern International Law of the Commercial World is replete with refined and ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson

... 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 ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... as a soldier, and to look forward with pleasure to the day, when events shall take place, against which the wounded spirits of your enemies will find no comfort, even from reflections on the most refined of the cruelties with which they ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... explanations of Christ and Christianity from an unbelieving point of view. It was the first attempt of unbelievers to explain where Christ's power came from. Like all first attempts, it was crude, and it has been amended and refined since. Earlier generations did not hesitate to call the Apostles liars, and Christ's contemporaries did not hesitate to call Him 'this deceiver.' We have got beyond that; but we still are met by explanations ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... up,' said the Major, taking in another button of his buff waistcoat, 'he has nothing to fall back upon. But some people will die. They will do it. Damme, they will. They're obstinate. I tell you what, Dombey, it may not be ornamental; it may not be refined; it may be rough and tough; but a little of the genuine old English Bagstock stamina, Sir, would do all the good in the world to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... point to his piety and his excellencies. His name Mordecai, for instance, consists of Mor, meaning "myrrh," and Decai, "pure," for he was as refined and noble as pure myrrh. Again, he is called Ben Jair, because he "illumined the eyes of Israel"; and Ben Kish, because when he knocked at the gates of the Divine mercy, they were opened unto him, which is likewise the origin of his name ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... qualified to lead a cotillon in quite a fashionable West-End Square. All that is required of him by the Pit and Gallery, ay, and the Private Boxes and Stalls—is to do his little assassinations and kindred villanies in an educated and refined manner that can be appreciated by those who have benefited either from the good offices of the School Board or the careful tuition of the leading Universities. Mr. WILLARD is so good that no one pays particular attention to the efforts to please of his fellow-actors and actresses. The scenery ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various

... for him, then, having the wherewithal, and being a refined and well-balanced man, to have the place where to live well. Did he have this? Yes: he had two villas—one a summer residence near the mountains, and a winter one sixteen miles from Rome, near Laurentum. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... He pressed his lips upon hers with the adoring respect of a worshipper touching his god, yet with the energy of a man. She sighed and compared him in her thought with Babcock. How gentle this new lover! How refined and sensitive and appreciative! How ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... lay them, in vivid flecks, on their canvas. They do not care if they may offend some modern cultivated eyes, used only to the invisible blues and shadowy greens and that host of cold, lifeless, toneless grays, of refined conventional art. They know well enough that their satisfying reds and browns and golds of rich, free nature will go to the beating ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason

... work meant for immediate effect on one age with the notions and feelings of another, may be a refined gentleman, but must be a sorry critic. He who possesses imagination enough to live with his forefathers, and, leaving comparative reflection for an after moment, to give himself up during the first perusal to the feelings of a contemporary, if not a partizan, will, I dare aver, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... "They were innocent", observed the Senator, "and on that account precisely adapted to the purposes of the superintendent, in reclaiming the savage from the hunter state. The first state after that, in the road to refined life, is the pastoral, and without music the tawny-colored Corydons and the red-skinned Amaryllises, 'recubans sub tegmine fagi,' upon the banks of the Missouri and Mississippi, could make no progress in the delightful business of love ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... altercation with Leonora in the second scene of Act II she uses a number of coarse expressions befitting a woman of vulgar birth,—wherein some of the critics see an evidence of Schiller's unfamiliarity with the ways of refined ladies. It is quite possible, however, that we have to do instead with a realistic attempt to make her language match the essential vulgarity of her character. At any rate it is interesting to know that the scene was offensive to Schiller himself. He worked ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... traverse, have been investigated by several eminent astronomers, and although the subject is one of much difficulty, on account of their extreme remoteness and the minute angles which have to be dealt with, necessitating the carrying out of very refined observations, yet a considerable amount of information has been obtained with regard to the paths which they pursue in the accomplishment of their revolutions round ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... they may not be a means of keeping up, by their example, those more vulgar assemblies, with all their grossness, which I have been describing. Is it not obvious that what the wine, and the fruit, and the oysters, are to the more refined and Christian circles, wine and fermented liquors may be to the more blunt sensibilities of body and mind, in youthful circles of another description? But if so, where rests the guilt? Or shall we bless the fountains, while we curse the stream ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... Nevada, U.S.A., and also in Peru, Ceylon, China, Persia, and Thibet. The commercial product is obtained from the native borax (known as "tincal") by dissolving in water and allowing the solution to crystallise. The Peruvian borax sometimes contains nitre. For testing the purity of refined borax the following simple tests will usually suffice. A solution of the borax is made containing 1 part of borax to 50 parts of water, and small portions of the solution are tested as follows: Heavy metals (lead, copper, ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... the castle liked a lavish style. He had invited to his house-warming numerous guests, to whom, in the spacious apartments planned for this purpose, he could offer a really royal hospitality, at once magnificent and refined. They were chiefly land-owners from the province of the Main, rich merchants and manufacturers from Frankfort, and acquaintances from places still more remote, who had flocked here with their wives ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... Oxford or Cambridge, were ordained and unmarried; if by chance they wished to marry they could only do so by accepting one of the smaller livings at the disposal of the Chapter; but for many years none of them had cared to leave the refined society of Tercanbury, which owing to the cavalry depot had a martial as well as an ecclesiastical tone, for the monotony of life in a country rectory; and they were now all men of ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... the story to—perhaps an abrupt, but still, an artistic close. No. Then did Poe not complete 'The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym' because his imagination failed him—failed to supply material of such a quality as his refined and faultless taste demanded? If so, then why did he begin it? Why write more than sixty thousand words in his usual careful and precise style, on a subject to him little known, in to him a new field of literary effort? He could in the time required to write ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... grimace at the recollection, because he was a man of refined tastes and raced his own yacht across the Atlantic ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... spend more money than he can afford in entertaining a girl it is a bad preparation for matrimony. Courtship is a time when a man desires to bring gifts, and it is quite right and fitting that he should do so within reasonable limits. A girl of refined feelings does not like to accept valuable presents from a man at this period of their acquaintance. Flowers, books, music, if the girl plays or sings, and boxes of candy are always permissible offerings which neither engage the man who offers them ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... wonder and fascination into the face of the youth who spoke. It was a refined and beautiful face, notwithstanding the evidences of long exposure to sun and wind. The features were finely cut, sensitive and expressive, and the eyes were very luminous in their glance, and possessed strangely penetrating powers. In stature the young man was ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... the mouth and raving like a madman. He ordered the steward to bring up his pistols to shoot the rascals, and when it seemed likely the offenders would escape, he called upon me, and another boy, by name, and in language neither courteous nor refined told us to haul the ship's yawl alongside and be lively about it. I instantly entered the boat from the taffrail by means of the painter; and in half a minute the boat was at the gangway, MANNED by a couple of BOYS, and Stetson rushed down the accommodation ladder, with a stout hickory ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... in the Chanson de Roland and the Crusades, which settled in Flanders, and then in Brittany, but became, as soon as it left the provinces for the capital, nomadic, changing its base at will from the garrison of the officer to that of the official, seems to have narrowed and refined its stock and condensed all the power of its past, all its hopes for the future, in one ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... perhaps, may come under the topic we are at present discussing. I mean the custom by which girls allow their young men friends to incur expense in their behalf. I am aware that this custom is on the wane in the older cities, that the most refined girls in all parts of the Union dislike it, that it is "bad form" in many circles. In the bowling-club to which I had the pleasure to belong the ladies paid their subscriptions "like a man;" when I drove out on sleigh-parties, the girls insisted on paying their share of the expense. The fact, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... favorite, aristocratic, refined, cultured, wealthy, haut ton de haut ton, and sabreur sans peur et sans reproche—how shall I paint him to you as I learned to know him in those dreadful, delightful seventeen days in which we lived only from instant to instant, and every ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... 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

... residence at the Mall, I have the honour and happiness of presenting Miss Amelia Sedley to her parents, as a young lady not unworthy to occupy a fitting position in their polished and refined circle. Those virtues which characterise the young English gentlewoman; those accomplishments which become her birth and station, will not be found wanting in the amiable Miss Sedley, whose industry and obedience have endeared her to her instructors, and whose delightful ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... has now come for a more careful description of this peculiar man. Mr. Moore was tall and of that refined spareness of shape which suggests the scholar. Yet he had not the scholar's eye. On the contrary, his regard was quick, if not alert, and while it did not convey actual malice or ill-will, it roused in the spectator ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... quite in the dark. I can't do that. I'm a blundering sort of fellow; and I'm horribly afraid, if I can't get some hint at the truth to help me at starting, of saying something to distress her. Family misfortunes are such tender subjects to touch on, especially with such a refined woman, such a tender-hearted woman, as Miss Gwilt. There may have been some dreadful death in the family—some relation who has disgraced himself—some infernal cruelty which has forced the poor thing out on the world as a governess. Well, turning it over in my mind, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... bit of toast and broke it nervously. She was never quite at ease in Mrs. Duff-Whalley's company. Incapable of an unkind thought or a bitter word, so refined as to be almost inaudible, she felt jarred and bumped in her mind after a talk with that lady, even as her body would have felt after bathing in a rough sea among rocks. Realising that the conversation had taken an unfortunate turn, ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... striking manner the extraordinary wealth of the country in the days when it was the mistress of Europe in civilization, and the all-pervading love of the beautiful which caused so very large a portion of that wealth to be expended for the gratification of a refined taste. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... A man of refined taste, who caught the tone of the French sentiment of his time, has, of course, pleased French critics, and has been translated into French. "The Man of Feeling" begins with imitation of Sterne, and proceeds in due course through so many tears that it is hardly to be called ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... away the things while she went up to her own room to make her bed. Here she was confronted with a possible prospect of that proverbial bed she might be making in her willfulness, and on which she must lie, in the photograph of a somewhat serious young man of refined features—Reuben Waters—stuck in her window-frame. Salomy Jane smiled over her last witticism regarding him and enjoyed, it, like your true humorist, and then, catching sight of her own handsome face in the little ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... try to give our house some other house's garden. One's private garden should never be quite so far removed from a state of nature as his house is. Its leading function should be to delight its house's inmates (and intimates) in things of nature so refined as to inspire and satisfy their happiest moods. Therefore no garden should cost, nor look as if it cost, an outlay of money, time or toil that cramps the house's own ability to minister to the genuine bodily needs and spiritual enlargements of its indwellers; and therefore, also, it should ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... degree of culture, however, where the understanding is sufficiently enlightened to remove the unjust contempt shown to the fair sex, is unknown to them; their temper is too grave to be captivated by female blandishments, or to set a proper value upon the refined enjoyments of life. They are obliged to work hard, at times, for the means of subsistence; but their leisure hours are spent in indolence, without those little recreations which contribute so much to the happiness of mankind, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... is only one reason out of many, and not the greatest. It is a very refined pleasure, and to resolve it into its elements is something like trying to divide one of these same white rays of light into the many various coloured ones that go to form it; and not by any means so ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... had soulful friends-refined Maiden Ladies with ideals and long noses, who live at Hampstead or Putney, and play Chopin with passion. On sad autumn afternoons I would go and have tea with them, and talk of the spiritual meaning of Beethoven's late Sonatas; or discuss ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... and jerked venison and smoked fat; and Toma, as a special mark of favor presented me with a deer's tongue which had been cured by some distinctive process unlike anything I had ever eaten before, and it was delicious indeed, together with a bladder of refined fat so clear that it was ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... may be firmness and constancy of courage from tradition as well as of belief: nor, methinks, should any man know how to be a coward, that is brought up with the opinion, that all of his nation or city have ever been valiant.' Temple's Works, i. 167. 'This is a disease too refined for this country and people, who are well, when they are not ill, and pleased, when they are not troubled; are content, because they think little of it; and seek their happiness in the common eases ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... wonderfully near us, whereas he is separated by a great gulf from the rude trouveres of the Chansons de Gestes and from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was still dragging out its weary length in his early days. Chretien is as refined, as civilised, as composite as we are ourselves; his ladies are as full of whims, impulses, sudden reserves, self-debate as M. Paul Bourget's heroines; while the problems of conscience and of emotion ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... loveliness, is satisfied with mere comparisons based on casual and petty resemblance. The reader or critic of modern times, when the poet speaks of 'rosy-fingered dawn,' or of 'cheeks like damask roses,' is quite satisfied with the accuracy of the simile as to delicate color, and with the refined, vague association of perfume and of individual memories attached to the flower. But if we could realize by even the dimmest hint that the mind of the poet was penetrated and filled by the knowledge that the rose was a flower-favorite of man in all lands in primeval ages, and, as Geology asserts, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... memorable examples of the exact expression of elusive ideas. The house of literature built in this fashion is a notable achievement in the architecture of language. It reminds us of his own description of a temple of AEsculapius: "His heart bounded as the refined and dainty magnificence of the place came upon him suddenly, in the flood of early sunshine, with the ceremonial lights burning here and there, and with all the singular expression of sacred order, a surprising cleanliness and simplicity." Who would not give ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... spacious plain on the side of a wood, being neatly built, with a market-place in the middle, but not large, and has two churches. There are silver-mines five or six leagues from this town, the ore from which is carried on mules to Compostella to be refined. Compostella, the capital of this part of Mexico, is twenty-one leagues from Pecaque, being inhabited by seventy families of Spaniards, and by five or six hundred mulattoes and Indians. Finding great plenty of maize, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... to look at her an' wish an' wish I wa'n't who I am, so's I could a' let her know I knew too. I use' to go to mend her lace an' sell orris root to her—an' Madame Proudfit an' Clementina would be there, buyin' an' livin' on the outside, judicious an' refined an' rill right about everything; but when Linda come in, she sort o' reached somewheres, deep, or up, or out, or like that, an' got somethin' that meant it all instead o' gnawin' its way through words. It was like other ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... think I'm easy to see through and that I ain't nothin' but fat and appetite, but they've got me down wrong, Mr. Gubb. I was unfortunate in gettin' lost from my father and mother when a babe, but many is the time I've said to Zozo, 'I got a refined strain in my nature.' ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... which gushes forth a never-ending saline solution, highly impregnated with sodium nitrate, potash and other salts. The country for many miles around is covered with a white precipitate which has been carried by the moist air and deposited on the Martian earth. These chemical compounds are refined and used to replenish the ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... generation becomes more manifold in its combinations and in its distinctions; the more time one has for observing the wonderful and deep secrets of existence, behind the visible, tangible, world of sense, the more will each new generation of children show a more refined and a more consistent mental life. It is impossible to attain this result under the torture of the crude methods in our present home and school training. We need new homes, new schools, new marriages, new social relations, for those new souls who are to feel, love, and suffer, ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... the public the following pages, the writer confesses her inability to minister to the refined and culti- vated, the pleasure supplied by abler pens. It is not for such these crude narrations appear. Deserted by kindred, disabled by failing health, I am forced to some experiment which shall aid me in maintaining myself and child with- out extinguishing ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson

... appeared to have arisen naturally enough. I could not detect in the relation of it any indication of a deliberate attempt on the part of the man to lead up to the subject of Billy's educational acquirements; what reason, indeed, could he have for doing so, apart from the lad's more refined mode of speech? The matter that most powerfully exercised me was the Dutchman's eager curiosity to discover the full extent of Billy's qualifications as a navigator. Yet, even as to this, there seemed little enough reason for uneasiness; the man had given a quite plausible reason ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... path of our slower intelligences, which look about them and think twice before taking the leap. Courage! there are always fresh woods and pastures new on the other side. A curious reflection has more than once flashed upon our minds as we lingered with Mr. James over his complex and refined sensations: we mean the very striking contrast between the ancient and modern traveller. The former saw with his bodily eyes, and reported accordingly, catering for the curiosity of homely wits as to the ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... ever so much nicer than when they're younger. They know how to be courteous, and they're not afraid of being natural. I mean this one looks as if he would. But he must be somebody remarkable in some way—don't you think so? There's something about him—something graceful and gentle and refined and manly—that makes most other men seem common beside him. Who do you ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... But in Western Missouri the percentage of Disciples was perhaps larger than in any other portion of the United States, consequently I had brethren on every side of me. These men certainly were not refined and educated men, as the phrase goes, still they had the qualities that our Lord found in the fisherman ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... Manila is pleasant, but expensive. It is pleasant from the fact that it is not only the capital but also metropolis of the archipelago. Thus the combination of wealth and high official position has given to Manila a society of the highest and most refined type. The process of beautifying and improving the city which is constantly going on bids fair to give us at no distant day a city of which ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley

... the men. No educated man who has not experienced the desolation of having been shut up among savages and rough, unlettered voyageurs for a long time can appreciate the pleasure of meeting a cultured and refined gentleman so unexpectedly as Mr. Boutwell encountered Nicollet, and especially when he was able ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... of those itinerant Italian pedlars, who are found, I think, everywhere under heaven, selling pins, needles, and badly-coloured engravings, representing all the various passages of William Tell's history, and the combats during the "three days," in 1830. Although not a refined companion, the Genevese spoke Italian, and I was delighted to converse in that soft tongue, not a word of which I had spoken since the death of Prince Seravalle. I invited my companion to the principal tavern, and called at the bar for ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... lady whose whole care in life had been her own health. She had nursed it, and worried over it, and enjoyed ill health so long, that only the constant recourse to the most refined stimulants postponed the end which would have been a merciful relief—to others. The effort of letter-writing remade her. Doctors were forgotten, stimulants were tabooed, the insignia of invalidism banished, and to ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... some advantage over the Divine wisdom. This is frenzy—and the man who commences this Titanic battle; will be crushed and annihilated. But what opposes our love? Nothing but the talk of the world. I respect the customs of human society. I even respect them when, as in our time, they are over-refined and confused. A sick body needs artificial medicines, and without the barriers, the respect and the prejudices of society, at which we smile, it were impossible to hold mankind together as at present existing, and ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... became one of the most ably conducted papers in the kingdom, and had a wide-spread circulation. Mr. Baines represented Leeds as successor to Mr. Macaulay, and as representative of that town was one of the most useful members of parliament. He was not a man of refined bearing or mental cultivation; as a public speaker he was ungainly in manner, his pronunciation common and provincial, his voice monotonous, and his style dry and commonplace; but he was serviceable, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... they were, and how much they made of us two happy girls, who were never tired of seeing, and hearing and admiring! We breakfasted, lunched, and dined with one or the other of the set during our stay, and walked about the colleges all day with the whole train. [A reminiscence from that week of refined and genial hospitality survives in the Essay on Madame d'Arblay. The reception which Miss Burney would have enjoyed at Oxford, if she had visited it otherwise than as an attendant on Royalty, is sketched off with all the writer's wonted spirit, and more than his wonted grace.] Whewell ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... do Levita de Ephrain—translated from Darboy's Femmes de la Bible, are full of significance. The Folhas soltas (1876) is a collection of verse in the manner of Flores do campo, brilliantly effective and exquisitely refined. Within the next few years the writer turned his attention to educational problems, and in his Cartilha maternal (1876) first expressed the conclusions to which his study of Pestalozzi and Froebel had led him. This patriotic, pedagogical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... protestingly. "She certainly is a soft-soap artist. My mother says she is so refined; and Mrs. Daggett is always chanting ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... who was a splendid talker, and apparently an intelligent man, and when at the supper table that night, he mentioned the matter to Uncle Kit again of having his life published. On turning his eyes to the refined gentleman, he said: "I would have you understand that when I say anything I mean it. I told you in plain English last evening that I would not submit to anything of that kind, and now don't compel me to talk too harsh, but please drop the subject ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... wax is sent from Borislau to almost all European countries, to be further refined. Outside of Austro-Hungary, we may specially mention Germany, England, Italy, France, Belgium, and Russia as large purchasers of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various

... happen. He felt quite interested in the old man and the girl, and longed to know something about them. Why were they thus appealing to the crowds for money? The man did not seem like the ordinary street musician, as there was something dignified and refined in his manner. The girl was unusually timid. He could not forget the big blue eyes which had turned to him in gratitude for his assistance, and he had noticed how clean and ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... means, it is true, but another than myself planned and executed the effect," and sitting down in 'Lina's chair, Anna told her brother of Rose Markham, so beautiful, so refined, and so perfectly ladylike. "You must see her, and judge for yourself. Can't I think of some excuse for sending for ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... about five-and-thirty or forty years old. My cousin, who had known her husband, introduced me to her. She was not handsome; the cheek-bones were a little too prominent, and her face was weather-worn, but not by wind and sun. Nevertheless it was a quietly victorious face. Her ways were simple and refined. She had travelled much, as far even as Athens, and was complete mistress of Italian and French. Her voice struck me—it was so musical, and adapted itself so delicately to varying shades of thought and emotion. I have often reflected how little we get out of the voice in talking. How ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... law, can commit, without remorse, the dishonest act that may serve his purpose—The fear of God, so far from being the beginning of wisdom, should be the beginning of folly—The command to love one's parents is more the work of education than of nature—Modesty is only an invention of refined voluptuousness—The law which condemns married people to live together, becomes barbarous and cruel on the day they cease to ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... that the more intelligent and refined among the nations will make a beginning in this matter, and then that the Germans may take example by it and follow suit.[1] Meanwhile, I may quote what Thomas Hood says of them[2]: For a musical nation, they are the most ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer

... circle I have named, by an incident in my private life, I entered amongst them very young, perfectly unknown, with no other title than a little presumed ability, some education, and an ardent taste for refined pleasures, letters, and good company. I carried with me no ideas harmonizing with those I found there. I had been brought up at Geneva, with extremely liberal notions, but in austere habits and religious ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... beneficiary of a vote that was demonstrably fraudulent in its character,—a vote that was tainted with crime and stained with the blood of innocent men. It is assuredly not to be presumed that violent acts and murderous deeds are less repulsive to Mr. Seymour than to any other refined Christian gentleman. But his silence in respect to the wicked transactions of his supporters in Louisiana, when he was a candidate for the Presidency, has persuaded many honest-minded Democrats that the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... Madame Quenu standing at her door this evening," she would say sometimes. "It is quite amazing how well she wears. And she's so refined-looking, too; quite the lady, indeed. It's the counter that does it, I'm sure. A fine counter gives a woman such a ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... regard it, do not let us forget that the pursuit of beauty in art offers the best of educations for the faculties, that its interest continually increases, and its pleasures and successes are the most refined and satisfying. ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane

... her eyes as she spoke. Some curious sense of the man's more refined personality had made her think that coffee might appeal to him. As she did so, Michael's Irish-blue ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... hardly inside the door before he began to expatiate in the wildest manner on the subject of the beautiful deaf and dumb girl. If ever man was in love with a child at first sight, he was that man. As an artist, as a gentleman of refined tastes, and as the softest-hearted of male human beings, in all three capacities, he was enslaved by that little innocent, sad face. He made the Doctor's head whirl again; he fairly stopped Mrs. Joyce's progress ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... elder's ear, whereupon he was released, and turned to his brother; hand-in-hand the two stepped into the water alone. Judith saw the pale, boyish faces, strangely refined by the exaltation of spirit which was upon them, as the twins waded out toward the preacher. Bohannon called to Jeff, shook hands with him, shouted, "Praise God, brother. Glory! Glory! Now—make yo'se'f right stiff. Let me have ye. Don't be scared. I won't drop ye. I've baptised a many before you ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... Seed, obscurely then foretold, Now amplier known thy Saviour and thy Lord, Last in the clouds from heaven to be revealed In glory of the Father, to dissolve Satan with his perverted world, then raise From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined, New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date Founded in righteousness and peace and love, To bring forth fruits, joy, and ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... wealth. That liberality which nature has denied him, with respect of money, he makes up by a great profusion of promises: but this perfection, so necessary in courts, is not very successful in camps among soldiers, who are not refined enough to understand ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... wreath he most not wear Next Kenrick came: all furious and replete With brandy, malice, pertness, and conceit; Unskill'd in classic lore, through envy blind To all that's beauteous, learned, or refined; For faults alone behold the savage prowl, With reason's offal glut his ravening soul; Pleased with his prey, its inmost blood he drinks, And mumbles, paws, and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... modes of inward life, and represses them in turn, has in this way provided that the earlier growth should propel its fibres into the later, and so transmit the whole of its forces in an unbroken continuity of life. Then comes the spectacle of the reserve of the elder generation exquisitely refined by the antagonism of the new. That current of new life chastens them as they contend against it. Weaker minds do not perceive the change; clearer minds abandon themselves to it. To feel the change everywhere, yet not to abandon ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... our literature. Here Sidney was in earnest. His style is wholly free from the euphuistic extravagance in which readers of his time delighted: it is clear, direct, and manly; not the less, but the more, thoughtful and refined for its unaffected simplicity. As criticism it is of the true sort; not captious or formal, still less engaged, as nearly all bad criticism is, more or less, with indirect suggestion of the critic himself as ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... man, this Mr. Bellows; not specially refined in manner, but possessing a delicacy of character and a lively sensibility which placed him among the ranks of nature's noblemen. He had been fortunate in business, and owned the principal store in the place, where he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... who have been knocking about for months and years together at sea among rough uncivilised men can fully appreciate the satisfaction which a sailor feels in spending a few brief hours under the soothing influence of refined ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... in stating this fault on a large scale, for, as it now stands, it does not appear to be levelled against any particular set of men; but were it to be refined a little further, it might afterwards be applied to the Tories with a degree of striking propriety: those men have been remarkable for drawing sudden conclusions from single facts. The least apparent mishap on our side, or ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... to look away from matter and into Mind, or Spirit, for all that is real and eternal, and for all that produces anything that is lasting, the doubts and petty annoyances of life become dissolved in the light of a better understanding, which has been refined in the crucible of charity and love; and they fade away into the nothingness from whence they came, never having had any existence in fact, being only the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... golden in the evening sun, was driving (as well as he could) a large, black horse harnessed into a thing called a gig, northwestward towards Winchester. Dangle, barring his swollen eye, was a refined-looking little man, and he wore a deerstalker cap and was dressed in dark grey. His neck was long and slender. Perhaps you know what gigs are,—huge, big, wooden things and very high and the horse, too, was ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... when his goodness we offend; Zeal, to his likeness to ascend; Will, from the world refined, To his sole will resigned: These graces in God's children shine, Reflections of the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... passing vehicle. Then spending so much of their lives in the high-bred company of their horses, seems to have mended their manners and improved their taste, besides imparting to them something of the dignity of their animals; but it has also given to them a sort of refined and uncomplaining aversion ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... one of the most engaging pursuits in which a refined and artistic taste may be indulged. From the earliest times, and even before the days of printing, this pleasant diversion has been pursued by persons of moderate means as well as by those of wealth and ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper

... in their favour from interested parties. When, therefore, Terence and Thomas de Lancey made their appearance, and were walked in for exhibition by their proud and happy sister, there was some surprise at the sight of two peculiarly refined, quiet boys, with colourless complexions, soft, sleepy, long-lashed, liquid brown eyes, the lowest of full voices, and the gentlest of manners, as if nothing short of ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... time was too short to admit of its striking deep root in the country. Its leaders and men were, moreover, closely related to the Syrian Hittites; the language they spoke was, if not precisely the Hittite, at any rate a dialect of it; their customs were similar, if, perhaps, somewhat less refined, as is often the case with mountain races, when compared with the peoples of the plain. We are tempted to conclude that some of the monuments found south of the Taurus were their handiwork, or, at any rate, date from their time. For instance, the ruined palace at Sinjirli, the lower portions ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... has always seemed to me that Mr. Clifford was a remarkably intelligent and refined character for one who had never had a college education. I would never think of him as illiterate or ignorant. He uses beautiful language. I have never heard such English as he uses in his prayers. And he is a good linguist. I heard Mr. Masters say only ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... 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 would hardly ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... ready for use in three or four months; and if the vent-peg be never removed, it will have strength and spirit to the very last. But if bottled, great care must be taken to have the bottles perfectly sweet and clean, and the corks of the best quality. If the ale requires to be refined, put two ounces of isinglass shavings to soak in a quart of the liquor, and beat it with a whisk every day till dissolved. Draw off a third part of the cask, and mix the above with it: likewise a quarter of an ounce of pearl ashes, one ounce of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... accomplished within a given time appears even to us at this day, and might well therefore appear to his contemporaries, truly astonishing. A distance of one hundred miles was no extraordinary day's journey for him in a rheda, such as we have described it. So refined were his habits, and so constant his demand for the luxurious accommodations of polished life as it then existed in Rome, that he is said to have carried with him, as indispensable parts of his personal baggage, the little ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar

... points insisted upon are that one should deny God, worship man, and nourish vermin, has indeed no right to exist; nor has it had as a system much influence on the history of thought. As in the case of Buddhism, the refined Jain metaphysics are probably a late growth. Historically these sectaries served a purpose as early protestants against ritualistic and polytheistic Brahmanism; but their real affinity with the latter faith is so great that at heart they soon became Brahmanic again. Their position geographically ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... 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 couch it in such terms that without a ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... West and placed him amid a society teeming with quaint and genial eccentricity, he might possibly have been the first Western humorist, and his humor might have gained in depth and richness. In England, on the other hand, everything encouraged his natural fastidiousness; he became a refined writer, but by no means a robust one. At the same time he is too essentially the man of his own age to pass for a paler Addison or a more decorous Sterne. He has far more of the poet than any of the writers of the eighteenth century, and his moralizing, unlike theirs, is unconscious and indirect. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... have to be refined to pure aluminum oxide before it could be smelted," George said. "And you can't smelt aluminum ore in an ordinary furnace—only in an electric furnace with a generator that can supply a high amperage. And we would have to have cryolite ore to serve as the solvent ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... is striking: Guillaume de Lorris was a refined and graceful exponent of the conventional doctrine of love, a seemly celebrant in the cult of woman, an ingenious decorator of accepted ideas; Jean de Meun was a passionate and positive spirit, an ardent speculator ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... infinitely important that intelligent and upright men should occupy their true position in public affairs. A reluctance to face the virulent and brutal opposition of low adventurers must be naturally felt by every refined and educated man. The future character of these colonies will, however, depend on the courage and perseverance of the respectable classes. The widest extension of suffrage cannot be long resisted, and qualifications for office founded on property will inevitably break down. But the reputable and ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... that men liked others for being like themselves. Since then, our feelings have not changed materially, although our mode of showing them is slightly less intense. In those simple days stranger and enemy were synonymous terms, and their objects were received in a corresponding spirit. In our present refined civilization we hurl epithets instead of spears, and content ourselves with branding as heterodox the opinions of another which do not happen to coincide with our own. The instinct of self-development naturally begets this self-sided view. We insensibly find those persons congenial whose ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... Linley, perhaps the one by Gainsborough, in which she is portrayed with her young brother, gives the best idea of the special character of her type of beauty. Here are the large lustrous eyes and the very delicately modelled, sensitive, refined features; here, the luxuriant hair, the slender neck, and the sloping shoulders; and here, the superb poise of head and of mind. There is another fine picture of her by Gainsborough, for this painter was one of the brilliant men who frequented her father's house at Bath. ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing

... denounce; august in dignity, yet melting with tenderness; solemn, sad, profound. Thus was his influence pure and exalted in an art which has too often been prostituted to please the perverted taste of a sensual age. The most refined and expressive of all the arts,—as it sometimes is, and always should be,—is the one which oftenest appeals to that which Christianity teaches us to shun. You may say, "Evil to him who evil thinks," especially ye pure and immaculate persons who have walked uncorrupted ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... took it for granted. She said you had had a long talk. You can see, of course, that they're not ordinary people. Didn't Winifred—her name is Winifred—strike you as very refined and lady-like?' ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... I disliked seeing people living on Chalukha (alms sent them from Europe), and I could not understand why they were not ashamed to take it, for they did not look like ordinary beggars, but quite the reverse—independent, studious, and refined-looking, as I found out later when I spoke to them. They seemed indeed to think they were conferring a favour by accepting alms. Father said to a certain degree they were wrong, but from another point of view ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager

... foreign taste was decisive; and indeed we can hardly blame the Romans for turning away with contempt from the rude lays which had delighted their fathers, and giving their whole admiration to the immortal productions of Greece. The national romances, neglected by the great and the refined whose education had been finished at Rhodes or Athens, continued, it may be supposed, during some generations to delight the vulgar. While Virgil, in hexameters of exquisite modulation, described the sports of rustics, those rustics ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... poison; no other means would suggest themselves to one of her refined sense; but if so, why those marks on her neck, growing darker and darker as I stared ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... word went forth, as a whisper, and Captain Higginson forgot his rear-admiralship and his high family and took to wife three hundred thousand dollars and a refined and cultured girl who was one thirty-second Polynesian, one-sixteenth Italian, one-sixteenth Portuguese, eleven thirty-seconds English and Yankee, and ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London

... how to choose the best. In books and gardens thou hast placed aright, - Things which thou well dost understand, And both dost make with thy laborious hand - Thy noble, innocent delight, And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet Both pleasures more refined and sweet: The fairest garden in her looks, And in her mind the wisest books. Oh! who would change these soft, yet solid joys, For empty shows and senseless noise, And all which rank ambition breeds, Which seem such beauteous flowers, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... implies judgment; and that judgment must be adjusted to the special nature of the thing criticised. Art is different from ethics, from the physical world, from sensuality, however refined. It will not, therefore, in the long run do for the critic of an art to apply the same rules as the moralist, the naturalist, or the hedonist. It will not do for him to be contented with edification, or differentiation of species, or demonstrable delightfulness as the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... nation's gore, Will not in vain arise to where belongs[ce] Omnipotence and Mercy evermore: Like to a harpstring stricken by the wind, The sound of her lament shall, rising o'er The Seraph voices, touch the Almighty Mind. Meantime I, humblest of thy sons, and of 20 Earth's dust by immortality refined To Sense and Suffering, though the vain may scoff, And tyrants threat, and meeker victims bow Before the storm because its breath is rough, To thee, my Country! whom before, as now, I loved and love, devote the mournful lyre And melancholy gift high Powers allow To read ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron



Words linked to "Refined" :   superfine, finespun, dainty, fastidious, patrician, cultured, civilised, gentlemanly, genteel, well-mannered, polished, debonaire, gracious, unrefined, well-bred, sophisticated, prim, gentlemanlike, ladylike, delicate, suave, debonair, civilized, niminy-piminy, cultivated, polite, debonnaire, twee, couth, mincing



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