#refine

One day we took the children to see a goldsmith refine gold after the ancient manner of the East. He was sitting beside his little charcoal fire. ("He shall sit as a refiner"; the gold- or silversmith never leaves his crucible once it is on the fire.) In the red glow lay a common curved roof tile; another tile covered it like a lid. This was the crucible. In it was the medicine made of salt, tamarind fruit and burnt brick dust, and imbedded in it was the gold. The medicine does its appointed work on the gold, "then the fire eats it," and the goldsmith lifts the gold out with a pair of tongs, lets it cool, rubs it between his fingers, and if not satisfied puts it back again in fresh medicine. This time he blows the fire hotter than it was before, and each time he puts the gold into the crucible, the heat of the fire is increased; "it could not bear it so hot at first, but it can bear it now; what would have destroyed it then helps it now." "How do you know when the gold is purified?" we asked him, and he answered, "When I can see my face in it [the liquid gold in the crucible] then it is pure. ↗

— Amy Carmichael

#fire #gold #heat #pain #pure

Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement. Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura’s version of political theory. ↗

— Yukio Mishima

#elegance #inaction #indifference #japan #passivity

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old. ↗

— Leigh Hunt

#old #our #pleasures #recall #refine

If I could create an ideal world, it would be an England with the fire of the Elizabethans, the correct taste of the Georgians, and the refinement and pure ideals of the Victorians. ↗

— H. P. Lovecraft

#could #create #england #fire #georgians

But had they not paid that advance we would have lost much more, we would have started to go and look for the product all over again, the refinery would have stopped working. ↗

— Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

#again #go #had #look #lost

To have one's own story told by a third party who doesn't know that the character in question is himself the hero of the story being told, that's a technical refinement. ↗

— Raymond Queneau

#character #hero #himself #know #own

The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined. ↗

— George Saunders

#conduit #damaged #even #get #heightened

This Englishwoman is so refined, She has no bosom and no behind. ↗

— Stevie Smith

#bosom #refined #she

Sure, science involves trial and error. Scientists refine theories each day. But as they do, they help us grasp more clearly the wonders of the world and the universe. ↗

— Tony Snow

#day #each #error #grasp #help

Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then, he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street. ↗

— John Sununu

#afghanistan #art #art form #back #bad