"Betterment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... citizen of Chicago, who founded the railway mail service of the United States. A city art commission approves all works of art before they become the property of the city, and at the request of the mayor acts in various ways for the city's aesthetic betterment. The Architectural Club labours for the same end. A Municipal Art League (organized in 1899) has done good work in arousing civic pride; it has undertaken, among other things, campaigns against bill-board advertisements,[11] and against ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... lost its savor, just as his soul had lost its slowly-won serenity. His business had no importance to any save himself. It had been merely to winter decently and economically with an eye cocked for such opportunities of self-betterment as came his way, and failing material opportunity in this Bagdad of the Pacific coast to make the most ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... thus gained intimate acquaintance with a pile of tin cans, a scrub hard pine, and a big hill of black ants. As the proper method of moving sideways, when in skirmish line, is to roll, I rolled away from the latter position, not to the betterment of my poncho. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... that you may have found pleasure in considering their lives and their works as I have done. For as I wrote of their behavior and pondered upon it, meseemed they offered a very high example that anyone might follow to his betterment who lives in this world where so much that is ill ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... jest laid ter rest was ther leader of ther Harpers an' ther Thorntons but over an' above thet he was ther friend of every man thet loved peace-abidin' and human betterment." ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... defendant, etc. The New York Courts, under the present statute, are powerless to prevent this abuse. In Massachusetts half a dozen of our principal editors and "special writers" would have been locked up long ago to the betterment of the community and to the increase of respect for our courts ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... The doubts regarding the wisdom of selecting any one form of lime for the betterment of soil conditions have been promoted very naturally by the conflicting interests of men who would furnish the supply. Some dealers in fresh burned lime have asserted that it was folly to expect any appreciable ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... even plead for a month's leave of absence. But my reasons were of no avail, and after arguing pro and con for over an hour, I went with her to the house. If the Almighty ever made a good woman and placed her among men for their betterment, then the presence of Jean Lovelace at Las Palomas ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... immediate help in this new campaign against the social evil will probably come thus indirectly from those streams of humanitarian effort which are ever widening and which will in time slowly engulf into their rising tide of enthusiasm for human betterment, even the victims ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... and greed. One remedy for the evil would be that no children should be born in it for the next thirty or forty years—the relief would be incalculable,—a monstrous burden would be lifted, and there would be some chance of betterment,—but as this can never be, other remedies must be sought and found. It's pure hypocrisy to talk of love for children, when every day we read of mothers selling their offspring for so much cash down,—lately in ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... Europe had done for civilization with her long roll of kings and priests, her despotic governments, and her unequal laws—the people in most cases ciphers, and in all cases ignorant and enslaved—with no room for expansion, and little or no hope of political or social betterment; every inch of liberty, in every direction, which they had gained, wrung from their oppressors piecemeal, in bloody ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... man, and I have not failed. That is my pride—the glory of my manhood, for the means of accomplishment no matter how unworthy, are unimportant compared with the great mission of the Germanic race in the betterment of humanity." ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... the arousal of the public conscience against political corruption, party corruption, and interparty as well as intraparty bribery and tyranny. There is accord between all the forces for betterment. Barbarism and cruelty toward the brute creation are as certainly doomed as polygamy and human slavery were. The needs of surgery will be preserved from wanton slaughter in the name of surgery, in times past, and now wrought by men called doctors and by ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... word than any of the little gospels that we hear clamouring round about us are able to utter. It means something a great deal more than either social or intellectual, or still more, material or political betterment of man's condition. The disease lies so deep, and so great are the destruction and loss partly experienced, and still more awfully impending over every soul of us, that something else than tinkering at the outsides, or dealing, as self-culture does, with man's understanding or, as social ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... his life will be to enrich the rich. If, by any means—industry, opportunity, invention, speculation, dishonesty, chance or inheritance—he gets on top, then the workers will be working for him by the same law. The fact remains that every dollar's worth of betterment in the country increases the value of city property one dollar, without effort to the owner. A city is an artesian well. Take it from me, Thompson, a man of your ability ought to make connections and get ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... the immigrant is, always, the betterment of his condition. He leaves old communities, where competition in all branches of industry is great, in the hope of "getting in on the ground floor," as we used to say, when he arrived in a new country, and every American, and, in fact, everybody else, wants to get rich ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... cases and stimulate peristalsis; the gas inflates the cecum and drives the contents of the bowels into the abscess cavity; this sets up secondary inflammation. The meat juice and wine could have been left out to the patient's betterment. It is refreshing to know that no drugs were given, and if the case had been treated from the start on the no-drug plan the course and ending would have been very different. The poultices would have done as ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... does science give for human endeavor? Although it may seem that the biologist leaves his field when he considers these questions, his duty would be unfulfilled if he neglected an opportunity to give his results their highest utility through their use for the betterment ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... his leave he had begun to change his mind about going home. This was due, partly, to a slight betterment in his health, which he at this time mentions; chiefly, it would seem, to the prospects of a Spanish war. This, by doubling the number of his enemies and the quarters whence they might come, contributed to the pleasurable excitement that was ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... German, and the representations were dual in language in all cases, except the Italian works. I mention this fact, not because of its singularity, for it is a familiar phenomenon all over the operatic world, except perhaps Italy, but in order to point out hereafter a betterment, which came in with a more serious artistic striving later. The chorus always sang in the "soft bastard Latin," whether the principals sang in Italian or French; and the occasions were not a few when two languages were sung also by the principals—when lovers wooed in French, and received their ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... anything more about his mysterious identity. But she felt sure that he had been trying, from some evil motive, to injure her employer both personally and professionally, and his sudden disappearance, followed by the easing of Brand's anxiety and the betterment of his spirits, convinced her that Gordon had been at the bottom of all the trouble and made her hope that the architect had stopped his machinations and would be annoyed by ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... traffic was a shameful trade, but they pronounced themselves unable to follow any other. Curiously enough the work proved a tonic to the 'Bishop.' He allowed himself so many drinks a day, and observed faithfully other rules to his physical and financial betterment. He started a reading- room in connection with the bar, for he had had experience in such matters when a curate at home; and the illustrated papers sent regularly by his maiden aunt were in great demand. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... satisfaction of the magistrates that the owners are in fault, and the sites of such dwellings might be obtained by a cheap process. In all cases we ought to give powers to public bodies to take land for public purposes at a fair price ... and by the adoption of the principle of betterment ... owners would be called upon to make special contribution towards schemes which would ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... leads towards the conclusion that the safety of the future lies in a progressive movement of social control alleviating at least the misery it cannot obliterate, and based upon the broad general principle of equality of opportunity, and a fair start. The chief immediate opportunities for social betterment, as the writer sees them, lie in the attempt to give every human being in childhood, ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... official career, running sometimes, indeed, into an ostentation of simplicity whose good taste might be questioned. But of Jefferson's entire sincerity there can be no doubt. Inconsistent as he sometimes was—as every man is—his purposes and policies all tended steadily toward the betterment of humanity; and the great mass of the people who to this day revere his memory, "pay a just debt of gratitude to a friend who not only served them, as many have done, but who honored and respected them, as very few ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... always be, for those who read with their mind and soul as well as their eyes, anything but a depressing writer. For them, on the contrary, she will be a tonic force, a seer using fiction as a means to an end—and that end the betterment ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... wheel to the side of the room, and went gravely back to her chair. Her energy had fled, leaving her hushed and tremulous. But not for that did aunt Ann relinquish her quest for the betterment of the domestic world. Her tongue clicked the faster as Amelia's halted. She put away her work altogether, and sat, with wagging head and eloquent hands, still holding forth on the changes which might be wrought in the house: a bay window here, a sofa there, new chairs, tables, and furnishings. ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... suppose, is to offset some of the evil agencies of the great city and keep the young people under good influences. The Woman's Meeting convenes on Monday afternoon. The leaders of the meeting are ladies of the church, who are laboring for the betterment of an inferior class of London women. I spoke before this meeting, by request, and was, so far as I now recollect, the only male person present. It is the custom to use the instrument in connection ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... this, for the reason that during the past fifty years so much has been written on the subject. A number of movements for human betterment have kept the whole idea in the forefront of the public mind. It is an idea only partially accepted as yet, arousing as much opposition among the conservative as hope on the part of the progressive. Since, however, ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... look for one. Judged by his personal bearing, who is brighter, more persuasive, more equal to the occasion than himself,—less open to Doudan's stricture upon writers who hoard and store up their thoughts for the betterment of their printed works? Lowell's treasury can stand the drafts of both speech and composition. Judged by his works, as a poet in the end must be, he is one who might gain by revision and compression. But think, as is ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... In Naples and ass was condemned to be burned at the stake, but the sentence appears not to have been executed. D'Addosio relates from the court records many trials of pigs, bulls, horses, cocks, dogs, goats, etc., greatly, it is believed, to the betterment of their conduct and morals. In 1451 a suit was brought against the leeches infesting some ponds about Berne, and the Bishop of Lausanne, instructed by the faculty of Heidelberg University, directed that some of "the aquatic worms" be brought before the local magistracy. This was done and the leeches, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... further human welfare. He would have the astronomer and physiologist pursue their tasks, not merely for the sake of acquiring knowledge, for the gratification of the curiosity to know, but for the betterment of man's lot. And for the same reason he insisted on the pre-eminence of the sympathetic affections over the intellect. The reason, he declared, must ever be the servant, though not the slave, of the emotions. Altruism, or the service of others (a word of his own coining), must be made to ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... supervisor, county commissioner, or the more conspicuous offices of state and national government. Or as plain citizens they will lend these officials their active support for community and national betterment. ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... corporate operation promise more for the betterment of human conditions, for a higher standard of morals and of education, or great certainty of profit for capital, than by systematically aiding men ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... worthiness before God on the ground of their own moral character and physical generation; feeding their tendency to imitate the true faith by great humanitarian undertakings and schemes for the reformation of individuals and the betterment of the social order. God's necessary requirements of regeneration are carefully set aside, and the blinded souls go on without hope, "having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in there, because of the ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... to find out how to make our psychic powers count for the betterment of the world. I am very psychic. Some ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... land. As captain of a vessel may be judged By those subordinate to his command, So do I quick conception of thee form. By the broad mental gifts of Seldonskip Who were the hose, through which thy mind doth squirt Most sapient thought, for mankind's betterment. Seldonskip: You bet his wisdom squirts until I feel As if my think tank were about to bust. Francos: Good captain, greatly hast thou honored me And from such worthy source, I doubly feel The compliment were born from honor's womb; Anon, with thee would I more converse ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... of man, the pig holds an important place. He has had no small share in the betterment of the estate of his masters. One of the large questions which beset men in their unconscious endeavors to lay the foundations of civilization was that of food-supply. No sooner does a population become ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... creations of the aged spirit as the French Renaissance Chateaux of Touraine, or Rouen's Hotel Bourgtheroulde, they showed what vigour there was left, if only it had been permitted to remain original. Nor is there any hope of betterment in architecture, or any art, to-day, until something of the spirit has come back to us which made each citizen proud of the house he lived in, or of the House of God he helped to build, until the love of workmanship that built the old ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... come in their tens, they now came in their hundreds, for here was News. The Assembly of the League of Nations is not News, until it stumbles on mystery and disaster, becoming material for a shocker. The meeting together of organisations for the betterment of the world is not News, in the sense that their failure is. Deeply Henry, going about his secret and private business, intent and absorbed, pondered this question of News, what it is and what it is not. Crime ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... be innate in human beings everywhere, offers a clear and indisputable revelation of a purpose for man's life, above and beyond the mere continuation of it. It is one very solid answer to the second part of the great question: What is the purpose of my life? To strive toward betterment and excellence, in accordance with your lights and conscience. Why? Because, just as a feeling within you tells you that a sunset is beautiful, so there is this other feeling within you, which tells you this is ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... without taking the centre of the stage, or repelling support by affectations of manner. But like Conkling he relied upon the use of patronage and the iron rule of organisation, and too little upon the betterment ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... wholly unnecessary. The farmer is essential, because without him we should starve. Nobody else is essential. We must not get the big-head. Economical farming on Socialistic methods is impossible, and any successful system of Social betterment must be based on the requirements of economical farming. Finally, to conclude this preliminary reconnaissance, the attitude of Socialism to religion is wholly unjustifiable. I am profoundly convinced that the ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... pains to give them what historians so rarely give, the measure of a period in terms of a human life. It is from secondary impressions divorced from reality that a contempt for the past arises, and that the fatal illusion of some gradual process of betterment of "progress" vulgarizes the minds of men and wastes their effort. It is from secondary impressions divorced from reality that a society imagines itself diseased when it is healthy, or healthy when it is diseased. And it is from secondary impressions divorced ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... against a certain head-watchman during the first days after the fact had leaked out that he was under suspicion. Not one of them could be shown to be true. Sometimes one man will bring a charge against another for the betterment of his own interests. Here is a letter from a watchman who had resigned, but wished to rejoin, "To his Exec. Chief Dircoter of the tembels. I have honner to inform that I am your servant X, watchman on the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... scope of this bureau's work was employment, housing, social welfare and readjustment, education and legal fairness. This bureau acted as a welfare clearing house for all social agencies working for the betterment of the colored people. ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... up the ascents. Boils, an old enemy, tortured her again; she was covered with them from head to foot, and was one mass of pain. "Only sleeping draughts," she said, "keep me from going off my head." As the months went on she became feeble almost to fainting point, and had given up hope of betterment. A note of sadness crept into her letters. "I cannot write," she told a friend at home, "but there is no change in the heart's affection, except that it grows stronger and perhaps a little more wistful as the days go by and life gets more uncertain." She was anxious to recover sufficiently ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... watchfulness, Gordon held out bravely. At the end of six months, however, during which no fresh indulgence had been possible to her, he had not gained the least ground for hoping that any poorest growth of strength, or even any waking of desire toward betterment, had taken ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... hundred dollars now, after buying the land about his house. When the right time came he would invest it in more property— grazing, a few herd of cattle and maybe in timber. Calvin had innumerable schemes for their betterment and success. To all this the sheer fact of Hannah was like the haunting refrain of a song. She was never really out of his planning. He might be sitting on his rooftree squaring the shingling; bargaining with Eli Goss, the stone-cutter; renewing the rock ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... court intrigues had much to do with the many changes which the score had to undergo before it became entirely acceptable to the powers that be in the Czar's empire. Possibly. But every change which has come under the notice of this reviewer has been to its betterment and made for its practical presentation. It is said that the popular scenes were curtailed because they represented the voice of the democracy. But there is still so much choral work in the opera that the judgment of the operatic audiences of to-day is likely to pronounce ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... famous Apemen stunt the growth of the brain by misusing it for the base purpose of accumulating individual wealth, our great men utilized their brains to receive, understand and operate the wise laws established by nature for the equal benefit and betterment of all mankind. And therein lies the chief difference between the piece of human machinery your soul now occupies and that which it once directed over four thousand years ago. Behold," said she, dramatically pointing at the director of the band, "that you were," and then casting her eyes upon ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... polished and profound speech conceivable is answered when a jackass mounts the platform and brays out something about the gallant boys in gray. The cry for progress, for material advancement, for moral and social betterment, is stifled, that everybody may have breath to shout for a flapping trouser's leg worn by a degraded old sot. All that your Southern statesmen have had to give a people who were stripped to the bone is fulsome rhetoric about ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... goodness and truth. (v) Duty should be the moving force of our life; and the thought that God is always in us and about us should incite us to lead good and beneficent lives, showing our love of God by loving our fellow-creatures, and working for their happiness and betterment with all our might. (vi) In various bygone times God has revealed, and even in our own days continues to reveal to us, something of His nature and will, by inspiring the best and wisest minds with noble thoughts ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... a certain wicked cheerfulness, that, even after the coming of Miss Caroline, Clem would be forced to pander to my breakfast appetites for the slight betterment it made in his fortunes, even must this be done surreptitiously. And at least one dinner was secured to me beyond the coming of this mistress; for Clem had conveyed to me, with appropriate ceremony, an invitation, which I promptly accepted, to dine with Mrs. Caroline Lansdale at six-thirty ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... impressed and appropriately depressed, for his eight hundred shares would be depressed in value by the necessity of heavy expenditures for tunnels and other improvements. Nevertheless, there was some consolation in the thought that such betterment, as Addison now described, would in the long run make the lines more profitable. But in the mean time there might be rough sailing. The old directors ought to act soon now, he thought. With the South Side company being done over, they would have to follow suit. But would they? ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... there was due to him a tribute of thanks: "God, I thank thee," saith he, but yet not a bit of this, for mercy; but for that he had let him live, for I know not for what he did thank himself, till he had made himself better than other men; but that betterment was a betterment in none other judgment than that of his own, and that was none other but such an one as was false. So then, the Pharisee is by this time quite out of doors; his righteousness is worth nothing, his prayer is worth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... leaders: Democratic Party, Martin LEE, chairman; Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, TSANG Yuk-shing, chairman; Hong Kong Democratic Foundation, Dr. Patrick SHIU Kin-ying, chairman note: in April 1994, the United Democrats of Hong Kong (UDHK) and Meeting Point merged to form the ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... vice—with all that dwarfs man's moral nature—it appeals to something within us, to be earnest advocates of its principles, by making them a living faith and illustrating its beneficent purposes. If we make one man purer and better, and that man one's own self, we have done something toward the betterment of the world. The voices of the past and of the present all speak to us today. Men and brethren, let us hearken unto them, and putting our trust in God, let us march onward, side by side together, until the standards of our order are planted ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... reverts to government; and, as this represents the production of the people as a government, government may dispose of it to other peoples in exchange for that which they produce. Thus we are establishing a trade between kingdoms, the profits from which go to the betterment of the people—to building factories for the manufacture of agricultural implements, and machinery for the various trades we ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Europe and the Empire better perhaps than any other living man; he is in sympathetic touch with rich and poor alike and has taken for many years deep interest in philanthropic and other schemes for the betterment of the poor; he has been trained in the school of constitutional monarchy by the personal teachings of his father and the potent example of Queen Victoria. The London Daily Telegraph said of him at the time of his accession—speaking probably with ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... thoughts as these pass through his mind while watching by her bed; alternated, checked, and sometimes destroyed, by the fears which attended her precarious condition, but returning with every apparent betterment or hopeful symptom. ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... havin' fixed the hinfant up, I'm a going to drop him in somebody's doorway. Hullo! Here's the house of that County Council! I fancies now it is rather in your way! You're up to everythink, you swells are, from "Betterment" to the claims of Cabby. You've a lot to learn; so jest have a turn—as I hope you'll ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... and Hanover for example, state aid came early to the continuation school. In 1874 an increased appropriation resulted in the betterment of the schools then existing and in the further establishment of like institutions. Here the communities must meet the cost of building, heating, lighting etc., and one-half of all the expenses not covered ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... classified according to their position and character, and had to maintain a prescribed level of quality. The materials to be employed were named. New streets were to be of certain widths, and so on. This is the Act that contains the first Betterment Clause: "And forasmuch as the Houses now remaining and to be rebuilt will receive more or less advantage in the value of the rents by the liberty of air and free recourse for trade," it was enacted that a jury might be sworn to assess upon the owners ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the preparation of school plays, or school festivals, in the writing and printing of school papers, in the participation in the school assembly, in the making of shelves, tables, or other school equipment, in the working for community betterment with respect to clean streets and the like, may be considered even more significant from the standpoint of the realization of the social aim of education than are the recitations in which they are ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... to the Ann Arbor citizens, though more excusable perhaps, was the standing protest of the students at the condition of the wooden sidewalks in the town, whose improvement apparently formed no part of the programme for civic betterment on the part of the good but conservative burghers. The students therefore constantly took matters in their own hands and about once in so often the offending rickety planks went up in flames. The class of '73 thus celebrated ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... and dozens of books on Sociology, and Socialism, and Syndicalism, and every conceivable subject that bears upon the relations between your class and ours, and I can't come to any but one conclusion. There is only one logical conclusion. Violent methods are useless. The betterment of the poor must come about gradually. If religion hadn't interfered, things would have been far ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the urgent need of keeping this organization in power. To change the leadership and organization of the House at this time means to bring confusion to those who have been successfully engaged in the steady working out of a great and comprehensive scheme for the betterment of our social, industrial, and civic conditions. Such a change would substitute a purposeless confusion, a violent and hurtful oscillation between the positions of the extreme radical and the extreme reactionary for the present orderly progress along ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... Arnold was one of England's purest and greatest men. As scholar, teacher, poet and critic he labored zealously for the betterment of his race and sought to bring them back to a clearer, lovelier spiritual life and to win them from the base and sordid schemes that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... efforts at social betterment—the reduction of unemployment, the improvement of wages and relief, the reduction of taxation, direct and indirect, and the provision of better housing conditions—should undoubtedly help to make conditions ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... acted just as they do now, no doubt. When there was anything to be done for general trade betterment, almost every man had some good reason for believing that his case was a special one different from all the rest. For every foolish thing he did, or wanted to do, for every unbusiness-like plan he had, he always pleaded that it was necessary in his case. He was the one man who had to sell at less ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... that thoroughgoing knowledge of the lives of the infrahuman primates would inevitably make for human betterment. Through the science of genetics, as advanced by experimental studies of the monkeys and anthropoid apes, practical eugenic procedures should be more safely based and our ability to predict organic phenomena greatly increased. ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... colonists, perhaps lonely and heartsick, will not find it quite so hard to go to a strange country, if they know in advance that the people are generous, big hearted and sympathetic; progressive and interested in all things that stand for the betterment of humanity. ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... indifferently provided and without any definite object; nay, to such an extent is this carried, that hundreds of young females venture out every year by themselves, to better their condition, which betterment usually ends in their reaching as far inland as Toronto, where, or at other ports on the lakes, they ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... America in 1865), one of the world's leading bankers (senior member of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., New York), and a prince of philanthropists, noted for his personal devotion and munificent gifts to many causes for human betterment. He was among the first to encourage and befriend the Menorah movement, founding in 1907 the annual Menorah Society Prize at Harvard. The present article forms the approved substance of an interview granted by Mr. Schiff to the Editors of ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... alliance. Afterwards I became admitted to comradeship, and then to leadership. I need hardly say how earnestly I believe that men should have a keen and lively sense of their obligations in politics, of their duty to help forward great causes, and to struggle for the betterment of conditions that are unjust to their fellows, the men and women who are less fortunate in life. But in addition to this feeling there must be a feeling of real fellowship with the other men and women engaged in the same task, fellowship ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... two distinct civilizations having very little in common and always antagonistic. Sparta developed human machines, men of great physical force, but contributed nothing to the civilization of the world, nothing for the betterment of mankind. Liberty, patriotism, love of home and kindred, are the characteristics of the Athenian civilization. The contributions of Athens for the civilization of the world and the elevation of mankind are beyond human conception. The mind ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... cheers him three times three, For if there was a pioneer in Civilisation's host, It was the cheery-hearted chap who schemed the Penny Post. And when the croaking cravens, who are down on all Reform, And shout their ancient shibboleth, and raise their tea-pot storm, Whene'er there's talk of Betterment in any branch of State, And vent their venom on the Wise, their greed upon the Great, Punch says to his true countrymen, "Peace, peace, good friends—be still! Reform does not spell Ruin, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... voted in favor, the only eastern State except Maine to have this record. In October Miss Anthony called a meeting of the presidents of all the women's organizations of the State in the interests of social betterment, which resulted in the foundation of the Civics Cooperative Council, and Mrs. Nancy M. Schoonmaker was engaged to give a course of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Corey was a large, firm woman who wore her white hair in a marcelled pompadour, and frequently managed to have a flattering picture of herself in the Sunday papers—on the Society-and-Club-Doings page, of course. She figured prominently in civic betterment movements, and was loud in her denunciation of Sunday dances and cabarets and the frivolities of Venice and lesser beach resorts. She did a lot of worrying over immodest bathing suits, and never went near the beach except as a member ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... fell she come home sick wid de fever. Yo' nuvver would 'a' knowed her fur de same ole Miss Anne. She wuz light ez a piece o' peth, an' so white, 'cep' her eyes an' her sorrel hyar, an' she kep' on gittin' whiter an' weaker. Judy she sut'n'y did nuss her faithful. But she nuvver got no betterment! De fever an' Marse Chan's bein' kilt hed done strain her, an' she died jes' 'fo' de folks ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... penalty upon him as a retribution for wrong-doing. There may be, usually is, no intention to improve the offender. To chastise him is to inflict deserved corporal punishment upon him for corrective purposes. To chasten him is to afflict him with trouble for his reformation or spiritual betterment. The word is normally employed in connection with ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... concerns us is one of simple fact. Assuming the present laborious effort at betterment to have been proved a "fiasco," how is the General Convention to set in motion any more promising enginery of revision? "Summon in," say our English advisers, "competent scholars, and give them carte blanche to do what they will." But the Convention, which is by law the final arbiter, has ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... to commit rape and murder, robbery and assault, and to violate every principle of honor that man has tried to establish for the betterment and advancement of ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... present Russian situation, which is unspeakably horrible and which seems beyond present hope of betterment, presents new problems to be solved at the ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... exclusive women of River Falls belonged to the Forum Club; its few rooms, situated in the business part of town, and handsomely but plainly furnished, were full of subtle reminders that here was no mere social center; here responsible members of the recently enfranchised sex met to discuss civic betterment, schools and municipal budgets, commercialized vice and child labor, library appropriations, liquor laws and sewer systems. Local politicians were beginning to respect the Forum, local newspapers reported its ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... her with an added desire. It was a desire coming straight from an honest, unsophisticated heart. She registered a vow that whithersoever her ambitions might lead her, she would always remember the "underdog," and work for his betterment and greater happiness. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... companions, and, amid new scenes, find help in self-reform. He was not, therefore, without at least occasional aspirations after moral improvement; but again he made the common and fatal mistake of overlooking the Source of all true betterment. "God was not in all his thoughts." He found that to leave one place for another was not to leave his sin behind, for he took ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... generation. He would simply tell them this great truth,—the foe for whom Germany was obliged to make these great military preparations was Russia. If ever they were used it would be against Russia, and at Russia's instigation.—In his humble way he was striving for the betterment of relations between the dearly beloved country of his birth and the equally beloved country of his adoption. Such meetings as these, instituted, as it seemed to him, for the propagation of unfair and unjustified suspicions, were one of the greatest difficulties in his ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... occasionally. This is the poem. I am sending it so that you'll see how mistaken I was at first in assuming that Mrs. Blythe was just a kind-hearted little social butterfly, who had taken up housing betterment as a fad. Some of the divine fire that inspired the great reformers of all the ages must burn in her soul, or she couldn't have written this poem that ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... whose talent architecture gained no less betterment than painting had gained from that of Cimabue, being born in the year 1232, was thirty years of age when his father died, and was held in very great esteem, for the reason that, having not only learnt from his father all that he knew, but having also given attention ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... Nelson's" history is to enlighten the public concerning life behind the wicket and thus pave the way for the legitimate organization of bankclerks into a fraternal association, for their financial and social (including moral) betterment. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... scheme may be said to be the origin of the English Notification of Births Act, which came into operation in 1908. This Act represents, in England, the national inauguration of a scheme for the betterment of the race, the ultimate results of which it is impossible to foresee. When this Act comes into universal action every baby of the land will be entitled—legally and not by individual caprice or philanthropic condescension—to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his amusement. "Men who have spent years in studying agricultural conditions, and experimenting with soils, and seeds, and plants, and fertilizers, and all that, write what facts they have learned for our betterment. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... out and admired may account in part for present elation and balmy succeeding sleep, but the vital functions seem, if my own sensations are typical, to receive also a general toning up. Twice a month at least a man should spend an afternoon on a coral reef for the betterment of body and brain. On the face of it this is counsel of perfection. Only to the happy few is such agreeable and blest physic proffered gratis. Yet the whole world might be brighter and better if coral reefs were more generously distributed. Breathing such subtle and sturdy ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... not less to master his social environment. Therefore, while sociology and the special social sciences present as yet no program for action, aiming simply at the discovery of the abstract truth, they will undoubtedly in time bring about vast changes for the betterment of ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... American economists to keep their faith in a simple rise of wages as an all-cure for labor unrest. In England, with a homogeneous labor class, active in politics, maintaining university extension courses, spending their union's income on intricate betterment schemes, and wealthy in tradition—there a rise in wages meant an increase in welfare. But in the United States, with a heterogeneous labor class, bereft of their social norms by the violence of their uprooting from the old world, dropped into an unprepared ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... bruises and distortion follow. When we view humanity, we behold not the true and natural man, but a deformed and pitiable product, undone by the vices of those who have sought to improve on Nature by shaping his life to feed the vanity of a few and minister to their wantonness. In our plans for social betterment, let us hold in mind the healthy and unfettered man, and not the cripple that interference and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... window before going to bed, but closed it as soon as he was asleep. Lawrence Veiller, our greatest expert on tenement conditions, says: "To bathe in a tenement where a family of six occupy three rooms often involves the sacrifice of privacy and decency, which are quite as important to social betterment as cleanliness." ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... personal intuition, was of the scantiest, if it had any existence at all. But my own emotional side was active, and my mind an inchoate mass of ideals and more or less sentimental longings for social betterment. And so, with Sylvia's gentle ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... thing is that we soften our hearts for its entrance, and grow in grace by its application. Tears of compassion such as our dear Saviour wept are in our eyes this morning as we plead with Thee to help us to apply these words to the betterment of this community." ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... School needs bucking up. It's the fourth largest in Zenith, but there's no reason why we should take anybody's dust. We ought to be first. I want to request you, if you will, to form a committee of advice and publicity for the Sunday School; look it over and make any suggestions for its betterment, and then, perhaps, see that the press gives us some attention—give the public some really helpful and constructive news instead of ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... of democratic civilization. This is not mere platitude. For we cannot properly judge the significance and the relation of the different industrial activities of our farmers, and especially the value of the various social agencies for rural betterment, except by the standard of class status. It is here that we seem to find the only ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... mission to deep sea fishermen came to be founded among the fishing fleets that frequent the Dogger Bank that has figured prominently in the recent international complication. It is a story rich in adventure and eloquent of accomplishments for the betterment of the men." ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... and drastic means of bringing them to themselves is to elect them to legislative or executive office. That will reduce over-sanguine persons to their simplest terms. Not because they find their fellow legislators or officials incapable of high purpose or indifferent to the betterment of the communities which they represent. Only cynics hold that to be the chief reason why we approach the millennium so slowly, and cynics are usually very ill-informed persons. Nor is it because under our modern democratic arrangements we so subdivide power and ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Like the German Information Service sheets, each contains from six to ten articles. All paint conditions in Russia under Trotzky and Lenine as steadily improving and show those men and their aids as gentle, kind-hearted individuals whose only sin is the betterment of mankind. ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... few centuries, the modern spirit nevertheless looks ever forward, not backward. A debtor to the past, it will be doubly creditor to the future. It will determine the type of individual and social betterment through coming centuries. Such an idea is implied in the phrase, "the continuity of history"—the ever-flowing stream of happenings that brings down to us the heritage of past ages and that carries on our richer legacies to generations ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the superintendent of a Sunday school in Cawnpore. He was giving himself to all sorts of betterment work which would lessen the misery of the poor. He had a seat in the city council. A hostel for boys was one of his enterprises. Here was a man doing his utmost to Christianize the industry in which thousands of his country men spent their lives; a second-generation Christian, and a man who must ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... they played the course together, not only to the betterment of Merle's technic, but to the promotion of a real friendliness between this Whipple and a mere Cowan. They became as brothers again, seeming to have leaped the span of years during which they had been alien. During those years Wilbur had kept secret his pride in his brother, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... liabilities from chemically dependent farming. Drs. Robert McCarrison and Weston Price addressed their concerns to other health professionals. Rudolf Steiner, observing that declines in human health were preventing his disciples from achieving spiritual betterment started the gentle biodynamic farming movement. Steiner's principal English speaking followers, Pfeiffer and Koepf, wrote about biological farming and gardening extensively and ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon |
