Sophistication Quotes

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
― Clare Boothe Luce

“The most sophisticated people I know - inside they are all children. ”
― Jim Henson

“There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun.”
― Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life

“The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“He thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“They became sophisticated in a way that she wasn’t-in a way she’d never be because sophistication is either your first language or you always have an accent in it.”
― Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman Is in Trouble

“When it turns out that the greatest enemy of truth is not falsehood, but gibberish, it turns out that the greatest intellectual virtue is not deductive brilliance or factual erudition, but common sense. When it turns out that the greatest enemy of decency is not hatred, but arbitrariness, it turns out that the greatest moral virtue is not kindness or mercy, but perseverance. When it turns out that the greatest enemy of good taste is not vulgarity, but ostentation, it turns out that the greatest aesthetic virtue is not elegance or refinement, but moderation. And when it turns out that the greatest enemy of civilization is not barbarity, but infantilism, it turns out that the greatest cultural virtue is not sophistication, but integrity.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“How fast everything had seemed, and how special and different and sophisticated and rich. All the things that had struck me at first—the odd formality that would have been unfriendliness at home, the attitudinizing, the orgies of talk, the tension and snobbery—seemed to make life so complicated. But then you acquire a taste for complicated things, nothing simpler will satisfy you. Go back home, and it's a let-down, there's something missing, everything is slower, duller, the conversation makes you want to bang your head against the wall.”
― Rachel Ingalls, Something to Write Home About

“There were glamorous young men with dyed hair who rustled like old cellophane. Older men had airs of sophistication and cold grace, giving the impression that if they were not so terribly tired they would go to places (known only to a select few) where the conversation was more scintillating and the congregation more interesting.

There were young women who had the exotic sheen of recently fed forest animals. Although they moved their fine heads languorously this way and that, nothing in the room excited their appetites. Unfashionable red lips cut across their white faces, and the crimson fingernails, as pointed as surgical instruments, heightened the predatory effect. Older, sadder women were more interesting to me. Voluminous skirts and imported shawls did not hide their heavy bodies, nor was their unattractiveness shielded by the clanks of chains and ribbons of beads, or by pale pink lips and heavily drawn doe eyes. Their presence among the pretty people enchanted me. It was like seeing frogs buzzed by iridescent dragonflies.”
― Maya Angelou, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

“I like doing everything fully, getting the most out of everything one does. I think that's the way to live.”
― Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

“Sensuality is the spirit of excellence.”
― Lebo Grand

“In order to be good, one needs to be virtuous, not "nice". In order to be true, one needs to be honest, not "authentic". In order to be wise, one needs to be discriminating, not "open-minded". And in order to be civilized, one needs to be principled, not "sophisticated".”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“She was white, wore perfume and smiled openly with the Negro customers, so I knew she was sophisticated. Other people's sophistication tended to make me nervous and I stayed shy of Louise.”
― Maya Angelou, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

“Experience of a wise person is nothing but collective sophistication of years.”
― Mukesh Kwatra

“An amateur should be more willing to be impressed by the professional than eager to impress the professional.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“The audience was far different from that healthy, joyous throng at the Christmas Pantomime. The theatre was full, but there were no children: the onlookers were mostly of the unwholesome 'men about town' type, the type that is known as 'sophisticated': those poor, hunted, complex-ridden people who have never found the gateway that leads to the crystal sunlight of simplicity.

[Edgar Hopkins]”
― R. C. Sherriff

“I don’t know how many more times I have to say the word 'ethereal' to make people understand what the vibe of this wedding is.”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“Industry without art is brutality. Art is specifically human. None of those primitive peoples, past or present, whose culture we affect to despise and propose to amend, has dispensed with art; from the stone age onwards, everything made by man, under whatever conditions of hardship or poverty, has been made by art to serve a double purpose, at once utilitarian and ideological.
It is we who, collectively speaking at least, command amply sufficient resources, and who do not shrink from wasting these resources, who have first proposed to make a division of art, one sort to be barely utilitarian, the other luxurious, and altogether omitting what was once the highest function of art, to express and to communicate ideas.”
― Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Christian & Oriental Philosophy of Art Formerly: "Why Exhibit Works of Art?"

“Sensuality is the ultimate sophistication.”
― Lebo Grand

“Digital sophistication implies intelligence, profundity, uniqueness, urban fit, and multidimensional understanding.”
― Pearl Zhu, Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit

“I've never met—have you?—a truly sophisticated man. World-weary and discreet—of course. But never sophisticated.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“A reading of the facts of ethnology and culture history proves plainly that maxima of culture have frequently been reached in low levels of sophistication; that minima of culture have been plumbed in some of the highest. Civilization, as a whole, moves on; culture comes and goes.”
― Some Snob

“They were not hired for their looks or their sophistication; the most competent ones specialized in puzzles, music, and foreign languages.”
― Sarah Rose, D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II

“There's something special about you that sets you apart - a je ne sais quoi. You possess a unique combination of elegance, beauty, and sensuality that some people envy. They may have more status symbols than you, but they still feel poor next to you, because they don't understand what you have. Instead of trying to understand, they choose to hate you, gossip about you, and ridicule your good name.
But others love being around you. They appreciate your energy, your simplicity of life, and your charm.
You are perfect from your toenails to the top of your head. You embody grace and are an example of expression. Don't change to please others because you are perfect just the way you are"
Kenan Hudaverdi 30/01/2024”
― Kenan Hudaverdi

“don’t mistake a lack of sophistication for sweetness”
― Lorrie Moore, Birds of America: Stories

“Your prime target in business should be about offering a lasting value.”
― Utibe Samuel Mbom, Your Clients and You

“When you build your brand to a sophisticated level, you begin to attract sophisticated clients.”
― Utibe Samuel Mbom, Your Clients and You

“Branding is not just about making a business official. It is about giving structure, style and sophistication to a business venture.”
― Utibe Samuel Mbom, Your Clients and You

“Postpone, not because you are being lazy. Postpone, only because you want to appear in a grand style.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Sips And Little Portions

“Sophistication, sir, is an overcoat that any man may put on, but it can't hide the flaws beneath.”
― Karen Miller, The Innocent Mage