Stars wide of belt often cultivated a gentlemanly grandeur, a groomed refinement that filtered through their fingertips - the dainty fidgets of Hardy's plump digits, Orson Welles performing magic tricks with nimble dexterity, Jackie Gleason lofting a teacup to his lips as if he were Lady Bracknell - or through a fine set of twinkle-toes.

James Wolcott

Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.

Abraham Lincoln

We had never before seen a place where European influence had not contributed to smooth and soften the rough features of uncultivated nature. The prospect of Rangoon, as we approached, was quite disheartening.

Adoniram Judson

My mother always cultivated my imagination from the time I was very little.

Alden Ehrenreich

When you do a film in a foreign language, you know there's a cost in it, that you know, unfortunately, the audiences of foreign language films have not been cultivated. There's a market, but the market has been reduced, unfortunately, and you know that when you're making a foreign language film, you're making a choice.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Christopher Hitchens, the late essayist and sot, was a man who purposefully cultivated a lot of friends of a certain type - rich, self-important, generally dim-witted and hence easy for a well-spoken Oxbridge debater to impress - and he electrified Washington D.C. society mainly by not being a completely charmless bore.

Alex Pareene

The money has always been wasted on me. I don't care for beautiful things, funnily enough. I am my father's daughter. The things that excite me are the smell of a wood-burning stove, uncultivated fields. My house is decaying and falling to pieces. It's not had the love it deserves over twenty years.

Alison Moyet

The English are a tolerant bunch and, outside elements of the London elite, never much minded the rise of the Scottish Raj: after all, we were British, well-educated, reasonably cultivated and spoke with clear, classless accents.

Andrew Neil

Quick condemnation of all that is not ours, of views with which we disagree, of ideas that do not attract us, is the sign of a narrow mind, of an uncultivated intelligence. Bigotry is always ignorant, and the wise boy, who will become the wise man, tries to understand and to see the truth in ideas with which he does not agree.

Annie Besant

For decades, the men at Area 51 thought they'd take their secrets to the grave. At the height of the Cold War, they cultivated anonymity while pursuing some of the country's most covert projects. Conspiracy theories were left to popular imagination.

Annie Jacobsen

In the ten years leading up to 2013, quinoa prices nearly tripled on the back of skyrocketing international demand for the latest 'superfood'. The grain had traditionally been cultivated in the high Andean plateau, principally for household consumption. But as prices rose, farmers' incentive to sell it as a cash crop grew.

Arancha Gonzalez

We have built cities, developed industry and cultivated agriculture - we have transformed the State of Israel into an example and symbol for many other countries in the world.

Ariel Sharon

Oprah Winfrey is a big role model for me from a business capacity and a creative capacity. She is an incredible interviewer who cultivated a certain style by inserting her own personhood into a show on national television at a time when no one was talking about empowerment, spirituality, or our inner lives.

Ava DuVernay

America thrived in the 20th century because we made high school free. We sent a generation to college. We cultivated the most educated workforce in the world.

Barack Obama

The leaders of the Women's March, arguably the most prominent feminists in the country, have some chilling ideas and associations. Far from erecting the big tent so many had hoped for, the movement they lead has embraced decidedly illiberal causes and cultivated a radical tenor that seems determined to alienate all but the most woke.

Bari Weiss

You get the feeling that many of my guests feel that the French language gives them entry into a more cultivated, more intelligent world, more highly civilised too, with rules.

Bernard Pivot

I feel like 'Beware' is a heartfelt song - it's something that is definitely a story, something that I cultivated from personal stories, some from just other stories in just wanting to make a good song.

Big Sean

My father loved baseball and he cultivated my talent. I don't think he ever had any doubt in his mind that I would play professional baseball someday.

Bob Feller

From time to time I think I made some errors in judgment, but I have some really fashionable friends and I feel I've cultivated my own sense of style and what I feel comfortable with over the years.

Busy Philipps

I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.

Charles Baudelaire

Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life.

Charles Scribner, Jr.