Quotes About Sophistication

Apparently when someone stays in a civilized kingdom too long, even his skin becomes delicate.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for being civilized

Good taste is the excuse I've always given for leading such a bad life

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

I liked my new owner, as I have said, very quickly; and I liked all his friends and companions the "swells" as your snobs will call them; the men with the pale, handsome faces, borne by crusaders and cavaliers before them; the men with the gentle, quiet ways, and the contemptuous ring in their voices, and the easy indolent insolence to all forms of pretension ; and the frank, kindly, generous hearts for those that know them well; and the manner that is so natural to them,

The cello is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful.

To the people in Creede I am intelligent, suspiciously sophisticated and elitist to the point of being absurd. To the people at UC Davis I am quaint, a little slow on the uptake and far too earnest to even believe.

Just like James fucking Bond.

Double-zap," said Tag. "That is not a technical term, I hope," murmured Asil. "Only the most technically advanced people can use 'double-zap' correctly," Anna told Asil sotto voce. "You and I shouldn't try it.

Champagne, always champagne. Make mine Veuve-Clicquot.

Lois, as fresh as paint in a slim black suit which showed off her figure and flattered her skin, the white camellia of a blameless life at the newest, smartest angle, and the latest bit of nonsense adorning the auburn waves of her hair.

Miss Silver's fire. 'Of course

La gentileza es el lujo de los sabios.

It only looked chaotic because it was vastly, marvelously complex.

She wasn't dressed like a student. She wore an elaborate burgundy dress with long skirts, a tight waist, and matching burgundy gloves that rose all the way to her elbows. Moving deliberately, she managed to get down off the stool without tangling her feet and made her way over to stand nest to my table. Her blond hair was artfully curled, and her lips were a deeply painted red. I couldn't help wondering what she was doing in a place like Anker's.

Graciousness is the luxury of the wise,

Denna lifted her glass in a salute. "To the gullibility of the well-educated.

the protocols of such gatherings, the sophisticated hypocrisies of supposed art lovers coming to an art show in order to ignore the artworks on display,

Our affluence does not make us selfish; it simply enables us to afford more sophisticated expressions of selfishness.

É um dos grandes erros da pessoa culta: ter como adquirido que, por possuir uma mente sofisticada, possui também emoções sofisticadas".

The connoisseur's hushed, museum-trained gaze is not well-designed for these purposes. That gaze values subtlety, complexity, ambiguity, and irony. Its most characteristic grace note is self-congratulation at being the kind of person who likes this rare and beautiful thing, whatever it may be, laced always with contempt for those too crude, too uneducated, or too simple to be able do so.

Academic writers are bad writers for three reasons. First, they want to sound smart. "If the water is dark," goes a German aphorism, "the lake must be deep." Instead of using good words like smart, they choose sophisticated or erudite.

Guy cradled his tux, stroking it, running his fingers incestuously over the satin stripe on the trousers. There is a satisfaction that only superb clothing can offer, the joy of man raising himself from the mud, vindicating evolution. Life cannot lack purpose if a tuxedo exists—this is the obvious reply to the Samuel Beckett canon.