"Reformer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... explains to us the impulses and conditions of life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had a hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau was suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why after the Reformation the peoples ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... forgave Turgenieff for this forgiveness. Another merit of these letters is the light they shed on the true character of Tolstoy, who is shown in his proper environment, neither a prophet nor a heaven-storming reformer. Dostoievsky invented the phrase: "land-proprietor literature," to describe the fiction of both Tolstoy and Turgenieff. He was abjectly poor, gambled when he got the chance (which was seldom), hated Western Europe, France and Germany in particular, but ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... austerity; nor was it forbidding and intolerant, but sweet and gentle. Words of forgiveness were always on his lips, and his hand was ever open to distress. He labored assiduously to reform, wherever reform was needed, but, what rarely happens, without alienating affection from the reformer. It was his constant study to elevate the character of the clergy, and he ceased not to encourage among them learning as well as piety. Into the Diocesan Seminary, which was always the object of his most anxious care, he introduced some new branches of study, such as agriculture, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... happily carried on, and made use of the intelligence of his friend Cadwallader; though he sometimes converted this advantage to the purposes of gallantry, being, as the reader may have perceived, of a very amorous complexion. He not only acted the reformer, or rather the castigator, in the fashionable world, but also exercised his talents among the inferior class of people, who chanced to incur his displeasure. One mischievous plan that entered our hero's imagination was suggested by two advertisements published in the same paper, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... currents of City Life; it is an unavoidable conclusion that there is only one influence that can make safe, and pure, and strong in goodness, those recesses out of which issue so much social evil, and so much personal suffering. And that is the influence not of the law-giver, nor of the reformer; but of the Redeemer. It is that power which flows through the soul in a practical conviction of the reality of religion. It is the help which comes from its inspiration of divine truth and goodness in the breasts ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... Once I found in a drawer a whole portfolio of plans and estimates. Another time, upon returning after a day's absence, I discovered my wife standing before the chimney in earnest conversation with a person whom I at once recognized as a meddlesome architectural reformer, who, because he had no gift for putting up anything was ever intent upon pulling them down; in various parts of the country having prevailed upon half-witted old folks to destroy their old-fashioned houses, ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... a reformer laugh. I picked up the book in German on an Ann Street sidewalk stand, caught the Big Idea right then and there; ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... There he could feel not the past alone nor the present, but the future also; and, like all brave men, when he saw the future he was a little afraid of it. For of all tests by which the good citizen and strong reformer can be distinguished from the vague faddist or the inhuman sceptic, I know no better test than this—that the unreal reformer sees in front of him one certain future, the future of his fad; while the real reformer sees before him ten or twenty futures among ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... unheard of villainy, we should probably never have had the other magnificent poetry and prose of Percy Bysshe Shelley composed during his self-imposed ostracism, and which furnish such glorious thoughts for the philosopher, and keen trenchant weapons for the reformer. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... immediately made Principal of Glasgow University, at that time in a state of utter collapse and ruin. He had matured his plans, after consultation with George Buchanan, and they were worthy of a great reformer. He sketched a curriculum, substantially the curriculum of the second University period. The modifications upon the almost exclusive Aristotelianism of the first period, were significant. The Greek ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... struggles after catholicity of taste, and wide admiration, receives some rude shocks from Carlyle's treatment of humanity, as Dr. Garnett has well shown in his excellent biography of Carlyle; indeed it has led with some to the parting of the ways. For the hopes and inspirations of poet, reformer, teacher, became in great part to him as "the idle chatter of apes" and "the talk ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... herein mentioned was of course the distinguished Scotch politician and social reformer, Duncan M'Laren, for sixteen years ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Oriel also claims as students Prynne, who, with his libels and his ears, laid the foundation of our liberty of the press; Bishop Butler, whose "Analogy" showed how logic and philosophy could be applied to support the cause of Christian truth; Dr. Arnold, the reformer of our modern school system, whom Oxford persecuted during life and honoured in death; and lastly, the clever crotchety Archbishop Whateley, who has not only proved that Napoleon Bonaparte never existed, but that Mr. Gibbon Wakefield's bankrupt schemes ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... for this opinion: you have heard the speech of the right reverend prelate {27} this evening—a speech which no sanitary reformer can have heard without emotion. Of what avail is it to send missionaries to the miserable man condemned to work in a foetid court, with every sense bestowed upon him for his health and happiness turned into a torment, with every month of his life adding to the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... a diplomat!" exclaimed Grace, closing the door, which the stout girl had left wide open. "Chocolate is the one thing calculated to reduce J. Elfreda to reason. We will feed her, then renew our lectures on tale-bearing. Never call me a reformer. I am certain that before the year is over J. ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... and distinctly not a reformer. Although sensitive to pressure from the reform element, he was not ahead of ordinary public opinion on matters of economic and political betterment. Leaders in federal railroad regulation found the President cold toward projects to strengthen the Interstate Commerce law; ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... in proposing any substitute for the family. In the first place, all society at present rests on this institution, so that we cannot easily discern which of our habits and sentiments are parcels of it, and which are attached to it adventitiously and have an independent basis. A reformer hewing so near to the tree's root never knows how much he may be felling. Possibly his own ideal would lose its secret support if what it condemns had wholly disappeared. For instance, it is conceivable that a communist, abolishing the family in order to make opportunities equal and remove the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... anti-slavery struggle was not always a quiet one. On one occasion, when in company with a famous but unpopular English reformer he was to address an audience on the subject of abolition, he was attacked by a mob while passing quietly along the street with a friend, and narrowly escaped being tarred and feathered. Somewhat later ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Augustine monk, enraged that his order, and consequently himself, had not the exclusive privilege of selling indulgences, but that the Dominicans were let into a share of that profitable but infamous trade, turns reformer, and exclaims against the abuses, the corruption, and the idolatry, of the church of Rome; which were certainly gross enough for him to have seen long before, but which he had at least acquiesced in, till what he called the ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... political existence, so that they may not feel themselves conquered by Russia, but united to her for their own clear advantage; therefore, not only their civil but their political laws have been maintained." This liberal policy was continued by the various Tsars throughout the century, the reformer Alexander II. taking particular interest in the development of the Grand-Duchy, which he evidently regarded as a place where experiments in political liberty were being worked out that might later be applied to the rest ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... 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 Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... cousin; and once, more particularly, spoke of his restless, reforming spirit in the church, in the university, physic, &c. "And please your Majesty," replied Sir Richard, "if my cousin were in heaven he would be a reformer!"—Wadd's Memoirs. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... to New Testament criticism, we alluded to his historical works. He was in a distinct sense a reformer of the method of the writing of church history. To us the notions of the historical and of that which is genetic are identical. Of course, naive religious chronicles do not meet that test. A glance ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... in His hand, of course; but as for the election next month, that was quite another thing. If Joel thrust the history out of the touch of common life, the Doctor brought it down, and held it there on trial. To him it was the story of a Reformer who had served his day. Could he serve this day? Could he? The need was desperate. Was there anything in this Christianity, freed from bigotry, to work out the awful problem which the ages had left for America to solve? People called this old ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... amongst them like a new raised spirit To speak of dreadful judgments that impend, And of the wrath to come. —THE REFORMER. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Titian or Van Dyke or Holbein. But each brought to the service of the State what she most needed in each generation. The constructive statesman, the framer of the Constitution and statutes, the financier, the debater, the lawyer, the man of business, the diplomatist, the reformer, the orator, are all there, and all ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Those breed most freely and recklessly of whom it may be said that, for the interests of civilisation, it is least desirable that they should perpetuate their kind. The problem too is so complicated, that it requires a gigantic faith in a reformer to suggest the sowing of seed of which he can never hope to see the fruit. The situation is one which tends to develop vehement and passionate prophets, dealing in vague and remote generalisations, when what one needs is practical prudence, and the effective power of foreseeing ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of human equality. The fruits of such a teaching soon showed themselves in a new attitude of the people. "Here," said Morton, over the grave of John Knox, "here lies one who never feared nor flattered any flesh"; and if Scotland still reverences the memory of the reformer it is because at that grave her peasant and her trader learned to look in the face of nobles and kings and "not ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... pilgrim with his pack, Forth went the dreaming youth To seek, to find, and make his own Wisdom, virtue, and truth. Life was his book, and patiently He studied each hard page; By turns reformer, outcast, priest, ...
— Three Unpublished Poems • Louisa M. Alcott
... doesn't," admitted Druro. "But he does it on principle. He's a born reformer—aren't you, Tobe? Picks a scrap with any one he considers a disreputable, dissipated character." Toby's master ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... promulgation of the revised liturgy its rash author fell a victim to the jealousy of the boyards and to his own arrogance, and was solemnly deposed by a council. To the Raskol his deposition appeared in the light of a justification of their own course. The condemnation of the reformer seemed necessarily to involve the condemnation of the reform. Great, then, was the popular bewilderment when the council turned from deposing the author of the liturgic revision to hurl its anathemas against those who opposed that revision. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... Malay, a rigid Mohammedan, who is known, the Resident says, to have said that when he becomes Sultan he "will drive the white men into the sea." He works hard, as an example to his people, and when working dresses like a coolie. He sets his face against cock-fighting and other Malay sports, is a reformer, and a dour, strong-willed man, and his accession seems to be rather dreaded by the Resident, as it is supposed that he will be something more than a mere figure-head prince. He is a Hadji, and was dressed in a turban made of many yards of priceless silk muslin, embroidered in silk, a white baju, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... of Mr. Upton's general unworthiness. Now, though Imogen's tragic ardor did not communicate any of her faith in her father's wonder or nobility, it did convince him of past unfairness toward, no doubt, a most worthy man. Incompatibility, that had been the trouble; he one of these reformer people, very much in earnest; and Mrs. Upton, dear and lovely though she was, with not a trace of such enthusiasm in her ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the followers of the first prominent Vishnuite reformer Ramanuj in southern India, with whom are classed the Ramanandis or adherents of his great disciple Ramanand in northern India. Both these are also called Sri Vaishnava, that is, the principal or ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... relative. This habit of not being hindered by using, but still going beyond the great truths of living, to the greater truths of life gave force to his influence over the materialists. Thus he seems to us more a regenerator than a reformer—more an interpreter of life's reflexes than of life's facts, perhaps. Here he appears greater than Voltaire or Rousseau and helped, perhaps, by the centrality of his conceptions, he could arouse the deeper spiritual and moral emotions, without causing his listeners to distort their physical ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... provided for all by simply taking something from those who have too much. Now, I may probably assume that we all agree in approving the contemplated end—a greater equality of wealth, and especially an elevation of the lower classes to a higher position in the scale of comfort. Every social reformer, whatever his particular creed, would probably agree that some of us are too rich, and that a great many are too poor. But we still have to ask, in what sense it is conceivable that a real suppression of competition can contribute to the desired end. It is obvious ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Ewing Whittle, M. D., of the Royal Academy, Liverpool, and Miss Isabella M. S. Tod, the well-known reformer of Belfast. M. Leon Richer, the eminent writer of Paris, and Mlle. Hubertine Auclert, editor of La Citoyenne, sent cordial words of co-operation. There were also greetings from Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, a Polish exile, one of the first ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... follows the wheelbarrow, as the cracker pursues the cheese. I am a derivative of alcohol, the one and infallible argument against temperance, Miss Knight. In me you behold the shining example of all that puts the reformer to rout and gladdens the heart of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... tired to attend to what belongs to His work. An ill old woman or idiot child is important to Him and He attends to them; but He declines the sort of work that will involve Him and His mission in controversy and politics. He is not a reformer of society but a reformer of men. He knows that only by the reformation of ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... reformer; "nearly a dollar apiece, from every man, woman, and child throughout the country, spent on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... 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 glass eyes in ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... think of it. The Lord held those old Jews in His hand, of course; but as for the election next month, that was quite another thing. If Joel thrust the history out of the touch of common life, the Doctor brought it down, and held it there on trial. To him it was the story of a Reformer who, eighteen centuries ago, had served his day. Could he serve this day? Could he? The need was desperate. Was there anything in this Christianity, freed from bigotry, to work out the awful problem ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... he happened to be a member his aggressiveness and his imagination usually made him the leader. As far back as I can remember, Richard was always starting something—usually a new club or a violent reform movement. And in school or college, as in all the other walks of life, the reformer must, of necessity, lead a somewhat tempestuous, if happy, existence. The following letter, written to his father when Richard was a student at Swarthmore, and about fifteen, will give an idea of his conception of ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... perplexing and bewildering problem which faces the reorganizer in management when he arrives in a large establishment. In making this decision, as in taking each subsequent step, the most important consideration, which should always be first in the mind of the reformer, is "what effect will this step have upon the workmen?" Through some means (it would almost appear some especial sense) the workman seems to scent the approach of a reformer even before his arrival in town. Their suspicions are thoroughly aroused, and they are on the alert for ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... was a Russian novelist, poet, and social reformer; author, among other important works, of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He wrote many short stories and sketches, a number of which are markedly symbolic in character. The one that follows is a good illustration ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... had slight sympathy with our social reformer's notions and ways of promulgating them, and accordingly took up his wonted weapons—sarcasm and ridicule—against poor Jean-Jacques. The quarrels of these two great men cannot be described in this place; but they constitute an important chapter ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... British Empire. He recognized in the fullest degree both the powers and the limitations of a Constitutional Monarch. Here, at home, he was, though no politician, as every one knows, a keen Social Reformer. He loved his people at home and over the seas. Their interests were his interests; their fame was his fame. He had no ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... known, was a firm believer in the doctrine which held that the Devil was the originator of all diseases. No ailment, maintained the great reformer, comes from God, who is good, and does good to every one. It is the Devil who causes and performs all mischief, who interferes with all play and all arts, and who brings about pestilences and fevers. Luther believed that he himself was compelled, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... printed, or reprinted, if there be found in his book one 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 done, ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... as a high Tory, and the friend and follower of Pitt.—In 1793, he had fought boldly against the Reform question. This was at the period when he retained the generosity of youth, and the classic impressions of his university; but he had now been trained to courts, and he became a reformer, with a white rod in his aged hand! In 1833, he was re-appointed to the government of Ireland; he returned full of the same innocent conceptions which had once fashioned Ireland into a political Arcadia. But he was soon ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... the capital of the department of the High Alps, and once an important Protestant centre. Farel, the French Reformer of the sixteenth century, was born and for a time preached here. But since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes until very lately—during a period, that is, of nearly two hundred years—no Protestant pastor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... with us is Mr. Michael Biddulph, a partner in that highly-respectable firm, Cocks, Biddulph, and Co. Twenty years ago Mr. Biddulph sat as member for his native county of Hereford, ranked as a Liberal and a reformer, and voted for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church and other measures forming part of Mr. Gladstone's policy. But political events with him, as with some others, have moved too rapidly, and now he, sitting as member for the Ross Division of the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... forth as the saviour of his country. But such self-sacrifice is not exhibited by men of Scipio's type. Too able to be blind to the signs of the times, they are swayed by instincts too strong for their convictions. An aristocrat of aristocrats, Scipio was a reformer only so far as he thought reform might prolong the reign of his order. From any more radical measures he shrank with dislike, if not with fear. The weak spot often to be found in those cultured aristocrats who coquet with liberalism was fatal ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... have read fifteen reviews of any of my books. Life is too short; but I am glad I did not miss that one. Those are the fellows for whom Roosevelt is not a good enough reformer; who chill the enthusiasm of mankind with a deadly chill, and miscall it method—science. The science of how not to do a thing—yes! They make ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... discussion still in his veins; others on the paper of the Department of the Interior, with the symbol of the buffalo—chosen by him—richly embossed in white on the corner, and other letters, soiled and worn from being long carried in the pocket and often re-read, by the brave old reformer who had hailed Lane when he first entered the lists. This is the part of the record ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... remarkable at once for their dignity of manner and refinement of utterance. There is an entire absence of the fierceness that is to be found in some of Whittier's and Timrod's sectional lyrics. Hayne lacked the fierce energy of a great reformer or partisan leader. But nowhere else do we find a heart more sensitive to grandeur of achievement or pathos of incident. He recognized the unsurpassed heroism of sentiment and achievement displayed in the war; and in an admirable sonnet, ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... revived the New England interest in education and laid the foundations for the school systems of to-day. Even so ardent a Southerner as William L. Yancey, of Alabama, became a disciple of the New England reformer, and tried to do a similar work in his State. In Indiana, Illinois, and the other Western States educational reforms followed. There were in consequence about 5,000,000 children in school in the year 1860. Of these the South had 796,000, the Northwest, exclusive of California, 2,005,196, and the ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... was in this happy frame of mind, I happened to meet with the history of the famous Rance, founder, or rather reformer, of the Order of La Trappe. I found a strange similarity between my own worldly errors and those of this illustrious penitent. The discovery had such an effect on me, that I spurned all idea of entering a convent where the rules were comparatively ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... liberators. The importance of this event in Russian history is not diminished by the fact that its practical benefits have not as yet been realized to the full extent anticipated. In 1888 Stepniak, the Russian author and reformer, declared that emancipation had utterly failed to realize the ardent expectations of its advocates and promoters, had failed to improve the material condition of the former serfs, who on the whole were worse ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... make more crowded our overcrowded tenements, to enlarge our overgrown cities, to cause suburb to spread beyond suburb, to submerge more and more the beautiful fields and hilly slopes which used to lie near the busy life of the people, to make the atmosphere more foul, and the task of the social reformer ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... war that overshadowed the whole of Europe which prevented his rule from solving a great problem. He, in this, was invariably the aggrieved. The plan which he had carried into practical solution was wrecked by the allies, and in less than a century after the great reformer had been removed from the sphere of enmity and usefulness, Prince Bismarck forced these small States into unification with the German Empire, thereby carrying into effect the very system Napoleon was condemned for bringing under his suzerainty. What satire, what malignity ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... presented another side of the problem to his bewildered friend—a phase of the question commonly ignored by every fiery reformer, whose particular reformation ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... had, of course, not accomplished the whole Augean task of purification. He was a vigorous Huguenot, but no Hercules, and demigods might have shrunk appalled at the filthy mass of corruption which great European kingdoms everywhere presented to the reformer's eye. Compared to the Spanish Government, that of France might almost have been considered virtuous, yet even there everything ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... of the subject in America is from the pen of Noah Webster, in an essay which should be as interesting to the spelling reformer as to the sociologist.[5] He writes: "It iz no crime for brothers and sisters to intermarry, except the fatal consequences to society; for were it generally practised, men would become a race of pigmies. It iz no crime for brothers' and sisters' children to intermarry, ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... 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
... age of turmoil, pestilence and sudden death. In central Europe, in Bohemia, the devoted disciples of Johannus Huss, the friend and follower of John Wycliffe, the English reformer, were avenging with a terrible warfare the death of their beloved leader who had been burned at the stake by order of that same Council of Constance, which had promised him a safe-conduct if he would come to Switzerland and explain his doctrines to the Pope, the Emperor, twenty-three ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Budha, not to 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 to have ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... The thirteenth century, that marvellous and romantic age of mediaeval religion and character, mediaeval art, mediaeval philosophy, was also the palmy age of the universities. Then Oxford gloried in Groseteste, at once paragon and patron of learning, church reformer and champion of the national church against Roman aggression; in his learned and pious friend, Adam de Marisco; and in Roger Bacon, the pioneer and proto-martyr of physical science. Then, with ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... composer the world has ever seen did not write a note! Do you realise what that means? It means that the world lost two or three immortal operas, which he might have, and probably would have, written in these six years had not an unsympathetic world forced him into the role of an aggressive reformer and revolutionist." ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... not only a great actor, but also a great reformer of the stage. He seems to have excelled equally both in tragedy and comedy, which makes it natural to suppose that in some parts he may have been excelled by other actors; though he had no equal (and perhaps never has had) in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... imagination. They display the almost unbounded resources of genius and invention so richly possessed by the prince of allegorists, John Bunyan. It reminds us of the dialogue between Lucifer and Beelzebub, in that rare work by Barnardine Ochine, a reformer, published in 1549, called, A Tragedy or Dialogue of the unjust usurped Primacy of the Bishop of Rome.[4] In this is represented, in very popular language, the designs of Lucifer to ruin Christianity by the establishment of Popery. Lucifer thus addresses his diabolical conclave—'I have devised ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... prejudices, and attaching to himself the affections, of the people. Nor had his efforts proved unsuccessful. Men in the higher ranks of life might penetrate behind the veil, with which he sought to conceal his ambition; but by the nation at large he was considered as the reformer of abuses, the protector of the oppressed, and the savior of his country. Even some of the clergy, and several religious bodies, soured by papal and regal exactions, gave him credit for the truth of his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... principles. The melodies of religious 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 Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... discarded Lady Anne were also in tribulation, and a letter from one of the Lutherans in England to Henry Bullinger, the reformer, reports that "the king has within these two months burnt three godly men in one day. For in July he married the widow of a nobleman named Latimer, and he is always wont to celebrate his nuptials by ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... for England if it were so. There is no country in the world so much in need of unpractical people as this country of ours. With us, Thought is degraded by its constant association with practice. Who that moves in the stress and turmoil of actual existence, noisy politician, or brawling social reformer, or poor narrow-minded priest blinded by the sufferings of that unimportant section of the community among whom he has cast his lot, can seriously claim to be able to form a disinterested intellectual judgment about any one thing? Each of the professions ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... a French lady, who shifts her frowsy smock in presence of a male visitant, and talks to him of her lavement, her medecine, and her bidet! An Italian signora makes no scruple of telling you, she is such a day to begin a course of physic for the pox. The celebrated reformer of the Italian comedy introduces a child befouling itself, on the stage, OE, NO TI SENTI? BISOGNA DESFASSARLO, (fa cenno che sentesi mal odore). I have known a lady handed to the house of office by her admirer, who stood at the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... was a man 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 ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... not omit to notice the other reasons which have been assigned for his leaving his old home. It has been repeatedly asserted, in recent times, and even by Protestant writers, that the father of our great Reformer had sought to escape the consequences of a crime committed by him at Mohra. The matter stands thus: In Luther's lifetime his Catholic opponent Witzel happened to call out to Jonas, a friend of Luther's, in the heat of ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... and art is beginning to feel she must utter our emotion towards it. Such art is exposed to an inherent and imminent peril. Its very bigness and newness tends to set up fresh and powerful reactions. Unless, in the process of creation, these can be inhibited, the artist will be lost in the reformer, and the play or the novel turn tract. This does not mean that the artist, if he is strong enough, may not be reformer too, only not ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... 