"Improve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... honest member, I handed over the $3,000. Soon after this, I saw the 'Sheriff' and Jones figuring earnestly together, and then go and consult with several members, who I supposed were in the ring. It would be ungenerous to suppose that Jones would receive money for voting for a bill to improve his own county, and he was undoubtedly doing all he could without compensation, while entirely conscious that others were being paid. My readers will be as ready to adopt this opinion as myself after what I have already recorded of him. Private bill day came, and mine was on the calendar. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the religion—by which, it is carefully explained, is meant not only the 'maintenance' of the true religion, but the 'suppressing' of the false. One more remark may be made. Theoretically, the Church could improve its creed. In France it was read aloud on the first day of each yearly Assembly, that amendments or alterations upon it might be proposed; and in Scotland also the view was strongly held that the only standard unchangeable by the Church ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... grief can charm, And fate's severest rage disarm; Music can soften pain to ease, And make despair and madness please; Our joys below it can improve, And antedate the bliss above. This the divine Cecilia found, And to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound. When the full organ joins the tuneful quire, Th' immortal pow'rs incline their ear; Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire, While solemn ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... important and respectful. The conversation did not catch on at first. The girls sat immovable, like carvings of stone, in order to pretend with all their might that they were respectable ladies. Even the champagne, which Ryazanov called for, did not improve the mood. Rovinskaya was the first to come to the aid of the party. Turning to the stoutest, fairest German of all, who resembled a loaf, she ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... from the Federation. Recognition of labor's contribution to winning the war was embodied in the treaty of peace, which provided for a permanent international organization to promote the world-wide effort of labor to improve social conditions. "The league of nations has for its object the establishment of universal peace," runs the preamble to the labor section of the treaty, "and such a peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice.... The failure of any nation to adopt ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... doth the provident M.P. Improve each shining hour, And in the "Labour Question" see Hopes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... do not jump to the conclusion that just because you find some difficulty in using one sense avenue for impression, it is therefore impossible to develop it. Facility in using particular senses can be gained by practice. To improve ability to form visual images of things, practise calling up visions of things. Try to picture a page of your history textbook. Can you see the headlines of the sections and the paragraphs? To develop auditory imagery, practise calling up sounds. ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... how anxious your guardian is that you should improve yourself in every way. He laid particular stress on your German, as he was leaving for town yesterday. Indeed, he always lays stress on your German when he is ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... every way suitable for the Greek colony which he proposed to found as the best means of keeping Egypt in obedience. Even before the time of Homer, the island of Pharos had given shelter to the Greek traders on that coast. He gave his orders to Hinocrates the architect to improve the harbour, and to lay down the plan of his new city; and the success of the undertaking proved the wisdom both of the statesman and of the builder, for the city of Alexandria subsequently became the most famous of all the commercial and intellectual centres of antiquity. From Rhacotis ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... hundred francs; average disbursements, eighteen thousand seven hundred and ninety-four francs. Possibly these facts and figures may be of service to some of our chiefs of industry who are studying to improve the condition of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... pinned down to any definite statement, then that statement will be false.'[2] Mr. Ward in turn says of Mr. Bradley: 'I cannot even imagine the state of mind to which his description applies.... It reads like an unintentional travesty of Herbartian Psychology by one who has tried to improve upon it without being at the pains to master it.' Muensterberg excludes a view opposed to his own by saying that with any one who holds it a verstaendigung with him ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... local tradesmen, all the great London shops, the circulating library, the theatre box-office, the post-office and cab-rank, the nurses' institute and the doctor, within reach of her hand. The instrument we may confidently expect to improve, but even now speech is perfectly clear and distinct over several hundred miles of wire. Appointments and invitations can be made; and at a cost varying from a penny to two shillings any one within two hundred miles of home may speak day or night ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... they were sixty years ago. The state of the public mind, incapable of discriminating excellence from inferiority proved incontrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be acquired by long and frequent observation, and that without proper opportunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue insensible of the true value of the ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... basket, he thought long how he might improve and save time. He must hasten, or the now almost daily rains would destroy his ripened ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... by the better organized units of that industry.[82] This leveling process may have any or all of several consequences. It may cause enterprises which had succeeded in competing partly because they paid lower wages than more efficient enterprises for the same grade of labor either to improve their productive methods, or gradually to cease production. It may result in a reduction of profit for certain enterprises. It may occasion an increase in the price of the commodities produced. It may result in an increase in the productive ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... creating a great competition for the purchase of grain, and would thus prevent the arbitrary imposition on this, the principal production of the colonists, of a maximum that is frequently beneath its just value, and it would improve the morals of the present and of future generations. With these irresistible arguments in favour of this measure, it must be evident that the cause of justice and morality would be violated by any further unnecessary ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... Captain Somers did not improve so rapidly as his friends desired. The surgeon declared that his night ride from Petersburg, in his feeble condition, had done him more injury than a year's hard service; and after he had been in the hospital ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... tracks, muddy in the winter and dusty in the summer, while the numerous public reservations were commons overgrown with weeds. The growth of the city had been slow and labored, the real estate being generally in the hands of a few old fogies who manifested no disposition to improve or to sell. For many years the metropolis had been petted and spoiled by the general Government, which had doled out small annual appropriations, and the residents had been exempted from many of the ordinary burdens of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... improve my intellec'; that's why I ain't er goin' ter school. Got so I knowed all the teacher knowed last year, so 'tain't nothin' but a waste er time ter think of goin' ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... been promised money if she kept the secret intrusted to her, and was so pleased with the prospect that she forgot the dreadful past, and all connected with it. At all events, that was the only explanation I could find for her general industry and desire to improve herself, or for the complacent smiles I detected now and then stealing over her face when she didn't know ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma's health did not improve. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... found that the picture is not altogether satisfactory; it lacks both vigor and color. To improve matters recourse is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... improve this occasion," Peter abruptly continued, "to make my adieux. I shall be leaving for England in a few ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... labouring horses, oxen, and mules, though almost constantly at work during this season, yet being indulged with plenty of the green tops of this noble plant, and some of the scummings from the boiling-house, improve more than at any one period of the year. Even the pigs and poultry fatten on the refuse." So says Mr Edwards. Two physicians quoted by him speak to the same effect,—take the words of one of them; Dr Rush, of Philadelphia,—"Sugar affords the greatest quantity of nourishment in a given quantity ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... The borrower offers this price because he hopes to be able, after paying it, to benefit himself out of what he is going to make or grow or get with its help, or if it is a Government because it hopes to improve the country's wealth by its use. Sometimes borrowers want money because they have been spending more than they have been getting, and try to tide over a difficulty by paying one set of creditors with the help of another, instead of ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... to worship some saint or tomb. The Saints, or Pirs, in fact, are invested with all the attributes of God. It is the Saint who can avert calamity, cure disease, procure children for the childless, bless the efforts of the hunter, or even improve the circumstances of the dead. The underlying feeling seems to be that man is too sinful to approach God direct, and therefore the intervention of some one worthy must ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... signifies gloomy surroundings will be cleared away by your energetic overthrow of poverty. For a woman, this dream denotes an increase in her possessions, unless she loses or throws them away, then it might imply a disregard of opportunities to improve her condition. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... he remarked, "and when you began to improve you 'hustled.' But my treatment, those prescriptions, offset the poison—call it microbes, if you wish—in your blood and gave your physique and constitution and general health a chance. The darky ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... glance and a little flush of thankfulness. Matters had begun to improve with Miss Westlake. But it was due to Banneker that she had won through her time of desperation. Now, through his suggestion, she was writing successfully, quarter and half column "general interest" articles for the Woman's Page of the Sunday Ledger. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the judge showed embarrassment. He was conscious of its unfitness for their fastidious taste and yet he had not known how to improve matters. In his best days he had concerned himself very little with household affairs, and for the last few years he had not given a thought to anything outside his own rooms. Bela had done all—and Bela was pre-eminently a cook, ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... Government allows every man, or single woman of mature age, widow or unmarried, to go upon a plot of land, not more than one hundred and sixty acres nor less than forty acres, and to improve it, and live upon it. If he stays there, or 'maintains a continuous residence,' as the lawyers say, for a certain length of time, the Government gives him a title-deed at the end of that time, and he owns ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... unwilling to welcome the first rays of the sun, because their sweet, inexhaustible converse came to an end? Had they shared the happiness of ameliorating Count Tristan's melancholy state, and seeing him daily improve? And now it was all over: she must resume her old course of life, her temporarily laid aside labors! To muse too long upon departed happiness would unfit her for those. Even the sad joy ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... small sum, a plate of meat and a potato were furnished, but enough only to whet the appetite of a hearty boy like Sam. A suspicion did enter his mind as he rose from the table penniless once more, and his appetite still unsatisfied, that he had bought his liberty dearly, if his affairs did not improve. In the country he had enough to eat, a good bed to sleep in, and no care or anxiety, while he was not overworked. Here there was constant anxiety, and he never knew, when he rose in the morning, where his dinner was to come from, or whether ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... verdant rise Those gentler mounds that skirt the temperate skies, A happier hemisphere invites thy view; Tis there the old world shall embrace the new: There Europe's better sons their seat shall trace, And change of government improve the race. Thro all the midsky zones, to yon blue pole, Their green hills lengthen, their bright rivers roll; And swelling westward, how their champaigns run! How slope their uplands ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... a household, tongues wagged fast and furious; misfortune had smitten the mighty ones of W——, and brought them within range of the gossiping tongues of their social inferiors; and, while the village oracles improve their opportunities, and old women hatch theories, the like of which was never heard on earth, let us make the acquaintance of some of the ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and a half that our Democratic party had been in power, our taxes had paid in a surplus to the United States treasury of $125,000,000. The whole country was groaning under an infamous taxation. Most of it was spent by the Republican party, three or four years before, to improve navigation on rivers with about two feet of water in them in the winter, and dry in summer. In the State of Virginia I saw one of these dry creeks that was to be improved. Taxation caused the war of the Revolution. It had become a grinding wheel ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... enter upon any serious consideration about it,—for what use and purpose it is; though it be the foundation of our salvation, the chief ground of our faith, and the great spring of our consolation. Yet to improve the knowledge of it to any purpose of that kind, is a thing so rare, even among true Christians, that it is little the subject of their meditation. I think, indeed, the lively improvement of this mystery of godliness would be very effectual to make us really what we are said ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... foggy night that her voice had degenerated into an appealing whine. She was smudgy-looking, but undoubtedly clean; only life in underground kitchens, and the ingraining of London blacks with the baking process of cookery, had given her skin an unwholesome tinge, which her reddened eyes did not improve. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... not possessed a natural genius for teaching, even his patience would never have survived those schoolroom struggles with three children of differing ages and capacities. But he was interested in Vassie's determination to improve herself, and of little Phoebe he was fond in the way one cannot help being fond of some soft confiding little animal that rubs ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... other grimly, "young ladies take arsenic in minute doses to improve the complexion and promote tissue, forgetting that the effects are cumulative when they stop suddenly. Your young friend has 'sworn off' ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to Oliver Evans, of whom we shall learn more presently, for an improvement in manufacturing flour and meal. The fourth patent was granted in 1791 to Francis Baily of Philadelphia for making punches for types. Next Aaron Putnam of Medford, Massachusetts, thought that he could improve methods of distilling, and John Stone of Concord, Massachusetts, offered a new method of driving piles for bridges. And a versatile inventor, Samuel Mulliken of Philadelphia, received four patents in one day ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... willing to discourage it. Himself no ardent lover, although captivated both by the beauty and the amiable qualities of the fair orphan, De Lacy was satisfied with being endured as a companion, and made no efforts to improve the opportunity which this familiarity afforded him, by recurring to any of the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Capillano, and other rivers have been much overfished by legal and probably by illegal means. The sport used to be excellent, and would soon improve again under proper conditions. ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... on the Cumberland mountains, and one particular breed is found to succeed so much better than all the others that it fairly starves the others to death. I should here say that natural selection picks out this breed, and would tend to improve it, or aboriginally ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... complained to Abraham, the master. Abraham ordered Sarah to exercise her authority. Sarah did so, and pushed it to severity, and the slave absconded. The divine oracles inform us, that the angel of God found this run-away bond-woman in the wilderness; and if God had commissioned this angel to improve this opportunity of teaching the world how much he abhorred slavery, he took a bad plan to acomplish it. For, instead of repeating a homily upon doing to others as we "would they should do unto us," and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... gentle powers, We, who improve his golden hours, By sweet experience know That marriage, rightly understood, Gives to the tender and the ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... day; Mrs. Lewson's spirits began to improve. "I have always held the belief," the worthy old woman confessed, "that bright weather brings good luck—of course provided the day is not a Friday. This is ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... make every one hate the sight of you; if that is what books do, one cannot keep too clear of them. There are two ways in which a man may derive benefit from the study of the ancients: he may learn to express himself, or he may improve his morals by their example and warning; when it is clear that he has not profited in either of these respects, what are his books but a habitation for mice and vermin, and a source of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... with the wisdom of Congress to correct, improve, or enforce this plan of procedure; and it will probably be found expedient to extend the legal code and the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States to many cases which, though dependent on principles already recognized, demand some ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... interior arrangement, with which numerous readers may be acquainted. The object, in addition to our own designs, has been to apply practical hints, gathered from other structures in use, which have seemed appropriate for a work of the limited extent here offered, and that may serve to improve the taste of all such as, in building useful structures, desire to embellish their farms and estates in an agreeable style of home architecture, at once pleasant to the eye, and ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... ecclesiastical affairs, there would be also in the political estate innumerable matters of great importance to improve. There is the disagreement between the princes and the states; usury and avarice have burst in like a flood, and have become lawful [are defended with a show of right]; wantonness, lewdness, extravagance in dress, gluttony, gambling, idle display, with all kinds of bad habits ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther
... prudence, as well as good manners, to put men upon talking on subjects they are best versed in, yet that is a liberty a wise man could hardly take; {56} because, beside the imputation of pedantry, it is what he would never improve by. ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... was no almiranta to collect the vessels, the flagship, the "San Miguel," and the "San Juan Bautista" were very near the enemy, while the others were more than three leguas to leeward. The enemy tried to improve the opportunity, and determined to grapple our flagship with all their fleet, which they had carefully collected—thinking that if it surrendered the war would be ended; for they thought that ship alone carried force, and that the others could only be carrying the pretense ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... Commissioner of Works of recent times. A little coolness sprung up between him and CAVENDISH BENTINCK about those staircases in Westminster Hall. But chacun a son idea of a staircase. PLUNKET quite as likely to be right as C.B. Always doing something to improve arrangements of House. Does it quietly, too; Members know nothing about it till they come down and find new Smoking-room, fresh arrangements of lights, new rooms for Ministers, and occasionally a priceless ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... 'whole libraries of books' into which he earnestly desires to look. He feels like a man who has exchanged dusty boots for comfortable slippers; he is reading Spanish 'with enthusiasm'; longing to learn Italian, to improve his German, and even to read up his classics. He compares himself to a traveller in Siberia who, according to one of his favourite anecdotes, loved raspberries and found himself in a desert entirely ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of yellow corn, and every sign of fertility. All these, and perhaps a little admixture of state pride, led me to say that, after all, the people of Ohio need not go beyond the bounds of that state with any hope to improve their condition or to secure a better opportunity for a happy life. I soon parted with my friends with sincere regrets, for in our journeyings we were in truth ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... putting you in early because you are a fellow I can trust. My first and last word is, hit at nothing that isn't wide of the wicket. The ground will probably improve fast." ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... conservative. There was always a strong desire in the American mind to preserve, perpetuate, and improve existing institutions. Our fathers were not the enemies of government. They were ready at all times to sustain a government founded upon and recognizing the principles of equality and justice. Nor did they imagine that society could exist without the agency of a government in which force should ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... acres of woodland are consumed by the railroads, the manufactories, and the homes of the United States every twenty-four hours. How many are planted? To avert treelessness, to improve the climatic conditions, for the sanitation and embellishment of home environments, for the love of the beautiful and useful combined in the music and majesty of a tree, as fancy and truth unite in an epic poem, Arbor Day was created. It has grown with the vigor ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... can improve the breeds of his game-cocks by the selection of those birds which are victorious in the cockpit, so it appears that the strongest and most vigorous males, or those provided with the best weapons, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... make?" Isobel said. "As far as I have seen, I do not think that rich Englishmen are more amusing than others, and if he had all the wealth of India, that would not improve Nana Sahib in my eyes. There are women, of course, who do think a great deal about money, and who will even marry men for it, but even women who would do that could not, I should think, care anything about the wealth of ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... make me wonder what on earth I can have been writing about. I do not even remember, unless you tell me, whether they were long or short; and, except for my consciousness of never having written in a strain of trifling or levity, or otherwise than in a manner calculated to elevate and improve the minds of everyone but my hearers, I should be almost led to think I had been guilty of excesses in the way of toast-water or gruel previous to writing them (tea-totaller you see). Put it to yourself now. ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... the village, unlike the women, are not picturesque in appearance. The officials are well paid, so is everyone else, yet they never think of spending money to improve the looks of the village or even their own. Most of them are ragged. A few exhibit an inadequate elegance, dressed in white suits, derby hats, and very high collars. But in spite of the seeming poverty, there is not a seringueiro who could not at a moment's notice produce a handful of bills ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... acquired in a noble education. That which, with more reason, I admire, is that being so absolute a courtier, you have not forgot either the ties of friendship, or the practice of generosity. In my little experience of a court, (which, I confess, I desire not to improve) I have found in it much of interest, and more of detraction: Few men there have that assurance of a friend, as not to be made ridiculous by him when they are absent. There are a middling sort of courtiers, who become happy by their want of wit; ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... Ambrose raised a cheer. The sound did not improve the morale of the other side. Even in the dark, the difference between the two crowds could ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... proved to be a drizzling morning, so that instead of setting forth as I had intended before eight, I hung about the door of the cottage, hoping the weather might improve. Towards ten o'clock, the rain began to cease, and looking inside the back room I said 'good-bye' to Mrs. Riddles, who inquired in which ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... said. "But I have tried to improve; I have worked very hard, I thought it would please you, and that you would be glad to find me different—and I am different," she added, with a sudden pathetic change in her voice. "I understand a great ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... degradation were the more appalling because they were always boasting of their felicity and grandeur as compared with the rest of their species. And there is no hope that this people, which evidently resembles your own, can improve, because all their notions tend to further deterioration. They desire to enlarge their dominion more and more, in direct antagonism to the truth that, beyond a very limited range, it is impossible to secure to a community the happiness which belongs to a well-ordered family; and the more ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... good in peace as he was great and good in war, King Alfred never rested from his labors to improve his people. He loved to talk with clever men and with travelers from foreign countries, and to write down what they told him for his people to read. He had studied Latin after learning to read English, and now another of his labors was to translate Latin books into the English-Saxon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... see how the mere struggle and interplay among occurring forms may improve them and lead them on, we cannot well imagine how the adaptations which arrest our attention are thereby secured. Our difficulty, let it be understood, is not about the natural origination of organs. To the triumphant outcry, "How can an organ, such as an eye, be formed under Nature?" we ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... left Edinburgh for London, was active in the formation (1754) of the "Select Society," which in addition to its main object—the improvement of its members in reasoning and eloquence—sought to encourage the arts and sciences and to improve the material and social condition of the people. It was in this more genial atmosphere that Henry ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... stranger's name, And clip those bays I court; weak striver I, But a faint echo unto poetry. I have not clothes t'adopt me, nor must sit For plush and velvet's sake, esquire of wit. Yet modesty these crosses would improve, And rags near thee, some reverence may move. I did believe—great Beaumont being dead— Thy widow'd Muse slept on his flow'ry bed; But I am richly cozen'd, and can see Wit transmigrates: his spirit stay'd with thee; Which, doubly advantag'd by thy ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... theatre fitted up this year in the Rubens Room, Windsor Castle. The first of the dramatis personae in the best London theatres went down and acted before the Court, giving revivals of Shakespeare—which it was hoped would improve the taste for the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... the socialism of intelligent people, it is necessary to take hold of the ignorant masses and to mislead them by showing them the imaginary enemy of their welfare instead of the real one. Anti-Semitism says to the ignorant masses: "There is your enemy, fight the Jews, and you will improve your life conditions...." It is well known that such attempts to apply anti-Semitism for the purpose of creating social parties of the new type were more than once made in the West. As an example, I shall cite the Christian ...
— The Shield • Various
... money his object there can be nothing of this. There are here none of those specious delusions that look like virtues, to veil either the governed or the governor. If you look at Mr. Hastings's merits, as he calls them, what are they? Did he improve the internal state of the government by great reforms? No such thing. Or by a wise and incorrupt administration of justice? No. Has he enlarged the boundary of our government? No: there are but too strong proofs of his lessening it. But his pretensions ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Spread wide their ears and hiccough "That's divine!" The genius of his purse no longer draws The pleasing thunders of a paid applause. All silent now, nor sound nor sense remains, Though riddances of worms improve his brains. All his no talents to the earth revert, And Fame concludes ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... domestic virtues are woven into a beautiful chaplet of spring-time blossoms to bedeck her brow, there you will find good and great men. Our own nation is an example of this. To regenerate China then, to improve the morals of Chinatown in San Francisco, or Chinatown in New York where there are between seven and eight thousand sons and daughters of the Flowery Kingdom, you must create pure homes, and to do this you must first of all sweeten them with the ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... Perhaps the best excuse for him is the remaining possibility of an idea on his part, that any defence coming from one who had himself so many powerful enemies might seem to Keats rather to! damage than improve ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... her situation that would not improve was her father's aloofness. He seemed to try at times to thaw out but he persistently congealed again. One evening he got in late from the ranch, cold and wet, complaining of rheumatism. The driver went on with the team to Sleepy Cat and ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... at the stranger. Some of them, namely, the merchant class, are, however, excellent people, travelled and educated, as we found out afterwards. The Albanian and Turk are the enterprising merchants of Montenegro, and improve on acquaintance, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... repudiated Leicestrian designs, and declared that he had been always influenced by a desire to serve his country and maintain the Reformed religion. If he had made mistakes, he desired to be permitted to improve ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... passion, that Sir Francis was agreeably astonished. He should have less trouble in throwing off the mask. But he was an ill-tempered man; and to hear that the letter had been found to have the falseness of his fine protestations and promises laid bare, did not improve his ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... not thought of; and, except cricket, they had no manly games to strengthen their muscles and improve their forms. There was a dancing-master; but as he had the art of making a toil of a pleasure, few of the boys learned. A drill-sergeant came once a week, but few seemed to benefit by his lessons. However, as every care was taken to fill the heads ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... was as good as made. But before the vote was taken another chap came to the great man and said: 'Look here! I want to get an appropriation of, say, fifty thousand dollars, to deepen and improve a river down in my State'—a Southern State we'll say. 'I've been to the chairman of the pork bill committee, and he says it's impossible. The bill simply can't be loaded any further. But I find that you have an item in there for deepening and improving a harbor back ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the distillation process being omitted. There are two varieties of absinthe, the French and the Swiss, the latter of which is of a higher alcoholic strength than the former. The best absinthe contains 70 to 80% of alcohol. It is said to improve very materially by storage. There is a popular belief to the effect that absinthe is frequently adulterated with copper, indigo or other dye-stuffs (to impart the green colour), but, in fact, this is now very rarely the case. There is some reason to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and running the knife under it in a semicircular direction to 3. The nearer the knuckle the drier the meat, but the under side contains the most finely grained meat, from which slices may be cut lengthwise. When sent to the table a frill of paper around the knuckle will improve ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... a coal-black poodle, with half of his right ear gone, and absurd little thick moustaches at the end of his nose; he was shaved in the shamlion fashion, which is considered, for some mysterious reason, to improve a poodle, but the barber had left sundry little tufts of hair, ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... our public domain in quarter-sections (a hundred and sixty acres of land) upon the actual settler, on the simple condition that he should cultivate it and improve it as his home, was a more effective blow against the spread of slavery in the Territories than any number of legal restrictions or provisos of the kind proposed by Mr. Wilmot. Slavery could not ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... healing process for the man himself. We punish A. that B. may be afraid, and not do likewise. Our