Refined You Quotes & Sayings

I don't know things. I'm not good enough. I'm not refined. The more you see of me, the more you'll find me out.'
'But I'm going to help you.'
'You'll 'ave to 'elp me a fearful lot. — H.G.Wells

If you go through the hot furnace of hardships, you will be refined like gold. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Have you ever observed a tiger? A true breed like the ones in the Chrysanthemum? Not those kittenish sorts like those in our cloisters. They're all muscle and sinew, with jaws powerful enough to break the strongest man, yet if you see them stalk prey, if you see them hunt- the sheer strength gives them more grace than the most refined of delicate creatures. That's Nemesis. — S.J. Kincaid

I think the 50mm lens is an extremely good discipline lens; it requires you to see in a more refined way, not just tighter. — William Albert Allard

you were the most beautiful thing i'd ever felt till now. and i was convinced you'd remain the most beautiful thing i'd ever feel. do you know how limiting that is. to think at such a ripe young age i'd experienced the most exhilarating person i'd ever meet. how i'd spend the rest of my life just settling. to think i'd tasted the rawest form of honey and everything else would be refined and synthetic. that nothing else would be refined and synthetic. that nothing beyond this point would add up. that all the years beyond me could not combine themselves to be sweeter than you.

- falsehood — Rupi Kaur

She was not quite what you would call refined.
She was not quite what you would call unrefined.
She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot. — Mark Twain

You could say that he split his day in half on order to travel between east and west. Some say that it shows how refined he was, but I see it as mental struggle to not be sucked under by either side. — Kyung-Sook Shin

Her long hair is loosely tied back, her face very refined and intelligent-looking, with beautiful eyes and a shadowy smile playing over her lips, a smile whose sense of completeness is indescribable. It reminds me of a small, sunny spot, the special patch of sunlight you find only in some remote, secluded place. — Haruki Murakami

My husband's family was terribly refined. Within their circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven. — Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

I suppose there is no place in the world where snobbery is quite so ever-present or where it is cultivated in such refined and subtle forms as in an English public school. Here at least one cannot say that English 'education' fails to do its job. You forget your Latin and Greek within a few months of leaving school - I studied Greek for eight or ten years, and now, at thirty-three, I cannot even repeat the Greek alphabet - but your snobbishness, unless you persistently root it out like the bindweed it is, sticks by you till your grave. — George Orwell

Intellectual knowledge exists in and of the brain.
Because the brain is part of the body, which must one day expire, this collection of facts, however large and impressive, will expire as well.
Insight, however, is a function of the spirit.
Because your spirit follows you through cycle after cycle of life, death, and rebirth, you have the opportunity of cultivating insight in an ongoing fashion.
Refined over time, insight becomes pure, constant, and unwavering.
This is the beginning of immortality. — Lao-Tzu

Awakening the mystical kundalini prematurely is dangerous, because unless you have refined your being, you'll get all screwed up, entities, weird powers ... strange things. That is why I don't teach anyone how to open up the chakras. — Frederick Lenz

My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman! — Oscar Wilde

Life has little bits of magic at nearly every turn, if you're looking closely enough. Scrapbooking has refined myselses. it's made me hungry to use it before I lose it. It's made me remember that I don't remember what it was like to be nine years old. And that I will never live in a Pottery Barn house. And that as tiny as I am in the scope of the universe, no one lives a life like mine. Not even the people whose meals I cook, whose laundry I fold, and whose cheeks I kiss at night. — Cathy Zielske

In the past, it was known as a "massive stroke," and you simply died. But improved resuscitation techniques have now prolonged and refined the agony. — Jean-Dominique Bauby

Was it me you were discussing?" he countered with lifted brows. "I couldn't tell from the description you were giving. Since when am I kind, considerate, refined, and amiable?"
"You're angry," Victoria concluded on a sigh.
A low chuckle rumbled in his chest and his arms tightened, drawing her close to his leann, muscular body. "I'm not angry," he said in a husky, gentle voice. "I'm embarrassed — Judith McNaught

People are complex. You can be smart and still look hot. You can be a punk rocker yet have a refined vocabulary. It's all about this mashup that makes us who we are and I think that's a beautiful thing. — Nadia Giosia

If you want to change from sex towards love, try to understand your sexuality. Watch it, watch the mechanicalness of it. See the futility, see the whole absurdity of it - it is not leading you anywhere. Become a little more refined, become a little more subtle. Look not for the body, but somebody's being. Watch, explore. Sooner or later you will find somebody who fits with you. — Rajneesh

Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. — John Bevere

The fires of refinement come with a cost, but also with a promise. His grace has been extended forth to you for restoration, confirmation, strengthening, and being established in Him. — Robin Bertram

You are not a sensitive and will never experience this, but raw data surges, blunt data with errors which are slowly refined like the process of chiselling out a sculpture from a block of marble. — Tade Thompson

avoid refined carbohydrates: white sugar, honey, high-fructose corn syrup, cookies, cakes, pastries, white bread, crackers, potato chips, french fries, commercial waffles, candy, donuts, and many dry breakfast cereals (juice-sweetened cereals listing whole grains as a primary ingredient are okay, but those with added sugar, evaporated cane juice, or honey are likely to raise your levels of tumor-fueling blood sugar and insulin). Instead, emphasize whole grains such as those above, as well as complex carbs such as vegetables, legumes, beans, and fresh fruit. If you crave something sweet, try dried fruit, rice syrup, barley malt, agave, kiwi sweetener, stevia, FruitSource, or maple syrup. — Keith Block

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings? — William Morris

But this must not be confused with our usual ideas of the practice of "unselfishness," which is the effort to identify with others and their needs while still under the strong illusion of being no more than a skin-contained ego. Such "unselfishness" is apt to be a highly refined egotism, comparable to the in-group which plays the game of "we're-more-tolerant-than-you." The Vedanta was not originally moralistic; it did not urge people to ape the saints without sharing their real motivations, or to ape motivations without sharing the knowledge which sparks them. — Alan W. Watts

Sooner or later your fingers close on that one moist-cold spud that the spade has accidentally sliced clean through, shining wetly white and giving off the most unearthly of earthly aromas. It's the smell of fresh soil in the spring, but fresh soil somehow distilled or improved upon, as if that wild, primordial scene has been refined and bottled: eau de pomme de terre. You can smell the cold inhuman earth in it, but there's the cozy kitchen to, for the smell of potatoes is, at least by now, to us, the smell of comfort itself, a smell as blankly welcoming as spud flesh, a whiteness that takes up memories and sentiments as easily as flavors. To smell a raw potato is to stand on the very threshold of the domestic and the wild. (241) — Michael Pollan

Kaladin frowned. "Wait. Are you wearing cologne? In prison?"
"Well, there was no need to be barbaric, just because I was incarcerated."
"Storms, you're spoiled," Kaladin said, smiling.
"I'm refined, you insolent farmer," Adolin said. Then he grinned. "Besides, I'll have you know that I had to use cold water for my baths while here."
"Poor boy. — Brandon Sanderson

Polish what you polish until it is like gold that has been refined a hundred times; anything that is done in a hurry is not deeply developed. Do what you do like a thousand-pound catapult; one who pops off too easily does not accomplish much. — Zicheng Hong

You don't want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don't want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading. — Dorothy Parker

For optimal health, we need body and spirit, exercise (ming) and meditation, awareness of the inner world and the outer. In other words, health requires balance and moderation. The goal of qigong may be summarized as xing ming shuang xiu,spirit and body equally refined and cultivated. Cultivate your whole being, as you would cultivate a garden with attention, care, and even love. — Ken Cohen

First of all, the carbohydrates restricted are sugar, refined flour, and starchy vegetables, not the green leafy vegetables, so there should still be significant fiber in the diet, although it's not actually necessary. In fact, a likely scenario is that you'll eat more green vegetables when you're carb-restricting than not, because you're likely to substitute more green leafy vegetables and salads for the starchy vegetables, pasta, and bread that you're not eating. A restaurant meal might be a dish of meat, fish, or fowl with green vegetables or salad substituted for the potatoes (or rice or pasta or the hamburger bun). — Gary Taubes

Carbohydrates, and especially refined ones like sugar, make you produce lots of extra insulin. I've been keeping my intake really low ever since I discovered this. I've cut out all starch such as potatoes, noodles, rice, bread and pasta. — Cynthia Kenyon

In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty. — Orhan Pamuk

The thing about playing percussion is that you can create all these emotions that can be sometimes beautiful, sometimes really ugly, or sometimes sweet, sometimes as big as King Kong and so on. And so there can be a real riot out there, or it can be so refined. — Evelyn Glennie

Although the making of a religion of one's own can be satisfying, it can progress further and faster with the aid of the spiritual traditions. Your own spiritual path risks being too personal and limited. What resources do you have compared to the traditions that have thought of things you will never consider? They have refined ideas and images and teachings and moral guidelines expressed in elegant and inspiring ways. They have produced spiritual beauty of a kind no single person could ever create. Read Emerson's journals and you find that he was reading Hafiz for months, and Thoreau's homespun spiritual insights come wrapped in references from the Western and Eastern traditions. — Thomas Moore

Straight out of Blackpool, I'm William Regal. My rhymes so intense, they shouldn't be legal. My style is refined, not crude and crass. I'll keep you grounded, like volcanic ash. I'll take you down, rung by rung. I'm just like British Parliment; I'm completely hung. Straight-up gangsta trippin'. Yes, boy! — William Regal

That's where the importance of nurturing comes in; the already sculpted personality is not recast, but refined. Loving, caring families can sand and polish, but they can't chip away at a lawn ornament and turn it into Michelangelo's David. Or vice versa. Want another analogy? Regarding personality, I am convinced that at birth the cake is already baked. Nurture is the nuts or frosting, but if you're a spice cake you're a spice cake, and nothing is going to change you into an angel food. — Lorna Landvik

My love", she whispered, so low she sounded to Jacques as if she were speaking from the bottom of an abyss, "now we shall belong to each other in a strange country that you do not know. It is the country of madmen but not the country of brutes. I am taking away your vulgar senses and giving you others more refined. — Rachilde

look here you old, painted hussy! I am neither a tart, a trollop, nor am I a strumpet! I am a lady of refined breeding and culture, so bugger off, before this little poppet pops you one in that ugly, wrinkled mug! — L.T. Suzuki

It's a favorite myth in our culture that hardship makes you a better person, that is is merely the grindstone on which your essence is refined and polished. But the truth is that scarcity, depression, thwarted ambition, and suffering most often leave the person a little twisted. That is the territory where mean drunks and tyrannical bastards come from. — Jessa Crispin

Why did you want to live here? No offense, but it doesn't really seem to be your style."
He paused at her room. "I think I might ought to be offended by that. What exactly are you saying about my style?"
She paused, too, then shrugged. "I don't know. You just seem to be the kind of guy to have a man cave, not something this ... "
"Refined?"
She shook her head affirmatively.
"Well, that just shows what you know. For your information, I do like some fancy things."
"Like what? Lacy underwear?"
"On my women, yeah." He flashed that grin at her that she was learning to hate. Not for any reason other than the fact that it softened his features and made him terribly irresistible. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I used to be more refined but at my age, you start to realize all that politeness doesn't get you very far. Better to be honest and direct, even if it does piss off a few people along the way. — Christopher Golden

Over time, the grueling job of a mother requires one to learn everything from patience to clinical psychology.

When you are "in the fire," it is sometimes hard to recognize the value of what you are learning. But the da-to-day refining process--the problem solving, crisis resolution, mental stretching, mess clean-ups, sleep deprivation, and loving more than you thought possible truly makes you into a smart, aware, beautiful refined individual.

The great secret is appreciating the refined person you are becoming through your trials. — Linda Eyre

And long afterwards, in moments of the greatest merriment, there would rise before him the figure of the little clerk with the balding brow, uttering his penetrating words: "Let me be. Why do you offend me?"
and in these penetrating words rang other words: "I am your brother." And the poor young man would bury his face in his hands, and many a time in his life he shuddered to see how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savege coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners, and God! even in a man the world regards as noble and honorable. — Nikolai Gogol

Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is likely to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our powers of wishful thinking? Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe. The methodology isn't perfect, and the history of science is riddled with abject failures of scientific objectivity. But that is just the point-these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected by-what, religion? No, by good science. — Sam Harris

Tira: Whatever you're thinkin' you're wrong. I only like him like a brother. You ain't got nothin' to worry about ... Say listen you. A better dame than you once called me a liar and they had to sew her up in twelve different places. You're lucky I'm a little more refined than I used to be. And if you was as much a lady as I am, you'd get out of here before I get real sore. Alicia: You haven't a streak of decency in you. Tira: I don't show my good points to strangers. I'll trouble you to scram. — Mae West

Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra - they'll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigour when I'm too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I'm syntactically uptight. I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka, as roughage. If your aesthetic has become so refined it is stopping you from placing a single black mark on white paper, stop worrying so much about what Nabokov would say; pick up Dostoyevsky, patron saint of substance over style. — Zadie Smith

The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be. — Henry David Thoreau

Lord, you are God! You made us. Who better to know how to fix us when we've gone wrong? who better to set us to rights again? Who better to love us through the fire and refine us into something beautiful and useful despite our wrongs? — Francine Rivers

I have been deceived, before, in the objects whom I have endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you, nevertheless; and I am more interested in your behalf than I can well account for, even to myself. The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love, lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up, forever,on my best affections. Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them ... — Charles Dickens

He terrifies me, Aunt Peg." I don't have the backbone to say it to her face. "Oliver is such a self-contained person. He's always so calm, so at ease, so refined. I'm the one who's always losing my mind over nothing. He is unbelievably amazing in a way I don't know if I can reciprocate. His voice is calm and patient. It makes me feel like he will sit me down and tell me everything's going to be okay. And his eyes. Have you seen his eyes? They're so kind and gentle. — Elisa Marie Hopkins

So what this is is us, our personalities refined down on to a stage performance. In other words, the way we play is the end product of the way we live - we live in the cities, you see. — Alice Cooper

Some night soon, I'll sneak back in here and we can eat chocolates until we vomit."
"We're such refined, genteel ladies."
"Please," Lysandra said, waving a manicured hand, "you and I are nothing but wild beasts wearing human skins. Don't even try to deny it. — Sarah J. Maas

You have no idea how well you are doing, John complimented me
just a few minutes after he mentioned the Christmas card. What did that mean: That I was doing well? That I'd come to a family gathering? That I'd remembered to bring food? That I was dressed, and my hair combed? That I was wearing shoes? I wasn't sure, but maybe just making an appearance at a family event meant I was handling things well. — Mary Potter Kenyon

And how closely related to you is Cousin Beatrice?"
Reynaud gave him a look. "Not that close.
"Glad to hear it." Vale dropped into a cushioned chair. "I hope she recovers fully so that you can then propose to her. Because I tell you now, matrimony truly is a blessed state, enjoyed by all men of good sense and halfway adequate bedroom skills."
"Thank you for that edifying thought," Reynaud growled.
Vale waved his glass. "Think nothing of it. I say, you haven't forgotten how to treat a lady in the bedroom, have you?"
"Oh, for God's sake!"
"You've been out of refined society for years and years now. I could give you some pointers, should you need them. — Elizabeth Hoyt

Let your library be a testimonial of your dedicated interest in accelerated personal development, that you will read whatever you have to read you will hear whatever you must hear and you will watch and see whatever you must see in order to make your life refined and worthwhile and achieve all your purpose. — Jim Rohn

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. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

You pay a whore to make you feel like a man, you fund a philharmonic to make yourself feel like a refined man. — Sam Lipsyte

I think one of the most important lessons that I've learned is to put your head down and work. Don't look at other people and compare yourself. Just do the work. Because when the opportunity is there, you have to be ready. Make sure your craft is refined and you're constantly working on it. — Tika Sumpter

To pastors and teachers
Compose catechisms particularly to teach prayer, not by reasoning nor by method, for the simple are incapable thereof; but to teach the prayer of the heart, not of the understanding; the prayer of God's Spirit, not of man's invention.
Alas! By wanting them to pray in elaborate forms ... you create their chief obstacles. The children have been led astray from the best of fathers, by your endeavouring to teach them too refined, too polished a language ...
A father is much better pleased with an address which love and respect in the child throws into disorder, because he knows it proceeds from the heart, than by a formal and barren harangue, though ever so elaborate in the composition. The simple and undisguised emotions of filial love are infinitely more expressive than all language and all reasoning. — Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon

In contrast, markets - oft mythologized as "natural" are the most unnatural things going. Libertarians will tell you "market laws are laws of nature", what baloney. Markets - and the other great modernist cornucopian tools - are magnificent wealth generating machines, built ad-hoc, through trial and error, constantly fine-tuned and refined, tinkered, adjusted. — David Brin

Very well." In a voice as cool and detached as if he were critiquing a work of art, he said, "Starting at the top: your brow is marked with intelligence, your gaze is direct, your features are delicate, your skin is fair, your voice is refined, your speech reflects education ... " He paused. "Even the way you hold your head is elegant." I was suddenly, excruciatingly self-conscious. I dropped my gaze, my face on fire. "Ah, yes," he said softly. "And then there is your modesty. No milkmaid could have blushed like that." To my mortification, I felt my blush deepen until the tips of my ears were tingling with the heat. "Shall I continue?" he asked with a hint of a laugh in his voice. "No, that is quite enough, thank you. — Julianne Donaldson

You see, I was born in the slums, that was before the ghetto. The ghetto was kind of refined; the slums was right there on the ground. — Della Reese

If you are drawn to the refined, take up calligraphy or grow a bonsai. — Laurie A. Helgoe

Ballet Hispanico is a mixture of ethnic, ballet, social, jazz - you name it, it's doing it. The company has been going strong for more than 20 years, and you can see why: It may not be refined, but it's full of beans. — Robert Gottlieb

Our weaponry was not dropped onto our laps one morning. It is not manna from Sinai's skies. Since Agincourt, the White man has refined & evolved the gunpowder sciences until our modern armies may field muskets by the tens of thousands! Aha!' you will ask, yes, 'But why us Aryans? Why not the Unipeds of Ur or the Mandrakes of Mauritius?' Because, Preacher, of all the world's races, our love - or rather our rapacity - for treasure, gold, spices & dominion, oh, most of all, sweet dominion, is the keenest, the hungriest, the most unscrupulous! This rapacity yes, powers our Progress; for ends infernal or divine I know not. Nor do you know, sir. Nor do I overly care. I feel only gratitude that my Maker cast me on the winning side. — David Mitchell

What language for such a refined and sophisticated northern lass! And a beautiful one. Even more beautiful when you're swearing away in such a ladylike manner! — Heather Graham

Will is developed in meditation. It is refined. It is within you, but you don't know how to get to it. — Frederick Lenz

She's remarkably refined." "You told me she slung Miss Birmingham over her shoulder and tossed her into a carriage. — Jen Turano

Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. — Morihei Ueshiba

I always imagined that magically, at some point, I would settle into this very easy and refined sophistication, but it turns out that who you are at eleven is pretty much who you are at 27, so I don't know how much I've learned over the years. — Mackenzie Davis

When I was a child, I always wanted to be funny and to please people in my family. As you grow up that instinct becomes more refined, but it's still there. — Romola Garai

It is properly said that the Devil can "quote Scripture to his purpose." The Bible is full of so many stories of contradictory moral purpose that every generation can find scriptural justification for nearly any action it proposes - from incest, slavery, and mass murder to the most refined love, courage, and self-sacrifice. And this moral multiple personality disorder is hardly restricted to Judaism and Christianity. You can find it deep within Islam, the Hindu tradition, indeed nearly all the world's religions. Perhaps then it is not so much scientists as people who are morally ambiguous. It — Carl Sagan

I will gladly shell out $24.95 or $9.99 or 99 cents on iTunes to read or see or listen to the 24-karat treasure that you have refined from your pain and your vision and your imagination. I need it. We all do. We're struggling here in the trenches. That beauty, that wisdom, those thrills and chills, even that mindless escape on a rainy October afternoon - I want it. Put me down for it. — Steven Pressfield

P. and J. did not like books set in large type with wide margins, such as pleased readers of more refined tastes, but rather pages set in small type stretching all the way across tightly justified lines, filled to the brim with words and sentences, like those enormous rustic dishes you can eat at long and heartily without every emptying them, and are all that can satisfy some gigantic appetites. — Albert Camus

The hospital that feeds you refined sugar, white bread, canned soup, bouillon cubes, and frozen vegetables should be closed by the health department as a menace to the public health. — David Reuben

It had been in a Paris house, with many people around, and my dear friend Jules Darboux, wishing to do me a refined aesthetic favor, had touched my sleeve and said, "I want you to meet-" and led me to Nina, who sat in the corner of a couch, her body folded Z-wise, with an ashtray at her heel, and she took a long turquoise cigarette holder from her lips and joyfully, slowly exclaimed, "Well, of all people-" and then all evening my heart felt like breaking, as I passed from group to group with a sticky glass in my fist, now and then looking at her from a distance (she did not look ... ), and listening to scraps of conversation, and overheard one man saying to another, "Funny, how they all smell alike, burnt leaf through whatever perfume they use, those angular dark-haired girls," and as it often happens, a trivial remark related to some unknown topic coiled and clung to one's own intimate recollection, a parasite of its sadness. — Vladimir Nabokov

I heard Nirvana, and discovered that songs could be like poetry, but a little bit more refined: you didn't have to have 20 verses to get your point across. — Justin Townes Earle

Refined indifference is a sports psychology precept: train like there's no tomorrow and then accept whatever happens. Once you step on the field realize that whatever is meant to be is meant to be. — Scott Hamilton

Why is it so embarrassing to admit you like someone? It should be a compliment to them, and even if they don't like you back, they should at least commend you on your refined taste. — Dalya Moon

Often, after extinguishing the oil lamp in our house on stilts, we would lie on our beds and smoke in the dark. Book titles poured from our lips, the mysterious and exotic names evoking unknown worlds. It was like Tibetan incense, where you need only say the name, Zang Xiang, to smell the subtle, refined fragrance and to see the joss sticks sweating beads of scented moisture which, in the lamplight, resemble drops of liquid gold. — Dai Sijie

You look at William Powell in My Man Godfrey and he's a butler in that and he's very dapper. He's a very refined gentleman. I liked playing around with that, with the good posture and a style, a panache, and a way of moving about the room. — Evan Peters

Meditation ... puts into question more or less everything you tend to do in your search for happiness. But if you lose sight of this, it can become just another strategy for seeking happiness a more refined version of the problem you already have. — Sam Harris

Was bad language used?" asked Colonel Melchett.
"It depends on what you call bad language."
"Could you understand it?" I asked.
"Of course I could understand it."
"Then it couldn't have been bad language," I said.
Mrs. Price Ridley looked at me suspiciously.
"A refined lady," I explained, "is naturally unacquainted with bad language. — Agatha Christie

Public-policy-wise, if you want to be consistent, crude oil is a bulk commodity, and you should be able to export it. I would rather the crude go to U.S. refineries to get refined and then export the refined product because we get double, triple the money. — John Shimkus

The problem was that, while the classic European coming-of-age story generally featured a provincial boy who moved to the city and was transformed into a refined gentleman, the American tradition had evolved into the opposite. The American boy came of age by leaving civilization and striking out toward the hills. There, he shed his cosmopolitan manners and became a robust and proficient man. Not a gentleman, mind you, but a man. This — Elizabeth Gilbert

The privilege of a middle-class, stable, bourgeois life is that you can pretend that you are not complicated and project yourself as a solid, uncomplicated person, with refined life goals and achievements. — Aleksandar Hemon

Two people can illustrate crudity to you.
The first is the crude man, whom you see perceiving the diamond as a stone.
The other is the refined man, who makes clear to you the crudity of the first one. — Idries Shah

For an actor to remain a child is rather important. It's a childlike, dreamy thing, acting, if you think about it. It's the sort of thing children fantasise about, playing cowboys and Indians in the street. I think that acting is just a highly refined development of that. — Michael Gambon

Through algebra you easily arrive at equations, but always to pass therefrom to the elegant constructions and demonstrations which usually result by means of the method of porisms is not so easy, nor is one's ingenuity and power of invention so greatly exercised and refined in this analysis. — Isaac Newton

It is what often happens in the establishment. Inconvenient truths are left buried. If you don't ask too may questions of a gentlemen then you won't be disappointed."
"And this is what makes us British?"
"It is our face to the world," Sidney replied. "Many of us are civilised, charming and perfectly genuine people. Others have developed their reserve into a form of refined deceit. It's why people find the British so intriguing, Georgie. The line between the gentleman and the assassin can be so very thin. — James Runcie

Isn't one of the first lessons of good elocution that there's nothing one can say in any rambling, sprawling rant that can't, through some effort, be said shorter and better with a little careful editing? Or that, in writing, there's nothing you can describe in any page-filling paragraph that can't be captured better in just a sentence or two? Perhaps even nothing in any sentence which cannot better be refined in a single, spot-on word? Does it not follow, then, that there's likely nothing one can say in any word - in saying anything at all - that, ultimately, isn't better left unsaid?
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) — Mort W. Lumsden

Real music will make you more and more refined. It will become more and more silent. In fact, real music will help you to listen to silence, where all notes disappear, where only gaps remain. One note comes, disappears, and another has not come, and there is a gap. In that gap meditation flows in you. — Rajneesh

In New York, you are competing with Times Square lights and all of that, so you've got to be 300 pounds and crazy to get anyone's attention. Then, you can refine yourself. I always knew under those 300 pounds and tracksuits was a refined, slim, dignified man. — Al Sharpton

You're looking good today Bret. Very hot ... hotter than Jemaine. You have a refined bone structure, while Jemaine's facial features are too deep set to be classically handsome. — Kristen Schaal

When you leave the familiar and enter the unknown, your fear becomes refined by experience and hammered into tools of survival on the anvil of anxiety. — T.D. Jakes

But this is one of the rewards of reading the Old Testament regularly. You keep on discovering more and more what a tissue of quotations from it the New Testament is; how constantly our Lord repeated, reinforced, continued, refined, and sublimated, the Judaic ethics, how very seldom He introduced a novelty...The Light which has lightened every man from the beginning may shine more clearly but cannot change. The Origin cannot suddenly start being, in the popular sense of the word, "original". — C.S. Lewis

I've found that motherhood helps you figure out what absolutely needs to be done and what doesn't. You just learn to do everything quicker and quicker - your style and your makeup gets more refined and generally easier. — Jade Jagger

God alone knows exactly what you and I must endure in order to form His character in us. It is in our trials that God refines us and removes our impurities. Like refined gold, when we pass through our trials, people will see His perfect reflection in us. — Wendy Blight

What were you going to make for Christmas dinner?" one of my
older children asked in a very reasonable tone. I cleared my throat,
but couldn't speak. There was no real explanation for my behavior. I'd been so intent on getting through this first Christmas without David. I'd found new rituals to replace the old, wrapped gifts, and even made cutout sugar cookies. I'd modified Christmas in order to endure it. What I hadn't done was plan on or prepare a Christmas meal. Everyone was looking at me expectantly by this point, including my sweet, hungry grandchildren.
"I forgot all about Christmas dinner," I finally admitted. No one batted an eye. — Mary Potter Kenyon

The war has changed you, too, Caroline. Your faith is stronger, your compassion deeper, your love more intense than ever before. It's as if all the qualities I saw in you and fell in love with have been refined and purified. — Lynn Austin