"Bettering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... goodly woodes full of Deere, Conies, Hares, and Fowle, euen in the middest of Summer in incredible abundance. The woodes are not such as you finde in Bohemia, Moscouia, or Hercynia, barren and fruitles, but the highest and reddest Cedars of the world, farre bettering the Ceders of the Acores of the Indies, or Lybanus, Pynes, Cypres, Sassaphras, the Lentisk, or the tree that beareth the Masticke, the tree that beareth the vine of blacke Sinamon, of which Master Winter brought from the streighte of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... part with their children, if they like, but I will never part with mine." "Well, my good woman, the offer to educate them has done no harm: let me hope it will do good. I would have you recollect that you have now a proposal made you of bettering their present and future condition. You and I must soon meet at the judgment-seat of Christ, to give an account of this meeting; and you know that I can do better for your little ones than you can." She was silent. The author then addressed these ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... who know of the existence and location of the Public Library there are many whose ideas of its contents and their uses, and of the conditions and value of such uses, are limited and crude. The advertising that succeeds in bettering this state of things is surely doing an economic service. All these things the self-respecting citizen should know. But beyond and above all this there is the final economic service of advertising—the causing a man to ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... in which Cerimon, the man withdrawn from the world to study the bettering of man, revives the body of Thaisa, are the most lovely ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... the night, and fast the day; Compare dead happiness with living woe; Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were, And he that slew them fouler than he is; Bettering thy loss makes the bad-causer worse; Revolving this will teach ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of the day-starres of that knowledge, which then but dawning hath since shone out in clearer brightness, thought nothing better for the bettering our understanding then Travell: as well by having a conference with the wiser sort in all sorts of learning, as by the [Greek: Autopsiaei]. The eye-sight of those things, which otherwise a man cannot have but by Tradition; A Sandy foundation ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... to keep on friendly terms with the villains, as long as he was in their power. To express disapproval of their conduct would have incurred the enmity of the whole crew, without bettering his own situation. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... the benefits that could be conferred upon mankind, I found none so great as the discovery of new arts, endowments, and commodities for the bettering of man's life.... But if a man could succeed, not in striking out some particular invention, however useful, but in kindling a light in nature—a light that should in its very rising touch and illuminate all the border regions that confine upon ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... states, when they saw that two had shaken off the yoke, would go over to the party of that nation which professed the patronage of liberty. If freedom was not actually preferable to servitude, yet the hope of bettering their circumstances by a change, was more flattering to every one than ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... opinion on the subject. I suspect that when she knows the true state of the case, she would far rather you remained at home than have to go knocking about the salt ocean, without the prospect of bettering yourself." ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... The colored race being here, I assume that its education, with the probabilities this involves of its elevation, is a duty as well as a necessity. I speak both of the inherent justice there is in giving every human being the chance of bettering his condition and increasing his happiness that lies in education—unless our whole theory of modern life is wrong—and also of the political and social danger there is in a degraded class numerically ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was much at Selwoode. Many people came there now—masculine women and muscleless men, for the most part. They had, every one of them, some scheme for bettering the universe; and if among them Margaret seemed somewhat out of place—a butterfly among earnest-minded ants—her heart was in every plan they advocated, and they found her purse-strings infinitely elastic. The girl was pitiably anxious to ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... abstractions they turned with a new intoxication to what they conceived to be the concrete. Entering thus late upon the stage of national politics, they devoted themselves, with their accustomed thoroughness, to learning and bettering what they conceived to be the principles and the practice which had given success to other nations. In this quest no scruples should deter them, no sentimentality hamper, no universal ideals distract. Yet this, after all, was but German ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... reasonable, but it is a little curious that it should be asked. For when were men ever really put out of work by the bettering of industrial processes? The stage-coach drivers lost their jobs with the coming of the railways. Should we have prohibited the railways and kept the stage-coach drivers? Were there more men working with the stage-coaches than are working on the railways? ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... as of every other mental process. And not only must we thus put ourselves in the way of acquiring new experience, but we must by recall and reconstruction, as we saw in an earlier discussion, keep our imagery fresh and usable. For whatever serves to improve our images, at the same time is bettering the very ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... corresponding salaries. The case of Orange has been already alluded to, and there were many other nobles less able to afford the expense, who had been indulged with these ruinous honors. During the war, there had been, however, many chances of bettering broken fortunes. Victory brought immense prizes to the leading officers. The ransoms of so many illustrious prisoners as had graced the triumphs of Saint Quentin and Gravelines had been extremely ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... have passed, or are passing. And we may now consider, what has been the effect of the improvement of natural knowledge on the views of men who have reached this stage, and who have begun to cultivate natural knowledge with no desire but that of "increasing God's honour and bettering man's estate." ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... Commons. Our politicians are at present in a state of extreme servility before the enterprising gentlemen who are now at the head of what is called the Labour Party. Every one will sympathise with the aspirations of this party in so far as they aim at bettering the lot of those who do the hard and uninteresting work of the world, and giving them a larger share of the productions that they help to turn out; but that is not the same thing as giving obsequious ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... influenced by it. The optics of some minds are in so unlucky a perspective as to throw a certain shade on every picture that is presented to them, while those of others (of which number was Harley), like the mirrors of the ladies, have a wonderful effect in bettering their complexions. Through such a medium perhaps he was looking ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... 1705. For the encouragement and bettering of the markets in the said town, Be it enacted, That no dead provision, either of flesh or fish shall be sold within five miles of any of the ports or towns appointed by this act, on the same side the great river the town shall stand upon, but within the limits of the town, on pain of forfeiture ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... unparalleled strain of the war was due to the unparalleled extent to which the British Empire placed its resources at the disposal of less fortunate countries; and fortunately for Powers, which later on complained of American interference, the United States seemed bent in 1918 on bettering our example. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... after years of uninterrupted labor and the severest analysis, to invent a panopticon, a self-sustaining penitentiary, or rather to apply that invention of his brother, General Sir Samuel Bentham, to the bettering of our prison-houses and to the restoration of the lost,—or perhaps a ballot-box, that nothing might be wanted, when that "system" he valued himself so much upon should be adopted throughout the world, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... after the congestion of both lungs had shut off any probability of recovery, and the sculptor had asked his pupil to send his body home. "It's not a pleasant place to be lying while the world is moving and doing and bettering," he had said with a feeble smile, "but it rather seems as though we ought to go back to the place we came from, in the end. The townspeople will come in for a look at me; and after they have had their say, I shan't have much to fear ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... strange; she seemed to have seen it before, but could not recollect how or where. Then she recalled it as that of a young daily governess, her predecessor at the Fergusons', who had left them "to better herself," as she said—and decidedly to the bettering of her pupils. ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... slightest chance of my bettering myself," said the Military Man. "Now that the Regiment has come from India, I can't afford to live at home, and I can't exchange because of my liver. Promotion was never slower than in 'Ours,' and my look-out is about the most ghastly there ever ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... should have warned Selina that she was not bettering her case. Instead, her belated attempt at caution flew away on the ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... came into power in England the new government turned its attention to the navy, which had languished under the Stuarts. A great reform was accomplished in the bettering of the living conditions for the seamen. Their pay was increased, their share of prize money enlarged, and their food improved. At the same time, during the years 1648-51, the number of ships of the fleet was practically doubled, and the new vessels were the product of the highest skill in design ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... undergone an improvement, if indeed anything so excellent could admit of bettering. The little round glutinous stopper—india-rubber, I believe—from the peculiar inconvenience of which I presume the odious little thing derives its title as patent, has come unfastened from the top, and now, every time I open and shut ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... bones, arteries, and nerve centres, I found a little book on {169} "Sanitation and Hygiene in the Tropics," written in simple language, profusely illustrated, and with information which the pupil can use in bettering the health of himself, his family, and his neighborhood. Instead of a general book on agriculture, I found a book written so as to fit the special needs, crops, and conditions in the Philippines. Moreover, I found the officials ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... she could care greatly? Was not any form of emotion always distasteful to her? Was not her mind always occupied with abstract questions? Was she not always engaged in her own self-improvement—with schemes, it is true, for bettering the world; but did her heart ever ache once for the individual? What was it, then, he loved? Something he imagined this girl to be, or was he in love with the fact that his own nature had been so mightily ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... was surely a man, though a match for few; "But let us hold our peace hereon," he said; "maybe he is chosen for the bettering of thy troubles." So the goodwife was ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... month slipped away between the start and the arrival on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas. Delicate women and children of tender years developed extraordinary endurance, and showed remarkable fortitude on the wearisome trip. But the hope of bettering their fortunes was the magnet that drew them steadily on, day after day, in their march ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... their heads in conventional patterns on the tops of gate-posts, did devote their leisure intervals to rearing fortresses like this. Edinburgh Castle could not be conceived, much less built, nowadays, when all our energy is consumed in bettering the condition of the "submerged tenth"! What did they care about the "masses," that "regal race that is now no more," when they were hewing those blocks of rugged rock and piling them against the sky-line ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... reception, which was a great disappointment to Miss Anthony. They had shared so much trouble that she felt most anxious they should share this one great pleasure. In the diary at midnight is recorded: "Fiftieth birthday! One half-century done, one score years of it hard labor for bettering humanity—temperance—emancipation—enfranchisement—oh, such a struggle! Terribly stormy night, but a goodly company and many, many splendid tributes to my work. Really, if I had been dead and these the last words, neither press nor friends could have ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... among us in the main, buoys us up and makes us better patriots and makes our country the great nation that we love and honor. And directly to your hands in the accomplishment of the great national purpose, making all our prosperity, all our power, all our capital and our labor instruments for the bettering of mankind, for the progress of civilization and for the coming of the effective and universal rule of the religion which we profess, right at your hands, as the first and plainest duty, is the cementing of the bonds of friendship between our republic and our sister republics ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... the state of his affairs, married him in the hope of doing something to help him out of his difficulties. A few pounds she had saved up, and a trifle her mother had left her, she placed unreservedly at his disposal, and he in his abounding honesty spent it on his creditors, bettering things for a time, and, which was of much more consequence, greatly relieving his mind, and giving the life in him a fresh start. His marriage was of infinitely more salvation to the laird than if it had set him free from all his ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Wilson's 600. We found the surface very bad, most of the ponies sinking deep in the snow. After doing roughly five miles we halted and had a meal. Oates was called into our tent and consulted with a view to bettering the conditions for the ponies. As a result it was decided to march by night and rest during the day when the sun would be higher and the air warmer. There was quite a drop in the temperature between noon and midnight, and it was natural to suppose that we should get better ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea; where, after a variety of good and ill fortune, a little before I was acquainted with him he had ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... men by physical forces, they straightway make a god of it? That is why you deify strenuousness. You dare not forgo it. The Eskimo doubtless deifies seal-blubber; he could not survive without it. Yet nobody would be an Eskimo if he had a chance of bettering his condition. By all means let us take life seriously. But let us be serious about ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... very dryly, "you are very kind, indeed, but I don't think you can relieve me. I have excruciating neuralgia in my eyebones and temples, and my hands are cramped again. Dinah has been, rubbing, without bettering them, for ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Queen Dowager and two Royal Duchesses doubled; then came sundry Dukes, Earls, and other notables with $500 each, followed by a long list of smaller and smaller subscriptions. But this money was given to the "Society for Bettering the Condition of the Laboring Classes," to enable them to try an experiment; and that experiment has triumphantly succeeded. All those I have described, as well as one for single women only near Hatton Garden, and one for families and for aged women near Bagnigge Wells, which I have not ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... general reformation of the church in Gaul. Here the clergy were sadly demoralized, and the churches and monasteries had been despoiled of much of their property in the constant turmoil of the time. Boniface succeeded, with the help of Charles Martel, in bettering affairs, and through his efforts the venerable church of Gaul, almost as old as that of Rome itself, was brought under the supremacy of the pope. In 748 the assembled bishops of Gaul bound themselves ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... world. I was born in Bristol, England. My father was a clergyman of the established church. I have no remembrance of my mother, for she died when I was an infant. When I was fifteen years old I was sent to sea as a means of bettering my morals. I served first on board an Indiaman, made two voyages to China, and was wrecked on the coast of Malabar; and when I got home my father or friends procured me the position of midshipman ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... obscure associations in her own mind, that he was speaking of dissenting ministers and persons of low origin, who might wish to enter the church for the sake of BETTERING THEMSELVES, and holding as she did, that no church preferment should be obtained except by persons of good family and position, qualified to keep up the dignity of the profession, she was not a little gratified to hear, as she supposed, the same sentiments from the mouth of such ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... he can, and men formerly poor now suddenly become rich, which gives a zest to the extension of the contest nothing else could produce. Indeed, the poorer orders of Somali are only too glad to have a good pretext for a fight, as a means of bettering their condition, by adding a few more head of cattle to their stock. Were this not the case, there would be no fighting whatever, as the sultan would be powerless to raise an army against the inclination of the people. War only ceases when both sides become exhausted, and withdraw ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... [are] almost utterly unknown. In this unhappy country the few who are enlightened are too much occupied in the pursuit of lucre, ambition, or ungodly revenge to entertain a desire or thought of bettering the moral state of their countrymen. But it has pleased the Lord to raise up in foreign lands individuals differently situated and disposed, whose hearts bleed for their brethren in Spain. It is their belief that ignorance of God's Word is the sole cause ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... lend a hand on the side of Leslie Walker but Mr Pornsch, uncle of the late Miss Flipp. He arrived with the callousness worthy of a certain department of man's character, and addressed a meeting with as much pomp and self-confidence and talk of bettering the morals of the people, as though he had been an Ellice Hopkins. He had the further effrontery to visit Clay's and feign crocodile grief for the deplorable fate of his niece. He protested his shame and horror, together with a desire for revenge, so loudly that I resolved that ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... senior, and when working at Douglass's I looked up to him as a man of authority. I had obtained from him many a valuable wrinkle in mechanical and technical construction. After I left Edinburgh he had emigrated to the United States for the purpose of bettering his condition. But he promised me that if disappointed in his hopes of settling there, he should be glad to come into my service if I was ever in a position to give him employment. Shortly after my removal to Patricroft, and when everything had been got into full working ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... dear child, and I have felt a great interest in her from the moment she entered the school. I wish I knew of some way of bettering her circumstances. Mr. Burgess is a most estimable man, but not one liable to advance rapidly through his own efforts, I fear. He is most reliable and capable, but seems to lack the push so essential ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... save the King!" It is a large economy In God to save the like; but if He will Be saving, all the better; for not one am I Of those who think damnation better still; I hardly know, too, if not quite alone am I In this small hope of bettering future ill By circumscribing, with some slight restriction, The ...
— English Satires • Various
... George Williams Laboratory of Physiologic Research in Physical Education, Chicago, have proved that track men can far surpass their best previous times under hypnosis. Their tests, incidentally, proved that there is no danger of an athlete going beyond his physiologic limit while bettering his former marks. They attribute the superior performances to the removal of inhibitions, which psychologically prevent an athlete from doing his best. This report was made before the International Congress ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... too, would be the evolution of the modern methods of raising and bettering the condition of the poor,—the evolution, especially, of the idea that men are to be helped to help themselves, in opposition to the old theories of indiscriminate giving, which, taking root in some of the most ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... cause and with the most ardent reformers was sincere, he was at issue with them in regard to the means, though not in regard to the ends; he wished to better the intelligence of the people as the first step toward bettering their condition. But when he had convinced himself, as he said, that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought, he had still to persuade men who were stirring ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... her after that. The importance of her position was borne into her in a new and better way. By being Lady Hurdly she might hope, perhaps, to do some little service in bettering the lots of those who were at the other extreme of life's scale from her, whereas if she had remained in her former position she would have had as little value at one end as ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... whose presence imparts the greatest peculiarity and the fraternal tone to the household, believe that an improved state of existence would be developed in Association, and are therefore anxious to promote it. Another class consists of those who join with the view of bettering their condition, by being exempt from some portion of worldly strife. The third portion comprises those who have their own development or education for ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Unions has at times been used as selfishly as the power of the employers has been. But when we remember that until the first quarter of the nineteenth century combinations of workmen, even to respectfully ask an increase of wages or a bettering of work conditions in lessening of hours and in sanitary and moral provisions in work-places, was legally a "conspiracy," and liable to harsh punishments, we must be glad that at any temporary cost the main ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... no suppositions of the sort. I content myself with thinking that Gordon is clever, insinuating, young; and it is a very good chance of bettering himself that you have thrown in his way. However, it is no affair of mine; and though on the whole I like Kenelm better than Gordon, still I like Gordon very well, and I have an interest in following his career which I can't say I have in conjecturing what may be Kenelm's—more ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... if for nothing else. This is in my eyes the second part of a woman's parish work. I entreat you to bear it in mind when you hear, as I trust you will, lectures in this place upon that SANITARY REFORM, without which all efforts for the bettering of the masses are in my eyes not only ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... question referred to the news printed in another column, and stated that this information, if correct, showed a state of affairs at the High School that needed bettering. The ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... the old propagandists, who had offered the workmen merely abstract Socialist theories which no uneducated person could reasonably be expected to understand, they adopted a more rational method. Though impervious to abstract theories, the Russian workman is not at all insensible to the prospect of bettering his material condition and getting his everyday grievances redressed. Of these grievances the ones he felt most keenly were the long hours, the low wages, the fines arbitrarily imposed by the managers, and the brutal severity of the foreman. By helping ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... also, Taylor began to write a series of novels, in the hope of bettering his fortunes thereby. The books brought him some reputation, but to-day "Hannah Thurston" and "John Godfrey's Fortunes" ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... have descended to the very deepest levels of depression before he loses his power to laugh, or to be cheered by an unexpected bettering of his financial position. John Fulton was in a bad way, but certain things still struck him as funny, and the money which he had been enabled to borrow from the bank had eased his mind. Still, so Lucy told me, he could not sleep at ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... thee, gallant, betwixt wealth and honour; There lies the pelf, in sum to bear thee through The dance of youth, and the turmoil of manhood, Yet leave enough for age's chimney-corner; But an thou grasp to it, farewell ambition, Farewell each hope of bettering thy condition, And raising thy low rank above the churls That till the earth for ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... have enough of Retirement, you may go to Church, hear Anthems, Prayers and Sermons; and if you see any Matron or Virgin remarkable for Piety, in whose Company you may get good; if you see any Man that is endow'd with singular Probity, from whom you may learn what will make for your bettering, you may have their Conversation; and you may chuse that Preacher that preaches Christ most purely. When once you come into a Cloyster, all these Things, that are the greatest Assistances in the Promotion of true Piety, you lose ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... inquiries for his sister, not knowing whether or not she had succumbed to the cruel change in her life. He thought she might have passed into the white basis for the sake of bettering her fortunes. Hope deferred, which had sickened his mother's heart, had only ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... and profitable on account of the fine pasture which some of the surrounding hills afford. Nothing could look more solitary. Magdalene might have left her desert, and ended her days there, without materially bettering her situation. The only sign of life is a stream that runs round a very productive small orchard in front of the house, while on a hill behind are a few maguey plants, and on the mirador, in front of the house, some creepers have been ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... improvements, and declares the final result of the doctrine of abdicating powers arbitrarily designated as doubtful is but the degradation of the nation, the reducing itself to impotence, by chaining its own hands, fettering its own feet, and thus disabling itself from bettering its own condition. The impotence resulting from the inability to employ its own faculties for its own improvement, is the principle upon which the roving Tartar denies himself a permanent habitation, because to him the wandering shepherd is the ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... sight of that man was annoying. Flitch was a stable-boy, groom, and coachman, like his father before him, at the Hall thirty years; his father died in our service. Mr. Flitch had not a single grievance here; only one day the demon seizes him with the notion of bettering himself he wants his independence, and he presents himself to me with a story of a shop in our county town.—Flitch! remember, if you go you go for good.—Oh, he quite comprehended.—Very well; good-bye, Flitch;—the man was respectful: he looked the fool he was very soon to turn ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... religion bears a more tender regard to human nature. It prescribes to a very miserable man the means of bettering his condition; nay, it shews him that the bearing of his afflictions as he ought to do, will naturally end in the removal of them: It makes him easy here, because it can make him ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... demi-mondaine of Dumas fils, and Daudet, and even Zola. She is not pretty; she is not fascinating in any way; she is neither good- nor ill-natured in any special fashion; she is not even ambitious of "bettering" herself or of having much pleasure, wealth, etc. If she goes to the bad it is in the most commonplace way and with the most unseductive seducer possible. Her progress and her end are, to borrow a later phrase and title metaphorically, merely a tale of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Bacon has pronounced on the ancient schools of wisdom. The Epicurean, who referred all happiness to bodily pleasure, and all evil to bodily pain, might have been expected to exert himself for the purpose of bettering his own physical condition and that of his neighbours. But the thought seems never to have occurred to any member of that school. Indeed their notion, as reported by their great poet, was, that no more improvements were to be expected in the arts which conduce ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... period of the Crusades, encouraged vagabondage in all classes. The extent to which travelling was carried in the Middle Ages for purposes of pilgrimage and commerce, out of pure curiosity or love of knowledge, for the bettering of trade in handicrafts or for self-improvement in the sciences, has only of late years been estimated at a just calculation. "The scholars," wrote a monk of Froidmont in the twelfth century, "are wont to roam around the world and visit all its cities, till much ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... to whom this part of my discourse is directed, mind only such things as are useful to the bettering of manners. And such we are to put in mind that it is an absurd thing, that those who delight in fables should not let anything slip them of the vain and extravagant stories they find in poets, and that those who affect language should pass over nothing that is elegantly and floridly expressed; ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... mowed down by the scythe of war or of famine, others rose in increased numbers to supply their place. Among these bold and improvident Barbarians, population was probably but little checked, as in modern states, from a fear of future difficulties. A prevailing hope of bettering their condition by change of place, a constant expectation of plunder, a power even, if distressed, of selling their children as slaves, added to the natural carelessness of the barbaric character, all conspired to raise a population ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... benefits that could be conferred upon mankind, I found none so great as the discovery of new arts for the bettering of human life. For I saw that among the rude people of early times, inventors and discoverers were reckoned as gods. It was seen that the works of founders of States, law-givers, tyrant-destroyers, and heroes cover but narrow spaces and endure but for a time; while the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... clime; some engaged in its trade; some who had travelled to it from distant countries to solicit the imperial favour; some, like Paul, conveyed to it as prisoners; some stimulated to visit it by curiosity; and some attracted to it by the vague hope of bettering their condition. The city of the Caesars might well be described as "sitting upon many waters;" [145:4] for, though fourteen or fifteen miles from the mouth of the Tiber, the mistress of the world was placed on a peninsula stretching out into the middle of a great inland ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... East India dredge did not dissent to this verdict. My friend John thought the acquisition well approved. But the people, he said, were worthless; they added superstition to ignorance and fierceness, and obstinately opposed the bettering their condition. 'Without attempting to burden your credulity, Jonathan,' interpolated John, 'the truth is, we well understood the nature of this people, and having failed to conciliate them in one way betook ourselves to another, and in our characteristic style chastised them into submission.' John ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the younger, the beautiful being now the successful lady of the ascendant, the elder writhed in all the combined miseries of jealousy and dependance, and an everyday lessening chance of bettering her condition. Lord Castlefort, too, for good reasons of his own, well remembered, detested Lady Katrine, and longed to shake her off. In this wish, at least, husband and wife united; but Lady Castlefort had no decent excuse for her ardent impatience ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... as follows: (Preface) "It is essential that the person desirous of being initiated into the Black Art—the Art of communicating with the Unknown (Daramara) in order to acquire certain great powers, should dismiss from his mind all ideas of moral progress, and wholly concentrate on the bettering of his material self—on acquiring riches and fame in the physical sphere. His aspirations must be entirely earthly, and all his affections subordinate to his main desire for wealth and carnal pleasures. Having acquired this preliminary psychological ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... had seen so far not a single lean, hungry-looking person, that the elements were kindly, that they could mend their own roads, and that he was tired of their everlasting complaint of poverty and hunger, when a little work would go a great way in this country toward bettering their material condition. This, of course, is just the kind of talk these people need, and the last some ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... other motives for education, besides bread winning and bettering one's material condition. I remember at Harvard how Charles Eliot Norton, Prof. Thayer, the New Testament Greek scholar, and Dean C. C. Everett, of the Harvard Divinity School, impressed students by the ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... to occupy his attention. He could discover numerous ways of bettering the conditions of affairs, and took keen delight in making changes calculated to lessen the friction ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... power that ordained its existence in the hour when nature was constituted to be its mode of birth, consciousness, and death. And if the choice must be made on the broad scale, it is our practical faith that the service of the best, even to the point of death, is due to the least in the hope of bettering the lot of man. Hence, as we are willing that in communities the noblest should die for a cause, we consent to the death of high civilizations, if they spread in some Hellenization of a Roman, some Romanizing of a barbaric world; and to the extinction of aristocracies, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... patience and grown angry, had that served me; but I knew it would only give pleasure to my tormentors, without bettering my condition. I therefore observed silence, and kept my eyes averted or turned ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the married state, and finding the salary of his office in the Register House unequal to the comfortable maintenance of his family, he resolved to emigrate to the United States, in the hope of bettering his circumstances. Arriving at New York in July 1822, he made purchase of a farm in that State, and there resided the three following years. He next made a trial of the Social System of Robert Owen, at New Harmony, but abandoned ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... use the power of the unions unjustly, cultivate amicable relations with everybody, and try in all possible ways to make true men of themselves? If the men had worked along this line they would have found they were bettering themselves in every way faster than they could by ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... less effort. Ye gods!" He got up and strode around the apartment. "Ye gods! What fallacies we provincials believe! I was in heaven on my farm and didn't know it! And from that celestial paradise of peace and quiet and tranquillity of nature, I deliberately came to this—with a view of bettering my surroundings! When I think of it—when I consider the money I have spent and the time I have lost—" he stopped by reason ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... utterly love, and trust, and respect on the face of God's earth, is you; and I cannot lose sight of you. If we are to earn our bread, let us earn it together; if we are to endure poverty, and sorrow, and struggle to find out the way of bettering these wretched millions round us, let us learn our lesson together, and help each other to ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... may be expected of the gas motor supplied by a gas generator in putting to profit certain improvements that will hereafter be possible, such, for example, as the lightening of the movable parts of the motor, the bettering of its organic rendering (now quite feeble), the use of better oils, the reduction of the consumption of water, the superheating of the steam injected into the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... lies outside our subject, the character of its influence on society may be gathered from their efforts for the suppression of the slave trade; from the stricter observance of Sunday which became general towards the end of our period; from their plans for bettering the condition, and their care for the education of the poor. The institution of Sunday schools was largely due to Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, who began his work in 1780. Six years later some 200,000 children attended these schools, and in many cases gained in them their only education. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... W. theory appeals chiefly to the lower strata of unskilled labor, to young and homeless workers, to transients, and to unassimilated immigrants. The better trained and the more intelligent American workmen reject the program of the I. W. W. These latter workmen believe in bettering their condition through the gradual development and enforcement of industrial standards, made possible by lawful coperation with the employer. The truth of this statement is borne out by the fact that whereas the I. W. W. ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... the conscience of man seems to have been first awakened to his innate power of bettering his own condition by well directed observation, by the elaboration of laws, and by forethought for the future. Between Egypt on the one hand, and Chaldaea with that Assyria which was no more than its offshoot and prolongation, on the other, there are strong ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... exclaimed Dolly, her humour bettering as mine went down. "Oh, no; you are jealous. He is more sought after than any gentleman at the assemblies, and Miss Dulany vows his steps are ravishing. There's for you, my lad! He may not be able to keep pace with you in the chase, but he has writ the most delicate ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Channing that Dorothea Lynde Dix drank in this theory with passionate faith, and proceeded at once to convert it into action. She was governess of Dr. Channing's children, and had long been interested in bettering the condition of convicts; but now her attention was turned to the insane and she proceeded at once to master the whole question of insanity, its origin, its development, and its treatment, so far as it was then known. Enlisting the aid ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... because the priestly order was lowered, while I asserted that the misery of the people was the cause of the suffering of the State, to which thou, so far as I remember, didst answer: Let Mefres occupy himself with bettering the priesthood, Pentuer in improving the lot of common people, while I will avoid destructive ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... man, who has not abundance of money, Being thus active and stirring, and bettering inside and outside? Only too much is the citizen cramped: the good, though he know it, Has he no means to acquire because too slender his purse is, While his needs are too great; and thus is he constantly hampered. Many things ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in bettering conditions in prison camps, especially at Ruhleben, will be long remembered. When conditions were at their worst he went out daily to keep himself informed, and then daily went to the Foreign Office or wrote to the Ministry of War in an effort to get better accommodations for the men. ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... this Apologie, euen now made for himselfe; because thereby it will appeare that he hath not withdrawne himselfe from seruice of the state to liue idle or wholly priuate to himselfe, but hath spent some time in doing that which may greatly benefit others, and hath serued not a little to the bettering of his owne mind, and increasing of his knowledge; though he for modesty pretend much ignorance, and pleade want in wealth, much like some rich beggars, who either of custom, or for couetousnes, go to begge of others those things whereof they ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... them," answered Marion with eagerness; "for all the false things they might believe about him could not destroy the true ones, or prevent them from believing in Jesus himself, and bettering their ways for his sake. And as they grew better and better, by doing what he told them, they would gradually come to disbelieve this and ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... the whole is beneficial, because, although it may not be altogether averse to moral legislation, it recognizes that the policeman is a very feeble guide in these matters, and that the fundamental and essential way of bettering the public morality is by enlightening ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... is, but it's a large class, Denyven. Every soul of us has the privilege of bettering out condition if we have the brain and the industry to do it. Energy and intelligence come to the front, and have the right to be there. A skillful workman gets double the pay of a bungler, and deserves ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... passing such laws for Ireland ever since Mr. Butt in 1870 raised the standard of Irish Land Reform under the name of Home Rule, it seems a little absurd, not to say Hibernian, of the British authorities to prosecute Father M'Fadden merely for bettering their own instruction in his own way. I could better understand a prosecution of Father M'Fadden on such grounds by the ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... felt that if He needed rest on that day I was sure that I must have rest. So the Sunday work was not carried on any more in that laundry. He said that the Lord had sent me to that laundry for the bettering of all in it. The gentleman was from Philadelphia and ...
— A Slave Girl's Story - Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. • Kate Drumgoold
... to improve the condition of the poorer classes. A rich country and poor inhabitants is an anomaly; and whatever is done should be prompt and effectual. If the Irish landlords looked directly into the state of their tenantry, and set themselves vigorously to the task of bettering their circumstances, they would, I am certain, establish the tranquillity and happiness of the country at large. The great secret, Colonel, of the dissensions that prevail among us is the poverty of the people. They are poor, and therefore the more easily wrought ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... said, "has come about in this way—we have all enough to live upon, and so many women worsen their condition by marriage, instead of bettering it, that we made up our minds to live comfortably on what we have got, and not trouble our heads about the men. We live very happily together, and are all socialists, radicals, libres penseuses and the rest. We read a great ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... in life should be to better himself, to keep bettering himself; and in this high duty the poet helps him. Poetry is the great educator of the feelings. By seizing and holding up to view the noblest and cleanest and best there is in human life, poetry elevates and refines the feelings. It reveals ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... disgrace and the loss of his position. Surely it was none of his business. He could easily get the papers back to the freight department and no one be the wiser. Let the iniquity go on. Let the law be defied. What was it to him? He would work out his plans for bettering the condition just before him. What more could a man do in this railroad business when there was so much going on anyway that made it impossible to live by the Christian standard? But what would Jesus do if He knew the facts? That was ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... himself evidently unconscious, "I want to get home to Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia." He described himself as a printer by trade, and said that he had come over when he was a younger man, in the hope of bettering himself, and for the sake of seeing the Old Country, but had never since been rich enough to pay his homeward passage. His manner and accent did not quite convince me that he was an American, and I told him so; but he steadfastly affirmed, "Sir, I was born and have lived in Ninety-second ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
