Quotes About Refinement

There is only good vodka and very good vodka—there is no such thing as bad vodka.

But people don't on the whole fart raucously in Mozart [concerts]. So I suppose a few vestiges of the thin crust of civilization which prevents our descent into utter barbarism are just about holding. ~Vigilance, by Julian Barnes

Sybil, vulgarity is no substitute for wit.

If Daisy Buchanan's laugh is the sound of money, then a gimlet, well executed, is the color of it. It is just the thing when you are feeling impoverished, financially or spiritually.

A fine man, observed my sister, pouring mead for the two of us. Well trained.

When I compared them to Naomi, I sensed an unmistakable difference in refinement between those who are born to the higher classes of society and those who aren't... there's no concealing bad birth and breeding.

A gentleman is not born but crafted. He had to work on himself in the same way as a sculptor shaped a rough stone and made it a thing of beauty.

Keep the best, forget the rest.

One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.

It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.

Men are like wine,--not good before the lees of clownishness be settled.

The more cultured a man, the less fortunate he is.

Of what use is it to please the herd? They are simply coarse animals - for all that is admirable in man is the artificial product of special breeding.

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.

There is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality than to laugh ... 'tis such a vulgar expression of the passion!

Men are like fine wines - the older they get, the better they get.

Man is born a barbarian, and only raises himself above the beast by culture.

Refinement is just as much a Christian grace in a man as in a woman; but he is not such a hateful, unsexed creature without it as a woman is.

Elegance is always in style for men.

No noble man ever hated good wine.

... acquired tastes are the mark of the man of leisure.

The ability to talk well is to a man what cutting and polishing are to the rough diamond. The grinding does not add anything to the diamond. It merely reveals its wealth.

To be thoroughly imbued, with the liberal arts refines the manners, and makes men to be mild and gentle in their conduct.

A man perfect to the finger tips.