“ They civilize what's pretty By puttin' up a city Where nothin' that's Pretty can grow.... They civilize left They civilize right Till nothing is left Till nothing is right. ”
- Alan Jay Lerner- Copy
- 1.6K
“ You are doing your best only when you are trying to improve what you are doing. ”
- Mae West- Copy
- 3.7K
“ Or send them to Arkansas to butcher the politicians and clergy? It is not only a way to get rid of them, and of the heavy expense of keeping them; it is a way to civilize Arkansas and the South Seas. ”
- H. L. Mencken- Copy
- 494
“ Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life. ”
- Jeff Goldblum- Copy
- 622
“ I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on. ”
- Isaac Rosenberg- Copy
- 3.3K
“ Your ideas are like diamonds without the refining process, they are just a dirty rock, but by cutting away the impurities, they become priceless. ”
- Paul Kearly- Copy
- 903
“ The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind. ”
- Washington Irving- Copy
- 2.7K
“ It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old. ”
- Leigh Hunt- Copy
- 900
“ Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them. ”
- Eliza Farnham- Copy
- 1.4K
“ Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability. ”
- Roy L. Smith- Copy
- 1.6K
“ I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty; that give the like exhilaration, and refine us like that; and, in memorable experiences, they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty… ”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson- Copy
- 3.8K
“ Mindfulness means moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness. It is cultivated by refining our capacity to pay attention, intentionally, in the present moment, and then sustaining that attention over time as best we can. In the process, we become more in touch with our life as it is unfolding. ”
- Myla and Jon Kabat Zinn- Copy
- 2.1K
“ Someone else's way of doing things will never do. We each have to find a way that is our own, learning from all useful sources along the way. We have to learn to trust our own instincts and to nourish and refine them. ”
- Myla and Jon Kabat Zinn- Copy
- 517
“ We embark unhesitatingly on the path, in a direction that is absolutely right and urgent, supported by everyone, in the knowledge that this path is but a learning process e have to keep on learning, creating, applying, by-passing, touching upon, refining and clarifying a number of notions and details that need to be improvised and applied and which, thank God, we cannot foresee… ”
- Yehudi Menuhin- Copy
- 2.6K
“ Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feelings, reviews the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the springtime of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human mature, by vivid delineations of its tenderest and softest feelings, and through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life. ”
- William Ellery Channing- Copy
- 618
“ Manners are of more importance than laws… Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. ”
- Edmund Burke- Copy
- 2.1K
“ Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The problem is not how to improve commitment, but how to abolish it. ”
- Thomas Szasz- Copy
- 2.6K
“ Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. ”
- Willa Cather- Copy
- 1.3K
- 1