"Improver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... able body, bold and stout; his hair and eyes black, and his complexion brown, insomuch as he was called the great black Knight of the North; though the word great attributed to him not so much for his stature, as power, and estate, and fortune. He was a wise man, and a great improver of his estate, which might have prospered better with his posterity, had he not been extra-ordinarily given to the love of women." There is unfortunately nothing left above the ground of the manor house of Roxby, the grass-covered site merely showing ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... of race betterment is not only immensely simplified, but it is clearly shown to be more a matter for treatment by the biologist, acting through eugenics, than for the optimistic improver ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... 13th of December, 1799, the General was engaged in making some improvements in the front of Mount Vernon. As was usual with him, he carried his own compass, noted his observations, and marked out the ground. The day became rainy, with sleet, and the improver remained so long exposed to the inclemency of the weather as to be considerably wetted before his return to the house. About one o'clock he was seized with chilliness and nausea, but having changed his clothes, he sat down to his indoor work. At night, on joining his family circle, he complained ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... it joys to communicate; it loves others, for it depends on them for its existence; it sanctions and encourages to all delights that are not unkind in themselves; if it lived to a thousand, it would not make excision of a single humorous passage; and while the self-improver dwindles toward the prig, and, if he be not of an excellent constitution, may even grow deformed into an Obermann, the very name and appearance of a happy man breathe of good-nature, and help the rest of us ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... On the same plan hath Envy form'd her rage, 370 'Gainst those whom fortune hath our rivals made, In way of science, and in way of trade: Stung with mean jealousy she arms her spite, First works, then views their ruin with delight. Our Hogarth here a grand improver shines, And nobly on the general plan refines; He like himself o'erleaps the servile bound; Worth is his mark, wherever worth is found. Should painters only his vast wrath suffice? Genius in every walk is lawful prize: ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... who might otherwise have cheated himself into a belief, that some of the decayed remains of those oaks, the place of which was in this manner usurped, had been planted by the Hermit's own hand. This sainted spot, however, suffered comparatively little injury. At the bidding of an alien improver, the Hind's Cottage, upon Vicar's island, in the same lake, with its embowering sycamores and cattle-shed, disappeared from the corner where they stood; and right in the middle, and upon the precise point ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... your neighbors and friends now address you. Themes less splendid, but more endearing, impress our minds. The first and best of citizens must leave us; our aged must lose their ornament; our youth their model; our agriculture its improver; our commerce its friend; our infant academy its protector; our poor their benefactor; and the interior navigation of the Potomac (an event replete with the most extensive utility, already, by your unremitted exertions, brought into partial use) ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Features and figure were symmetrical; his eyebrows had been pencilled into exact arcs, his mouth was a Cupid's bow, his cheeks were softly rosy, and a silky and sickly moustache shadowed his rosy lips. Under his fashionable outing shirt he wore a rubber chest improver; his cunningly padded shoulders recalled the exquisite sartorial creations of Mart, Haffner, and Sharx; his patent puttees gave him a calf to which his personal shanks had never aspired; thick, golden-brown hair, false as a woman's ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... him a debt of gratitude. God forbid! that I should be suspected of a wish to enter into a rivalry with Schelling for the honours so unequivocally his right, not only as a great and original genius, but as the founder of the Philosophy of Nature, and as the most successful improver of the Dynamic System [31] which, begun by Bruno, was re- introduced (in a more philosophical form, and freed from all its impurities and visionary accompaniments) by Kant; in whom it was the native and necessary growth of his own system. Kant's ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... embodiment of law and order in the place—had gone over and joined the "Momiers" with his wife and family. M. Laugier was quite a model gendarme. He was a man of excellent character, steady, sensible, and patient, a diligent self-improver, a reader of books, a botanist, and a bit of a geologist. He knew all the rare mountain plants, and had a collection of those that would bear transplantation, in his garden at the back of the town. No man was more ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... Hall, is also an improver and architectural reformer, his efforts being directed towards the abolition of thatch in favour of slate, an idea which has proved more fortunate in his case than in that of the great-grandfather of the present Lord Kenmare. ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... was over; he had reached the status of an Improver, and he dressed the window of the Manchester department. By all the standards available he dressed it very well. By his own standards he dressed it wonderfully. "Well, O' Man," he used to say, "there's one thing about my position here,—I can ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... full premium was paid by the efforts of my mother and father, rather against the wishes of Lord Luxellian, who likes my father, however, and thinks a great deal of him. There I stayed till six months ago, when I obtained a situation as improver, as it is called, in a London office. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... equivocations of the economists on the subject of rent, I had better refer you to one characteristic example. You will find in paragraph 5th and 6th of Book II., chap. 2, of Mr. Mill's 'Principles,' that the right to tenure of land is based, by his admission, only on the proprietor's being its improver. ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... it may be so. Nothing is wanting but the assistance which a government alone can afford, to render Borneo a friendly and valuable ally, and to constitute Mr Brooke one of the most useful benefactors of modern times; a benefactor in the best sense of the term—an improver of his species—an intelligent messenger and expounder ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... portion—it is always some partial good he would introduce; and thus he but destroys the just proportions of a nicely-regulated system of things by exaggerating one of the parts. I passed of late through a richly-cultivated district of country, in which the agricultural improver had done his utmost. Never were there finer fields, more convenient steadings, crops of richer promise, a better regulated system of production. Corn and cattle had mightily improved; but what had man, the lord of the soil, become? ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... scarcely had their due weight with the general reader, nor secured their just meed of admiration. He was singularly careless, writes his editor, in distributing his pleasing illustrations of playfulness, or pathos, or epigrammatic expression. His 'mission' he considered to be that of an instructor and improver; and the flowers which, equally with more substantial things, were the produce of his vigorous intellect, he looked upon as scarcely worthy of passing attention, and deserving of no more notice than to be permitted ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... sat a full-grown girl, in holiday attire, with her elbows on the table and her fingers in her hair, reading some illustrated journal; while a little boy, squatted behind the girl's chair, was attaching a possum's tail to her improver. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... found anywhere else. The Board gave a spirited support to this enterprise, and negotiations were entered into with the most eminent instrument-maker of those days. This was Jesse Ramsden (1735-1800), famous as the improver of the sextant, as the constructor of the great theodolite used by General Roy in the English Survey, and as the inventor of the dividing engine for graduating astronomical instruments. Ramsden had built for Sir George Schuckburgh the largest and most perfect ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... this publication, with a view to enable our readers to determine, whether the author of these verses which have now been exhibited, is entitled to claim the honours of an improver or restorer of our poetry, and to found a new school to supersede or new-model all our maxims on the subject. If we were to stop here, we do not think that Mr. Wordsworth, or his admirers, would have any reason to complain; for what we have now quoted is undeniably ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... resolved to out-maneuver me, and he succeeded: while with one hand he motioned to the party to keep silence, with the other he took hold of Curzon, but with no peculiar or very measured respect, and introduced him as Mr. MacNeesh, the new Scotch steward and improver—a character at that time whose popularity might compete with a tithe proctor or an exciseman. So completely did this tactique turn the tables upon the poor adjutant, who the moment before was exulting over me, that I utterly forgot my own woes, and sat down ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... now in fashion were devised by some thoughtful improver of woman, to enhance beauty by imparting a roseate hue to the complexion. Unfortunately, however, the reflection from the pink silk does not always reach the face at the right angle. Sometimes it concentrates altogether ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... rum 'ot, is wot you want, mate, for that," said the industrious self-improver at the shelf-table. "Got a chill on yer stummick on sentry-go in the fog an' rine las' night.... I'd give a 'ogs'ead to see the bloke who wrote in the bloomin' Reggilashuns 'nor must bloomin' sentries stand in their blasted sentry-boxes ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... fall in Datura, the price of next year's oil and cloth and tools. The peanut, a legume Aaron had no experience of beyond purchasing an occasional tooth-ful at the grocery-store, won half a dozen acres from Korean lespedeza, the crop he'd at first selected as his soil-improver there. He got acquainted with a plant no Amishman before him had ever sown, a crabgrass called fonio, a staple cereal and source of beer-malt on Murna, imported with ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... economic difference between property in land and property in capital is well defined by J. S. Mill, Principles, II, ch. 2, 6. "The reasons which form the justification, in an economical point of view, of property in land, are only valid in so far as the proprietor of the land is its improver. In no sound theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it." He here alludes specially to Ireland. The Fourierist, Considerant, distinguishes ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... application, and when we saw the crop, should have been willing to insure it at twenty-five bushels. Col. C. has nearly 2,000 acres in cultivation, which within his recollection was cultivated entirely with hoes—his grandfather would not use a plow—was as much set against that great land improver as some modern, but no more wise farmers, are against guano. Col. C. uses the best of plows; sows 200 lbs. guano to the acre and plows it in six inches deep, and sows one bushel of wheat and harrows thoroughly, but not deep enough to disturb the ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... this kind recognized in our day: so far good. But there is a bad contrary: the age is apt, in interpretation, to upset the letter in favor of the view—very often the after thought—of one side only. The case of John Palmer,[403] the improver of the mail coach system, is smothered. He was to have an office and a salary, and 2-1/2 per cent for life on the increased revenue of the Post-Office. His rights turned out so large, that Government would not pay them. For misconduct, real or pretended, they turned him out of his office: but ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... he wished the Improvers could induce old Josiah Sloane to keep his whiskers trimmed. Mr. Lawrence Bell said he would whitewash his barns if nothing else would please them but he would NOT hang lace curtains in the cowstable windows. Mr. Major Spencer asked Clifton Sloane, an Improver who drove the milk to the Carmody cheese factory, if it was true that everybody would have to have his milk-stand hand-painted next summer and keep an embroidered ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he produced in less than a quarter of a century a stock worth on the average L150 each. The most famous bull of Charles Colling's was Comet. The sale of this animal realised the handsome sum of 1,000 guineas. The bull Hubback is said by many writers to have been the great improver of Shorthorn blood. He was bought by Robert Colling for the trifling sum of L8; but although this animal was kept by both Collings for three years, there is good reason to believe that they made but little use of him. It would appear, indeed, that to the cows first used ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... efficacious improver of many kinds of woods is raw linseed-oil mixed with a little rectified spirits ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... obscurity, the important achievements of a writing-master are detailed by contemporaries with laborious accuracy. Mr D'Israeli, in his "Curiosities of Literature," has not scrupled to devote many pages to Bales's contests for superiority with a rival penman of the name of Johnson. Bales was the improver of Dr Bright's system, and, according to his own account in his "Writing Schoolmaster," he was able to keep pace with a moderate speaker. He seems to have been engaged in public life, by acting as secretary where caligraphy was required; and he was at length accused of being concerned ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... his vast unexecuted schemes, there is the same sedate magnanimity, the same fearless composure: when the fatal bullet strikes him, he dies with the concerns of others, not his own, upon his lips. He is a reformer, the perfection of reformers; not a revolutionist, but a prudent though determined improver. His enthusiasm does not burst forth in violence, but in manly and enlightened energy; his eloquence is not more moving to the heart than his lofty philosophy is convincing to the head. There is ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... his estate absorbed. In Oatlands, two properties were measured according to the common practice: the side-lines were guessed at; one cultivated, and the other sold his property; but when measured, the improver of his estate discovered that his homestead, and nearly one hundred acres of his land fell by description ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Two distinct principles have been developed and combined—the iron framing in a single casting, and the cross or overstringing. I will deal with the last first, because it originated in England and was the invention of Theobald Boehm, the famous improver of the flute. In Grove's "Dictionary," I have given an approximate date to his overstringing as 1835, but reference to Boehm's correspondence with Mr. Walter Broadwood shows me that 1831 was really the time, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... than by inventing something of real worth and merit that can be quickly turned into money. The inventive field is large, and each invention opens up a new field for improvements, and it is the "improver," without question, that reaps the greatest benefit from any invention. Owing to the ever forward progress of civilization, there is no limit to the possible improvements in the ...
— Practical Pointers for Patentees • Franklin Cresee
... length, perfectly straight, the trees meeting at the top in a cathedral arch, lessening in perspective,—the boughs the roof, the stems the pillars. I never saw so beautiful an avenue. We were told that some improver of pleasure-grounds had advised Lord B. to cut down the trees, and lay the whole open to the lawn, for the avenue is very near his house. His own better taste, or that of some other person, I suppose, had saved them from the axe. Many workmen ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... thousands, who could do nothing to save them. Models of lifeboats were solicited, and premiums offered for the best. Among those who responded, William Wouldhave, a painter, and Henry Greathead, a boat-builder of South Shields, stood pre-eminent. The latter afterwards became a noted builder and improver of lifeboats, and was well and deservedly rewarded for his labours. In 1803 Greathead had built thirty-one boats—eighteen for England, five for Scotland, and eight for other countries. This was, so far, well, but it was a wretchedly inadequate ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... a leguminous crop and gathers nitrogen from the air. It is therefore a good fertilizer. The question of soil fertility will become more important with the passing of the years, and the value of lucern as a land improver will then be more ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... which form the justification, in an economical point of view, of property in land. It is seen that they are only valid in so far as the proprietor of land is its improver. Whenever, in any country, the proprietor, generally speaking, ceases to be the improver, political economy has nothing to say in defense of landed property, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... "Kenilworth." Near at hand is the tomb of Sir Thomas Bromley, the Lord Chancellor, who presided at the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. But the chief feature of this chapel is the colossal marble effigy of James Watt, the celebrated improver of the steam-engine—a splendid monument, from the chisel ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... He valued a guinea as little as any man: money to him was no more than dirt, and his gentleman and groom, and all belonging to him, the same; but the sporting season over, he grew tired of the place, and having got down a great architect for the house, and an improver for the grounds, and seen their plans and elevations, he fixed a day for settling with the tenants, but went off in a whirlwind to town, just as some of them came into the yard in the morning. A circular letter came next post from the new agent, with ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... was to ensure purity of breed. The value of his own stock was quickly recognized, and in one year he made 1200 guineas from the letting of a single ram. Bakewell's agricultural experiments were not confined to stock-breeding. His reputation stood high in every detail of farm-management, and as an improver of grass land by systematic irrigation he had no rival. He died on the 1st of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... unjustly. But let us hope a brighter day is approaching, when a Scottish country gentleman may be a scholar without the pedantry of our friend the Baron, a sportsman without the low habits of Mr. Falconer, and a judicious improver of his property without becoming a boorish ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... "Wa min-hum man faha," evidently an error of the scribe for "Man nafahu." Scott (vi. 351), after the fashion of the "Improver-school," ends the tale, which is somewhat tail-less, after this fashion, "At the same instant, the Sultan and his courtiers found themselves assaulted by invisible agents, who, tearing off their robes, whipped ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the country scenery coloured the whole of the boy's after life, and did much to make him the first agricultural improver and naturalist of Bengal, which he became. The lordship of Pirie, as it was called by Gitda, its Saxon owner, was given by the Conqueror, with much else, to his natural son, William Peverel, as we see from the Domesday survey. His descendants passed it on ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... of; this afternoon, however, all circumstances were favourable, and behold the floor chequered with uncertain gleam. The workers were arranged in groups of three, called 'parties,' consisting of a learner, an improver, and a hand. All sat with sleeves pushed up to their elbows, and had a habit of rocking to and fro as they plied their mechanical industry. Owing to the movement of a cloud, the sunlight spread gradually towards one of these groups; it touched the skirt, the arms, the head of one of ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... distinct idea to the ladies; but Vizard, for the first time, turned red at this revelation before Uxmoor, improver of cottage life. "Confound the brutes!" said he. "Why, I built them a new room; a larger ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... that of the Portuguese along the coast of Africa, was as an invention compared to an improvement. Each new discovery then was but a step beyond that which had preceded it; Columbus was the first to steer boldly from shore into the waste of waters, an originator, not a mere improver. ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... I sorrowed heartily for my lost ship, my vanished island, my uneaten dinner, and for the knowledge that, if I wanted any angels to play with, I must henceforth put up with the anaemic, night-gowned nonentities that hovered over the bed of the Sunday-school child in the pages of the Sabbath Improver. ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... plentiful feeding, so that the average size was almost doubled, while the meat, and in some cases the wool, was improved in quality in even greater proportion. The names of such men as Jethro Tull, who introduced the "drill husbandry," Bakewell, the great improver of the breeds of cattle, and Arthur Young, the greatest agricultural observer and writer of the century, have become almost as familiar as those of Crompton, Arkwright, Watt, and other pioneers of the factory system. The general improvement in agricultural ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... a pensive and penetrating aspect), is prefixed to his "English Improver Improved;" and which work Professor Martyn terms "an original and incomparable work for the time." Dr. Beale calls him "honest ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... such vast good according to the one, such portentous evil according to the other, has done only a part of the promised good, and has done none of the threatened evil. The true lesson from this is one of perseverance and thoroughness for the improver, and one of faith in the self-protectiveness of a healthy society for the conservative. The master error of the latter is to suppose that men are moved mainly by their passions rather than their interests, that all their passions are presumably selfish and destructive, and that their ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... making but little progress, young Swain applied for instruction to Thomas Williams. That distinguished engraver was one of the few excellent "facsimile men" of the day; and he agreed to accept the applicant as "improver." At that time he was engaged in engraving the blocks of an edition of "Paul et Virginie"—the well-known illustrated edition which was published in Paris in 1838. For at that time there were fewer facsimile engravers in Paris than in London, and what there ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... acquainted with the history of their own country than the illustrious princes now in exile; but I caution them not to be led into error by that which has been supposed to be the guide of life. I would give the same caution to all princes. Not that I derogate from the use of history. It is a great improver of the understanding, by showing both men and affairs in a great variety of views. From this source much political wisdom may be learned,—that is, may be learned as habit, not as precept,—and as an exercise to strengthen the mind, as furnishing materials to enlarge and enrich it, not as ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke |
