Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace... to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed--but never the husband).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that ...in the High School hall.... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn't do if your life depended on it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Chinese were born ... with an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplan...ted too young, these qualities ripened in them.... If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You just can't predict the course of friendship among girls at this age [9ââ¬â12]. There's a need--varying in intensity ...according to the individual--for Gibraltar-like attachments in this betwixt-and-between period. Impressive sophistication and maturity exist side by side with fearsome anxiety about the changing body, the person-to-be. The "best friends" are anchors against these tides of confusion. . . . Girls need the support and backing of a group to relieve their anxieties about who they are and who they're going to be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a th...ing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication ...of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »