"Self-improvement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knew better the strength and the weakness belonging to the lot of labour, stated the result of his experience to be, that Work, even the hardest, is full of pleasure and materials for self-improvement. He held honest labour to be the best of teachers, and that the school of toil is the noblest of schools—save only the Christian one,—that it is a school in which the ability of being useful is imparted, the spirit of independence ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... and achievements, the greatest of our self-made men. The simple yet graphic story in the Autobiography of his steady rise from humble boyhood in a tallow-chandler shop, by industry, economy, and perseverance in self-improvement, to eminence, is the most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men. It is in itself a wonderful illustration of the results possible to be attained in a land of unequaled opportunity by ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... at about thirteen years of age, but they make a very great mistake if they leave off learning at that age. Time might be roughly divided off into four parts—necessary work, work for others, self-improvement, and recreation. A man's education is never completed. A man is never too old to learn. Whilst you are a boy and lad you need to be taught; afterwards you can to a great extent learn for yourself. You should never be content to remain just where you are, you should endeavour to make the ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... energy and perseverance were equal to his resolution. The consequence was that he became famous for boating, shooting, riding, and all sorts of fieldsports, though he cared little for any thing else. But when, at last, his attention was turned to self-improvement and philanthropy, by the influence of the Gurney family, he carried the same qualities with him there, and through them won a world-wide fame. It was thus with Sir Walter Scott, who was second to no one in his youth for his dexterity and proficiency in ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... old age, and essays on the properties of stones and fishes, besides monographs on India and Egypt, and a short fragment on "the form of the universe." These, however, only occupied a portion of his time, the chief part was given to self-improvement and those beautiful letters to Lucilius which are the most important remains of his works. Since the death of Burrus, who had helped him to influence Nero for good, or at least to mitigate the atrocious tendencies of his disposition, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... teaching between their college course and their choice or pursuit of a profession. Among them had come, now and then, a youth of rare gifts, one, not only strong to govern and skilled to teach, but who kindled in the minds of the pupils an eager desire for self-improvement, an enthusiasm of mental activity which outlasted his term of office, and which influenced for good a far greater number than those whom he taught, or with whom he came ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... 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 imaginary picture, a man is a man, and one of the cruellest ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... in reply to all that has been said in favor of the possibility of uniting self-improvement with labor, discouraging facts may be brought forward from our daily experience. It may be said that in this country, under advantages unknown in other lands, there is a considerable number on whom the burden of toil presses ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... fashionable entertainments; and each acts himself or herself. Boarding-houses, sanitariums, and sea voyages are the places to study human nature. When a man is half seasick the old original Adam shows forth in him through all the wrappings of education, social restraint, imitation and attempts at self-improvement, with which he has covered it over for so many years. Once on a Cunard steamship I heard an architect from San Francisco tell the story of the hoop-snake, which takes its tail in its teeth and rolls over the prairies ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... earnest mania for self-improvement which has blighted the lives of so many young men—a passion which, however, is commendable in those who feel themselves handicapped by a college career and a jewelled fraternity emblem. It suddenly struck him that it would be valuable to make a list of some of the titles in Mifflin's ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... service he won the esteem of Mr. Beyerbach, and devoted his leisure to self-improvement, taking private lessons in mathematics and physics, and attending the lectures of Professor R. Bottger on mechanics at the Trade School. When his apprenticeship ended he attended the Institute of Dr. Poppe, in Frankfort, and as neither ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... material. Memory and imagination often act unbidden by the will; imagination often when we are asleep. We may find a material element even in the character as moulded by physical or social circumstance or need. But is there not also a conscious effort of self-improvement not dependent on these? That all is material, nothing spiritual, does not seem yet to ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... sensible people in the world, and we used to astonish each other at every sentence . . . Charlotte, at school, had no plan of life beyond what circumstances made for her. She knew that she must provide for herself, and chose her trade; at least chose to begin it once. Her idea of self-improvement ruled her even at school. It was to cultivate her tastes. She always said there was enough of hard practicality and useful knowledge forced on us by necessity, and that the thing most needed was to soften and refine our minds. She picked up every scrap of information concerning ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that path is from the road which men are apt to take in working out their own self-improvement! How many forms of religion, and how many toiling souls put the cart before the horse, and in effect just reverse the process, and say practically—'first make yourselves righteous, and then you will have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... ready by the hands of the workmen, to be adjusted by the working-tools of the Fellow-Craft." We shall not repeat the explanations of these symbols given by the York Rite. You may read them in its printed monitors. They are declared to allude to the self-improvement of the individual craftsman,—a continuation of the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... back to the old truth—all a man's hope of, and effort after, reformation and self-improvement must begin with the consciousness of sin, the lament over it, the longing for divine goodness, the opening of the heart for the reception thereof; and only then can we rise to these serene heights of purity of heart. This, and this alone, is the way by which 'a clean thing' can be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... will be the punishment of its abstract principle of equality, which dispenses the ignorant man from the necessity of self-training, the foolish man from that of self-judgment, and tells the child that there is no need for him to become a man, and the good-for-nothing that self-improvement is of no account. Public law, founded upon virtual equality, will destroy itself by its consequences. It will not recognize the inequalities of worth, of merit, and of experience; in a word, it ignores individual labor, and it will end in the triumph of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mandates to others, or to depute others to do the work for you. No, my purpose is to urge you to do the work yourself. In this connection that idle passing of resolutions, the will to will, some time or other, are not sufficient, nor is it enough to remain sluggishly satisfied until self-improvement sets in of its own accord. On the contrary, from you is demanded a determination which is identical with action and with life itself, and which will continue and control, unwavering and unchilled, until ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... very worthy man; who, however, although he knew a vast deal more than Mr. Hobby, the poor old grave-digger, was far from being what we might call a first-rate scholar. But what his teacher lacked in learning, George made up in diligence, and the most judicious use of every means of self-improvement within his reach. And here, my dear children, let me remind you of a thing worthy of your remembrance through life, that success in the pursuit of knowledge depends far less upon the ability and skill of the teacher, than upon the industry, perseverance, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... accomplishment was the drawing up a creed which he thought to contain "the essentials of every known religion," and to be "free of everything that might shock the professors of any religion." He intended that this should serve as the basis of a sect, which should practice his rules for self-improvement. It was at first to consist of "young and single men only," and great caution was to be exercised in the admission of members. The association was to be called the "Society of the Free and Easy;" "free, as being, by the general practice and habit of ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... all 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 source or the occasion ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... worshipped as its type, even Arcady is its exile, not its home. Soon weary of the dalliance of Tempe, it ascends to its mission,—the Archer of the silver bow, the guide of the car of light. Speaking more plainly, genius is the enthusiasm for self-improvement; it ceases or sleeps the moment it desists from seeking some object which it believes of value, and by that object it insensibly connects its self-improvement with the positive advance of the world. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... president of the American Federation of Labor, has said: "The workers want more wages; more of the comforts of life; more leisure; more chance for self-improvement as men, as trade-unionists, as citizens. These were the wants of yesterday; they are the wants of today; they will be the wants of tomorrow, and of tomorrow's morrow. The struggle may assume new forms, but the issue is the immemorial one,—an ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... done there. This seems the best way of treating all that part of worldly trouble which consists of self- reproval. We scarcely know of any outward life continuously prosperous (and a very dull one it would be): why should we expect the inner life to be one course of unbroken self-improvement, either ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... whole we were much impressed by the great desire for self-improvement, for study and debate, exhibited by many of the young men. This very tendency, in fact, brought one of the most promising of our earlier clubs to an untimely end. The young men in the club, twenty in number, had grown much irritated by the frivolity ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... superior to them: the thought is generally clearer, the connexion closer, the sentence and paragraph are better distributed. The best modern languages, for example English or French, possess as great a power of self-improvement as the Latin, if not as the Greek. Nor does there seem to be any reason why they should ever decline or decay. It is a popular remark that our great writers are beginning to disappear: it may also be remarked that whenever a great writer appears in the future he will find ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... vagabondage in all classes. The extent to which travelling was carried in the Middle Ages for purposes of pilgrimage and commerce, out of pure curiosity or love of knowledge, for the bettering of trade in handicrafts or for self-improvement in the sciences, has only of late years been estimated at a just calculation. "The scholars," wrote a monk of Froidmont in the twelfth century, "are wont to roam around the world and visit all its cities, till much learning makes them mad; ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... soil, he fell into a commercial serfdom to the cities well-nigh as complete as the feudal bondage had been. By reason of his isolated and unsocial life he was uncouth, unlettered, out of touch with culture, without opportunities for self-improvement, even if his bitter toil had left him energy or time for it. For this reason the dwellers in the towns looked down upon him as one belonging to an inferior race. In all lands, in all ages, the countryman has been considered a proper butt by ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... English Girl Guide accepted Edith's efforts toward self-improvement and her evident desire to make friends with perfect tact and ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... Quin's desire for self-improvement soon became an obsession. With Miss Enid's assistance he got into a night course at the university, and proceeded to attack his ignorance with something of the fierce determination he had attacked the Hun the year before in France. He plunged through bogs of history, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... fanaticism which was throttling the noblest strivings of the Jewish mind. But this struggle for freedom of thought should have been fought out within the confines of Judaism, by means of a thorough-going cultural self-improvement, and not on the soil of assimilation, nor in alliance with the powers that be, which were aiming not at the rejuvenation but at the obliteration of Judaism, in accordance with ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... or the yet simpler circles of our ordinary city lift, vastly more association with the storied scene than I had brought to it or should bring away. In fact, there is nothing more impressive in the floating foreign society of Rome than its zeal for self-improvement. No one classes himself with his fellow-tourists, though if he happens to be a traveller he is really one of them; and it is with difficulty I keep myself from the appearance of patronizing them in these praises, which are for the most part reverently meant. Their zeal never seemed to ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... watch carrying the power to regulate itself, and when worn out to reproduce itself in another watch of a new and higher form, endowing it at the same time with power for handing forward this capacity for self-improvement? Is not the wisdom and skill required for making a watch that is self-adjusting, self-improving, and self-succeeding vastly more than the wisdom required to construct a simple timepiece? Should science finally establish the new view, already adopted by practically all biologists, ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... that the utmost limits of human power are to be discerned in proximity to himself, and none seeks any longer to resist the inevitable law of his destiny. Not indeed that an aristocratic people absolutely contests man's faculty of self-improvement, but they do not hold it to be indefinite; amelioration they conceive, but not change: they imagine that the future condition of society may be better, but not essentially different; and whilst they ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... chiefly interested Nicholas Ferrar, than whom no traveller for study's sake was ever more devoted to the task of self-improvement. At about the same time that the second Earl of Chesterfield was fighting duels at the academy of Monsieur de Veau, Nicholas Ferrar, a grave boy, came from Cambridge to Leipsic and "set himself laboriously to study the originals of the city, the nature of the government, the humors and inclinations ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... eternal life will grow. Christian graces are the products of the indwelling divine life, and nothing else will succeed in producing them. All the preachings of moralists and all the struggles after self-improvement are reduced to impotence and vanity by the stern, curt sentence—'a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit.' Surely it should come to us all as a true gospel when we feel ourselves foiled by our own evil nature ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... There are fine passages in his essay, but it is intellectualized, bloodless, heedless of the trifling oddities of human intercourse that make friendship so satisfying. He seems to insist upon a sterile ceremony of mutual self-improvement, a kind of religious ritual, a profound interchange of doctrines between soul and soul. His friends (one gathers) are to be antisepticated, all the poisons and pestilence of their faulty humours are to be drained away before they may approach ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... of a distinction in those days. He had learned it, perforce, during his early voyagings. He had been twice round the world, both times on English ships, and he was the kind of man, steady, quiet, thoughtful, to miss no opportunities of self-improvement, though I do not think there ever can have been a man less desirous of gain. His wants were very few, and so long as the farm and the fishing provided us all with a sufficient living, he was satisfied and grateful. He saw his neighbours waxing fat all about ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... present undertaking, whatever it be, and that you may one day, under happier circumstances, resume a pen which has, of late years, been so meritoriously employed. If your new attempt prosper, you will yet find leisure for intellectual gratification, and for that self-improvement which may be carried on even in the busiest ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... "just growed," after the manner of Topsy. Nobody helped him. But the boy differed in one way from his thoughtless little playmates. There was a mysterious something in him that drove him eagerly to avail himself of any opportunity for self-improvement that came along. If the opportunity, as generally happened, failed to "come along," he went after it with all his ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... sister sailed for Hamburg, in the hope that their imperfect acquaintance with the German language might be improved by the heroic remedy of a winter at Goslar. But at Goslar they do not seem to have made any acquaintances, and their self-improvement consisted mainly in reading German books to themselves. The four months spent at Goslar, however, were the very bloom of Wordsworth's poetic career. Through none of his poems has the peculiar loveliness ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... didactic aim with artistic excellence is among the most difficult of literary experiments. If the lesson or principle to be inculcated be given too much prominence, the reader who opens the book for entertainment will shut it very soon in spite of any prospective self-improvement. If narrative interest or artistic beauty be the most striking feature of the work, its serious aim will be unnoticed. The safest plan for the writer of the novel of purpose to pursue, is to openly acknowledge his object, and to place that object ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... important points, Dr. Japp added to my knowledge, and with the same blow fairly demolished that part of my criticism. First, if Thoreau were content to dwell by Walden Pond, it was not merely with designs of self-improvement, but to serve mankind in the highest sense. Hither came the fleeing slave; thence was he despatched along the road to freedom. That shanty in the woods was a station in the great Underground Railroad; that ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Every other evening they were required to be on duty until the office closed, and on these nights it was seldom that I reached home before eleven o'clock. On the alternating nights we were relieved at six. This did not leave much time for self-improvement, nor did the wants of the family leave any money to spend on books. There came, however, like a blessing from above, a means by which the treasures of literature ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... she has no home comforts; but, then, she has no heavy duties to perform, no housework, bed-making, sweeping, dish-washing, or clothes-washing, and when her work is done, she is her own mistress. She goes and comes at her own will; she has time for self-improvement, but best of all she has something to look forward to. That is a great advantage over girls of other occupations, who have such a small ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... and, in one sense, was a demagogue, as well as a statesman, since he appealed to popular passions and interests. He was very eloquent, and was the idol of the party which was dominant in the State. His rank and fortune enabled him to avail himself of every mode of culture and self-improvement known in his day. He loved music, philosophy, poetry, and art. The great Anaxagoras gave a noble direction to his studies, so that he became imbued with the sublimest ideas of Grecian wisdom. And his eloquence is said ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... America as a whole as London bears to the British Isles. Englishmen take no account of, for they have not seen and no one has reported to them, the intense craving for and striving after culture and self-improvement which exists (and has existed for a generation) not only in such larger cities as Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and New Orleans, but in many hundreds of smaller communities scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific. One must have such ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... unwise poor law administration, rightly enjoin the strictest caution in contemplating new experiments. But the growing recognition of the duty of the State to protect its members who are unable to protect themselves, and to secure fair opportunities of self-support and self-improvement, as well as the danger of handing over their protection to the conflicting claims of private and often misguided philanthropy, is rapidly gaining ground against the advocates of laissez faire. It is beginning to be felt that the State cannot afford to allow the ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... the mirror ever so assiduously does not secure the image of the sun on its surface. The only way to do that is to carry the poor bit of glass out into the sunshine. It will shine then, never fear. It is weary work to labour at self-improvement with the hope of drawing from our own characters evidences that we are the sons of God. To have the heart filled with the light of Christ's love to us is the only way to have the whole being full of light. If you would have clear and irrefragable, for a perpetual ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... exercised by parents too untrained themselves to understand how to govern him properly, and in most instances too ignorant to have any just idea as to the difference between right and wrong in the ordinary affairs of life. What is the result? The child grows up without any lessons in self-control and self-improvement, or any intelligent appreciation of the cardinal principles of morality. If the child is a boy, he leaves his parents almost as soon as he can earn his own support and only too often leads for years the life of a vagabond. All the worst ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... that you are 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... have been, at this very day, squatted on his naked haunches in the woods of Ecclefechan, painting his weather-hardened epidermis in the sun like his Piet ancestors. Where, in fact, can we look for unaided self-improvement and spontaneous internal development, to any considerable extent, on the part of any nation or people? From people to people the original God- given impulse towards civilization and perfection has been transmitted, as from Egypt to Greece, and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... them, that they may become masters of themselves and their environments—a law unto themselves—fitting them for a perfect citizenship of a perfected republic. This most desirable of all accomplishments, requires better surroundings, more leisure and opportunity for self-improvement, more money, shorter hours of more remunerative labor—labor transformed from a hated drudgery to a desirable occupation. Behold, friend Gaylord, you have before you the outlines of the problem. Can you suggest ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... in his private capacity, or from whom he had received more remarkable proofs of his honour and love of literature, than Lord Russell.[298] In Birmingham shortly after, discoursing on education to the members of the Midland Institute, he told them they should value self-improvement not because it led to fortune but because it was good and right in itself; counselled them in regard to it that Genius was not worth half so much as Attention, or the art of taking an immense deal ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the causes and occasions for hostilities among the tribes, to inspire an interest in the observance of laws to which they will have themselves assented, and to multiply the securities of property and the motives for self-improvement. Intimately connected with this subject is the establishment of the military defenses recommended by the Secretary of War, which have been already referred to. Without them the Government will be powerless to redeem its pledge of protection ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... in hand. We must teach men how to make nobler uses of their incomes and themselves, while we endeavor to bring about reforms that shall give them greater comforts and more leisure to use for either self-improvement or self-debasement. ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... a raw youth; but my New England training had given me the serious and money-seeking characteristics of that part of our country. For ten years I applied myself exclusively to the details of business, having but few associates, devoting my leisure to self-improvement, and steadily accumulating a competency. On the death of a member of the firm I took his place. Five years passed, and I had attained a fortune. Some friends from the North called upon me in their travels, and during the week of their visit, I participated in more ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... troubles. [10] Until, however, they do realize this, their case is hopeless, and it is impossible to help them, but when they acknowledge that the fault is theirs, they can be shown that there is a remedy for their ills and a way out of their difficulties, by means of self-improvement. Let them then search for hidden weaknesses, and build up those weak places in their character, such as lack of grit, determination, steadfastness, persistence, patience, probity, decision, which are the cause of their troubles, and they will find that their circumstances ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... Havens. She had a way of making the frivolling talk of the supper table appear a warrantable substitute for the things that Peter knew, even while he echoed her phrases, that he wasn't getting. He found himself skidding on the paths of self-improvement and the obligations of seeing life, along the edges of desolation. He immersed himself as far as possible in the atmosphere of Blodgett's in order that he needn't have any time left in which to consider how far it ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... poet-scamp); he was rather impatient with poor Thoreau, because he was a purist solitary, and had too little of vice, and, as Stevenson held, narrow in sympathy, and too self-satisfied, and bent only on self-improvement. He held a brief for the honest villain, and leaned to him brotherly. Even the anecdotes he most prizes have a fine look this way—a hunger for completion in achievement, even in the violation of fine humane feeling or morality, and ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Love," and a sentimental pugilist indulged in reminiscences (per a hired pen from the cheap magazine field) upon "The Influence of my Mother on my Career." An imitator of Banneker developed a daily half-column of self-improvement and inspiration upon moral topics, achieving his effects by capitalizing all the words which otherwise would have been too feeble or banal to attract notice, thereby giving an air of sublimated importance to the mildly incomprehensible. Nine tenths of The Patriot's ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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 career, Mrs. Billington visited Paris, where she placed ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... Thirdly, she was placed in favorable circumstances after she came to the North; having frequent intercourse with intelligent persons, who felt a friendly interest in her welfare, and were disposed to give her opportunities for self-improvement. ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... declared ambition for literary excellence. From this club he withdrew himself; it did not meet the wants of his higher nature, but offered much that stimulated the grosser appetites and passions. Now he gave himself up to earnest self-improvement, and found in the higher and wider range of thought which came as the result a partial compensation for what he had lost. But he was not happy; far, very far from it. And there were seasons when the past came back upon him in such a flood that ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... not need to go abroad for lazy and impecunious placemen. But two things are certain. Nova Scotia is more contented, if not with its government, at least with the system by which that government is chosen, {90} and it has within itself the capacity for self-improvement. Before Joseph Howe Nova Scotians were under tutors and governors; he won for them the liberty to rise or fall by their own exertions, and fitted them for the expansion ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... intensely attractive to me, as being a kind of sublimation of the wild northern landscape that I had already loved in my native Lancashire; but the Highlands were not well chosen as a field for self-improvement in the art of painting. A student ought not to choose the most changeful of landscapes, but the least changeful; not the Highlands or the English Lake District, but the dullest landscape he can find in the south or the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... a moment deny that there may be, and occasionally is, a magnificent force of will and persistency of purpose in efforts at self-improvement on the part of perfectly irreligious men. But, if by the occasional success of such effort, a man conquers one form of evil, that does not deliver him from evil. You have the usurping dominion deep in your nature, and what does it matter in essence which part of your being is most conspicuously ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wavering to his uncle. He could not but acknowledge to himself that he was interested in all the boy's plans for the future,—all his youthful anticipations of happiness and success,—all his present little projects for progress and self-improvement,—and these matters, trivial though they may have been, gradually drew his thoughts from himself and his sorrow, put them farther and farther away into the dimness and silence of the past, and made the present a more vivid and earnest reality. Was it any wonder that, seeing he ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... neglected. It has succeeded in calling attention to the fact that the Negro race has a good deal more intelligence and virtue than it uses for its own advancement. The controlling spirit of this new association of colored women is first of all for self-improvement. It is the most distinct voice of self-admonition and self-examination yet uttered by a national body of Afro-Americans. In other words these women coming from all parts of our country and from various conditions of the people, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... 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 of truth, integrity, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... the moral health and preparing the way for violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants; on the weakness of women and the debauchery of men. He discourses on the vanity of human wishes with the moral wisdom of Dr. Johnson, and urges self-improvement like Socrates and Epictetus. [Footnote: The best translations of Juvenal are those of Dryden, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... earnestly, until he saw clearly the principles involved in them. It was in these early days of experimenting and self-education that the desire to become a philosopher was implanted in his mind. He embraced every chance for scientific study and caught every opportunity for intellectual self-improvement. In the last year of his apprenticeship he was enabled through the kindness of a customer at his master's shop, to attend a course of four lectures on chemistry, given by Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... Scandinavian language. Without brilliance, producing few leaders, the Norseman represents the rugged commonplace of American life, avoiding the catastrophes of a soaring ambition on the one hand and the pitfalls of a jaded temperamentalism on the other. Bent on self-improvement, he scrupulously patronizes farmers' institutes, high schools, and extension courses, and listens with intelligent patience to lectures that would put an American audience to sleep. This son of the North has greatly ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... opportunities increased; women accumulated property; Legislatures were compelled to revise the laws and the church was obliged to liberalize its interpretation of the Scriptures. Women began to organize; their missionary and charity societies prepared the way to clubs for self-improvement; these in turn broadened into civic organizations whose public work carried them to city councils and State Legislatures, where they found themselves in the midst of politics and wholly without influence. Thus they were led into the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... you would admit that the desire to rise out of a class is almost inseparable from the amount of self-improvement that you would wish to give them?—I should think not; I think that the moment a man desires to rise out of his own class, he does his work badly in it; he ought to desire to rise in his own class, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... to give her up at her marriage, when she was enlarging the family tie by founding another family. It was easy to understand that they permitted and even promoted her going to college, travelling in Europe, or any other means of self-improvement, because these merely meant the development and cultivation of one of its own members. When, however, she responded to her impulse to fulfil the social or democratic claim, she ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... licence is one name for this kind of exaggeration. But I exaggerate very little indeed, much less than perhaps you think. I know that you are going to point out to me that vast numbers of people regularly spend a considerable portion of their leisure in striving after self-improvement. Granted! And I am glad of it. But I should be gladder if their strivings bore more closely upon the daily business of living, of self-expression without friction and without futile desires. See this man who ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... Bath, and Wells. At each stage we spoke dutifully of the scene and its associations; I sketched, the Shyster spouted poetry and copied epitaphs. Who could doubt we were the usual Americans, travelling with a design of self-improvement? Who was to guess that one was a black-mailer, trembling to approach the scene of action—the other a helpless, amateur detective, waiting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the object of getting to the end of it. They reach the word Finis with the same sensation of triumph as an Indian feels who strings a fresh scalp to his girdle. They are not happy unless they mark by some definite performance each step in the weary path of self-improvement. To begin a volume and not to finish it would be to deprive themselves of this satisfaction; it would be to lose all the reward of their earlier self-denial by a lapse from virtue at the end. To skip, according to their literary code, is a species of cheating; it is a mode of obtaining credit ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... that it was almost impossible to rear a well nurtured, much less a well educated and well dressed family, and, moreover, the hours of labor in some branches of business were so long as to shorten the lives of operatives and make self-improvement impossible. The natural progress of civilizing influence did much to abate many of these evils, but the organization of labor removed sores that had not and perhaps could not have been reached in other ways. Having then an excuse for organization, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... even hold themselves above keeping note books, or producing, chiefly for the beneficial exercise of it, essays, journals, descriptions, verse and fiction not meant to be offered for sale—solely copybook exercises, produced for self-improvement or to gratify an impulse ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... these safeguards, the woman of society must bid good-by to all opportunities for solitude, self-improvement, or the fulfillment of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... idealistic. They both depended upon the simple idea that men could conceive of themselves as better than they actually were, and upon the fact that such a conception is the strongest motive force in the world in the direction of self-improvement. The mystery of conversion is nothing more than the conscious apprehension of the fact that one's life is meant to be noble and beautiful, and that one has the power to make it nobler and more beautiful than ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... attitude towards name and pedigree, exercised a marked influence on his whole career. "To prove himself worthy of his forefathers was the purpose of his early manhood. It gives us a key to many of the singularities of his character; to his hunger for self-improvement; to his punctilious observance, from a boy, of the essentials of gentlemanly bearing, and to the uniform assertion of his self-respect."* (* Dabney ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... case, each of us has to deal with a tremendous problem; and the more earnestly and honestly we try to deal with it, the more we shall feel how grave it is. You can cure a great deal, I know. God forbid that I should say one word that seems to deny a man's power to do much in the direction of self-improvement, but after all that is done, again you are brought short up on this fact, the testimony of conscience. And so I see men labouring at a task as vain as that of those who would twist the sands into ropes, according to the old fable. I see men seeking after higher perfection of purity than they will ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the vices which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants; on the frivolity of women and the debauchery of men. He discoursed on the vanity of human wishes with the moral wisdom of Dr. Johnson, and urged self-improvement like Socrates and Epictetus. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... was a fellow-student with Goldsmith at the college. Neither the statesman nor the poet gave promise of their future celebrity, though Burke certainly surpassed his contemporary in industry and application, and evinced more disposition for self-improvement, associating himself with a number of his fellow-students in a debating club, in which they discussed literary topics, and exercised themselves ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... their hands, for trees are not always blowing down, nor wires snapping through the tension of the cold, and at some stations there will not be a dozen telegraph messages sent the whole winter through. If a young man be at all ambitious of self-improvement, here is splendid opportunity of leisure, but a great many are not at all so disposed. Character, except the most firmly founded, is apt to deteriorate under such circumstances; standards of conduct to be lowered. And what is here written of the young men of the signal-corps may well apply in ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... 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 as ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... hitherto ground on at after-education and self-improvement," said Rachel; "now I trust to make my preparation available for others. I will undertake any of your boys ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lesser degree conscious of this, and, as we know, frequently remain conscious of it as a desire and nothing further to the end of life in flesh. By means of it He draws a soul towards Himself until, because of it, the whole being is willing to make efforts at self-improvement, and this is the essential: it is this cleaning up of the character, this purification, which alone can bring us to the point where we can receive God's communications of Himself (in other words, ecstasies and periods of reunion with Celestial-living). Ecstasies inspire and awaken ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... 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 ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... it," said Pauline, always eager for self-improvement and roused by Olivia's stories of her college experiences. "But father'd never let me go to ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... work in a library offers opportunities for service and self-improvement. The profession is fairly well paid. It requires careful training and constant study. Enthusiasm, ability and initiative may make the librarian one of the most useful and influential citizens in ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy |
