"Improving" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... steadily improving. I do not mean merely in morality—for public opinion now demands that as a sine qua non—but in actual efficiency. Every fresh appointment seems to me, on the whole, a better one than the last. They are gaining more and ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... endeavour to preserve those pictures that remain to us; but probably a far greater number have perished from damp or neglect, and a strange combination of mischief and ignorance. Let us hope that in this respect the times are improving. For one, I cannot consent to the wanton destruction of a single portrait, though ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... especially among warriors, artisans, and laborers. Delight took on, among common people, forms which at times were inappropriate. Reports began to circulate, it was unknown where they had originated, that the new pharaoh, whom the whole people loved instinctively, intended to occupy himself with improving the condition of earth-tillers, laborers, and even captives. For this cause it happened, an unheard-of thing, that masons, cabinet makers, potters, instead of drinking quietly and speaking of their own occupation, or family interests, dared to complain in dramshops, not only of taxes, but even ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... rest of Italy was animated by a similar spirit, and the progress of the nation repaid the liberality of their princes. The Latins held the exclusive property of their own literature; and these disciples of Greece were soon capable of transmitting and improving the lessons which they had imbibed. After a short succession of foreign teachers, the tide of emigration subsided; but the language of Constantinople was spread beyond the Alps and the natives of France, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... kind. A tulip was the flower which was thought the finest the preceding year, and consequently numbers of people afterwards endeavoured to procure tulip-roots, in hopes of obtaining the prize this year. Arthur's tulip was beautiful. As he examined it from day to day, and every day thought it improving, he longed to thank his friend Maurice for it; and he often mounted into his crab-tree, to look into Maurice's garden, in hopes of seeing his tulip also in full bloom and beauty. He ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... basic factor in improving library services will be cooperation among local authorities. Such cooperation should be the condition ...
— Report of the National Library Service for the Year Ended 31 March 1958 • G. T. Alley and National Library Service (New Zealand)
... the means or the inclination to bribe his clemency. An equal stranger to righteousness and temperance, he presented a fine subject for the eloquence of St. Paul, who it is presumed, however, made the profligate governor tremble, without either affecting his religious principles or improving ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Queen Elizabeth, and was sent with Sir John Davies into Ireland, of which he has left behind him some tender recollections in his description of the bog of Allan, and a record in an ably written paper, containing observations on the state of that country and the means of improving it, which remain in full force to the present day. Spenser died at an obscure inn in London, it is supposed in distressed circumstances. The treatment he received from Burleigh is well known. Spenser, as well as Chaucer, was engaged in active life; but the genius of his poetry was not ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the most painful inflictions in the course of my task; but was he not a tool of the most valuable kind? Woe to him who despises his axe, or flings it carelessly aside! Would it not have been very inconsistent, moreover, if I, who wished to improve a district, had shrunk back at the thought of improving ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... in the world-wide movement toward improving the position of women. The long-delayed Sacchi bill was introduced. It very largely removed the civil disabilities of women, which were many; abolished the authority of the husband, which was absolute; gave women the right to control their property, enter the professions, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... it," he declared. "When I once find out how to make a certain shot I will keep right on improving until ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... is improving right along," she said. "He brought Bob another dog to replace Lonesome. I felt sorry for ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and at the bottom of the coulee, where the ground sloped easily down into the open valley, whence they might emerge at the lower level of the prairie round about. He led the team for a distance down this floor of the coulee, until he could see the better going in the improving light which greeted them as they came out from the gully-like defile. Cursing his ill fortune, and wretched at the thought of the danger and discomfort he had brought upon the very one whom he would most gladly have shielded, Franklin said not a word from the beginning of the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... serves on, a committee on military expenditure in the colonies. " 19. Brings in Colonial Passengers' bill for improving condition of emigrants. " 31. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... been a great reader, he had read a cheap novel or two, but his browsings in the literary fields had been mainly confined to the uplands where the grass is improving. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... since learned those lines, and though little they needed, was not above advantaging them to the best of her ability. The candle began to flicker. She could not do anything ungracefully, but that did not prevent her improving upon nature a bit, when she reached forth and deftly snuffed the red wick from the midst of the yellow flame. Again she rested head on hand, this time regarding the man thoughtfully, and any man is pleased when thus regarded by ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... the case of those marriages and the case of these chapels. The Irish Presbyterians have gone on marrying according to their own forms during a long course of years. The Unitarians have gone on occupying, improving, embellishing certain property during a long course of years. In neither case did any doubt as to the right arise in the most honest, in the most scrupulous mind. At length, about the same time, both the validity of the Presbyterian marriages and the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... improving in looks at the rate she has, you'll find it difficult to prevent, I should think, Mrs. Bell." Miss Kimpsey began to wonder at her own temerity in staying so long. "Should ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... fortnight ago, and he addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself vicious and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and deed, imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the three objects mentioned by the Rhetor, this last, that of improving mankind, especially appealed to Pierre. The important mystery mentioned by the Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem to him essential, and the second aim, that of purifying and regenerating himself, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... family, God had intended it as the best and most efficient institution for training children in the ways of morality and purity, he proposed to follow the Divine example. The children were employed, at first, in improving the grounds, which had hitherto been left without much care; the banks of a little stream, which flowed past the cottage, were planted with trees; a fish-pond into which it discharged its waters was transformed into a pretty sylvan lake; and the barren ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... facilities for social happiness and intellectual and moral excellence, in this western world, under our mild and republican institutions. It was an uncommon display of talent and research, and of profound observations on the present, improved and improving condition of man. He pointed out the happy destiny which awaited the United States, which a powerful imagination had predicted, but which sober facts also authorize us to expect; and called upon the literary and patriotic youth of our country to use all honorable efforts for hastening ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... acquisition of money the chief interest and pleasure of their lives. Money-making in some form is the main occupation of the great majority of men, but it is usually as a means to an end. It is to acquire the means of livelihood, or the means of maintaining or improving a social position, or the means of providing as they think fit for the children who are to succeed them. Sometimes, however, with the very rich and without any ulterior object, money-making for its own sake becomes the absorbing ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... admirable instruments—if somebody at the West End would but set up a stock of them for sale, what a lot of customers he'd have!—Sibylla was content to cherish the mental view she had conjured up, and to improve upon it. All the afternoon she kept improving upon it, until she worked herself up to that agreeable pitch of distorted excitement when the mind does not know what is real, and what fancy. It was a regular April day; one of sunshine and storm; now the sun shining out bright and clear; now, the rain pattering against the panes; ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... pathos—the lacrymae rerum politicarum—he began to have pessimistic views of the permanence of the connection: "I am very far from underrating the value to Great Britain of her extensive and rapidly improving North American possessions, but I cannot conceal from myself the fact that they are maintained to her at no light cost, and at no {140} trifling risk. To all this she willingly submits, so long as the bonds of union between herself and her colonies are strengthened by mutual ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... house-breaker would have simplified matters by removing his chaussures, it had seemed to Clifford that the shortest cut to comfortable relations with people—relations which should make him cease to think that when they spoke to him they meant something improving—was to renounce all ambition toward a nefarious development. And, in fact, Clifford's ambition took the most commendable form. He thought of himself in the future as the well-known and much-liked Mr. Wentworth, of ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... rapid and steadily improving accession of student material, in enlarging powers for greater usefulness, in influence upon the educational methods of the country and the civilized world, and in the sympathy and respect it has gained for the Negro through the writings and speeches of its Founder and ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... will be more offended at them. If you think that by killing men you can prevent some one from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves. This is the prophecy which I utter before my departure to the judges who have ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... all is not perfect. Let us accept it on the condition of correcting and improving it. Examine the character, original and altogether modern, of this new Empire, which sincerely has no desire to repress liberty, which has acquired glory, and in which the august chain of tradition is already renewed. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... 'and there's north. Now you go that way first, and when you get a little way down, turn off that way.' 'Quite right,' I said. And at that the Lapp laughed contentedly, and said: 'There! I did not know that forty or fifty years back, so I must see better now than I used to—yes, it is improving all the time.' And then he crouched down and crept into his hut again—the same old hut, his home on earth. And he sat down by the fire as before, full of hope that in some few years he would be able to make out the sun... Eva, 'tis strange about hope. Here am I, ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... Anthony Street, after a Rutgers, and the Old Brewery Mission was establisht there. Thru Mrs. Pease, a member of the Market Street church, whose husband was the brave projector of the Five Points House of Industry, the church became interested in improving conditions. When Mr. Pease went south, his place was taken by Benjamin R. Barlow, one of ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... the wind was falling light; it had dropped quite perceptibly since sunrise, and the state of the ocean was reflecting this change; the sea was going down; it no longer broke anywhere, and the conditions for swimming were improving every moment. The pair of strange voyagers were making excellent progress, as was evidenced by the rapidity with which they drew away from the raft; within half an hour, indeed, they had left it so far astern that it was with the utmost difficulty ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... dwelling. Again by accident, the Bee happened upon a drop of resin. It was soft, plastic, well-suited for the partitioning of the Snail-shell; it soon hardened into a solid ceiling. The Bee tried the resinous gum and benefited by it. Her successors also benefited by it, especially after improving it. Little by little, the rubble-work of the lid and of the gravel barricade was invented: an enormous improvement, of which the race did not fail to take advantage. The defensive fortification was the finishing-touch to the original structure. Here we have the origin and development ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... ever to be aiming. While we think it possible to make some great and important improvements in the subject of religion, we shall be unsettled, restless, impatient; we shall be drawn from the consideration of improving ourselves, and from using the day while it is given us, by the visions of a deceitful hope, which promises to make rich but tendeth to penury. On the other hand, if we feel that the way is altogether closed against discoveries in religion, as being neither ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... what I had long desired, and favour me with his explanation of several passages in his works. It happened that just at that juncture was published a ridiculous book against him, full of personal reflections, which furnished him with a lucky opportunity of improving this poem, by giving it the only thing it wanted—a more considerable hero. He was always sensible of its defect in that particular, and owned he had let it pass with the hero it had purely for want of a better; not entertaining the least expectation that such an one was reserved ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... from the depressing spectacle of the invalids with their spittoons spying upon each other and marking the progress of death over each one of them, she left the Palace hospital, and took a chalet, where she lived aloof with her own little invalid. Instead of improving Lionello's condition, the high altitude aggravated it. His fever waxed greater. Grazia spent nights of anguish. Christophe knew it by his keen intuition, although she told him nothing: for she was growing more and more rigid in her pride; she longed ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... paid by New Englanders to the raising and improving of horses that I presume horse-races did not seem so wicked as card-playing or dancing, for I find hint of a horse-race in the Boston News Letter of August 29, 1715, for Jonathan Turner therein challenged the whole country to match his black gelding in a race ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... woman, has a habit of pulling out the camel-gander's tail. This ruins the appearance of the site of that tail, without commensurately improving the head whereunto the tail is transplanted—an unprofitable game of heads and tails, wherein tails lose and heads don't win. Even the not over clever ostrich knows better than to wear those feathers on the wrong end. Perhaps he knows that he is enough ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and reported George still improving; his father would meet her steamer in New York. It was very reassuring, it was every thing hopeful; but when she had read it she gave it to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... finding that the health of Mr. Correard far from improving, seemed on the contrary, to decline more and more, persuaded him to return to France. These gentlemen gave him a certificate of such a nature, that the French governor could not object to his departure; he received his request perfectly well, and two days ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... year have caused no changes of importance in the Fitzroy River. The new channel at Central Island—which opened out and was beaconed and lighted this time last year—maintains its depth unassisted by dredging operations, and appears to be improving. No. 5 cutting is consequently no longer used. A new vessel has replaced the old lightship at the Upper Flats. She is considered an efficient and necessary beacon at one of the most rocky curves of the Fitzroy River, and serves ...
— Report on the Department of Ports and Harbours for the Year 1890-1891 • Department of Ports and Harbours
... which had been caused to her husband, her visiters, and herself. She then portrayed the future evils which would result from such habits of neglect and inattention, and the modes of attempting to overcome them; and then offered a reward for the future, if, in a given time, she succeeded in improving in this respect. Not a tone of anger was uttered; and yet the severest scolding of a practised Xantippe could not have secured such contrition, and determination to reform, as was gained ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... soups and mashed fruits should be strained through a wire gauze coffee strainer. If the saliva is spat out by the child because it will not go through the stricture the child should be taught to spit the saliva into the funnel of the abdominal tube. This method of improving nutrition was discovered by Miss Groves at the ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... time to time among the still untamed mountain tribes upon our north-western border, there is entire tranquillity in India. The season has been good, and the revenue is improving. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... rattled merrily over an excellent road, the scenery improving every mile, till we reached the picturesque little village of Fernshaw, a tiny township on the river Watt. Important as an absolutely pure water supply is to a city like Melbourne, where the present provision is anything but satisfactory, we could not help ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... practicing at her key; for the certainty and assurance with which she transmitted her brief message this time could have come only from hours of practice. Now, in addition to acknowledging Charley's call, she added the simple message, "Jim is improving." Charley did not guess that she had practiced that short message for an hour. Even if he had, he would have been none the less pleased; for practice was the very thing needed to make her an efficient operator. By the ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... of one another in its various modifications is a kind of culture varying with the degree of directness with which it is carried out, but we should be careful not to ascribe to such culture any improving qualities upon those on whom it is brought to bear. The water-ousel plucks moss from the riverbank to build its nest, but is does not improve the moss by plucking it. We pluck feathers from birds, and less directly wool from wild sheep, for the manufacture ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... with the U.S. Office of Civil Defense and the States, many local governments are improving their civil defense systems by preparing community shelter plans. These plans include instructions to local citizens on what to do in the event ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense
... for women in Episcopal Church choirs has grown extensively within the last ten years in the United States, very much to the promotion of aesthetic sentimentality in the congregations, but without improving the character of worship-music. Boys' voices are practically limitless in an upward direction, and are naturally clear and penetrating. Ravishing effects can be produced with them, but it is false art to use passionless voices in music conceived for the mature and emotional voices of adults; ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... was improving rapidly. With the passage of each day he felt more secure. The reporter from the Times-Republican—if he were really on the trail of Dick he would have come to see him, would have told him the story. No. That bridge was safely crossed. And Dick ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tour of the world, the crown prince will be but following in the footsteps of the heirs to the thrones of Austria and Belgium, who have both visited the United States for the purpose of improving their minds, and of fitting themselves more thoroughly for their duties as twentieth century rulers. The present Emperor of Russia, and his younger brother, the late Czarevitch George, likewise started on a tour round the world, which in the case of George was cut short at Bombay by that sickness ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... their sugar content. In the dietary, sugar is too frequently regarded as a condiment instead of a nutrient, to be used for imparting palatability rather than for purposes of nutrition. While valuable for improving the taste of foods, the main worth of sugar is as a nutritive substance; used in the preparation of foods it adds to the total heat and energy of the ration. Sugar is sometimes used in excessive amounts and, as is the ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... is improving every day; she will be a very good-looking girl by and by—what is more, a stylish one," thought ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... missions, and a military force of five hundred dragoons is found sufficient to keep them in obedience, to prevent their escape, or, if they should elude the vigilance of their guards, to bring them from the midst of their numerous tribes, improving the favourable opportunity of making new converts by the power ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... one may ask if the characters they made—or perhaps only revealed, were not such as to make them wholly miserable when they began to "live happily ever after"? A symposium entitled "Is Love Really Worth It?" by such distinguished characters as Helen of Troy, Mrs. Potiphar and Cleopatra, might be improving reading, if the ladies were capable of telling the truth after lives of dissimulation ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... two brothers, the sons of a rich merchant, and when he died he left all his estate to be divided between them equally. This was done, and the elder at once set about trading and improving his condition, so that very soon he became twice as rich as he ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... those attractions so desirable in a rural retreat; besides, after the death of Anet, we had given up this place from economical principles, feeling no longer a desire to rear plants, and other views making us not regret the loss of that little retreat. Improving the distaste I found she began to imbibe for the town, I proposed to abandon it entirely, and settle ourselves in an agreeable solitude, in some small house, distant enough from the city to avoid the perpetual intrusion of her hangers-on. She followed ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... declaration, that he saw the councils of Rimini and Seleucia, [143] forces us to believe that he was secretly present at the time and place of their convocation. The advantage of personally negotiating with his friends, and of observing and improving the divisions of his enemies, might justify, in a prudent statesman, so bold and dangerous an enterprise: and Alexandria was connected by trade and navigation with every seaport of the Mediterranean. From the depth ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... calling on them to act up to that; to be true to themselves, and to their better nature; saying, You can do right in one thing—then do right in another—and do right in all? If we do not do this we do wrong; we destroy our children's self-respect, we make them despair of improving, we make them fancy themselves bad children: that is the very surest plan we can take to make them bad children, by ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... way of improving the occasion. He spoke strongly of the utter meanness of the one who could play so heartless a trick on a schoolmate. He said that it was as much thieving to get your fun at the expense of another as to steal his money. And while he talked, all eyes were turned ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... the accused, improving the occasion with a homily which, considering the ordeal that Mme Boursier had had to endure through so many months, and that might have been considered punishment enough, may be quoted merely as a fine ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... threatened her, before it had become completely an overmatch for her: she provoked an open war: but she had not done enough when she now, as is necessary in such cases, took into consideration the training of soldiers, securing the harbours, fortifying strong places, improving the navy: the most pressing anxiety arose from the general Catholic agitation ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... choked her, there was such an ache in her throat when she heard them planning an excursion for the next day. She had no one to make plans with, and when she was taken sightseeing it was by a French teacher, more intent on improving her pupil's accent than in giving ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of Yankee Land, the first significant move to supplant foreign labor with native labor, a step which has resulted in one of the biggest upheavals in the North incident to the European war, which has already been a boon to the colored American, improving his economic status and putting thousands of ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... hardly possible to believe that William could have found transports for the conveyance of fifty thousand war-horses across the Channel. For a long time the winds were adverse; and the Duke employed the interval that passed before he could set sail in completing the organization and in improving the discipline of his army; which he seems to have brought into the same state of perfection, as was seven centuries and a half afterwards the boast of another army assembled on the same coast, and which Napoleon designed (but providentially in vain) for a similar descent ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... have the g—goodness to tell me," he inquired, with distinguished courtesy, "if this is"—Billy's articulation was improving, but otherwise he was just as tipsy as ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... After thus improving her property, and augmenting her resources, the Countess thought she might trust herself again in Paris, though a parvenu filled the throne which, in her view, was justly the property of the elder ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... these things that we can grow at all. When this great law of nature is understood we see at once how it is that life is full of trouble; why it is that the whole visible world seems to be designed to keep us constantly at work physically and mentally, to challenge our resourcefulness in improving our physical, social and political conditions, to continually try our patience and to forever test our courage. It is the way of development. It is the price ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... kingfisher green. In this court too there are no peach or apricot trees and these bamboos already are green in themselves, so were this shade of green gauze to be put up again, it would, instead of improving matters, not harmonise with the surroundings. I remember that we had at one time four or five kinds of coloured gauzes for sticking on windows, so give her some to-morrow to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "My taste is improving, you see," said Godfrey, filling his glass to the brim. "And here—in the sparkling juice of the grape, let all remembrance of my boyish love ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... West Point, a well-organized staff, and well-educated officers, matters are a little improving. Congress has not been able to destroy the army, in the present war, though it did its best to attain that end; and all because the nucleus was too powerful to be totally eclipsed by the gas of the usual legislative tail of the Great National Comet, of which neither the materials nor ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... Rolfe. "I'll look out for you, but Oldfield must examine titles and do the actual business. The best of that investment is, it is always improving; no ups and downs. Come," thought he, "Cassandra has not spoken ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... carpenters to-morrow," she said after a while, "and I can't be sorry. They're great fun. I'm having the shed changed. The architect had suggested a more acute angle than my carpenter liked. I told Willis I thought he was improving on Mr. Lane's lines, and he replied, with that delightful drawl, 'Ye-us, he had ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... colleagues, a series of evening lectures on natural philosophy to classes of working-men in their working clothes, and the lectures are generally acknowledged to have done great service to the arts and manufactures of the West of Scotland, by improving the technical education of the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... it. But one day Sir Thorn, who was improving very rapidly, expressed a desire to walk out a few steps in the Champs Elysees. I offered him my arm; he accepted it; and, when we came back, he asked me if I would be kind enough to take ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... questioned whether the frame of mind in which the boys went to bed that night under their mother's eye, for Rachel could be firm in a case of conscience, was more improving than ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... tendencies. He was, I am informed, either a theist or an atheist, I cannot for the moment recall which— I think that we should make our little course as improving ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... tried to smile—and hid the sad result from him in a kiss. "I do feel the anxiety and fatigue," she said. "But my mother is really improving; and, if it only continues, the blessed sense of relief will make me strong again." She paused, and roused all her courage, in anticipation of the next words—so trivial and so terrible—that must, ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... volumes in which Modern Methods of Book Composition appears, is but one of the distinguished services in improving the practice of typography rendered by THEODORE LOW DE VINNE (1828-1914). At his invitation, the chapter, "Mechanical Composition," was contributed by PHILIP T. DODGE, President of the Mergenthaler ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... Each step of the way had been made clear, and it had proven the right way by the test of practical demonstration. The outlined schedule of habits, including some denials and some gratuitous activity, kept her in prime condition—in fact, in improving condition, for six highly satisfactory months. Never had she accomplished so much; never did life promise more, as the result of her own efforts. She had earned comforts which had apparently deposed forever her old nervous enemies. Victorious living ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... batteries would rid you of every ache and pain known to suffering humanity. Yet they were themselves as a class in a state of sad physical disrepair, and one of them was the visible prey of rheumatism which he might have sent flying from his joints with a single shock. The only person whom I saw improving his health with the battery was a rosy-faced school-boy, who was taking ten cents' worth of electricity; and I hope it did not disagree with his pop-corn ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... well; but they were succeeded by a clique which cared only for what was nicely said, or rather what was out of the common. Instead of using an elegant and refined diction, they employed only a pretentious and conceitedly affected style, which became highly ridiculous; instead of improving the national idiom they completely spoilt it. Where formerly D'Urfe, Malherbe, Racan, Balzac, and Voiture reigned, Chapelain, Scudry, Mnage, and the Abb Cotin, "the father of the French Riddle," ruled in their stead. Moreover, every lady in Paris, as well as in the provinces, ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... the convent were improving little tales of conversion, and edifying stories of Catholic girls who decline to enter into mixed marriages, and she thought of the novices reading this artless literature on Sunday afternoons. There were endless volumes of meditations, mostly ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... yet another way of improving poems, taught us well by Chrysippus; which is, by accommodation of any saying, to transfer that which is useful and serviceable in it to divers things of the same ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... ages ago gradually converted our forefathers from brute creatures into human creatures. It is babyhood that has made man what he is. The simple unaided operation of natural selection could never have resulted in the origination of the human race. Natural selection might have gone on forever improving the breed of the highest animal in many ways, but it could never unaided have started the process of civilization or have given to man those peculiar attributes in virtue of which it has been well said that the difference between him and ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... during these years were good, and constantly improving. For some time he held the post of Secretary to the Sierra Leone Company, with a salary of L500 per annum. He subsequently entered into partnership with a nephew, and the firm did a large business as African merchants under the names of Macaulay and Babington. The position of the father was ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... during the last thirty years in providing houses for the Masters of the Grammar School, converting the Great Gate into suitable Schoolrooms (towards which friends have contributed L575, including L325 by the City of Ely), partially restoring Prior Crauden's Chapel, improving the Deanery and the Canons' houses, building new Schools for the Choristers, with a Master's house, turning part of the old Sacristy into a muniment room and Verger's lodge, executing important sanitary works, laying underground ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... I think. I'm not wholly satisfied with myself, but I believe I'm improving every day," replied the ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... so rapid a rise in any settlement made by the English as that of Hong Kong, considering the very short time that it has been in our possession. Where, two years back, there existed but a few huts, you now behold a well-built and improving town, with churches, hotels, stores, wharves, and godowns. The capacious harbour which, but a short time ago, was only visited by some Chinese junks or English opium clippers, is now swarming with men-of-war ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... mourned his death, because I lost in him a kind friend who had always taken a sincere interest in my welfare; but he was become too infirm to enjoy comfort, and then to die is a blessing. I am glad he left your son his estate, but it was want of knowing the world if he thought of improving the Property by keeping him ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... in her a sympathy which he needed. It reminded him of the past. He awoke from his lethargy; began to work once more in the old way; mixed among men again; grew brighter. "Henry Floyd is growing younger, instead of older," someone said of him. "His health has been bad," said a doctor. "He is improving. I thought at one time he was going to die." "He is getting rich," said a broker, who had been a schoolmate of his. "I see he has just invented a new something or other to relieve children with hip or ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... without a hitch. The troops had not only been able to rest after their journey, but a few days had been available for practice marches and for overhauling equipment. The condition of the reservists, even those who had been longest away from the colours, was excellent and constantly improving. ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... that he drove we always called the high phaeton. The wheels turned under in front. I have it yet. He drove long-tailed horses, harnessed loose in light American harness, so that the whole rig had no possible resemblance to anything that would be seen now. My father always excelled in improving every spare half-hour or three-quarters of an hour, whether for work or enjoyment. Much of his four-in-hand driving was done in the summer afternoons when he would come out on the train from his business in New York. My mother and one or perhaps two of us children might ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... and America are deceived about the value of voting as a means of improving conditions of workingmen. Possibly women are deceived about the value of voting as a means of improving the conditions of ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... himself mainly to improving his motor (which, by the way, he has applied to the tricycle), M. Trouv does not disdain telephony, but has introduced into the manufacture of magnets for the purpose ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... was ready Alice had quite got over her disappointment. Prudence had told her the contents of the letter, and also her mother's wishes on the subject. Alice was naturally too cheerful to think much of the matter; besides, she was glad that Robb's business was improving. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... not bring you. You would have suffered terribly crossing Mount Cenis where a storm detained me twenty-four hours. I found Eugene very well; I am much pleased with him. The Princess is ill; I went to see her at Monza: she has had a miscarriage, but is improving. Good by, my dear." "Venice, November 30, 1807. I have your letter of the 22d. I have been for two days in Venice. The weather is very bad, which has not prevented my going through the lagoons to see the different forts. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Aunt Hannah, whom Twemlow had seen that morning and who was improving rapidly. But he agreed with Leonora that the old lady's vitality had been irretrievably shattered. Then there was a pause, followed by some remarks on the weather, and then another pause. Bran, after watching them attentively for a few moments as they stood side by side near the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... voice cannot be adequately trained without also improving the body; that the improvement of the voice can be doubly accelerated if the body is considered ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... up and tramp forth again. We generally make our final camp about 8 o'clock, and within an hour and a half most of us are in our sleeping-bags.... At the long halt we do our best for our animals by building snow walls and improving ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... between the two hands, leaning down upon the knees'—exactly the same attitude!" In his next week's letter he reported further: "I have not been to the Blind asylum again yet, but they tell me that the deaf and dumb and blind child's face is improving obviously, and that she takes great delight in the first effort made by the Director to connect himself with an occupation of her time. He gives her, every day, two smooth round pebbles to roll over and over ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sniff an ill-odour, and when it was strong would say, "Now we are coming to something very old and fine!"—meaning in art. [1819] A little common education in cleanliness, where it is wanting, would probably be much more improving, as well as wholesome, than any amount of education in fine art. Ruffles are all very well, but it is folly to cultivate them to the neglect ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... material were fast becoming hewers of wood and drawers of water for their more opulent neighbours in {114} the United States. On March 10 of that year Sir John Macdonald propounded to the House of Commons his scheme for improving the commerce of the country. His proposals were contemptuously received by the Government. The prime minister, while admitting the serious character of the depression then prevailing, attributed the cause ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... the invariable cry from the mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling out the oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased, besides perhaps improving it ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... in the course of the day to secure the northern face of the Quadrilateral. Their four tanks were of great assistance to them this day. Throughout the day the 18th Infantry Brigade maintained the fight with characteristic determination, but without improving its position very much. At 11 p.m., however, it launched the 1st Leicestershire Regiment by moonlight in a further attack on Douai Trench. The attack, delivered with great gallantry, was successful, and many enemy were killed in the trench which ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... having done but little more than cut the timber out and remove impassable obstructions. We crossed high and rugged mountains, and forded dangerous streams. But in the West the people are waking up to the importance of improving the public roads. The abundant natural wealth of that country, when properly developed by wise industry, will respond in such lavish abundance that there will be no lack of means to build the best of roads, and in every respect to raise the country ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... countries, destroyed harvests, and reduced towns and villages to ashes; which opened a grave for many thousand combatants, and for half a century smothered the glimmering sparks of civilization in Germany, and threw back the improving manners of the country into their pristine barbarity and wildness. Yet out of this fearful war Europe came forth free and independent. In it she first learned to recognize herself as a community of nations; and this intercommunion of states, which originated in the thirty ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... doubt, but they are not one whit worse than the lugubrious processions with their 'arrangements' in black and feathers which are still to be seen in England; and there, as here, it is to be hoped that with improving national taste these ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... prisoners, the law says, must go toward improving their condition, and the balance must be paid them after their release, with the proper deduction for their board and keep. When officers of hostile armies who are captured are put to work they must get the same wage rate ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... it appears to me that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist than a journey in distant countries. It both sharpens and partly allays that want and craving, which, as Sir J. Herschel remarks, a man experiences although every corporeal sense be fully satisfied. The excitement from the novelty of objects, and ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... shallow bit of a hole with three or four men, the right flank of this part of the line, while the cliff edge was only four or five yards distant, and the enemy was thought to be crawling back and gathering for a heavy assault. Mac set about improving the trench and forming a small right angle to prevent enfilade and to protect the flank. The sap had been deeper earlier in the day, for the first foot he shovelled out consisted of a sticky muddy mass of blood, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Fabien into one of those nests, where he will be protected against idleness by the little he will do, and against revolutions by the little he will be. It's a charming profession; the very smell of books is improving; merely by breathing it ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... you know, Vivian. I am not one of those who wish to oppose the application of refined philosophy to the common business of life. We are, I hope, an improving race; there is room, I am sure, for great improvement, and the perfectibility of man is certainly a pretty dream. (How well that Union Club House comes out now, since they have made the opening), but, although we may have steam kitchens, human nature is, I imagine, much the same this moment ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... learned as much about them as my opportunities have allowed; and when the course of events shall place the estate in my hands, it will be my first desire to afford my tenants all the encouragement a landlord can give them, in improving their land and trying to bring about a better practice of husbandry. It will be my wish to be looked on by all my deserving tenants as their best friend, and nothing would make me so happy as to be able to respect every ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... of the male bird. But there is a spirit abroad now which condemns cock-fighting, and to continue selecting and breeding cocks solely for their game-points seems a mere futility. The energy and enthusiasm expended in this direction would be much better employed in improving the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... Established in a legal title to a throne which already commanded a prodigious extent of country, he found the first object of government already secured; and by applying himself with great sagacity to the third object, that of improving his people, it was reasonable to suppose that the second, the durability of his system, would become a necessary consequence. He effected his purposes, important as they were, merely by the introduction of the arts and the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... unfeelingly inflicts. At last she grows wiser, curbs and amends herself, corrects herself, returns upon her footsteps, repairs her errors, expending her best energies and her highest intelligence upon the correction. It is incontestable that she is improving her methods, that she is more skillful, more prudent, less extravagant than at the outset. And yet the fact remains that, in every department of life, in every organism, down to our own bodies, there is a survival of bad workmanship, of twofold functions, of oversights, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... to the ro[u]ka. Scowling he ran his eye over the crowd, taking in each and every. Then his eyes fell—first on Kogiku, the harlot of the Uedaya; then on the shrinking beauty of O'Some of the Aizawaya. Shu[u]zen was improving in these days. The Ue-Sama (Sho[u]gun) spoke harshly of those retainers who made no provision for issue to support loyally the fortune of his House. Let him who would seek his lord's favour furnish forth such noble and lusty issue as in the Kamakura ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... of the time in bed, but Susan, fired by Isabel Wallace's example, took regular exercises now, airing the dogs or finding commissions to execute for Emily or Mrs. Saunders, made radical changes in her diet, and attempted, with only partial success, to confine her reading to improving books. A relative had sent Emily the first of the new jig-saw puzzles from New York, and Emily had immediately wired for more. She and Susan spent hours over them; they became in fact an obsession, and Susan began to see jig-saw divisions: in everything her eye rested on; ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... natural aptitude, which so largely depends upon the models they may have had for imitation in the earliest days, is possibly quite excellent. Then comes the Voice Specialist on the scene with his pet theories for improving upon Nature, and he gets busy. He may have his ideas upon "breaks," registers, and a thousand other details. Perhaps he has written a book on the way in which Nature has made a botch of the voice, creating it in a number of sections like a fishing rod, specially to provide ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... he, "I prefer to continue improving my mind rather than idle away my days. I've never been to college or to any sort of school. I've been tutored at home ever since I can remember. I did give it up for a time shortly after the death of my father. I thought that the management of the estate would keep me occupied. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... we have made the matter worse," he said to his wife, who, on returning from a visit to Clara, reported that, so far from improving, she was too evidently sinking, daily. "If Fisher should have entered into another engagement, or, if his pride has taken fire at being thrown off on what may appear to him such slight grounds, I really tremble ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... of a Congregational missionary recently made, is probably true, viz.: that "one-fourth of the race is improving rapidly," yet much the larger part of them are almost, if not altogether, heathen. They are not across the ocean; under God's providence they are here, where you can touch them with your finger. Why here? {130} It will not do to say that nothing can ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... needed more money than the pound was giving him, he decided that the spirit of the times demanded public improvements, and therefore, as the executive head of the town, he levied taxes and improved the town by improving his wardrobe and the manner of his living. Each saloon must pay into the town treasury the sum of one hundred dollars per year, which entitled it to police protection and assured it that no new competitors would be allowed ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... from the chiffonier, and sat down on the sofa to read it. On being remonstrated with for her conduct, she replied that she "would not remain an hour in a house where those she helped had an objection to a young lady's improving her mind!" At an hotel at Toronto, one chambermaid, pointing to another, said, "That young lady will show you your room." I left Mr. Forrest's even for three days with great regret, and after a nine miles ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... health suffered to a serious degree. My tribulations increased to such an extent that I seriously contemplated suicide. I am convinced that this period left an indelible mark, and that not an improving one, on my character. Where sensitive children are concerned, chaff may be useful in hardening them, but it should not be ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... our way of thinking, Now you can do as you will, While we try to save her from sinking And hold her head to it still. Bale her and keep her moving, Or she'll break her back in the trough.... Who said the weather's improving, Or ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... ordered not to leave Petrograd. Alexiev became commander-in-chief; Ruzsky had the northern group of armies, Brusilov the southern; Kornilov was in command of Petrograd, and the central group was put under the command of Lechitsky. Reports came that discipline was improving everywhere on ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... place, Mark told Betts it would be necessary, for the moment, to make some sort of a fence. Within the crater, it was equally difficult to ascend, except at one or two places; but these ascents our mariners thought of improving, by making steps, as the animals were effectually excluded from the plain within by means of the sail which served for a curtain at the gateway, or hole ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... coffee, and a smoke, and a quiet chat, and then I'm going to stroll quietly down to Toad Hall, and get into clothes of my own, and set things going again on the old lines. I've had enough of adventures. I shall lead a quiet, steady, respectable life, pottering about my property, and improving it, and doing a little landscape gardening at times. There will always be a bit of dinner for my friends when they come to see me; and I shall keep a pony-chaise to jog about the country in, just as I used to in ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... protruding the tip of her tongue between her white teeth. No doubt on seeing herself in the looking-glasses she had thought she was pretty like this; and so, all day long, she poked her tongue out of her mouth, in view of improving her appearance. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... said Zoe, "but don't you suppose they may be improving the sleighing opportunity as well as ourselves? may be driving over here to call ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... Faubourg scoffed at a minister if he was not gently born, and produced no one of gentle birth that was fit to be a minister. There were plenty of nobles fitted to serve their country by raising the dignity of justices of the peace, by improving the land, by opening out roads and canals, and taking an active and leading part as country gentlemen; but these had sold their estates to gamble on the Stock Exchange. Again the Faubourg might have absorbed the energetic men among the bourgeoisie, and opened their ranks to the ambition which ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... your mind's eye of all that those sums, if properly spent, could effect for the nations who now waste them on heavy guns, rifles, dreadnaughts, fortresses and barracks. If this money were laid out on improving the material lot of the people, in housing them hygienically, in procuring for them healthier air, medical aid and needful periodical rest, they would live longer and work to better purpose, and enjoy some of the happiness ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... Portuguese power was on the wane; the Seedee was losing territory under the attacks of Mannajee and the Peishwa, while the Angrian power was divided. Meanwhile, the Company's position on the West coast was steadily improving. European pirates had ceased to haunt the Indian seas; Mannajee Angria found it necessary to maintain good relations with the English, though occasional acts of hostility showed that he was not to be trusted; while ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... profession, but I have my little plan For improving the position of the German Working-man. But the International Question stands a little in the way, So I've asked the Nations to convene—I only hope they may. Then ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... when I was young. It's no use attempting to explain a man's feelings, of course. Matoaca was almost as great a belle as Lucy, and she was the handsomest creature you ever laid eyes on—one of those big, managing women who are forever improving things around them. Why, I don't believe she could stay two seconds in a man's arms without improving the set of his cravat. Some men like that kind of thing, but I never did, and I often think the reason I went so mad about the other woman was that ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... to a private telegram, we learned that none of these was severely hurt, except Mr. Gray. Letters received afterward confirmed this news, and said that Mr. Gray was improving and would get well. Later letters spoke less hopefully of his case; and finally came one announcing his death. A good man, a most companionable and manly man, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sat in his elbow-chairs writing his apostilles, improving himself and his secretaries in orthography, but chiefly confining his attention to the affairs of France. The departed Mucio's brother Mayenne was installed as chief stipendiary of Spain and lieutenant-general for the League in France, until Philip should determine ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the outbreak of the plague a few calm and thoughtful students banded themselves together for the purpose, as they phrased it, of "improving natural knowledge." The ends they proposed to attain cannot be stated more clearly than in the words of one of the founders ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to our care, you're improving, my "Pet," a bit. Promising Novice, of that there's no doubt. But up to Champion form? No, not yet a bit. Just try that on, and you'll soon get knocked out. Can't say exactly how long we must bide with you, Help you develope grit, muscle, and pipe; But we must own you to-day—(though we ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... of the Opposition in England were checked by the gratifying accounts from Kew. The King was visibly improving, and hopes began to be entertained that there might be no necessity for a Regency after all. The letters of Mr. Grenville, reverting to the opening of the Parliament, trace the progress ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... earth's surface. Those of which we possess the fossil remains belong, almost without exception, to extinct species. They were crowded out of existence, as it were, by the new forms, more perfectly organized, which came to take their places in the improving condition of things. This continuous agency of the life-producing causes, effecting still higher results by each successive effort, seems to point directly to the gradual expansion and development of the qualities with which matter ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... tell me that their fathers used to be "moonshiners," and they say that at that time they thought it all right; did not realize the evils of alcohol until taught about it in the school. We believe, however, that the morals of this part of Kentucky are steadily improving, and feel confident of it in ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... great physical change, as of climate, or any unusual degree of isolation to check immigration, is necessary in order that new and unoccupied places should be left, for Natural Selection to fill up by improving some of the varying inhabitants. For as all the inhabitants of each country are struggling together with nicely balanced forces, extremely slight modifications in the structure or habits of one species would often give it an advantage over others; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... peasants of Mokroe, but he had the power of assuming the most obsequious countenance, when he had an inkling that it was to his interest. He dressed in Russian style, with a shirt buttoning down on one side, and a full-skirted coat. He had saved a good sum of money, but was for ever dreaming of improving his position. More than half the peasants were in his clutches, every one in the neighborhood was in debt to him. From the neighboring landowners he bought and rented lands which were worked by the peasants, in payment of debts which they could never shake off. He was a widower, with four ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... best means we've found for perpetuating and improving the race. It's a duty we owe society, to marry. I don't believe much in divorce either. Except for unfaithfulness. Unless the average lot of us are true to the marriage ideal the whole institution will be tainted. I guess the safety of society lies in each ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... relations with the United States. Surveys for the much-needed submarine cable from our Pacific coast to Honolulu are in progress, and this enterprise should have the suitable promotion of the two Governments. I strongly recommend that provision be made for improving the harbor of Pearl River and equipping it as ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... Found Mr. Bassnett improving. Expect to see him again in Buffalo. Called upon T. D. and found 400 dollars in 5's, 10's with particulars as to their legal tender, etc., by Mr. Bliss. Then dined and afterwards called upon Robert ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... told how in my muddled and wounded phase I had snatched at the dull project of improving my languages, and under the cloak of that spying a little upon German military arrangements. Now my mind set such petty romanticism on one side. It had recovered the strength to look on the whole of life and on my place in it. It could resume the ideas that ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Linda quietly, "that you would better forget that silly jesting and concentrate the best of your brains on improving your plans for Peter ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... looking weller and handsomer (as you say) than ever. Really, if she goes on thus improving, by the time she is nine and thirty she will be a tolerable comely person. But I may not live to see it.—I take Beauty to be catching— a Cholera sort of thing—Now, whether the constant presence of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... full employment, better housing, excellence in education; in rebuilding our cities and improving our rural areas; in protecting our environment and enhancing the quality of life—in all these and more, we will and must ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... 1807 and 1815, and prepared a series of propositions as the basis of future legislation, repealing a number of Acts and recommending the consolidation, into one Act of Parliament, of the provisions for the insane, as well as further facilitating the erection of county asylums, and improving the treatment of pauper ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... the use of poetical illustrations by orators leads him to express his conviction of the moral value of poetry. That poetry did have this improving effect ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... de la Fayette * Preface * Introduction * Chapter I Of Society and Civilisation * Chapter II Of the Origin of the Present Old Governments * Chapter III Of the Old and New Systems of Government * Chapter IV Of Constitutions * Chapter V Ways and Means of Improving the Condition of Europe, Interspersed with ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... wings tells that it is suspended there by no magic — the next instant it has flashed out of sight as if a fairy's wand had made it suddenly invisible. Without seeing the hummer, it might be, and often is, mistaken for a bee improving the "shining hour." ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... where science might accomplish new and unthought-of discoveries; while intelligent man would find a region teeming with useful vegetation, abounding with rivers, hills, and valleys, and waiting only for his enterprising spirit and improving hand to turn to account the native bounty ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... style from which, as was noted, Hazlitt may never have got free as far as philosophising is concerned, but of which he is a master. "On the Indian Jugglers" is a capital example of what may be called improving a text; and it contains some of the most interesting and genial examples of Hazlitt's honest delight in games such as rackets and fives, a delight which (heaven help his critics) was frequently regarded at the time as "low." "On Paradox and Commonplace" is less remarkable ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... to invite the Sniatynskis and several other people to dinner. Sniatynski has spread the news of my founding a museum for the public, and I am at present the hero of the day. All the papers write about it, improving the occasion as usual by pitching into those that waste their substance abroad instead of doing good to the country. I know their style so well, and it amuses me. There are the usual phrases about a citizen's duties and "noblesse ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz |
