"Self-improvement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... furnish the final encouragement of woman to constant self-improvement. In the sequestered paths of home, having hours and days, in which the needle is her quiet employer, how may she meditate on the touching and lofty themes of human concern. Why should she wander from the ways ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... of self-improvement lay towards the north-west, as was previously decided. We were very impatient to see these status in statu of Anglo-India, but.... Do what you may, there always ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... with you all, first; to win your confidence and teach you to look upon me in the light of a mother. Then, when I have won your confidence, I want to organize a Cowboys' Mutual Improvement and Social Society, to help you in the way of self-improvement and to resist the snares laid for homeless boys like you. Don't you think I'm very—brave?" She was smiling at him again, leaning back in her chair and regarding him playfully over ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... anxious efforts at self-improvement, Lady Alice's good-natured advice, and the bold policy of the earl, who persuaded him to undergo the terrors of an election, and get returned to Parliament as member for Gallowbay, gradually made the millionaire a more presentable person. He learned how to avoid dropping his h's; but two vices ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... two thirds as large as the United States comprised in 1783. The improvement and extension of education, the interest in social reform, the beginning of the decline of the "let alone doctrine," the shortening of the hours of labor, and the consequent increase in time for self-improvement,—are all especially important steps of progress ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... the hardest things to face in the world is the grim fact that our power of self-improvement is limited. Of some qualities we do not even possess the germs. Some qualities we have in minute quantities, but hardly capable of development; some few qualities we possess in fuller measure, and they are ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... from mechanics to morals, that has not been met with that ever-ready fear-thought, that the whole universe is going to the eternal bow-wows, if the slightest change in established institutions is made. And despite it all, we go on year after year, improving. "Self-improvement" is the watch-word of the Century. If "self-improvement," then social improvement. Mankind is still in the making, as far as external ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... of the prisoners who are unable to read and write soon acquire these useful arts if they have any ambition for self-improvement. If there was room, and this school could be conducted in the evening, as well as on Sunday afternoons, much more good could be accomplished. I would suggest that it would be a good act on the part of the State to employ an officer who should devote all his time to teaching and imparting ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... quite well content with yourself—not because of a reasoned conviction of your own worth, which would be mere vanity and unworthy of you, but by reason of a philosophical disposition. It is too early for you to bother over problems of self-improvement—as for me it is too late; wherefore we are alike in the calm of our self-content. What others may think or say about us is a subject of the smallest concern to us. Therefore they generally speak well of us; for there is little satisfaction in speaking ill of men who care nothing ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... German singer, who until then had no rival, was distracted with rage and jealousy, which the sweet-tempered Billington treated with a careless smile. Though her success had been so brilliant, she relaxed no effort in self-improvement, and studied assiduously both vocalism and the piano. Indeed, Salomon, Haydn's impressario, said of her with enthusiasm, "Sar, she sing equally well wid her troat and her fingers." At the close of this season, which was the opening of a great ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... once more entreat thee to take my advice: forsake these idle pursuits, which must end in shame and misery; whilst every effort made towards self-improvement will be crowned with the blessings and esteem of a worthy parent, and the approval ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... above all mercenary anxieties, I gave my attention entirely to the self-improvement necessary to my appearance before his highness as a representative character on whom the eyes of all Sprucehill were fixed. I would say the world—only for the modest consciousness that comes over me when I think of myself ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... always within reach of the mild social gaieties in which each family indulged, and Vera was not quite so ready as were his sisters to contrast unfavourably his hatred of all self-improvement with Hubert Delrio's eagerness to pick up every crumb of information, thus deservedly getting on ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... intimate or confidential, I very soon felt her to be the most admirable person I had ever known. It is not to be supposed that she was, or that any one, at the age at which I first saw her, could be, all that she afterwards became. Least of all could this be true of her, with whom self-improvement, progress in the highest and in all senses, was a law of her nature; a necessity equally from the ardour with which she sought it, and from the spontaneous tendency of faculties which could not receive an impression or an experience without making it the ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... be; and what will come, must come; whether it be for our happiness or misery, our life or death? Where shall we find something to trust in, something to give us confidence and hope that we can mend ourselves, that self-improvement is of use, that working is of use, that prudence is of use, for God will reward every man according to his work? St. John tells us—In that within you which is born ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... murderer holds some things dear). This absolute loss, this complete severance of all ties, produces a most agonising mental state and afflicts the poor wretch with untold horrors. He is made to drag out an existence under most unnatural conditions, conditions in which every effort he makes towards self-improvement is a useless one, every aspiration is routed, the natural affections crave in vain for an object to fasten upon, and where an artificial atavistic process is set in motion so powerful as to defy the resistance of all in time. This is no ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll |
