Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession. And still we hear, If only this nation had a soul, or, Let us change the way we trade, or, Let us be proud of our region.
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Therefore, to be possessed with double pomp,To guard a title that was rich before,To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,To throw a perfume on the violet,To smooth the ice, or add another hueUnto the rainbow, or with taper lightTo seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
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This Englishwoman is so refined She has no bosom and no behind.
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. . there is one other thought closely allied to this. What of our duties to our fellow-men? And here I appeal particularly to my own sex, because women are supposed to be rather the standard in the community of refinement, of gentleness, of compassion, of tenderness, of purity. But no one can eat the flesh of a slaughtered animal without having used the hand of a man as slaughterer. Suppose that we had to kill for ourselves the creatures whose bodies we would fain have upon our table, is there one woman in a hundred who would go to the slaughterhouse to slay the bullock, the calf, the sheep or the pig? . . . But if we could not do it, nor see it done; if we are so refined that we cannot allow close contact between ourselves and the butchers who furnish this food; if we feel that they are so coarsened by their trade that their very bodies are made repulsive by the constant contact of the blood with which they must be continually besmirched; if we recognize the physical coarseness which results inevitably from such contact, dare we call ourselves refined if we purchase our refinement by the brutalization of others, and demand that some should be brutal in order that we may eat the results of their brutality? We are not free from the brutalizing results of that trade simply because we take no direct part in it.
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Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism; if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined; if the latter, gross and sensual.
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The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
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The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is everyday rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family.
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That nameless and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness which, in every refined and honorable attachment, is...
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This Englishwoman is so refined
She has no bosom and no behind.
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It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.
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And who in time knows whither we may vent the treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores this gain of our best glories shall be sent, 't unknowing Nations with our stores? What worlds in the yet unformed Occident may come refined with the accents that are ours?
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You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it -- low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion -- and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national. The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land.
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Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.
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One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.
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Men... are bettered and improved by trial, and refined out of broken hopes and blighted expectations.
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Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.
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There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined.
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Psalms 12:6:
And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver purified in a crucible, like gold refined seven times.
(NIV)
The words and promises of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in an earthen furnace, purified seven times over.
(AMP)
The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
(KJV)
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Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.
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