Refined Culture Quotes

Good taste has everything to do with being cultured and being refined, and if art has to do with anything, it has to do with being human.

Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.

Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.

No man receives the full culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished; and there is no condition of life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries this is the cheapest, and the most at hand, and most important to those conditions where coarse labor tends to give grossness to the mind.

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.

France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside.

You can reach a situation where things of intelligence and refinement and culture can be considered elite, and things that are crass and ignorant can be considered to be real and of the people. And when you begin to have the mass of populus striving for something that's not worth striving for, then tremendous amounts of energy go into...the maintenance of that which is worthless.

I had grown up among engineers, and I could remember the engineers of the twenties very well indeed: their open, shining intellects, their free and gentle humor, their agility and breadth of thought, the ease with which they shifted from one engineering field to another, and, for that matter, from technology to social concerns and art. Then, too, they personified good manners and delicacy of taste; well-bred speech that flowed evenly and was free of uncultured words; one of them might play a musical instrument, another dabble in painting; and their faces always bore a spiritual imprint.

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.

An artist should be well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best society, and should keef out of it.

A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts

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

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined.

The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute.

Sloppy language and sloppy ways go together. Those who are truly educated have learned more than the sciences, the humanities, law, engineering, and the arts. They carry with them a certain polish that marks them as loving the better qualities of life, a culture that adds luster to the mundane world of which they are apart, a patina that puts a quiet glow on what otherwise might be base metal.

The charm of fine manners is music and sculpture and picture to many who do not pretend to appreciation of these arts.

The Countess was considerably younger than her husband. All of her clothes came from Paris (this was after Paris) and she had superb taste. (This was after taste too, but only just. And since it was such a new thing, and since the Countess was the only lady in all Florin to posses it, is it any wonder she was the leading hostess in the land?)

As to the pure all things are pure, so the common mind sees far more vulgarity in others than the mind developed in genuine refinement.

Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.

Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if that's what it is, that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it.

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

Again, the great number of cultivated men keep each other up to a high standard. The habit of meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the art of omission and selection.

Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing why.

What is the voice of song when the world lacks the ear of taste?

Men of polite learning and a liberal education.