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, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... Modern Deborah.. Thus Saluted by the Boston, W. C. T. U., at Memorial Service in Honor of Francis Willard. Boston, Mass.— Mrs. Carry Nation, the strenuous Kansas temperance reformer, was hailed as a "modern Deborah" at a meeting of the local W. C. T. U. yesterday afternoon in the vestry of Park Street Church. Not a dissenting voice was heard from among the gathering of perhaps 200 women, but all over the room ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... of July, 1415, the Bohemian Reformer, John Hus, was burned at the stake. But those who had silenced him could not unsay his message, and at last there drew together a little body of earnest men, who agreed to accept the Bible as their only standard of faith and practice, and established a strict discipline ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... them seem like simplicity itself by the side of the former systems; and which, although somewhat complicated by the additions and alterations of a later and more superstitious, generation, have still maintained the noble and honourable characteristics imparted to them by the great reformer and compiler of ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... indorsed by Lord John Russell, who said, "If that is the name that pleases them, if they say that the old distinction of Whig and Tory should no longer be kept up, I am ready, in opposition to their name of Conservative, to take the name of Reformer, and to stand by that opposition." Sir Robert Peel defined Conservatism when he said, "My object for some years past has been to lay the foundation of a great party, which, existing in the House of ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... it should always be kept in mind that the whole was written with the express purpose of laying bare all the social evils of one of the most corrupt periods in recent history, in the belief that through publicity might come regeneration. Zola was all along a reformer as well as a novelist, and his zeal was shown in many a bitter newspaper controversy. It has been urged against him that there were plenty of virtuous people about whom he could have written, but these critics ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... here, that's bad! That's bad! I can see I shall have to take you in hand, and commence my work of reform. Oh, I'm a great reformer, a Zwingli and Savonarola in one. I couldn't count the number of people I've led into the right way. It takes some finding, you know. Strait is the gate—damned strait sometimes. A damned tight squeeze...." Argyle was somewhat intoxicated. He spoke ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... remained a very good and active servant of the Catholic Church. But they were imprudent enough to irritate him by contradiction; they stimulated his vanity and pride to resistance; and so Henry became a church reformer, not from conviction, but out of pure love of opposition. And that, my child, you must never forget, for, by means of this lever, you may very well convert him again to a devout, dutiful, and obedient servant of our holy Church. He has renounced ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... afterwards carried, was unexpectedly adopted by the austere Calvin, and introduced into the Geneva discipline. It is indeed strange, that while he was stripping religion not merely of its pageantry, but even of its decent ceremonies, this levelling reformer should have introduced this taste for singing psalms in opposition to reading psalms. "On a parallel principle," says Thomas Warton, "and if any artificial aids to devotion were to be allowed, he might at least ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Wesleyan College, St. Stephen's Green, that I struggled through my first pages of Caesar and stumbled over the "pons asinorum," and here I must mention that although the Wesleyan College bears the name of the great religious reformer, a considerable number of the boys who studied there—myself included—were in no way connected with the Wesleyan body. I merely say this because I have seen it stated more than once that I am a Wesleyan, and as this little sketch professes to be an authentic account ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... looked at her scraggy pine-trees cresting the hill, she 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 ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... after much thought and self-analysis, I resolved to give myself wholly to propagandist work, as a Freethinker and a Social Reformer, and to use my tongue as well as my pen in the struggle. I counted the cost ere I determined on this step, for I knew that it would not only outrage the feelings of such new friends as I had already made, but would be likely to imperil my custody of my little girl. I knew that ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... trouble with the present desire for Americanization is that the American is anxious to Americanize two classes—if he is a reformer, the foreign-born; if he is an employer, his employees. It never occurs to him that he himself may be in need of Americanization. He seems to take it for granted that because he is American-born, he is an American in spirit and has a right understanding of American ideals. But that, by no ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... unfaltering faith in the final perfection of all things. Her belief is not orthodox, but it is religious. In ancient Greece she would have been a Stoic; in the era of the Reformation, a Calvinist; in King Charles' time, a Puritan; but in this nineteenth century, by the very laws of her being, she is a Reformer. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... returning from Spain full of new ardor after his retreat in the grotto of Segovia, and fully decided to adopt for his Order the rule of poverty, was strongly encouraged in this purpose and overwhelmed with favors.[34] Honorius III. saw in him the providential man of the time, the reformer of the monastic Orders; he showed him unusual attentions, going so far, for example, as to transfer to him a group of monks belonging to other Orders, whom he appointed to act as Dominic's lieutenants ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... once, which make up the sum of true caricature. If caricature is drollery, and not humour, as Carlyle says it is, Mr. May is above all things a humorist, and not at all a droll. He is neither a politician nor a reformer, nor even, if properly understood, a satirist. His aim is to show men and things as they really are, seen through a curtain of fun and raillery—not as they might or ought to be. Yet the essence of his work is inexorable truth, and his version of life is depicted to a delighted ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... know 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
... from a recent article savouring of Neal's second volume) it seems to be expected that English gentlemen will, in a Magazine that bears their name, be pleased with a rechauffe of democratic obloquy upon the character of the great reformer of their church, and will look with favour upon Canterburies Doome, would it not be desirable that Robert Ware's (and Nalson's) curious and important work should be republished? If a reprint of it were to be undertaken, I would direct attention to a copy in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... long as both labor and capital can move without hindrance to the points at which they can create the largest products and get the largest rewards—its action cannot be stopped, while that of the forces that disturb it can be so. In this is the most inspiriting fact for the social reformer. If there are "inspiration points" on the mountain-tops of science, as well as on those of nature, this is one of them, and it is reached whenever a man discovers that in a highly imperfect society the fundamental law makes for justice, that it is impossible to prevent it from working and that ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... without degradation on a basis of widespread industrialism and with our familiar equipment of railways, steamships, telephones, et hoc genus omne, and it is safe to predict that he would fail to give the reply which the modern reformer would expect from him. Instead of embracing one of the many current varieties of socialism which masquerade as his bastard progeny, he would either accept his interlocutor's premisses and tell him to build up his precious northern civilization on ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... excited in the ranks of Hinduism among those who would repudiate the name of Christian. Chief among the abuses of Hinduism to be attacked has been the traditional attitude toward woman. Child marriage and compulsory widowhood are condemned by every social reformer up and down the length of India. The battle is fought not only for women, but by them also. Agitation for the suffrage has been carried on in India's chief cities. In Poona not long since the educated women of the city, Hindu, Muhammadan, and Christian, joined in ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... professional politician triumphed over the too trusting workingman reformer. But the cause found strong allies in the other classes of the American community. From the poor whites of the upland region of the South came a similar demand formulated by the Tennessee tailor, Andrew Johnson, ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... difficulties which led to the loss of his crown. Mazdak, a native of Persepolis, or, according to others, of Nishapur, in Khorassan, and an Archimagus, or High Priest of the Zoroastrian religion, announced himself, early in the reign of Kobad, as a reformer of Zoroastrianism, and began to make proselytes to the new doctrines which he declared himself commissioned to unfold. All men, he said, were, by God's providence, born equal—none brought into ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... of the debris of feudalism to become the Imperial capital, T[o]ki[o], enabled me to see some things now so utterly vanished, that by some persons their previous existence is questioned. One of the most interesting characters I met personally was Fukuzawa, the reformer, and now "the intellectual father of half of the young men of ... Japan." On the day of the battle of Uyeno, July 11, 1868, this far-seeing patriot and inquiring spirit deliberately decided to keep out of the strife, and with four companions of like ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... moment that he had learned this valuable lesson—and Roosevelt never needed to learn a lesson twice—he had his course in public life marked out before him. He believed ardently in getting things done. He was no theoretical reformer. He would never take the wrong road; but, if he could not go as far as he wanted to along the right road, he would go as far as he could, and bide his time for the rest. He would not compromise a hair's breadth on a principle; he would compromise cheerfully on ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... who should offend him, might make the boldest 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 a long time bowed ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... 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 ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... Carolina elected its greatest governor since the Civil War—Charles B. Aycock. A much repeated anecdote attributes Lincoln's detestation of slavery to a slave auction that he witnessed as a small boy; Aycock's first zeal as an educational reformer had an origin that was even more pathetic, for he always carried in his mind his recollection of his own mother signing an important legal document with a cross. As a young man fresh from the university Aycock also came under the influence ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... of Hercules, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Stryker, shrugging his shoulders. "The position of a reformer is not sufficiently graceful to suit ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... to animals are nothing to us, we have still another argument to offer—the brutalization of the men who slaughter that we may eat flesh. Mrs. Besant, in "Why I Am a Food Reformer," says: ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight
... of these entries of the Overseers, but more especially in the Parish Constable's accounts, was the extraordinary liberty taken in the spelling of words! In a general way Dogberry, especially, was a spelling reformer, in so far as he went in for a phonetic spelling, but many entries occur in old constable's accounts which are governed by no principle ever yet laid down by scholars, with the {47} result very often that it would be impossible to settle what the word intended could ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... sacred to Quetzalcoatl, the "God of the Air," who, during his abode upon earth, taught mankind the use of metals, the practice of agriculture, and the arts of government. Translating myth into history, we may call him the great Aztec reformer. He is represented as a man of fair complexion with curling hair and flowing beard, very different from the type of the Aztecs. On his way from Mexico to the coast he remained for a while at Cholula, where a mound and temple was raised to ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... not much learning nor judgment, but the lost labour of much unprofitable reading. And yet a late hot Querist for Tithes, whom ye may know, by his wits lying ever beside him in the margin, to be ever beside his wits in the text,—a fierce Reformer once, now rankled with a contrary heat,—would send us back, very reformedly indeed, to learn Reformation from Tyndarus and Rebuffas, two ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... The young reformer was restrained, but only temporarily. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton she lived to do her part toward revising many of the laws under which women, in her day, suffered, and her successors, the organized women of the United States, are busy with ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... or obscure, it is all one. You shall be useful—you shall be a reformer who leads ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... having been the birth-place of Beza, the great Protestant Reformer (1519), who succeeded not only to the place but to the influence of Calvin, and was, after that eminent man's death, regarded as the head and ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... The Zend, or Zendavesta, is the sacred book ascribed to Zoroaster, or Zerdusht, the founder or reformer of the Magian religion. The modern edition or paraphrase of this work, called the Sadda, written in the Persian of the day, was, I believe, composed about three hundred ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... reformer of the Persian army, and a leader of it, unsuccessfully, however, against ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... religion consist in duty, not rites. He reduced duty mainly to mercy or kindness toward all living beings—a marvelous generalization. This set aside all slaughter of animals. The mind of the princes and people was weary of priestcraft and ritualism; and the teaching of the great reformer was most timely. Accordingly his doctrine spread with great rapidity, and for a long time it seemed likely to prevail over Brahmanism. But various causes gradually combined against it. Partly, it was overwhelmed by its own luxuriance of growth; partly, ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... dramatist. Possibly he may have inherited some small share of the poetical talent of his well-known maternal grandfather,—the author of "Divine and Moral Songs for Children," but he has shown no sign of the eminent histrionic genus which has made his elder brother, Mr. WENDELL PHILLIPS, so popular a Reformer. Still, if he was bent upon writing plays he should have confined himself to dramatizing the more quiet and domestic of Dr. WATTS'S poems. "How doth the little busy bee"—for example—could have been turned into quite a nice little ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... it would not suit me to run my estate as though it were a University Settlement. Handle me gently—that's all. You've had your way about some of the farms—you'll get it no doubt with regard to others. But don't go about playing the reformer—on this dramatic scale!—at my expense. I don't believe in this modern wish-wash; and I don't intend ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Dyer, in his late Life of Calvin, spells the word Phallicus, and supposes it to allude to some amorous propensities of the reformer. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... intelligence of the death, by cholera, of Judge Pyncheon's son, just at the point of embarkation for his native land. By this misfortune Clifford became rich; so did Hepzibah; so did our little village maiden, and, through her, that sworn foe of wealth and all manner of conservatism,—the wild reformer,—Holgrave! ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... special measures to popular vote, or referendum, was old in the United States, for in this way state constitutions and constitutional amendments were habitually adopted, and matters of city charters, loans and franchises often determined. The initiative, however, was new, and appealed to the reformer who resented the refusal of the legislature to pass desired laws as well as the unwillingness to pass worthy ones. The Populists, in 1892, recommended that the system of direct legislation be investigated, and they favored its adoption ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... was given to me by a veteran Reformer, who told me that it expressed in visible form the universal sentiment of England. That sentiment was daily and hourly confirmed by all that was heard and seen of the girl-queen. We read of her walking with a gallant suite upon the terrace at Windsor; ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... think the New Testament tells us that He is, the Incarnate Word of God, who for us men and for our salvation 'bare our sins in His own body on the tree,' and 'was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him,' but an Example, a Teacher, or a pure Model, or a social Reformer, or the like. If men think of Him only as such, they will never cry to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren |
