"Unimproved" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has it, for thy sake, preserved me from violation.' ALMORAN, whose passion had in this interval again surmounted his remorse, gazed eagerly upon her, and catching her to his bosom; 'Let us at least,' says he, 'secure the happiness that is now offered; let not these inestimable moments pass by us unimproved; but to shew that we deserve them, let them be devoted to love.' 'Let us then,' said ALMEIDA, 'escape together.' 'To escape with thee,' said: ALMORAN, 'is impossible. I shall retire, and, like the shaft of Arabia, leave no mark behind, me; but the flight of ALMEIDA will at once be traced to ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... fulfilled the foremost and greatest desire of my heart; restore her king to her, and future generations will bless your memory. But you hesitate very long to give my throne back to me, and I almost fear you will allow the opportunity to pass by unimproved. Hasten, therefore, and designate the positions you desire for yourself and for your friends. You will always be too indispensable to the state for me ever to be able to discharge the obligations of my ancestors ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... to our enclosure, which is but little above sea-level, and into which, till the pressure increases, we can fan or blow the water, so that it can be full three weeks after our longest day, or, since the present unimproved arrangement gives the indigenes but one day and night a year, I will add the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... it, then surely there is no harm done; but those who use the argument seem to imply that a vote unused is a very dangerous thing to leave lying around, and will probably spoil and blow up. In support of this statement instances are cited of women letting their vote lie idle and unimproved in elections for school trustee and alderman. Of course, the percentage of men voting in these contests was quite small, too, but no person ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... heart, they are a part of the soul's furniture; but where they only pamper the appetite or the vanity, or any foolish and hurtful lust, they are foolish and hurtful. Be thrifty of comfort. Never allow an opportunity for cheer, for pleasure, for intelligence, for benevolence, for kind of good, to go unimproved. Consider seriously whether the syrup of your preserves or juices of your own soul will do the most to serve your race. It may be that they are compatible,—that the concoction of the one shall provide the ascending sap ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... on l. 203. Hence the propriety of the word nudavit, which Lambin rightly interprets, nudos introduxit satyres, the poet hereby expressing the monstrous indecorum of this entertainment in its first unimproved state. Alluding also to this ancient character of the satire, he calls him asper, i.e. rude and petulant; and even adds, that his jests were intemperate, and without the least mixture of gravity. For thus, upon the authority ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... reasons for all that he said and did. That inexhaustible capacity of devising base motives for conduct, which is an especial attribute of mean minds, had now opportunity to put forth its full powers in the way of insinuation and assertion. It did not go unimproved. A common charge brought against him after the publication of the "Letter to His Countrymen" was that it had been written for the sake of gaining office. It was even said that Van Buren had a hand in it. Then and afterward, the Whig newspapers represented ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... asked what advantage, as far as we can see, would it be to an infusorian animalcule—to an intestinal worm, or even to an earthworm—to be highly organized. If it were no advantage, these forms would be left, by natural selection, unimproved or but little improved, and might remain for indefinite ages in their present lowly condition. And geology tells us that some of the lowest forms, as the infusoria and rhizopods, have remained for an enormous period in nearly ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... avoid him, but he was not to let this opportunity for international courtesy go by unnoticed and unimproved. So, much to my delight and surprise, he arose, and ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... that of elation that the crisis to which he had looked forward with so much apprehension, had passed without his receiving any bodily harm. This was soon replaced by regret that the long-coveted opportunity had been suffered to pass unimproved, and still another strong sentiment—that keen sense of disappointment which comes when we have braced ourselves up to encounter an emergency, and it vanishes. There is the feeling of waste of valuable accumulated energy, which is as painful as ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... Association fairly tried, we are confident that the appeal we now make will not be received without the most generous response in their power. As far as their means and their utmost exertions can go, they will not suffer so favorable an opportunity for the realization of their hopes to pass unimproved." ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... responsibility to God, and to His Church. And sometimes the sorrow of leaving home for the first time, or the death of a dearly-loved friend, has sufficed to arouse the question, "What must I do to be saved?" We must beware of allowing such opportunities for decisive action to slip away unimproved. When a vessel has grounded at the harbour-bar, she must wait till the tide lifts her, or she will not reach a safe anchorage; but when the tide does flow in, no sane man will let the chance go by, lest a storm should rise and wreck her ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... period, from two years of age to ten, is allowed to pass unimproved, the task of learning them ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... your peace of mind, because of the simplicity and tenderness of your disposition," may have had its effect upon Pestalozzi. He now entered upon his third venture. Having induced a wealthy firm in Zurich to advance him money, he bought about one hundred acres of unimproved land in the canton of Aargau, where he proposed to raise madder as a means of profit. Once more his real purpose was philanthropic, as he intended to show the poor peasants improved methods of farming whereby they could obtain better results for their labor and thereby ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... by my figures," said Frazee. "It will give me my little chance to get back at the governor. I had it assessed as unimproved suburban property at so much the lot, but he made a kick to the board of equalization and got it put in as unimproved farm land at fifty dollars an acre." Then, looking at his watch: "We'd better be getting back, if you have to catch the Accommodation. ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... exchanged, and the Cardinal would take his leave, accompanied by a file of the Duchessa's lackeys—and so it would all be over. But the Cardinal was a statesman, a diplomatist, and one of the best talkers in Europe; moreover, he never allowed an opportunity of pursuing his ends to pass unimproved. ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... is a good deal like a piece of unimproved real estate—he may be worth a whole lot of money, but he isn't of any particular use except to build on. The great trouble with a lot of these fellows is that they're "made land," and if you dig down a few feet you strike ooze and booze under the layer of dollars that their daddies dumped in ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... small income, over and above expenses. I did not tell my father—I don't know why, perhaps it was because I inherited a little of his business acumen, but I manipulated the net income in various minor undertakings, even in time buying small plots of unimproved real-estate, meaning after a year or two more to surprise my father with the result of my venture, but his death intervened before I ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... tells of semen being carried by wind. Notoriously there was no limit either to the absurdity or crudity of these conceptions. Were these men—the wisest of their time—insane? Here again we may quote the last patient—"Insanity," he says, "is the elemental human mind left to itself, unimproved by other minds." The last is the important phrase. What minds were there to improve those of the alchemists? What critic was there to tell Joan of Arc that visions and voices were pathological? That was the regulation form of inspiration ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Communal tenure into hereditary allotments, and its only visible effect has been that the allotments accumulate in the hands of the richer and more enterprising peasants, and the poorer members of the Commune become landless, while the primitive system of agriculture remains unimproved. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Him more joyfully. Our daily duties are given us for the same purpose. But if we go about them without thinking of God or the highest ends which life is meant to serve, then we shall certainly lose the highest ends, and an opportunity will go past us unimproved. But if, on the other hand, whilst we follow our daily business for the sake of legitimate temporal gain, we see, above that, the aspect of daily life as educating in all Christian nobleness and lofty thoughts and purposes, then we shall have given away the lower ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... thought, is frequently no more than a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon its improvement. This, no doubt, may be partly the case upon some occasions; for it can scarce ever be more than partly the case. The landlord demands a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon the expense of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent. Those improvements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... becomes troublesome on all roads and impossible on many. On the unimproved highways deep, dangerous bogs form in every depression, containing either liquid mud where the horse is almost forced to swim, or soft tough clay, where the horse's feet are imprisoned and the animal in ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... of the vast sums now worse than wasted in pauperizing the unemployed; a tithe of the money squandered on building palaces for our numberless, ever-begging colleges, devoted to settling the poor upon the unimproved lands in Florida, the dangerous flood of ever-increasing crime, and physical and mental suffering which now threatens the very existence of our republic, would soon vanish from our cities, and thousands of the dangerous classes would become self-supporting, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... and in architecture, whatever man performs owns the dominion of intellect. Yet many human beings, resigned to sensuality and indolence, un-instructed and unimproved, have passed through life like travellers in a strange country[26]; to whom, certainly, contrary to the intention of nature, the body was a gratification, and the mind a burden. Of these I hold the life and death in equal estimation[27]; for silence is maintained concerning both. ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... tremble—that the critical moment had come, and she concentrated her courage and determination that that moment might not pass unimproved. She raised her eyes slowly, and, with an affecting expression, she said in a low, tremulous voice, "Will your majesty permit me to tell you why I have ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... have had, and am to have, the rummaging of three chests of pedigrees and letters to that secretary Conway, which I have interceded for and saved from the flames. The prospect is as fine as one destitute of a navigated river can be, ind hitherto totally unimproved; so is the house, which is but just covered in, after so many years. They have begun to inhabit the naked walls of the attic story; the great one is unfloored and unceited - the hall is magnificent, sixty by forty, and thirty-eight high. I am going to pump Mr. Bentley ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... and worldly things beloved, My anxious thoughts employed; And time unhallowed, unimproved, ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... more pleasing thoughts than the fierce fights of early ages can ever suggest. It belongs to the idea of progress that beginnings can never seem attractive to those who live far on; the price of improvement is, that the unimproved will ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... party is two hundred yards from the roadfork where unimproved road leads northeast, about 600 yards southeast of Bridge S.H., Lieutenant Allen gives the following instructions ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... of saplings, ferns and bushes. Here and there were also to be found some trees of fairly good size. It was in the east but a few miles removed from the great metropolitan district of New York and Philadelphia. There could still be found many square miles of unimproved land. It was surprising also to find excellent highways running throughout this semi-wilderness, between almost impenetrable walls of green, which though beautiful, produced a feeling of loneliness under their weird shadows. Some distance ahead the country appeared more ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... he never can be deemed polite, except by those persons among whom they are as little understood. His first aim is to adorn his own person with what he calls fine cloaths, that is the frippery of the fashion. It is no wonder that the heart of a female, unimproved by reason, and untinctured with natural good sense, should flutter at the sight of such a gaudy thing, among the number of her admirers: this impression is enforced by fustian compliments, which her own vanity interprets in a literal sense, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... were not unimproved by Henrich. His character was formed, and his principles were fixed, and his mind and spirit grew strong and ripe beyond his years. Never were these hours of peaceful happiness forgotten; and often amid the strange and stirring ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... it that has not selling value? If land value is already absorbed by taxation, what is it that goes to maintain landlordism? Perhaps you'll contend that landlordism doesn't exist. What value is it that a man pays for when he buys an unimproved lot in the heart of a city? What is it that the boomer booms and the land speculator gambles on when he adds acre to acre and lot to lot without any intention of productive use? What, if not the community value which he expects to attach to his land as a result of increase of population? And what ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... time of court intrigue and state revolution, when nothing was certain for a moment, and when all who were possessed of any opportunity to make profit, used it with the most shameless avidity, lest the golden minutes should pass away unimproved. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... sinners resist the grace of God, and spend the precious time given to seek and find it in thoughtless folly? What can they do, on such a bed of distress, who have no God? Time misspent and gone—opportunities unimproved and gone—calls resisted never to be repeated—death hunting the soul through every avenue of life—a dreadful, unknown, unthought of eternity at hand—an awful Judge, and no Advocate secured to plead. A time was when a kind Saviour was expostulating with them: 'Why will you die?' ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... observations, and the terseness of the style, render this the most entertaining, as it is, perhaps, the most instructive of his works. His criticisms, indeed, often betray either the want of a natural perception for the higher beauties of poetry, or a taste unimproved by the diligent study of the most perfect models; yet they are always acute, lucid, and original. That his judgment is often warped by a political bias can scarcely be doubted; but there is no good reason to suspect that it is ever perverted ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... find work (though able and willing to perform it), by reason of the unequal application of hands to lands, ought to be provided for by the magistrate and landlord till that can be done; for there need be no beggars in countries where there are many acres of unimproved improvable land to every head, as there are in England. As for thieves, they are for the most part begotten from the same cause; for it is against Nature that any man should venture his life, limb, or liberty, for a wretched livelihood, whereas moderate labour will produce a better. But of this ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... too inviting to those who were privileged there to allow any proper opportunity for a visit to pass unimproved. Indeed, it became so attractive to strangers and lion-hunters, that some of those whose entree was quite legitimate and acceptable refrained, especially during the last two years, from adding to the heavy tax which casual visitors began to levy upon the quiet hours of the host. Ten years ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... value of our improvements? Nothing hazy about THAT statement, I guess. It says in so many words that any improvements we make will not be considered when the land is appraised and that's the same thing, isn't it? The unimproved land is worth two-fifty an acre; only timber land is worth more and there's none too much ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... be something in that place for him, as she had said; there must be an unimproved opportunity which Fate had fashioned for his hand. Hope lifted its resilient head again. Before the morning he must have a plan, and when he had the plan ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... place which gave to the firm a reputation which for some few days was absolutely metropolitan. The affair was at first fortuitous, but advantage was very promptly taken of all that occurred; no chance was allowed to pass by unimproved; and there was, perhaps, as much genuine talent displayed in the matter as though the whole had been designed from the beginning. The transaction was the more important as it once more brought Mr. Robinson and Maryanne Brown together, and very nearly effected a union between them. It was not, ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... the awkwardness of meeting her cousin Clym, who was returning the same morning. To own to the partial truth of what he had heard would be distressing as long as the humiliating position resulting from the event was unimproved. It was only after a second and successful journey to the altar that she could lift up her head and prove the failure of the first attempt ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the hotels of the larger towns; and, until one can build for himself, a hotel offers a very pleasant substitute—at a slightly increased expense. Land, for building purposes, or in an unimproved state, can be leased for a sum that is almost nominal, except in a few highly favored localities. Purchasers of land are more than likely to find themselves immediately embroiled in a lawsuit over the title. If no flaw exists in your title, then it ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... compelled to foreclose some mortgages; and as we did not wish to keep the farms of which we thus became possessed, we sold them at more or less profit. We were in the way of hearing when land was to be sold at a cheap rate, either improved or unimproved, and by purchasing such land and re-selling to newly-arrived settlers, who became good customers, we profited considerably. We got the best of everything, and our desire was to supply those who bought of us with what we knew they would most ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... land law that's wrong," contended the spruce man. "If all taxes were put on unimproved land values it would be cheaper to live and there would be more work because it wouldn't pay to keep land out of use. With cheap living and plenty of work the workingman would have money and business would be brisk ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... the looking upward to the summit, and thinking how much our actual elevation has brought us on the way towards it. And, further, there is coupled with every consideration of Christian privileges, the thought of what it must be to leave such privileges unimproved. In this respect, how well does the language of the two lessons from Deuteronomy suit the lesson from the Epistle to the Corinthians. We heard the description of the beauty and richness of the land which God gave to his ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... rushed upon him and again he was in a tangle and a tug, but he tore himself from their hands, got a square blow at the proprietor of the house and knocked him senseless. For a moment he was free, and this moment was not left unimproved. From an upturned table he wrenched a leg, and swinging it above his head he cleared his way to a side door, and snatching it open, he sprung out into a small court, just as the police were entering at the front of the house. In the court a dim light was burning; at the end, but a few yards ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... for establishing, within these reserves, game refuges, where no hunting whatever shall be permitted. Aside from his love for nature, and his wish to have certain limited areas remain in their natural condition, absolutely untouched by the ax of the lumberman, and unimproved by the work of the forester, is that broader sentiment in behalf of humanity in the United States, which has led him to declare that such refuges should be established for the benefit of the man of moderate means and the poor man, whose opportunities to hunt and to see game ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... that the lands I intended to give them were unimproved lands, and as they would not have the means of making the necessary improvements, of stocking their farms, and procuring the materials for at once living on them, they would have to hire themselves ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... argument to demonstrate the ill policy of denying the occupiers of land any solid property in it. Ireland is a country wholly unplanted. The farms have neither dwelling-houses nor good offices; nor are the lands, almost anywhere, provided with fences and communications: in a word, in a very unimproved state. The land-owner there never takes upon him, as it is usual in this kingdom, to supply all these conveniences, and to set down his tenant in what may be called a completely furnished farm. If the tenant will not do it, it is never ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... how are you? And this is your little 'prop'? your quarter-section, your country-seat, that we've been trespassing on, eh? A nice little spot, cool, sequestered, remote,—a trifle unimproved; carriage-road as yet unfinished. Ha, ha! But to think of our making a discovery of this inaccessible mountain, climbing it, sir, for two mortal hours, christening it 'Sol's Peak,' getting up a flag-pole, unfurling ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... struck him that the frequent recurrence of the accompanying noise would bring the skipper on deck and spoil the fun, so on second thoughts he desisted, and glanced eagerly about for something else, afraid that the golden opportunity would pass by unimproved. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... DEAR SIR,—Having been employed by our mutual friend, Mr. Wilkie, to copy the above, I cannot let the opportunity pass unimproved of speaking a word in my own name, and to call to your mind the pleasant hours we occasionally passed together many years since. Let me express, my dear sir, my great pleasure in thus renewing, after so long an interval, our acquaintance. You, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... and being quartered for a time at Letterkenny, shot and fished all about Donegal. He found the people here kindly and friendly, but in a deplorable state of ignorance and of destitution. Their holdings under sundry small proprietors were entirely unimproved, and as their families increased, these holdings were cut up by themselves into even smaller strips under the system known as "rundale,"—each son as he grew up taking off a slice of the paternal holding, putting ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... there were so great that hundreds from the audience were frequently admitted upon the stage. In one of his scenes, Rice introduced a negro boot-blacking establishment. Gosling was too "wide awake" to let such an opportunity pass unimproved, and Rice was paid for singing an original black Gosling ditty, while a score of placards bearing the inscription, "Use Gosling's Blacking," were suspended at different points in this negro boot polishing hall. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... all the aid he needs or desires at our hands, he would cut us off; aye, worse, he would murder us—murder us as we have murdered for him. Do you think I would let an opportunity to be revenged on him pass unimproved? Never!" ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... and the brightness and newness of the villages, so crude to the tastes founded in the picturesqueness of the Old World. Not even Emerson, with all his indifference to the mere form of things, took to unimproved and uncivilized nature as Lowell did, and his free delight in the Wilderness was a thing to remember, and perhaps by none so keenly appreciated as by me, to whom the joy of forest life was a satisfactory ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... a layman, of administering moral and religious reproof to a Doctor of Divinity; but finding the occasion thrust upon me, and the hereditary Puritan waxing strong in my breast, I deemed it a matter of conscience not to let it pass entirely unimproved. The truth is, I was unspeakably shocked and disgusted. Not, however, that I was then to learn that clergymen are made of the same flesh and blood as other people, and perhaps lack one small safeguard which the rest of ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... institution now before us, we learn that the number of patients treated during the year was three hundred and thirty-six, of whom one hundred and ninety-eight "were discharged with great hopes of permanent reformation." Fifty-eight were discharged unimproved. The largest number of patients in the asylum at one time was ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... provided by the 10th Vic., cap. 109, entitled, "an Act to authorise a further issue of money in aid of public works of acknowledged utility in poor districts in Ireland," is, according to the terms of the Act, applicable only to the case of unimproved districts, like parts of the Counties Kerry, Galway, Mayo, and Donegal, where, although roads and other works would be productive of more than usual public advantage, the districts are too poor to ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... the tombs, except of those men that fell in battle, or those women who died in some sacred office. He fixed eleven days for the time of mourning: on the twelfth they were to put an end to it, after offering sacrifice to Ceres. No part of life was left vacant and unimproved, but even with their necessary actions he interwove the praise of virtue and the contempt of vice: and he so filled the city with living examples, that it was next to impossible, for persons who had these from their infancy before their eyes, not ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... human habitation, save that of a miserable police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath, and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of man; and yet it is between ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of transaction. An insurance company owns two adjoining pieces of unimproved city real estate, for which it paid $250,000 apiece, but which are now worth $500,000 each. The directors of the corporation formally decide to dispose of these holdings, and sell the first piece to a trust company, which ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... eats his dinner. Where is the happiness of devouring books with no attempt to profit by them, except in the temporary pleasure of satisfying an appetite? So even the highest means of happiness may become a savor of death unto death when perverted or unimproved. Never should we stimulate the intellect merely to feed upon itself. Unless intellectual culture is directed to what is useful, especially to the necessities or improvement of others, it is a delusion and a snare. Better far to be ignorant, but industrious and useful in any calling ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... the three of them sat about the table in their old juxtaposition, his face relaxed. However, Kate had seen her mother look up wistfully as her husband passed her, as if she longed for some affectionate recognition of the occasion, but the man missed his opportunity and let it sink into the limbo of unimproved moments. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... heard vaguely (1) of Yoshida's movements, and had become filled with wonder as to their design. This was a far different inquirer from Sakuma- Shozan, or the councillors of the Daimio of Choshu. This was no two-sworded gentleman, but the common stuff of the country, born in low traditions and unimproved by books; and yet that influence, that radiant persuasion that never failed Yoshida in any circumstance of his short life, enchanted, enthralled, and converted the common soldier, as it had done already with the elegant and learned. The man instantly ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the moments as though they were gold. He educated himself and did much of his best work during his spare moments. He learned arithmetic during the night shifts when he was an engineer. Mozart would not allow a moment to slip by unimproved. He would not stop his work long enough to sleep, and would sometimes write two whole nights and a day without intermission. He wrote his famous "Requiem" ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Filipino Refugees The First Philippine Commission The Second Philippine Commission The Return of Mr. Taft Governor-general James F. Smith with a Bontoc Igorot Escort Governor-general Forbes in the Wild Man's Country The Philippine Supreme Court An Unsanitary Well A Flowing Artesian Well An Unimproved Street in the Filipino Quarter of Manila An Improved Street in the Filipino Quarter of Manila Disinfecting by the Acre An Old-style Provincial Jail Retreat at Bilibid Prison, Manila Bilibid Prison Hospital Modern ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... approached the town, the road continually grew worse until it was little better than the average unimproved country highway in America, and the sharp loose stones everywhere were ruinous on tires. It finally plunged sharply down to a steamboat ferry, over which we crossed the Dart and landed directly ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... even where Nature loads the teeming plain With the full pomp of vegetable store, Her bounty, unimproved, is deadly bane: Dark woods and rankling wilds, from shore to shore, Stretch their enormous gloom; which to explore [5] Even Fancy trembles, in her sprightliest mood: For there each eyeball gleams with lust ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... away it goes every year beyond Sea, and never returns; whereby our Wealth is made a Prey to other Nations, whose Poor are imploy'd and maintain'd thereby, whilst in the mean time our Nation is in a Consumption, our Poor live by Begging, Poverty increases, and our Lands lye unimproved, ...
— Proposals For Building, In Every County, A Working-Alms-House or Hospital • Richard Haines
... being then unimproved, and few kinds of fodder for cattle discovered, it was impossible to maintain the summer stock during the cold season. Hence a portion of it was regularly slaughtered and salted for winter provision. We may suppose, therefore, that when no alternative was offered but these ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... had fixed their own price for commuters' tickets along the whole line of the road, and had thus induced hundreds of New York citizens to remove to Connecticut with their families, and build their houses on heretofore unimproved property, thus vastly increasing the value of the lands, and correspondingly helping our receipts for taxes. He urged that there was a tacit understanding between the railroad and these commuters and the public generally, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... were almost an inviolable. The rights of fishery were a standing obstacle to every proposal of hydralic improvement, and to this day large and fertile districts in Southern Europe remain sickly and almost unimproved and uninhabited, because the draining of the ponds upon them would reduce the income of proprietors who derive large profits by supplying the faithful, in Lent, with fish, and with various species of waterfowl which, though very fat, are, ecclesiastically ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... approach the works on Verplanck's, in which Colonel Webster commanded, and be in readiness to attack them the instant Wayne should obtain possession of Stony Point. That this detachment might not permit the favorable moment to pass unimproved Wayne had been requested to direct the messenger who should convey the intelligence of his success to Washington to pass through M'Dougal's camp and give him advice of that event. He was also requested to turn the cannon of the fort ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... proper one, and that it is in the interest of everyone that the land shall be promptly disposed of. The danger of creating a monopoly of ownership in lands under the statutes as construed is nothing. There are only two tracts of 60,000 acres each unimproved and in remote Provinces that are likely to be disposed of in bulk, and the rest of the lands are subject to the limitation that they shall be first offered to the present tenants and lessors who hold them ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Washington, when my father, the inventor of the cotton-gin, was fifty- five years old. He died January 25, 1825. The cotton-gin was invented in 1793; and though it has been in use for nearly one hundred years, it is virtually unimproved.... Hence the great merit of the South, financially and commercially. It has made England rich, and changed the commerce of the world. Lord Macaulay said of Eli Whitney: 'What Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... unimproved are apt to be lost. One knows not all the conditions on which England holds her sway, nor do we fathom the strange way in which spiritual characteristics are inwrought with material interests. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... but little advance in the art of candle-making, for the candle, briefly described as a rod of solidified tallow or wax surrounding a wick, remained almost unimproved until the eighteenth century, when spermaceti was introduced, and in more recent ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... was Uncouth, Ungraceful, Unfashionable, Unladylike, Uninteresting, Unpresentable, and Ugly. She was Unpoetical, Unmusical, Unlearned, Uncultured, Unimproved, Uninformed, Unknowing, Unthinking, Unwitty and Unwise. She was Unlively, Undersized, Unwholesome and Unhealthy. She was Unlovely, Ungentle, Uncivil, Unsociable, Untameable, and altogether Unendurable. She was Unkind, Unfeeling, Unloving, Unthankful, Ungrateful, Unwilling, Unruly, Unreasonable, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... quiet one, the most enjoyable hours to me being the ones spent in dreaming of Olga. Gradually the fact dawned upon me that my life was now a most selfish one. I was feeding upon memories of dear, by-gone days, but allowing the present to slip unimproved away. If I could arouse myself to some good purpose in life, and take a hand at scattering bright bits of happiness to console some lonely hearts who had less of comfort than myself, might it not be better? With the wealth which I had rapidly accumulated in Alaska, I could ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... from this Bavarian contingent; a stroke of policy no doubt, for the South Germans were so prejudiced against their brothers of the North that no opportunity to smooth them down was permitted to go unimproved. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the second part of 'England's Improvement,'[20] in which he gave a summary account of its then limited growths and manufactures, pointing out that England and Ireland were the only northern kingdoms remaining unimproved; he re-urged the benefits and necessity of a voluntary register of real property; pointed out a method of improving the Royal Navy, lessening the growing power of France, and establishing home fisheries; proposed the securing and fortifying of Tangier; ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... mettle hot and full] Full of unimproved mettle, is full of spirit not regulated or guided by ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... which were improved by selection in pre-historic times, because they were annuals and quick yielders. The heavy yielding plants, the engines of nature, are the trees, which have in most cases remained unimproved and largely unused until the present time because of the slowness of their generations and the absence of knowledge concerning ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... the scattered forest-town is still through beautiful forest-roads—roads that cleave grand avenues, traverse black barren heaths, ford shallow rivers, and climb over ferny knolls whence the sea is visible. The church is unrestored, the parsonage is unimproved, the long low house opposite is still the residence of Mr. Carnegie, the local doctor, and looks this splendid summer morning precisely as it looked in the splendid summer mornings long ago, when Bessie Fairfax was a little girl, and lived ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... of the sordid prose of the Mont Cenis road that, unlike those fine old unimproved passes, the Simplon, the Spluegen and—yet awhile longer—the Saint-Gothard, it denies you a glimpse of that paradise adorned by the four lakes even as that of uncommented Scripture by the rivers of Eden. I made, however, an excursion to the Lake of Como, which, though ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... attractive were the offers that a few settlers who were hard pressed for money, sold their rights of title to the land, and passed it on to others who would re-homestead the claims. Several early proof-makers sold their deeded quarters, raw, unimproved, miles from a railroad, for $3000 ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... while in power from 1849 to 1853, been brave enough boldly to assume a rational anti-slavery attitude, though it might have been defeated, as it was in 1852, it would have had a future. The chance passed unimproved. The temporizing attitude of the party's then leaders and the known pro-slavery feeling of most of its southern members—twelve Whigs voting in the House for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise—proved deadly to the organization, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... I replied, 'who, instead of employing his one talent in his master's service, restored it to him unimproved, alleging, as an excuse, that he knew him "to be a hard man, reaping where he had not sown, and gathering where he had not strawed." Of him to whom less is given, less will be required, but our utmost exertions ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... unkind, and the ground penurious, so that the most fruitful years will produce only enough to maintain themselves; where life unimproved, and unadorned, fades into something little more than naked existence, and every one is busy for himself, without any arts by which the pleasure of others may be increased; if to the daily burden of distress any additional weight be added, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... newspapers, under the title of "A Californian Political Economist." This fell into the hands of Henry George himself, in a reading room in San Francisco, and he wrote an acknowledgment of it to me. In South Australia the first tax on unimproved land values was imposed. It was small—only a halfpenny in the pound, but without any exemption; and its imposition was encouraged by the fact that we had had bad seasons and a falling revenue. The income tax in England was originally a war tax, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... is favorable for pressing such a settlement, and not a moment should be lost in availing ourselves of it. Should it pass unimproved, our situation would become much more difficult. Formal war is not necessary—it is not probable it will follow; but the protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor of our country require that force should be interposed to a certain degree it will probably contribute to advance ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... was any thing he thoroughly understood, it was the bayonet-exercise. He remembered that the knowledge of it had once saved his life, and he had never let an opportunity to perfect himself in it pass unimproved. He now felt safe; and seeing the coxswain gradually retreating before the furious attacks of the guerrilla chief, he sprang forward, and with one blow sent the sword flying from his hand and bore him to the floor. This move was seconded by Archie, who sprang to his cousin's side with a revolver ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... almost supernaturally qualifying for law-writing. BLADAMS was about forty years old, though appearing much older: with a slight cast in his left eye, a pimply pink countenance, and a circular piece of unimproved property ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... sense of escape in replacing the outer world of other people by an inward world as himself really cared to have it, had made him a kind of "idealist." He was become aware of the possibility of a large dissidence between an inward and somewhat exclusive world of vivid personal apprehension, and the unimproved, unheightened reality of the life of those about him. As a consequence, he was ready now to concede, somewhat more easily than others, the first point of his new lesson, that the individual is to himself the measure of all things, and to rely on the exclusive certainty to himself of ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... purpose of the writer to create the impression that the leaders of our people are neglecting their duty, or that the masses are letting their opportunities for material betterment pass unimproved, but rather to arouse both leaders and followers to the necessity for greater activity in their work. Indeed when all things, favorable and unfavorable, are taken into account, there is much to be thankful for and hopeful over in the present ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... day drew near to a close, I was conducted to a small temporary hut or cabin, where I was informed I might repose peaceably for the night, which I did without being disturbed by any one. This was another opportunity that I did not suffer to pass unimproved to pour out my soul to that Being, who had already given me reasons to believe that he did not say to the house of Jacob, seek you me in vain. Oh! that all sincere Christians would in every difficulty make Him their refuge; He ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... As to the effects of the rise of automotive travel, see Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, Historic, Progressive Fairfax County in Old Virginia, (Alexandria: Newell-Cole, 1928), pp. 20-21, containing a road map of the county's hard-surfaced roads and unimproved roads in 1928. ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... the yeasty crest of a billow, and vain to think of talking under it, as for a drowning priest in the sea to exhort his fellow-sinners on a raft. Nothing would do, but he must keep his mouth shut. Doubtless, the interval was not, in a meditative way, unimproved; for, upon the traces of the operation being at last removed, the cosmopolitan rose, and, for added refreshment, washed his face and hands; and having generally readjusted himself, began, at last, addressing the barber in a manner different, singularly so, from his previous one. ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... that Wagner places a heavy and intoxicating draught before us the more we shall appreciate the precious mountain spring which laves us in Mozart's music, and the less willing we shall be to permit any opportunity to pass unimproved which offers us the crystal cup. In the mind of Goethe genius was summed up in the name of Mozart. In a prophetic ecstasy he spoke the significant words: "What else is genius than that productive power through which deeds arise, worthy of standing in the presence of God and Nature, ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... preparatory school is, I dare say, very difficult to find. I would make a great point, I think, to send a boy to a good one; not to cram him or make a prig of him, but simply to give him the advantage which will make his whole career in life different from what it will be if his opening days pass by unimproved. Cool of me, Jem, to write all this; but I think of this boy, and my boyish days, and what I might have been, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the end of three years, be liable to a payment of sixpence per acre, into the public chest of the settlement; and, at the expiration of seven years more, should the land still remain in an uncultivated or unimproved state, it will revert absolutely to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... story of how their father's land speculation went out of sight in the queer mutations that befall real estate. In the year before Roswell the elder died, he took his younger son for a drive in the country south of St. Louis, where the property lies unimproved to this day. "Rosy," said the father, "hold on to your Carondelet property. In fifteen years it will be worth half a million dollars, and, very likely, a million and a half." That was thirty-three years ago when the Carondelet ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... This difference of taste is not merely the effect of caprice, nor entirely of refinement, but results from the change of circumstances. A man who should attempt to exhibit in Sumatra the modern or irregular style of laying out grounds would attract but little attention, as the unimproved scenes adjoining on every side would probably eclipse his labours. Could he, on the contrary, produce, amidst its magnificent wilds, one of those antiquated parterres, with its canals and fountains, whose precision he has learned ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... air presaged approaching rain, And beasts to cover scud across the plain. Warn'd by the signs, the wandering pair retreat, To seek for shelter at a neighbouring seat. 'Twas built with turrets, on a rising ground, And strong, and large, and unimproved around; Its owner's temper, timorous and severe, Unkind and griping, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... whether Dicksie liked it or not, it had been in Dicksie's mind to bring up the subject of the disagreeable scene, hoping that Marion would suggest a way for making some kind of unembarrassing amends. But such opportunities had slipped away unimproved, and here was the new railroad superintendent, whom their bluff neighbor Sinclair never referred to other than as the college guy, being brought apparently as a prisoner to ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... was unimproved, but not rural. The adjacent lots had apparently just given up bearing scrub-oaks, but had not seriously taken to bricks and mortar. In one direction the vista was closed by the Home of the Inebriates, ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... the city's edge, and which now is a girdle worn high about its gigantic middle) petered out into violently muddy and unmade streets and great patches of unimproved vacant lots that in ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst |
