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noun
Reformer  n.  
1.
One who effects a reformation or amendment; one who labors for, or urges, reform; as, a reformer of manners, or of abuses.
2.
(Eccl.Hist.) One of those who commenced the reformation of religion in the sixteenth century, as Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, and Calvin.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reformer" Quotes from Famous Books



... when friends came hurrying to his room with the news that officers were on their way to arrest him. At the instant a loud knocking was heard at the outer entrance. There was not a moment to be lost. Some of his friends detained the officers at the door, while others assisted the Reformer to let himself down from a window, and he rapidly made his way to the outskirts of the city. Finding shelter in the cottage of a laborer who was a friend to the reform, he disguised himself in the garments of his host, and shouldering a hoe, started on his journey. Traveling ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... willingly, almost cheerfully. Just at the last, when he came to bid the younger children good-by, the father seemed for an instant to rise above the reformer. No doubt ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham

... of what may be called the anaesthetic element in the Victorian era was, undoubtedly, the work of a great reformer: it requires a fine effort of the imagination to see an evil that surrounds us on every side. The manner in which Morris carried out his crusade may, considering the circumstances, be called triumphant. Our carpets began to bloom under our feet like the meadows in spring, and our hitherto prosaic ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... felt as though they were her own no longer, and as if she had given them up to an enemy. She assured herself that nothing could be done without her free-will, and considered of the limitations that must be imposed on this frightful reformer, but her heart grew sick at the conviction that either she would have to yield, or be regarded as a mere ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... year 1831, just before the passing of the first Reform Bill Jeremy Bentham, the great English student of legislative methods and the most practical political reformer of that day, wrote to a friend: "The way to be comfortable is to make others comfortable. The way to make others comfortable is to appear to love them. The way to appear to love them is to love them in reality." Jeremy was an honest man. He said what he believed to be true. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... into a bad way. The subordinates are either slack or righteously rebellious, and the children are unruly. The State official pays a surprise visit, discovers the state of things, and reads the Riot Act all round. The wicked headmaster is dismissed, the eager young reformer is put in his place, the slackers are warned and given another chance.... Blessed be St. Bureaukrazius ... says the genial old god out of a machine, when by virtue of his office he has righted every man's wrongs. The school in the play must be an elementary ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... idea of a God whose will is that righteousness shall triumph, that life shall be lord of death, and {191} love victorious over all, and we have no guarantee but that all the efforts and sacrifices of martyr and reformer may be in vain, and the hope of the world a delusion. It is only the believer who can never despair, who knows that his work will endure and enrich the world—that there will be no collapse or final disarray, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... that societies have been formed for the protection of dumb brutes and helpless children. Will no attempt be made to alleviate this other form of suffering, which has apparently escaped the eye of the reformer? ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... words are addressed, was one of the most pious of the Jewish kings, and the most eminent reformer of them all. On him, the last sovereign of David's house (for his sons had not an independent rule), descended the zeal and prompt obedience which raised the son of Jesse from the sheep-fold to the throne, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... religion for religion, that expressed by the English—"Well, father, you are right—the 'British'"—Church in Wales was many hundred times superior in reasonableness and stability to the negroid ebullitions of the Calvinists. As a matter of fact they were scarcely more followers of the reformer Calvin than they were of Ignatius Loyola; it was just a symptomatic outbreak of some prehistoric Iberian, Silurian form of worship, something deeply planted in the soil of Wales, something far older than Druidism, something contemporary with the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... grave national abuses casts a deep shadow across the traditional American patriotic vision. The sincere and candid reformer can no longer consider the national Promise as destined to automatic fulfillment. The reformers themselves are, no doubt, far from believing that whatever peril there is cannot be successfully averted. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... serious. He was as splendidly serious as a reformer. By a single urgent act of thought he would have made himself a man, and changed imperfection into perfection. He desired—and there was real passion in his desire—to do his best, to exhaust himself in doing his best, in living according to his conscience. He ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... that these reading circles were started, for they kept alive the new truth of the reformer-prophets during the reign of a bad king, Manasseh. This man's father, Hezekiah, had favored the prophets. But Manasseh, who became king when Isaiah was an old man, was opposed to all these new ideas. Most of the people of Judah probably agreed with him. They still clung to the belief ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... four times the value of this said cow, every Christmas, for ten or fifteen years together, without having ever once had, or wishing to have, my name held up in a public newspaper, as an example of charity and liberality to the poor. Yet, twenty years ago, before I was known as a reformer, when, for instance, I was in the King's Bench, a pound note, a fifth part of what Mr. Waddington and I gave away privately, besides the ton of potatoes, would have caused my name to cut a pompous figure in all the vehicles of news, both in town and country. I may, without boasting, declare, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... thoroughgoing Socialism means something like a garden-city idyll, with play-houses, open-air theatres, excursions, picturesque raiment and fire-side art. This in itself quite decent ideal of the average architect, art-craftsman and art-reformer if expressed in dry figures would, "at the lowest estimate" as they say, demand about fivefold the capacity for production attainable by the utmost exertions and with a ten hours' day before the war—before the downfall of our economy and our ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... perhaps better known under its English title of the "Visible World." It is said to have been the first illustrated school-book printed, and was published in 1658. Comenius was born in 1592, was a Moravian bishop, a famous educational reformer, and the writer of many works, including the "Visible World: or a Nomenclature, and Pictures of all the chief things that are in the World, and of Men's Employments therein; in above an 150 Copper Cuts." Under each picture are explanatory sentences ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... consistent with any amount of cruelty or license. William's religion really influenced his life, public and private. He set an unusual example of a princely household governed according to the rules of morality, and he dealt with ecclesiastical matters in the spirit of a true reformer. He did not, like so many princes of his age, make ecclesiastical preferments a source of corrupt gain, but promoted good men from all quarters. His own education is not likely to have received much attention; it is not clear whether he had mastered the rarer art of ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... Hewitt, United States Commissioner to the Paris Exposition, a statement not yet controverted; and to a statement of Mr. Sandberg, an English engineer of note, in the London Times. A leading American railway president and reformer has publicly said: 'There is a fear on my part that railway companies will themselves tempt steel makers to send a poor article by buying the cheapest—first cost only considered—as they ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... various views of his monastery engraved, and pictures representing the daily pursuits of his laborious community. Such pictures, hawked about everywhere by itinerant vendors of relics and rosaries, served to create for this barbarous reformer a reputation saintly and angelic. In towns, villages, even in royal palaces, he formed the one topic of conversation. Several gentlemen, disgusted either with vice or with society, retired of their own accord to his monastery, where they remained ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... orator chary of speech. Hiawatha alone was undaunted. He summoned a second meeting, which was attended by a smaller number, and broke up as before, in confusion, on Atotarho's appearance. The unwearied reformer sent forth his runners a third time; but the people were disheartened. When the day of the council arrived, no one attended. Then, continued the narrator, Hiawatha seated himself on the ground in sorrow. He enveloped his head in his mantle of skins, and remained for ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale

... man are you, then, pray?" resumed the Little Countess in her brief and abrupt tone; "I cannot understand it very well. By what right, on what ground, do you despise me? Suppose I am really guilty of all the intrigues which are attributed to me; what is that to you? Are you a saint yourself? a reformer? Have you never gone astray? Are you any more virtuous than other men of your age and condition? What right have you to despise ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... who hated inactivity; he was never happy except he was in motion, and never contented unless he had a prospect of change before him. Born in England, he would have been a universal philanthropist or a radical reformer, or an inventor of patent machines, or, in late days, a railroad projector; he would have employed his time in haranguing popular assemblies on the rights of man, and the freedom of religion, and he would have been a loud advocate of the cause of the Poles, and Greeks, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... within its narrow confines to gratify our curiosity, and to enable us to cast it back into the obscurity from which we evoked it." Here is another specimen from his speech on the Reform Bill of 1832. He opposed that Bill with all his energy, as is well known. Lord Durham, a very advanced reformer for his time, and son-in-law to Earl Grey, the Prime Minister, was known to have influenced that nobleman in retaining the most liberal clauses of the bill. For his years he was a very juvenile looking man, which gave point to Sir Robert Peel's ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... the family, as they came and went, and made myself familiar with their habits. There was only one other guest in the house,—a man of dignified face and intellectual head, who carried a sword tied up with an umbrella, and must be, I supposed, one of the chief officials. He had so much the air of a reformer or a philosopher, that the members of a certain small faction at home might have taken him for their beloved W. P.; others might have detected in him a resemblance to that true philanthropist and gentleman, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... Socrates only through his disciple Plato, as Socrates wrote nothing himself. From this source we gather that Socrates firmly upheld the right and necessity of free thought. He was mainly a moralist and reformer, and attempted to prove the existence of God by finding evidence of design in nature. He rejected the crude religious ideas of his nation, was opposed to anthropomorphism, but considered it his duty to conform publicly to this belief. In his old age, he was charged with rejecting the gods of the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... enough, if once the law of veracity be acknowledged as the rule for human things, there will not anywhere be want of work for the reformer; in very few places do human things adhere quite closely to that law! Here was the Papa of Christendom proclaiming that such was actually the case;—whereupon all over Christendom such results as we have seen. The Sicilians, I think, were the first notable ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... Dr Reid, then, as a reformer of philosophy, amount in our opinion to this:—he was among the first[23] to say and to write that the representative theory of perception was false and erroneous, and was the fountainhead of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... his claim in favour of the great Reformer of the Carmelite Order: the child recovered, and so retained her sweet name of Therese. Sorrow, however, was mixed with the Mother's joy, when it became necessary to send the babe to a foster-mother in the country. There the "little rose-bud" grew in ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... the wildest confusion and uproar, it being the period of a great festival, when every one was too tipsy to attend to him. At an island called Juneauta, he met a very remarkable personage, a Powaw, who bore the reputation of a reformer, anxious to restore the ancient religion of the Red man, which had become corrupted by intercourse with ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... reformation, but delayed its coming. The monasteries grew worse and worse. Favoured parish clergy held as many as eight benefices. Bishops accumulated sees, and, unable to attend to all, attended to none. Wolsey himself, the church reformer (so little did he really know what a reformation means), was at once Archbishop of York, Bishop of Winchester and of Durham, and Abbot of St. Albans. Under such circumstances, we need not be surprised to find the clergy sunk low in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... exact thought, in the same mind, may be the exact opposite of the next. This inconstancy, which after all does not go very deep, is a sign of sincerity and pure love of truth; it marks the freshness, the vivacity, the self-forgetfulness, the logical ardour belonging to this delightful reformer. It may seem a paradox, but at bottom it is not, that the vitalists should be oppressed, womanish, and mystical, and only the intellectualists keen, argumentative, fearless, and full of life. I mention this casualness and inconstancy in Mr. Russell's ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... Discountenanced by the Government, and failing in the favour of the people, the profligacy of the Restoration still maintained its ground in some parts of society. Its strongholds were the places where men of wit and fashion congregated, and above all, the theatres. At this conjuncture arose a great reformer whom, widely as we differ from him in many important points, we ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... a reformer can't last in politics. He can make a show for a while, but he always comes down like a rocket. Politics is as much a regular business as the grocery or the dry-goods or the drug business. You've got to be trained up to it or you're sure to fail. Suppose a man who knew nothing about the grocery ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt

... "We have an ardent reformer among our ranks, and, everything considered, I admire his pluck," he said. "You'll notice you're all invited if you listen to this—'A temperance meeting will be held outside the Magnolia saloon to-night, when Fanny Marvin and Adam Lee will turn the flash-light ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... primitive forest rots below,—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... experiment. This course may appear tedious;—but it is the shortest and the best. By this mode of induction, all the facts which he is able to glean will assuredly be found to harmonize with nature, with reason, and with Scripture; and with these for his supporters, the Reformer in education has nothing to fear. His progress may be slow, but it will be sure; for every principle which he thus discovers, will enable him, not only to outrun his neighbours, but to confer a permanent and valuable boon ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... week progressed, the school considered itself more and more ill-used. The fact was that the Reverend T. W. Beasley was accustomed to university students, and could not focus his mind to the intellectual range of girls of thirteen to seventeen. Moreover, he was by nature a reformer. He liked to give others the benefit of his advice, and he had much to say in private to his sister upon the subject of her pupils' lessons and general management. Perhaps poor Miss Beasley had not expected quite so much criticism. She was accustomed, nevertheless, to defer to her ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... the mistake of supposing that his amendment will necessarily proceed continuously, or by equal increments; because this, which is a common notion, will certainly lead to dangerous disappointments. How frequently I have heard people encouraging a self-reformer by such language as this:—'When you have got over the fourth day of abstinence, which suppose to be Sunday, then Monday will find you a trifle better; Tuesday better still,—though still it should be only by a trifle; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... voice of the Umbrian reformer Italy roused herself, recovered her good sense and fine temper; she cast out those doctrines of pessimism and death, as a robust organism casts ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... spiritual supremacy of S. Peter's see. Though he burned with an enthusiastic zeal for liberty, and displayed rare genius for administration, he had no ambition to rule Florence like a dictator. Savonarola was neither a reformer in the northern sense of the word, nor yet a political demagogue. His sole wish was to see purity of manners and freedom of self-government re-established. With this end in view he bade the Florentines elect Christ as their supreme chief; and they did so. For the same end he abstained ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... habit to their lowest possible minimum, and the complete protection of the immature. But the modern Utopians, having systematised their sociology, will have given some attention to the psychology of minor officials, a matter altogether too much neglected by the social reformer on earth. They will not put into the hands of a common policeman powers direct and indirect that would be dangerous to the public in the hands of a judge. And they will have avoided the immeasurable error of making their control of the drink traffic a source of public revenue. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... ally for those who desire that our schools and colleges shall not insist that every young man wishing for their advantages shall devote one half of his time to the details of Greek and Latin Grammar and Prosody. Dr. Bigelow is no rash reformer, no youthful enthusiast, no reckless radical. He has the confidence of the whole community for his science, scholarship, and ripe judgment. When, therefore, a man of his character and position, without passion or prejudice, publishes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... many embodied in a little MS. volume of reminiscences of her life. I hold more from her than from my father; but, as he was an unlucky speculator, I inherit from him Hope, which is invaluable to a social or political reformer. School holidays were only a rarity in harvest time for the parish school. At Miss Phin's we had, besides, a week at Christmas. The boys had only New Year's Day. Saturday was only a half-holiday. We all had a holiday for ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... took long walks with Tom. She inveigled him into high collars and discarding shoestring ties or wearing cravats in a bow with loose ends. She even persuaded him to give up slouch hats and dress more up-to-date. He and Aunt Susan dubbed her the "Rejuvenator and Reformer," and she ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson

... year he began to purge Judah." Yes, that is the sequence. The reformer follows the seer. We shall begin to sweep the streets of our own city when we have gazed upon the glories of the holy ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... cause. Of his sincerity and honesty in this matter we need not speak. By common consent he takes place among those who in this world have been permitted to illustrate on an extended scale the power and beauty of the Christian life. As a reformer of the abuses of society he is often cited as a model, uniting to a singular purity and sweetness of spirit an immovable firmness of will. To these blended and diverse qualities was owing, in a great ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... among them for this temper of docility. It is interesting to see how he once turned to Erasmus in a devout meditation, written in the journal he kept during his journey to the Netherlands. His voice comes to us from an atmosphere charged with the electric influence of the greatest Reformer, Martin Luther, who had just disappeared, no man knew why or whither; though all men suspected foul play. In his daily life, by sweetness of manner, by gentle dignity and modesty, Duerer showed his religion, the admiration ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... at least suggestive, and moreover they point out signs of the times. They show us unmistakably that with our advance there is a tendency to become more and more selfish and to regard with less true charity the condition of the weak. One social reformer will say that there will not be any suffering because therapeutics will have overtaken every disease that the flesh is heir to, or better still, that some new discovery will have made it possible to heal all sicknesses without the tedious ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... enemies so profit by these waymarks, that what has chastened and illumined [15] another's way may perfect their own lives by gentle benedictions. In every age, the pioneer reformer must pass through a baptism of fire. But the faithful adher- ents of Truth have gone on rejoicing. Christian Science gives a fearless wing and firm foundation. These are [20] its inspiring tones from the lips of our Master, "My sheep ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... and longer than a serious or thoughtful judgment. When Theodore Roosevelt called Thomas Paine "a filthy little Atheist" (or was the adjective "dirty"? I really forget!) he was very young,—only twenty-eight,—and doubtless had accepted his viewpoint of the great reformer-patriot from that "hearsay upon hearsay" against which Paine himself has so urgently warned us. Of course Mr. Roosevelt, who is both intellectual and broad-minded, knows better than that today. But it is astonishing ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... the utmost of the life that is his, he neither complains of it nor is elated by it, nor does he complain against the better fortune of others. All alike, as he well knows, are but learning a lesson; and he smiles at the socialist and the reformer who endeavor by sheer force to re-arrange circumstances which arise out of the forces of human nature itself. This is but kicking against the pricks; a ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... 1880, have reflected on the nature of things." And, although a certain fatal spiritual weakness debarred him to a great extent from the world of practical life, his sympathy with action, whether it was the action of the politician or the social reformer, or merely that steady half-conscious performance of its daily duty which keeps humanity sweet and living, was unfailing. His horizon was not bounded by his own "prison-cell," or by that dream-world which he has described with so much subtle beauty; rather ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of things to be, woman and her progeny, in the fold of his garment! What a sense of wrong in those two captive youths, who feel the chains like scalding water on their proud and delicate flesh! The idealist who became a reformer with Savonarola, and a republican superintending the fortification of Florence—the nest where he was born, il nido ove naqqu'io, as he calls it once, in a sudden throb of affection—in its last struggle for liberty, yet believed ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... majorities. The people of Maine are evidently becoming dimly conscious that it is worse than useless to make laws which no human power can enforce. "The result of the vote," writes Mr. Arthur Sherwell, an English social Reformer, not himself opposed to temperance legislation, "from every point of view, and not least from the point of view of temperance, is eminently unsatisfactory, and it unquestionably creates a position of great difficulty and embarrassment ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... in music is thus far higher than that of a reformer, or even of an inventor of new forms. He is a spectator of all musical time and existence, to whom it is not of the smallest importance whether a thing be new or old, so long as it is true. It is doubtful whether even the forms most peculiar to him (such as the arpeggio-prelude) are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... necessarily implies this surplus labor or unpaid labor. So long as there are wages, workingmen, you will never get the full product of your labor. Let no reformer beguile you into a struggle which simply aims to secure a modification of the wage system! Nothing short of the annihilation of the wage system will give you justice and give you the full product ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... times greater than the exciting of the poor to riot. It is easy to fire the discontented, but to arouse the rich and carry truth home to the blindly prejudiced is a different matter. Too often the reformer has been one who caused the rich to band themselves against ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... What he was brought into the world for, was to appreciate, as nobody else can, all sorts of esoterically fine things. Now that he'll be able to gratify that taste, he'll find his occupation in it. Why shouldn't he? It'd be a hideously leveled world if everybody was, trying to be a reformer. Besides, who'd be left to reform? I love to contemplate a genuine, whole-souled appreciator like Morrison, without any qualms about the way society is put together. And I envy him! I envy him as blackly as your pines envied the sumac. He's got out of the wrong role into the right one. I ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... confidential talks with ladies of her own age, that she was doing so much for John's cousin, whom she had found buried in an old farmhouse. For Mrs. Willard was a Christian and a philanthropist, besides being a reformer. ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... cent. In the Prfecture is the mausoleum of the Connetable Lesdiguires, originally one of the leaders of the Protestants. In the hamlet of Tareau, close to Gap, Guillaume Farel, a celebrated French reformer, was born in 1489. He died on the 13th Sept. 1565. The most remarkable features of his character were dauntlessness and untiring energy and zeal. He possessed a sonorous and tuneful voice, fluency of language, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... an absconding cashier then, a railway director, an army contractor, a Russian art patron, a lawyer, a Conservative editor, a social reformer?... Any way, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... force, though it may be applied in new ways. Well, you will admit that the true sinner is the only true reformer and philosopher among men? No? I will explain, then. The world is full of discordances, for which man is not to blame. His endeavor to meet and harmonize this discordance is called sin. His indignation at disorder, rebellion against it, attempts ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... all? Had Pere Enfantin (who, it is said, has shaved his ambrosial beard, and is now a clerk in a banking-house) been allowed to carry out his chaste, just, dignified social scheme, what a deal of marital discomfort might have been avoided:—would it not be advisable that a great reformer and lawgiver of our own, Mr. Robert Owen, should be presented at the Tuileries, and there propound his scheme for the regeneration ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... form the bulk of contented society, demand that the radical, the reformer, shall be without stain or question in his personal and family relations, and judge most harshly any deviation from the established standards. There is a certain justice in this: it expresses the inherent conservatism of the mass of men, that none of the established virtues ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... day. He had learned his ethics in a school which taught that, for great and pious objects, the end justified the means. In the ardor of his zeal for what he deemed the Christian faith, Columbus committed many glaring mistakes and errors; but what over-zealous apostle or reformer has failed to do the same? Columbus was unduly eager after gold, they say; but in our advanced age, when that which Virgil called "the accursed hunger for gold" pervades all ranks, and our cities are nothing but great encampments of fortune-hunters, does it lie in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... the great good fortune of the province, this abandoned man was captured at sea by Algerine pirates. Thus he became the slave of these corsairs for two years. When he arrived it was soon seen what a beastly and detestable monster had been sent as a reformer of the morals of the people of Albemarle. He was the most shameless reprobate ever seen as a Governor in America. He took bribes, stole property and appropriated the Indian trade to his own uses, growing worse and ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... the seventh century these seventeen ethical precepts merit much approbation. With the exception of the doctrine of expediency, enunciated at the close of the tenth article, the code of Shotoku might be taken for guide by any community in any age. But the prince as a moral reformer* cannot be credited with originality; his merit consists in having studied Confucianism and Buddhism intelligently. The political purport of his code is more remarkable. In the whole seventeen articles ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... If the Squire persisted in rejecting this deal, which he had himself invited in another mood, half her dreams for the future, the dreams of a woman just beginning to feel the intoxication of power, or, to put it better, the creative passion of the reformer, were undone. She had already saved the Squire much money. When all reasonable provision had been made for investment, replanting, and the rest, this sale would still leave enough to transform the estate and scores of human lives upon it. Her will chafed hotly under the curb imposed upon ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... this derider of Mosaic formalism, who with his Messianic pretensions excited the people against their hereditary teachers, must at all events be put out of the way. Jesus must suffer the fate which society has too often had in store for the reformer; the fate which Sokrates and Savonarola, Vanini and Bruno, have suffered for being wiser than their own generation. Messianic adventurers had already given much trouble to the Roman authorities, who were not likely to scrutinize critically ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... by erecting on the Thames Embankment a statue to the memory of the Reformer Tyndale, whom we have partly to thank for the English version of the Bible. To help pay for their ornament it was decided that the names of all towns subscribing L100 or more should be inscribed on the pedestal, and the Bible-lovers of Birmingham scraped together L86 15s. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... fact no reform is final this side of death, and no panacea is universal, save that which the Maker of the Universe chooses to work out—is working out now, if we could any way grasp it—through the slow course of unnumbered ages. Let the reformer do all he can, but don't let him turn sour because his pet reform, his pet system, sinks away and is swallowed up in the great sea of things—sea of human progress, if you like. Every system is bound to prove too small, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... F. R. M.!" exclaimed Jerry. "Long may it wave! Only there's one glorious truth that I feel it my duty to impress on your minds. The way of the reformer is hard." ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... to point out one trait rather than another that makes Bernard Shaw, for so brilliant a man, so ineffective as a leader, or literary statesman, or social reformer, it would be his modesty. He ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... here—were backing a reform candidate and new ticket. But Mayor Wayne had all of the rest of the town in his hand. He'd been in twice, and had lifted the graft take by a truly remarkable figure. From where Gordon stood, it looked like a clear victory for the reformer, Nolan. ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... out as a reformer; and you're talking just like one of those good boys in the story books. What's up?" Joel smiled at the other boy's look ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... Sea;' a title afterwards changed to 'General of the Fleet.' Two others were associated with him in the command; but Blake seems at least to have been recognised as primus inter pares. The navy system was in deplorable need of reform; and a reformer it found in Robert Blake, from the very day he became an admiral. His care for the well-being of his men made him an object of their almost adoring attachment. From first to last, he stood alone as England's model-seaman. 'Envy, hatred, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... "I am a reformer; I desire to see sweeping changes; I want a good, wise, and honest government; and I desire these things because I fear that, if they do not come peacefully they will come in a tempest of lawlessness ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... leaders are in the right when they point to the accidental elements that go to the constitution of parliamentary majorities. The programme of any general election is always composite, and a man finds himself compelled, for example, to choose between a Tariff Reformer whose views on education he approves, and a Free Trader whose educational policy he detests. In part this defect might be remedied by the Proportional system to which, whether against the grain or not, Liberals will find themselves driven the more ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... had taken my measures to abscond and fly from my native place, in order to free myself of this tormenting, intolerant, and bloody reformer, he had likewise taken his to expel me, or throw me into the hands of justice. It seems that, about this time, I was haunted by some spies connected with my late father and brother, of whom the mistress of the former was ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... in 1844, to consider the whole question in its practical bearings. The Commission published two reports, with a view to legislation, but the Free-Trade struggle interfered, and little was done for several years. Meanwhile our sanitary reformer was occupied as a Commissioner in inquiring into the condition of the metropolis. The Commission published three reports, in which the defective drainage, sewage, and water-supply of London were discussed ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... gagged Mr. Gourlay. He had destroyed conventions. He had suppressed public meetings. And he had been censured for it by Sir George Murray. In 1822 the Honorable Barnabas Bidwell was returned to the Upper Canada Assembly as a reformer. Mr. Bidwell was a man of very considerable ability. He was eloquent, and his ideas of civil and religious liberty were liberal. Born a British subject, during the period of the revolution, but too young to take a part in it, he remained in the United States, after the declaration of ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... trifles, compared with the merits which wise men concede to me,—if not in my single self, yet as the representative of a class—of being the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of the vast portion of its crime and anguish, which has gushed from the fiery fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise, ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... under pretence of warming his feet by drawing still closer to the fire, helped himself to an excellent glass of old Malaga, which he swallowed by mouthfuls, with an air of profound meditation; after which he resumed: "So this Abbe Gabriel starts as a reformer. He must be an ambitious man. Is ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... a fame like that of Attila. Save Austria! save him from the curse that threatens both. We have not yet completed the noble edifice of which eleven years ago we laid the foundations. We must finish the structure, and so solid must be its walls that our thoughtless young reformer shall not have strength to batter them down. Your majesty must remain the reigning Empress of Austria. You cannot resign your empire to your son. Duty and the welfare of your subjects ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... always talking about? But he'll do them many a good turn; he'll make many a life easier; and just because it's his business to do so, because it's the way of advancing himself. He aims at being Home Secretary one of these days, and I shouldn't wonder if he is. There's your real social reformer. Egremont's an amateur, a dilettante. In many ways he's worth a hundred of Dalmaine, but Dalmaine will benefit the world, and it's well if Egremont doesn't ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... end, and had been recommended to my mother for board and lodging, and she gladly availed herself of the opportunity to get for me lessons in drawing in return for his board. He was a constitutional reformer, a radical as radicalism was then possible, had become an atheist with Robert Dale Owen, indignant at the treatment accorded him by destiny, and was au fond an honest and philanthropic man. He taught me the simplest ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... of this generic physiological peculiarity in the intervals of oviposition, taken in consideration with the fact of the rudimentary nest, would seem to indicate the retention of a now useless physiological function, and that the bird is thus a reformer who has repudiated the example of her ancestors, and has henceforth determined to look after ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... to unite with him in calling a grand council at Constance.[28] This council ended the great schism and restored order to the Church by securing the rule of a single pope. It also burned John Huss as a heretic, and thereby left on Sigismund's hands a fierce rebellion among the reformer's Bohemian followers. The war lasted for a generation, and during its course all the armies of Germany were repeatedly defeated by the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Metellus was a moderate reformer and a model man. He belonged to an illustrious plebeian gens, the Caecilian. Before his death in 115 three of his sons had been consuls, one censor, and the fourth was a ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell

... of morals. Religion, science, ethics, and every department of social economy but this, have their 'reformers.' Before the great problem, How shall the evils which attend our domestic service be removed? the stoutest-hearted reformer stands appalled. These evils are so multiform and all-pervading, they strike their roots so strongly, and ramify so extensively, that they defy the attempt to eradicate them; and they are thus left to flourish and increase. We have plenty of groans over these evils, but scarcely ever a thoughtful ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... made it a model for the rest of the kingdom. In his new and more enlarged sphere of action, Turgot's abilities expanded; or, perhaps it should rather be said, had a fairer field for their display. He showed himself equally capable in every department of his duties; as a financial reformer, as an administrator, and as a legislator. No minister in the history of the nation had ever so united large-minded genius with disinterested integrity. He had not accepted office without a full perception of its difficulties. He saw all that had to be done, and applied ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... street preacher—reigned supreme, where her Secularist father and his associates, hot-headed and early representatives of a phase of thought which has since then found much abler, though hardly less virulent, expression in such a paper, say, as the 'National Reformer,' were for ever rending and trampling on all the current religious images and ideas, Dora shrank into herself more and more. She had always been a Baptist because her mother was. But in her deep reaction against her father's associates, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of corruption and injustice, and, not least, by his use of the vernacular for political and religious purposes, he can scarcely be classed in the great army of the Protestant Reformers. He was a reformer from within, a biting, unsparing exposer of every priestly abuse, but a loyal son of the Church, who rebuked the faults of his brethren, but visited with the pains of Hell those of "fals herytikes," and wept over the "ruyne, inclynacion, and decay of the holy fayth Catholyke, and ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt

... Howe is as widely known for her learning and literary and poetic achievements as she is for her work as a philanthropist and reformer. ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... into the sentiments of this Welsh reformer, and actually laid hold on the delinquent's shoulder, crying, "D—n the rascal! I'll lay any wager that he's a Jesuit; for none of his order travel without a familiar." But Peregrine, who looked upon the affair in another point ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... but abbreviated forms of writing—the stenography of those exact sciences. The simple chronicles of the annalist, the flowing verses of the poet, clothing his thought with winged words, the abstruse propositions of the philosopher, the smiting protests of the bold reformer, either in Church or State, the impassioned appeal of the advocate at the bar of justice, the argument of the legislator on behalf of his measures, the very cry of inarticulate pain of those who suffer under the oppression of cruelty, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... are all the same to him—viz. Reform, Conservatism, and himself—he is an independent member, and has been described as a Conservative Reformer. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... The allusion here is to the Scotch reformer and the Puritan divine, whose weighty tomes Tickletext might be supposed to carry with him for propagandist purposes. Fillamour has already rallied him on his Spartan orthodoxy, and anon we find the worthy chaplain hot at the 'great work of conversion'. It has been ingeniously ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... enter the borderland of insanity if pituitary difficulties supervenes. If, on the contrary, the adrenal, thyroid and pituitary are present in a certain proportion, he will become the active, aggressive, never-resting, keen, and relentless fanatic reformer. A woman who is gonad deficient with a superior adrenal will suffer from virilism and specialize in the extreme tactics and mythology of the feminist movement. A number of life reactions are classifiable as the strivings ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... to do this, and his own qualifications for the task he has undertaken are manifold. Chief among them we should reckon a true enthusiasm for the cause he advocates, and a hearty delight in out-of-doors-life. He writes with the zeal and warmth of a reformer; but these are tempered by practical knowledge, and such a respect for the useful as will not sacrifice it to the merely pretty. His volume contains not only suggestions in landscape-gardening, guided ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... in view here the first numbers of The Secular World, and of The National Reformer, Secular Advocate, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... the king's sister, Margaret, Queen of Navarre, had encouraged the Reformers. Francis had leagued with the German Protestants because they were foes to the Emperor, while he persecuted the like opinions at home to satisfy the Pope. John Calvin, a native of Picardy, the foremost French reformer, was invited to the free city of Geneva, and there was made chief pastor, while the scheme of theology called his "Institutes" became the text-book of the Reformed in France, Scotland, and Holland. His doctrine ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... reformer, and determined that a dainty breakfast should minister to the outer man before she sought to apply a subtler balm to the inner. Trusting not even to Zibbie's established skill, she prepared with her own hands some inviting delicacies, and soon that which might have tempted ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... in the light of that dominating purpose. We are told sometimes that Jesus was a great teacher, and so He was, but the apostles never gloried in that fact. We are constantly reminded that He was a great reformer, and so He was, but Peter and John and Paul seemed to be altogether unconscious of that fact. It is asserted that He was a great philanthropist, a man intensely interested in the bodies and the homes of men, and so of course He was, but the New Testament does not seem to care for ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... seem very clear," she said in answer. "Since I came out here I've been a sort of riverine missionary, an apostle with no followers, a reformer with a plan of salvation no one ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... sentence of a venturous edge, uttered in the height of zeal (and who knows whether it might not be the dictate of a divine spirit?) yet not suiting with every low decrepit humour of their own, though it were Knox himself, the reformer of a kingdom, that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash: the sense of that great man shall to all posterity be lost, for the fearfulness or the presumptuous rashness of a perfunctory licenser. And to what an author this violence hath been lately ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... be confounded with the great reformer Buddha, is the son of Soma or the Moon, and regent of the planet Mercury. Angara is the regent of Mars who is called the red or the fiery planet. The encounter between Michael and Satan is similarly said ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... every such movement will either fail or else will provoke a violent reaction, which will itself result not merely in undoing the mischief wrought by the demagog and the agitator, but also in undoing the good that the honest reformer, the true upholder of popular rights, has painfully and laboriously achieved. Corruption is never so rife as in communities where the demagog and the agitator bear full sway, because in such communities all moral bands become loosened, and hysteria and sensationalism replace ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... about all politics seems to amount to," said the reformer. "If those lamps are to be a souvenir of the campaign, they ought to suggest road-houses ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... subject to my hobby, political economy and measures for saving the nation from its impending doom. A man who can't make much headway toward home-building before or after marriage usually becomes a reformer. Men with families take things as they are, if they live at home instead of a club, and find plenty to do. I could not be moved ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... to teaching and human service, while Herbart taught only as a traveling private tutor for three years, and later a class of twenty children in his university practice school. Pestalozzi was a social reformer, a visionary, and an impractical enthusiast, but was possessed of a remarkable intuitive insight into child nature. Herbart, on the other hand, was a well-trained scholarly thinker, who spent the most of his life in the peaceful occupation of a professor of philosophy in a German university. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... that he stopped dead on the pavement. "My Scottish blood," he said despondently. "A Scot is always a reformer and a preacher, in his heart. I used to orate to my mother, but she liked it. She is a Scot, too. Besides, it put her to sleep. But I thought ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... ancient religion of the civilized world; and its spirit exists in their poetry probably in the same proportion as its forms survived in the unreformed worship of modern Europe. The one preceded and the other followed the Reformation at almost equal intervals. Dante was the first religious reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather in the rudeness and acrimony than in the boldness of his censures of papal usurpation. Dante was the first awakener of entranced Europe; he created a language, in itself music and persuasion, out of a chaos of inharmonious ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... to the time of Pestalozzi, prevailed in Germany, and is again embodied in our present mode of education, seemed to him objectionable. The Swiss reformer pointed out that the mother's heart had instinctively found the only correct system of instruction, and set before the pedagogue the task of watching and cultivating the child's talents with maternal love and care. He utterly rejected ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... might have entertained such a scheme, but not a Caesar. The Senate knew him. They knew what he had done. They knew what he would now do, and for this reason they feared and hated him. Caesar was a reformer. He had long seen that the Roman Constitution was too narrow for the functions which had fallen to it, and that it was degenerating into an instrument of tyranny and injustice. The courts of law were corrupt; the elections wore corrupt. The administration of the provinces ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... occasion to enlarge on the evils of constant warfare, and suggested that a general reconciliation take place and that they all live in peace. The astonished fiends could not understand any such unwarlike procedure from him, and with one accord, suspecting treachery, made straight at the intended reformer, who, of course, took to his heels. The fiends pressed him hard as he sped over the plains of The Dalles, and as he neared the defile he struck a Titanic blow with his tail on the pavement—and a ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax

... upon Pewley Hill, a modern villa; opposite it, which would infuriate the old reformer if he could see it, War Office Ground, marked off with barbed wire and minatory notice-boards. A hundred years hence, perhaps the fort on Pewley Hill will be exhibited as one of ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... Augsburg, crossed the Brenner, and arrived at Verona in September, 1046, accompanied by a great army and filled with the ardent desire of becoming the reformer of the Church. No enemy opposed him, the bishops and dukes, among them the powerful margrave Boniface of Tuscany, did homage without delay. The Roman situation was provisionally discussed at a great synod in Pavia. Gregory VI now hastened ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... turns a schoolmaster, archdeacon, Cistercian abbot, Bishop of Worcester, and primate—a silent, dark, strong man, gentle, studious, and unworldly—was delighted at the request. He sent off Robert of Bedford, an ardent reformer and brilliant scholar, and Roger Roldeston, another distinguished scholar, who afterwards was Dean of Lincoln. These, like Aaron and Hur, upheld the lawgiver's hands, and they, with others of a like kidney, soon ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... point to the inadequacy of the evidence even of his existence. The strength of the Freethought position is in no-wise injured by the admission that a young Jew named Joshua (i.e. Jesus) may have wandered up and down Galilee and Judaea in the reign of Tiberius, that he may have been a religious reformer, that he may have been put to death by Pontius Pilate for sedition. All this is perfectly likely, and to allow it in no way endorses the mass of legend and myth encrusted round this tiny nucleus of possible fact. This obscure peasant is not the Christian Jesus, who is—as we shall ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... to write the biography of a great man complained to me lately, that in consulting a dozen of his friends—men and women who had known him as preacher, orator, reformer, and poet—so few of them had anything characteristic and fine to relate. "What," he said "is the use of trying to write biography with such mummies for witnesses! They would have seen just as much if they had had nothing but ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... roads, the tanks, the hospitals on the seashore and on the mountain, the farm on the peak—a green oasis crowning a heap of cinders—attest the zeal of a succession of officers and men. To the naval reformer they give occasion for reflections on the considerable cost which has been thrown upon the country in the creation of an establishment which has become practically useless through the universal use of steam and the suppression of the slave trade. In the present circumstances St. Helena offers unquestionably ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... Boston, and have watched your career with interest. But I thought of Mr. Clayton, in the first instance, because he was already attached to the Events, and I wished to promote him. Office during good behavior, and promotion in the direct line: I'm that much of a civil-service reformer," said Witherby. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... dismayed by finding it in much the old shape. As he said of the moral government of the universe, the scale is so vast, and a little difference, a little change for the better, is scarcely perceptible to the eager consciousness of the wholesale reformer. But with whatever sense of disappointment, of doubt as to his own deeds for truer freedom and for better conditions I believe his sympathy was still with those who had some heart for hoping and striving. I am sure that though he did not agree with me in some of my ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... person, it will be recollected, exhorted the commonwealth men to destroy all the muniments in the Tower—a proposal which Prynne considers as an act inferior only in atrocity to his participation in the murder of Charles I., and we should not be surprised if some zealous reformer were to maintain, that a general conflagration of these documents would be the most essential benefit that could be conferred upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various

... that Dickens was the most original genius in our fictitious literature since the days of Walter Scott. As a social reformer his fame is quite as great as it is as a master of romance. His pen was mighty to the pulling down of many a social abuse, and from the loving kindness of his writings has been got many an inspiration to deeds of charity. But how could a man who went so far as he did go no further? How could ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... reformer laugh. I picked up the book in German on an Ann Street sidewalk stand, caught the Big Idea right then and there; to Americanize the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... evil produced by the denial of children's rights, nor is it inherent in the nature of schools. I mention it only because it would be folly to call for a reform of our schools without taking account of the corrupt resistance which awaits the reformer. ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... banquet of steaming hot biscuit and custard pie. If they would only let me sit in the dear old-fashioned kitchen, or on the door-stone—if they knew how dismally the new black furniture looked—but, never mind, I am not a reformer. No, I should ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... Buddha, their Teacher and High-Priest, is to them what the crucifix is to the Jesuit; neither more nor less. They scout the idea that they worship the white elephant, but acknowledge that they hold the beast sacred, as one of the incarnations of their great reformer. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... its example, and that conquest would have proved a very genuine blessing. It would have been the means of saving some of the terrible waste from which most of the social evils of humanity spring. As an ardent social reformer, I freely confess that I myself was learning a good deal from that side of Germany, particularly in the direction of municipal and national organisation.'" Mr. Lloyd George goes on to say that ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... large is a far more delicate question. To the outer world a parish seems a sheer despotism. The parson prays, preaches, changes the order of service, distributes the parochial charities at his simple discretion. One of the great cries of the Church reformer is generally for the substitution of some constitutional system, some congregational council, some lay co-operation, for this clerical tyranny. But no one in fact feels the narrow limits of his power more keenly than the parson himself. As the old French ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... worship were rendered more heart-touching, by being set to words in the vernacular tongues, which every body could understand. Luther's hymn, "Great God, what do I hear and see," led the way. Henry VIII. hated the German reformer, and all that he did, but he burned to rival him in every thing, and he gave a stimulus to the public taste, by composing words and music for the service of the English church. In France, soon after the middle of the sixteenth century, when it was doubtful whether the nation would become Protestant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various

... independence of the local churches and also to avoid the repellent attitude of a nation that was as yet unprepared to welcome any trend towards democracy.[h] Having devised this system of compromise, Barrowe made a futile attempt to interest Cartwright, but the latter regarded the reformer as too heretical. Yet Cartwright himself, tired of waiting for the better day when his desired reforms should be brought about through the operation of Parliamentary laws, was attempting in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire to test his ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... "As political reformer, as editor, as teacher, above all as an example of the type of scholarly gentleman that the new world was able to produce, he perhaps did more than any of his contemporaries to dignify American literature at home and to win ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... itself less association, because every one enters and leaves it freely, chooses his place in it, judges and bargains for himself on his own responsibility, and brings with him the spring and warrant of personal interest? That it may deserve this name, is it necessary that a pretended reformer should come and impose upon us his plan and his will, and, as it were, to concentrate mankind ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... alter our laws or our ideas about property or our methods of production were envious and base and all who wanted any change between the sexes, foolish or vicious. He tried to go on disposing of socialists, agitators, feminists, women's suffragists, educationists and every sort of reformer with a good-humoured contempt. And he found an increasing difficulty in keeping his contempt sufficiently good-humoured. Instead of laughing down at folly and failure, he had moments when he felt that he was rather laughing ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... letters under lead, the copies whereof we herewith send you, from our most holy Lord and Father in Christ, Innocent, by Divine Providence Pope, the eighth of that name. We therefore, John, the Archbishop, the visitor, reformer, inquisitor, and judge therein mentioned, in reverence for the Apostolic See, have taken upon ourselves the burden of enforcing the said commission; and have determined that we will proceed by, and according to, the full force, tenour, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... against its rich dark purple folds her strong, white hands lay in vivid contrast. The most wonderful charm of her personality was her complete absorption in thought, or the speech of her visitor. She was interested in this keen-eyed, strong-limbed young fellow as a possible convert and reformer. She wanted to state herself clearly and fully to him. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... who launch themselves into party politics, and fill their heads with a vast mass of useless knowledge about political tricks, customs, theories and personalities. Thus, too, we have the woman social reformer, trailing along ridiculously behind a tatterdemalion posse of male utopians, each with something to sell. And thus we have the woman who goes in for advanced wisdom of the sort on draught in women's clubs—in ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... Legislature so strong in support of the Governor that before he left Trenton for Washington practically all of the measures included in his scheme had become laws. Mr. Wilson, then, was known to the country not only as a reformer but as a successful reformer; and his victories over the professional politicians of the old school had removed most of the latent fear of the ineffectuality of a scholar in politics. In point of fact, the chief interest of this particular ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... Wycliffites, true to their great and noble master, were martyrs, and Milman has insisted on this most nobly. To misapprehend Wyeliffe himself, that is, not to recognize him as the first and purest reformer, the man between the Waldenses, Tauler, and Luther, is, however, a heresy more worthy of condemnation than the ignoring of Germany in the Reformation, and doubly deplorable when one sees such blind ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... reached by a long spiral staircase, without banister or support, and a false step must certainly result in a broken leg, or, perhaps, neck! The room also contains a striking portrait of Theodore de Beze, the great French reformer, who, then an aged man, penned a letter, sublime in its force and simplicity, to Henry IV., conjuring him not to abandon the Protestant faith. The mention of this fact recalls an interesting experience. I here ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... ability made a great appeal to these men. They marveled at her industry. Thirty-four years old now, not handsome but wholesome, simply and neatly dressed, her brown hair smoothly parted and brought down over her ears, she had nothing of the scatterbrained impulsive reformer about her, and no coquetry. She was practical and intelligent, and men liked to discuss their work with her. William Henry Channing, admiring her executive ability and her plucky reaction to defeat, dubbed her the Napoleon of the woman's rights movement. Parker Pillsbury, the ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... at which I have arrived is indefensible, and I have no thought of trying to defend it. As I have stuck for the most part to the proper spelling, I append a table of some common vowel sounds which no one need consult; and just to prove that I belong to my age and have in me the stuff of a reformer, I have used modification marks throughout. Thus I can tell myself, not without pride, that I have added a fresh stumbling-block for English readers, and to a page of print in my native tongue have lent a new uncouthness. Sed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... meant to place the character of Jesus in its true and high light, as no impostor himself, but a great reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with him in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism: he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... what it was leading to. An order to read the new English liturgy was met with sullen resistance—"Now shall every illiterate fellow read mass!" cried Archbishop Dowdal of Armagh, in hot wrath and indignation. Brown, the Archbishop of Dublin, was an ardent reformer, so also was the Bishop of Meath, but to the mass of their brethren they simply appeared to be heretics. A proposal was made to translate the Prayer-book into Irish, but it was never carried into effect, indeed, even in the next century when Bishop ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... jail, to atone for some drunken excess. Is that all of their lives?—of the portion given to them and these their duplicates swarming the streets to-day?—nothing beneath?—all? So many a political reformer will tell you,—and many a private reformer, too, who has gone among them with a heart tender with Christ's charity, and ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis

... doubt if you will be able to enter into the regard for my distinguished relation that has led me to France, in order to examine registers and archives, which, I thought, might enable me to discover collateral descendants of the great reformer, with whom I might call cousins. I shall not tell you of my troubles and adventures in this research; you are not worthy to hear of them; but something so curious befell me one evening last August, that if I had not been perfectly certain I was wide ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... strong preaching, but how can one help it? Never yet did a true-hearted, clear-headed reformer set to work to clear away some old cankering sore of falsehood from a people's life that he did not meet with opposition. And never yet did that opposition come from those who loved the lie for the lie's sake or the bad for the bad's sake. It came from those who love Truth, but ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... "A social reformer, eh?" said the colonel. "I didn't know the police went in for that sort of stunt. And when did he take this sudden liking for ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... no! I haven't a single qualification for it but the will to have it done. I'm 'strong-minded,' a radical, and a reformer. I've done all sorts of dreadful things to get my living, and I have neither youth, beauty, talent, or position to back me up; so I should only be politely ignored if I tried the experiment myself. I don't want you to break out ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... even more disagreeable but not honest, and an agent who was—well, who was the hero of the book. She had further gathered to herself a crowd of hangers-on more or less artistic, and all given to requiring small temporary loans. One of them, however, was a professed social reformer, a bold bad man of doubtful extraction, who was leagued with the aunt in a plan to marry Magdalen to himself and secure control of the cash. So Magdalen gave a Venetian Carnival in her great house, and it came on to thunder, and she found herself alone in a gondola with the painter (favourite ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various



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