Refinement Quotes - Page 5

• Art is a way you discover the past, and so it brings the past into the present and the future. That's why we have anthropologists who dig up the art from the past. You can see the refinement in the society by the art. And people will see our lack of refinement when they dig up our art.

  Pat Steir

  Art, Past, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Gynaecologists are very smooth indeed. Because they have to listen to woeful and sordid symptoms they develop an expression of refinement and sympathy.

  Richard Asher

  Sympathy, Expression, Smooth

  A Sense of Asher p. 86. Pitman Medical, UK (1972)

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good engineering is characterized by gradual, stepwise refinement of products that yields increased performance under given constraints and with given resources.

  Niklaus Wirth

  Yield, Engineering, Resources

  11 Copy quote

• Manners or etiquette ('accessibility, affability, politeness, refinement, propriety, courtesy, and ingratiating and captivating behavior') call for no large measure of moral determination and cannot, therefore, be reckoned as virtues. Even though manners are no virtues, they are a means of developing virtue.... The more we refine the crude elements in our nature, the more we improve our humanity and the more capable it grows of feeling the driving force of virtuous principles.

  Immanuel Kant

  Determination, Communication, Mean

  9 Copy quote

• The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or there will be no blessings.

  John Adams

  Blessing, Government, Vices

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.418

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The charities of life are scattered everywhere, enameling the vales of human beings as the flowers paint the meadows. They are not the fruit of study, nor the privilege of refinement, but a natural instinct.

  George Bancroft

  Life, Flower, Natural Instinct

  4 Copy quote

• Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world's great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province... Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.

  Aaron Copland

  Self, Discipline, Simplicity

  9 Copy quote

• False modesty is the refinement of vanity. It is a lie.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Lying, Vanity, Modesty

  6 Copy quote

• I think my first impression (of Bix Beiderbecke) was the lasting one. I remember very clearly thinking, 'Where, what planet, did this guy come from? Is he from outer space?' I'd never heard anything like the way he played-not in Chicago, no place. The tone-he had this wonderful, ringing cornet tone. He could have played in a symphony orchestra with that tone. But also the intervals he played, the figures-whatever the hell he did. There was a refinement about his playing. You know, in those days I played a little trumpet, and I could play all the solos from his records, by heart.

  Benny Goodman

  Heart, Thinking, Play

  20 Copy quote

• When you are but slightly involved in the world, the effect the world has on you is also slight. When you are deeply enmeshed in affairs, you machinations also deepen. So for enlightened people simplicity is better than refinement, and freedom is better than punctiliousness.

  Zicheng Hong

  People, Simplicity, Taoism

  4 Copy quote

• Have you ever noticed how few sitting places you find in private gardens? How seldom the versatility and importance of benches is considered? True gardeners, with their peerless taste, dexterity and inspired planting, never stop . . . To sit is almost an offence, a sign of depravity and an outrage towards every felicitous refinement that has gone into making a garden.

  Mirabel Osler

  Garden, Benches, Taste

  "The garden bench". Book by Mirabel Osler, 1991.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build the most important function that software builders do for their clients is the iterative extraction and refinement of the product requirements. For the truth is, the clients do not know what they want. They usually do not know what questions must be answered, and they have almost never thought of the problem in the detail that must be specified.

  Fred Brooks

  Important, Details, Want

  11 Copy quote

• The ancients were destitute of many of the conveniences of life which have been invented or improved by the progress of industry; and the plenty of glass and linen has diffused more real comforts among the modern nations of Europe than the senators of Rome could derive from all the refinements of pompous or sensual luxury.

  Edward Gibbon

  Real, Luxury, Glasses

  Edward Gibbon (1846). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.106

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is in the stomach of plants that development begins, and ends in the circles of the universe. 'Tis a long scale from the gorilla to the gentleman,--from the gorilla to Plato, Newton, Shakespeare,--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legislation, the summit of science, art, and poetry. The beginnings are slow and infirm, but it is an always accelerated march.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Plato, Circles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1905). “The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• A semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Civilization, Luxury, Selfishness

  Charles Caleb Colton (1821). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.227

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The expression of a gentleman's face is not so much that of refinement, as of flexibility, not of sensibility and enthusiasm as of indifference; it argues presence of mind rather than enlargement of ideas.

  William Hazlitt

  Presence Of Mind, Expression, Ideas

  6 Copy quote

• It is important to remember that value investing is not a perfect science. It is an, with an ongoing need for judgment, refinement, patience, and reflection. It requires endless curiosity, the relentless pursuit of additional information, the raising of questions, and the search for answers. It necessitates dealing with imperfect information - knowing you will never know everything and that that must not prevent you from acting. It requires a precarious balance between conviction, steadfastness in the face of adversity, and doubt - keeping in mind the possibility that you could be wrong.

  Seth Klarman

  Adversity, Reflection, Knowing

  20 Copy quote

• No improvement that takes place in either sex can possibly be confined to itself. Each is a universal mirror to each, and the respective refinement of the one will always be in reciprocal proportion to the polish of the other.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Sex, Mirrors, Improvement

  4 Copy quote

• The expressive word "quiet" defines the dress, manners, bow, and even physiognomy of every true denizen of St. James and Bond street.

  Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Bows, Dresses, Quiet

  4 Copy quote

• Real good-breeding is independent of the forms and refinements of what has assumed to itself the name of society.

  George MacDonald

  Real, Independent, Names

  George MacDonald (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)”, p.202, Delphi Classics

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• dance is simply the refinement of human movement - walking, running, and jumping. We are all experts. There should be no art form more accessible than dance, yet no art is more mystifying in the public imagination.

  Twyla Tharp

  Dance, Running, Art

  43 Copy quote

• Tis mighty easy o'er a glass of wine
  On vain refinements vainly to refine,
  To laugh at poverty in plenty's reign,
  To boast of apathy when out of pain,
  And in each sentence, worthy of the schools,
  Varnish'd with sophistry, to deal out rules
  Most fit for practice, but for one poor fault
  That into practice they can ne'er be brought.

  Charles Churchill

  Pain, Wine, School

  Charles Churchill (1855). “The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill: With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes”, p.377

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 'Monsieur,' Madame d'Arestel, Superior of the convent of the Visitation at Belley, once said to me more than fifty years ago, 'whenever you want to have a really good cup of chocolate, make it the day before, in a porcelain coffeepot, and let it set. The night's rest will concentrate it and give it a velvety quality which will make it better. Our good God cannot possibly take offense at this little refinement, since he himself is everything that is most perfect.'

  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

  Food, Night, Years

  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (2009). “The Physiology of Taste: or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy”, p.124, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• That alone can be called true refinement which elevates the soul of man, purifying the manners by improving the intellect.

  Hosea Ballou

  Men, Soul, He Man

  4 Copy quote

• Riches are valuable at all times, and to all men, because they always purchase pleasures such as men are accustomed to and desire; nor can anything restrain or regulate the love of money but a sense of honor and virtue, which, if it be not nearly equal at all times, will naturally abound most in ages of knowledge and refinement.

  David Hume

  Men, Honor, Age

  David Hume (1809). “Essays and treatises on several subjects in two volumes: Essays, moral, political, and literacy”, p.293

  11 Copy quote

  Show source