Refinement Quotes - Page 4

• For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Law, Trying

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.190, Vintage

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• New Orleans is a city of elegance, beauty, and refinement.

  Tom Piazza

  New Orleans, Cities, Elegance

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• We cannot by ourselves reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, but we are doing what has to be done all over the world if those weapons are one day to be eliminated. We will not contemplate any circumstance in which their possession or threatened use is justified. We reject the secrecy and hypocrisy which surrounds the continuing refinement of the technology.

  David Lange

  Technology, Numbers, Hypocrisy

  David Lange's Right Livelihood Award Acceptance Speech, www.rightlivelihoodaward.org. December 31, 2003.

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• It is one proof of a good education and of true refinement of feeling, to respect antiquity.

  Sigourney Weaver

  Family, Feelings, Proof

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• Art is not vague production, transitory and isolated, but a power which must be directed to the improvement and refinement of the human soul.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Art, Soul, Improvement

  Wassily Kandinsky (1914). “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, p.54, Courier Corporation

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• In every aspect of life, purity and holiness, cleanliness and refinement, exalt the human condition . . . Even in the physical realm, cleanliness will conduce to spirituality.

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Holiness, Spirituality, Cleanliness

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• Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Selfish, Busybodies, Deck

  "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, Book III, (5), (c. 161 - 180 AD).

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• Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement; but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Sight, Forests

  Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Natural History Essays”, p.39, Gibbs Smith

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• A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence and refinement so they think they will impress others with their command of obscure words.

  Barbara Walters

  Thinking, People, Obscure

  "How to Talk With Practically Anybody About Practically Anything". Book by Barbara Walters, 1970.

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• That which men suppose the imagination to be, and to do, is often frivolous enough and mischievous enough; but that which God meant it to be in the mental economy is not merely noble, but supereminent. It is the distinguishing element in all refinement. It is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Eye, Men, Civilization

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.56

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• As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures, American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The Egyptian is so of the cavern and the mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Country, House, Tree

  Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Julian Hawthorne (2015). “Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of “The Scarlet Letter”, “The House of Seven Gables” and “Twice-Told Tales””, p.225, e-artnow

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• A man who from the beginning has long been soaked in the languid atmosphere of a woman, the scent of her hands, her bosom, her knees, her hair, her lithe and flowing clothes,
  Sweet bath, suavely
  Scented with ointments,
  
  has acquired a delicacy of skin, a refinement of tone, a kind of androgyny without which the toughest and most virile of geniuses remains, when it comes to artistic perfection, an incomplete being.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Women, Hair, Hands

  "Les paradis artificiels". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1860.

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• Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Expression, Ideas, Office

  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Beecher STOWE (2016). “Collected Works (Complete and Illustrated Editions: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Queer Little Folks, The Chimney-Corner, ...)”, p.580, Harriet Beecher Stowe

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• The blessing which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent.

  Jane Addams

  Blessing, Hull House, Made

  Jane Addams, Jean Bethke Elshtain (2002). “The Jane Addams Reader”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• We all originally came from the woods! it is hard to eradicate from any of us the old taste for the tattoo and the war-paint; and the moment that money gets into our pockets, it somehow or another breaks out in ornaments on our person, without always giving refinement to our manners.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Tattoo, War, Giving

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1875). “Success and Its Conditions”, p.290

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• Far better, and more cheerfully, I could dispense with some part of the downright necessaries of life, than with certain circumstances of elegance and propriety in the daily habits of using them.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Elegance, Habit, Certain

  Thomas De Quincey, James Thomas Fields (1851). “De Quincey's Writings: Life and manners; from The autobiography of an English opium-eater. 1851”, p.14

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• Nirvikalpa samadhi is another matter. I don't feel that's really up to us. That happens at a certain time when our being has gone through countless changes and refinements.

  Frederick Lenz

  Gone, Matter, Samadhi

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• There is a certain beauty and refinement that is often found in our world and it is expensive. It shouldn't necessarily be so. It is just the way our economic system is.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Our World, Way

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• The way our world is set up, a higher economic priority is given to things that bespeak a greater refinement. It is just a determination that was made, to make money.

  Frederick Lenz

  Success, Determination, Buddhism

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• In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut each others throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing a modus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.

  William James

  Believe, Heart, Cutting

  Letter to John Jay Chapman, April 5, 1897.

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• EXTREME LUXURY ISN'T THE MOST BLING-BLING, IT'S EXTREME REFINEMENT, WHICH IS COUTURE AT ITS FINEST.

  Karl Lagerfeld

  Luxury, Bling, Finest

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• The Great Being saith: Human utterance is an essence which aspireth to exert its influence and needeth moderation. As to its influence, this is conditional upon refinement which in turn is dependent upon hearts which are detached and pure. As to its moderation, this hath to be combined with tact and wisdom as prescribed in the Holy Scriptures and Tablets.

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Heart, Essence, Utterance

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• Indifference to all the refinements of life--it's really shocking. Just Calvinism, that's all. Calvinism without the excuse of Calvin's theology.

  Aldous Huxley

  Luxury, Reform, Indifference

  Aldous Huxley (1953). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• Musick is certainly a very agreeable Entertainment, but if it would take the entire Possession of our Ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing Sense, if it would exclude Arts that have a much greater Tendency to the Refinement of human Nature; I must confess I would allow it no better Quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his Common-wealth.

  Joseph Addison

  Music, Art, Plato

  Joseph Addison (1867). “The Works of Joseph Addison: Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition, with Letters and Other Pieces Not Found in Ay Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.65

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• Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable, nothing so rough and uncultured as not to gain brilliance and refinement from eloquence.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Believe, Oratory, Gains

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