thoughts are bent on B., not really on A. at all. As far as he is concerned, the process is very similar to pouring boiling lead into a wound. We do not wish or intend to improve him, but simply and purely to make him suffer. After we have dealt with him, he is never fit again for human society. That was in the officer's thought when he refused to take ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... account of any illegibility in his handwriting. The manuscripts are most of them, exhibited at the South Kensington Museum in "the Forster Collection," and they all show I think, the extreme care and fastidiousness of the writer, and his ever-constant desire to improve upon and simplify his original sentence. His objection to the use of a lead pencil was so great that even his personal memoranda, such as his lists of guests for dinner parties, the arrangement of tables and menus, ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... must proceed; and I hope you will lay it to Heart, that it will be becoming in me to appear still your Lover, but not in you to be still my Mistress. Gaiety in the Matrimonial Life is graceful in one Sex, but exceptionable in the other. As you improve these little Hints, you will ascertain the Happiness or Uneasiness of, Madam, Your most obedient, Most humble ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... himself a cannoneer in the service of his country, he remained at the same time the chief of division, whose attention was everywhere, whose eagle glance nothing escaped, and who knew how to improve every advantage. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... dogs an interest to him, and he took much pains to improve the breed of his hounds. On one occasion he "anointed all my Hounds (as well old Dogs as Puppies) which have the mange, with Hogs Lard & Brimstone." Mopsey, Pilot, Tartar, Jupiter, Trueman, Tipler, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... pass muster anywhere during his early novitiate it would be in small inns and on the road; so to these places we confined ourselves. Yes, he certainly did the best he could, but what of that? He didn't improve a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for they are said to be careless manufacturers. We went into one or two of the [Greek: ergasteria] to witness the process of compression, but could not take it upon our veracity to utter an opinion anent them. At least they seem in a fair way to improve their wares; for the new consular agent of France (whom, by the way, we took to his Barataria) is especially knowing in this line, and hopes to produce, in a short time, oil that shall be equal to that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... furniture is antique, and made of oak, and looks as if it had been handed down from generation to generation. The men, largely assisted by the females, cultivate small plots of ground, and totally disregard all modern improvements. These French towns and villages improve but little. Popery, that great antidote to social progress, is the creed universally professed, and generally the only building of any pretensions is a large Romish church with two lofty spires of polished ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... always taken up with her adopted child. She bought books for him to improve his mind, and he devoted himself ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... a like confidence in you. Your father writes me that a letter has just been received from your uncle, Monsieur Barbe Marbois, inviting you to spend some time with him in Paris. He says that both he and your mother think it much to be desired that you should improve this opportunity for completing your education. He says, further, that a ship sails from New York early next week, and requests me, if you should be in Washington when I receive this letter, as he suspects, that I will instruct you to lose no time in reaching home. ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... consumption of the kingdom; and this toll in the shape of dock dues, added to the increase in the value of landed property, occupied by warehouses, shops, and private residences, has enabled the municipal corporation to bestow on the inhabitants fine buildings, and greatly improve the originally narrow streets. Liverpool has no manufactures of any special importance. Few ships are built there in comparison with the demands of the trade, in consequence of the docks having taken up most of the space formerly occupied by the building-yards. The repairs of ships are executed ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... that would be worse than adding colours to the violet. No, I mean to recommend a night on the couch of the nose of Scotland, merely to improve the imagination. Who knows what dreams might be produced by a night spent in a mansion of so many memories! For aught I know, the iron door of the postern stair might open at the dead hour of midnight, and, as at the time of the conspiracy, forth might sally the phantom assassins, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... 10A. These redoubts, though habitable, were still unfinished. They were part of the defences mentioned above as being in the hands of the Egyptian Labour Corps, a chain of posts running south past Romani and then turning west among the sand hills. The garrisons had at once to set to and improve their position, strengthen their wire and finish off the fire bays. At 10A a signal station had to be established in mid-desert some hundreds of yards from the redoubt, owing to a temporary shortage of signal wire. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... and misinterpreted my disappointment. "Did you grasp what I said?" she asked; "there is no modesty nowadays. And you people who come from England," she added sternly, "with your short skirts and your peculiar ways, don't improve matters." ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... about business," said she, "and I think I'll improve my opportunity by learning something. And, first, aren't men sometimes losers by the dishonesty of those who act for them—agents, they ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... up, pulls down, then plants and builds anew, Till scenes once loved are banished from our view. The draughtsman with officious eye surveys What capabilities a site displays: How things may be made better for the worse, And much improve—at ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... possessed, arbitrarily reducing him to a condition infinitely beneath the bestial—and all because he had broken a Church law in neglecting to attend Divine service. Many of us incline to believe that our own punishments, inflicted in the name of law, often tend rather to degrade the prisoner than to improve him. At any rate, not a man in the land but believes that no punishment should be administered except with a view of amending what is amiss in the culprit's character. But contrast this moral attitude of ours with the method of procedure deliberately ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... Tsing-tao recently made a speech to visiting journalists from Tokyo in which he said: "The suspicions of China cannot now be allayed merely by repeating that we have no territorial ambitions in China. We must attain complete economic domination of the Far East. But if Chino-Japanese relations do not improve, some third party will reap the benefit. Japanese residing in China incur the hatred of the Chinese. For they regard themselves as the proud citizens of a conquering country. When the Japanese go into partnership with the Chinese they manage in the greater ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... moved him to that act. "Colonel Money," he says, in the quiet third person of a self-respecting Norfolk gentleman, "does not mean to assign any other reason for serving the armies of France than that he loves his profession and went there merely to improve himself in it." ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... the impression of an era long since departed, and the two men felt vaguely out of place. Their host led them to a pair of dilapidated chairs, which they accepted gratefully. The ride to Keegan after a hard day's work had not tended to improve ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... she breathed, "isn't it sad that human beings have to live in such wretchedness and poverty? And you—how noble it is of you to think of them, to give your time and money to improve ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... will not be the last time I shall have the pleasure of seeing you. I shall not soon forget the succotash and cranberries, and shall improve an early opportunity to pay my respects to you," he said, as he bade ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... out among the women and children of that famous tribe, as it sometimes does, they afford the finest subjects in the world for the strategical experiments of any enterprising military hero who desires to improve himself in the noble art of war (laughter); especially for any valiant lieutenant ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... sense of humor, the absurdity of the thing must have forced itself upon him and possibly helped to improve his temper. But he had no humor, and so abandoned himself to the venomous temper that was practically the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... from Philip made me stare in amazement; but it did not improve my temper, or incline me to acknowledge the injustice I had uttered. My face burned, my fingers clenched. But it was Philip that had spoken; and a thing or two flashed into my mind in the pause; and, controlling myself, I let out a long breath, opened my fists, and, with the best ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... "She will improve as she grows older—she is very young yet, but little more than eighteen," thought Mr. Hastings; and his heart softened towards her, as he remembered the kind of training she had received from her mother, ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... successive deposits of thought and language, of philosophy and art, which register its gradual progression. As the paleontological remains imbedded in the rocks present a succession of organic types which gradually improve in form and function, from the first sea-weed to the palm-tree, and from the protozoa to the highest vertebrate, so the history of ancient philosophy presents a gradual progress in metaphysical, ethical, and theistic conceptions, from the unreflective consciousness ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... eighties when the West was settled but sparsely that the farmers had attempted to improve their lot by the formation of "Farmers' Unions." The movement had had a brief and not very brilliant career and as the offspring of this attempt at organization some progressives with headquarters at Brandon, Manitoba, had tried to ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... of some black sage and set about proving it you would be still at it by the hour when the white gilias set their pale disks to the westering sun. This is the gilia the children call "evening snow," and it is no use trying to improve on children's names ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... improve as was hoped. Month after month passed away, and brought no pros- pect of returning health. He could not walk far from the house for want of strength; but he loved to sit with Aunt Abby in her quiet room, talking of unseen glories, and heart-experiences, while planning ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... hate—that I had made a fortunate escape. The morning brought wisdom. I was beginning to think that all was not well between Darthea and Arthur Wynne, and that to kill him would do anything but add to my chances with a woman so sensitive, nor would it much improve matters that his death had come out of the ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell |
