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Refinement Quotes

Browse 241 quotes about Refinement.

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Refinement Quotes

“Even in a personal sense, after all, art is an intensified life. By art one is more deeply satisfied and more rapidly used up. It engraves on the countenance of its servant the traces of imaginary and intellectual adventures, and even if he has outwardly existed in cloistral tranquility, it leads in the long term to overfastidiousness, over-refinement, nervous fatigue and overstimulation, such as can seldom result from a life of the most extravagant passions and pleasures.”

IfsLongArtUsedPassionTermPleasureResultsAdventureIntellectualArt IsSatisfiedNervousServantLong TermImaginaryTranquilityFatigueRefinementCountenanceExtravagantLead InEngraveOverstimulation
Author:Thomas Mann
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“I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.”

MindHumansHeartKindHas BeensBodyWishObjectsTasteWeaknessDignityPityPhrasesAcquireConvinceSentimentsEndeavorContemptWomens RightsNormMind And BodyRefinementDelicacyKinds Of LoveHuman HappinessVindicationEpithetSusceptibility
Book:Mary, A Fiction and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria
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“The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering in animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of the human spirit. All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all things whatsoever.”

PeopleShouldFirstsHumansSpiritSufferingHumanityEvilIndividualAnimalResultsAll ThingsRelationFellowsWelfareIndifferencePetVeganContemptSensibilityHuman SpiritExhibitsRefinementAnimal WelfareAnimal EthicsKindness To AnimalsCallousnessAnimal Suffering
Author:Ashley Montagu
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“No one wants adversity. Trials, disappointments, sadness, and heartache come to us from two basically different sources. Those who transgress the laws of God will always have those challenges. The other reason for adversity is to accomplish the Lord's own purposes in our life that we may receive the refinement that comes from testing. It is vitally important for each of us to identify from which of these two sources come our trials and challenges, for the corrective action is very different.”

WantMayTwoImportantDifferentReasonActionLawPurposeChallengesLordOur LivesSadnessSourceAdversityDisappointmentAccomplishTrialsGods WillHeartacheTestingRefinement
Author:Richard G. Scott
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“The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means of providing for the national defense, is one of those refinements which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.”

MeanIdeasLibertyAuthorityDefenseEnlightenedProvidingZealRefinementArdentNational DefenseRestraining
Book:The Federalist Papers and the Constitution of the United States: The Principles of the American Government
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“Today's Uncle Tom doesn't wear a handkerchief on his head. This modern, twentieth-century Uncle Thomas now often wears a top hat. He's usually well-dressed and well-educated. He's often the personification of culture and refinement. The twentieth-century Uncle Thomas sometimes speaks with a Yale or Harvard accent. Sometimes he is known as Professor, Doctor, Judge, and Reverend, even Right Reverend Doctor. This twentieth-century Uncle Thomas is a professional Negro -by that I mean his profession is being a Negro for the white man.”

MenWellsMeanSometimesTodayCultureSpeakWhiteKnownModernCenturyJudgingDoctorsProfessionEducatedHatsProfessorsTomsAccentsUnclesIntegrationWhite ManTwentieth CenturyHarvardRefinementYaleWell EducatedWell DressedPersonificationReverendsHandkerchiefsUncle TomTop Hats
Author:Malcolm X
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“Scientific method, although in its more refined forms it may seem complicated, is in essence remarkably simply. It consists in observing such facts as will enable the observer to discover general laws governing facts of the kind in question. The two stages, first of observation, and second of inference to a law, are both essential, and each is susceptible of almost indefinite refinement. (1931)”

FirstsKindMayTwoFactsSeemsFormLawScienceStageEssentialsEssenceMethodComplicatedObservationObserversObservingGoverningRefinedRefinementSusceptibleScientific MethodInference
Book:The Scientific Outlook
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“I think chemistry is being frittered away by the hairsplitting of the organic chemists; we have new compounds discovered, which scarcely differ from the known ones and when discovered are valueless-very illustrations perhaps of their refinements in analysis, but very little aiding the progress of true science.”

ThinkingLittlesScienceDifferencesKnownKnowledgeProgressAccountsAnalysisChemistryCompoundsIllustrationRefinementChemistValueless
Book:The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862: With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters
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“It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary; and it is one among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.”

MenShouldReasonSpiritSimplePathHuman NatureIllConvictionProofMultitudesAbstractionAdversariesAstonishingRefinement
Book:The Federalist on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788, with an Appendix Containing the Letters of Pacificus and Helvidius on the Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793
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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.”

IfsWorldDoneUseNumbersTechnologyCircumstancesOne DayWeaponsPossessionNuclearHypocrisyRejectsSurroundContemplatingNuclear WeaponsContinuingThreatenedJustifiedSecrecyDisarmamentRefinement
Author:David Lange
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“Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival's doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.”

IdeasCertainBornTeachTaughtArmsWords Of WisdomTruth IsArgumentAffectionEducationalSurrenderPerceiveRivalsRelevanceRefinementBrevitySortingSorting Out
Author:Michel de Montaigne
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“One should put forth great effort in matters of learning. One should read books concerning military matters, and direct his attention exclusively to the virtues of loyalty and filial piety. Reading Chinese poetry, linked verse, and waka is forbidden. One will surely become womanized if he gives his heart such knowledge of such elegant and delicate refinements. Having been born into the house of a warrior, one's intentions should be to grasp the long and the short swords and to die”

IfsGivingShouldHeartLongBookMatterDiesReadingHouseBornEffortAttentionVirtueMilitaryDirectIntentionLoyaltyWarriorChineseDelicateVersesLinkedForbiddenElegantPietyRefinementGreat EffortFilialFilial Piety
Author:Kato Kiyomasa
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“American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood, to make laws for you and your daughters awake to the danger of your present position and demand that woman, too, shall be represented in the government!”

IfsIdeasGovernmentLawOrderWishWealthVirtueDangerPositionDemandLowsDaughterChineseAwakeWomanhoodRefinementOur DaughterYour DaughterAmerican Woman
Book:The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Against an aristocracy of sex, 1866 to 1873
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“Love is the creative refinement of sex energy. And so, when love reaches perfection, the absence of sex automatically follows. A life of love, an abstinence from physical pleasures is called brahmacharya, and anyone who wishes to be free from sex must develop his capacity to love. Freedom from sex cannot be achieved through supersession. Liberation from sex is only possible through love.”

EnergyWishSexLove IsPleasureCreativeCapacityPerfectionAbsenceLiberationRefinementAbstinenceCapacity To LoveLove FreedomBrahmacharya
Author:Rajneesh
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“Each human being has the eternal duty of turning what is hard and brutal into a tender and subtle offering, what is crude into an object of refinement, what is ugly into a thing of beauty, confrontation into collaboration, ignorance into knowledge, hereby rediscovering the child's dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love”

HumansChildrenHardDreamRealityScienceHuman BeingsCreativeLearningObjectsIgnoranceDutyEternalDiscoveryUglyServantSubtleCollaborationOfferingBrutalConfrontationCrudeRefinementIncessantly
Author:Yehudi Menuhin
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“Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement... Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation.”

ShowsCoursesLiteratureLossInfluenceEvolutionEvidenceWingsFruitPopulationIsolationSicknessStemDeficiencyRefinementClawsWoodyAlterationsHeredityMutationSummarySpeciation
Author:Lynn Margulis
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“The most precise work is generally done by hand, with hand tools. Some people rely on machines for their precision, and my way of working is backwards. I rely on the machines for doing the gross stock removal and then, when it comes to the final refinements and fitting of joints and things, making things work together, I rely more on sharp-edged tools that I push by hand.”

PeopleWayDoneHandsTogetherToolsMachinesFinalsMy WayRelyWorking TogetherPreciseBackwardsGrossJointsFittingPrecisionRefinementRemoval
Author:Martin Puryear
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