"Better" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the witness, "if you want to make an ass of yourself you'd better shut up. What's that got ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... "Better still, better still," interrupted the newcomer, grasping his hand again; "you'll be broader, more progressive—'the heir of all the ages,' and so forth. I was denied such privileges in my youth. ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... a certain defeat for the county restored the earl to his original intention of giving a mild support to Hogarth, who certainly would be a better man than Fortescue. There was the usual amount of personal abuse levelled at the banker's clerk—neither his father nor his mother was spared—there were caricatures of him in mean lodgings and shabby raiment, doing things for himself, which he recollected doing, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... wife, not meaning the proverb. Her eye had swept the whole array of vehicles and had found them all empty, save one, in which she detected the blamelessly coated back of Mr. Arbuton. But I ought perhaps to explain Mrs. Ellison's motives better than they can be made to appear in her conduct. She cared nothing for Mr. Arbuton; and she had no logical wish to see Kitty in love with him. But here were two young people thrown somewhat romantically together; Mrs. Ellison was a born match-maker, and to have refrained from ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... entrusted with the power, or whether they ought to have a power which their personal interest leads to the abuse of. I am sure no candid man will hesitate about the answer; and it may also safely be left with ingenuous men to say whether the misconduct which we sometimes see in the press had not better be borne with, than to run the risk of confiding the power of correction to men who will be constantly urged by their own feelings to destroy its usefulness. How long can it be desirable to have periodical elections for the purpose of judging of the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... it is ..." said the ruddy-faced youth, discovering the grease on his nose and rubbing it off with the back of his hand. "Damn those dirty Fords. They get grease all over you! I suppose it is that life was so dull in America that anything seems better. I worked a year in an office before leaving home. Give ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... value of such a collection. A child's taste in reading is formed, as a rule, in the first ten or twelve years of its life, and experience has shown that the childish mind will prefer good literature to any other, if access to it is made easy, and will develop far better on literature of proved merit than on trivial ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... prejudices of landsmen, whose lives were spent in harsh, hard, cheerless toil, and who stood sorely in need of spiritual rest and deliverance from the death of sin. Many of these men had come there only out of curiosity; a few because they loved the Lord, and some because they had nothing better to do. ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... provoke such suspicions, they have, on the other hand, done nothing to allay them. We have never attempted to secure the good will of the Canadians in any respect; and we have never done anything to establish better relations. Yet unless such better relations are established, the United States will lose an indispensable ally in the making of a satisfactory political system in the Western hemisphere while at the same time the American people will be in the sorry situation for a sincere ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... people in Bretagne is but a step; a spark lights the whole; the citizens declared to M. de Montesquieu that if he had ten thousand men, Bretagne had a hundred thousand, who would teach his soldiers, with stones, forks and muskets, that they had better mind their own business, ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... be." says Eric. "He shall take the amends from me if he thinks it better; and tell them this too, that I bid them to my house, and my father shall do ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... sworn, clerks, serjeants, dempsters, and all other officers and members of court needful, to make, create, substitute and ordain, for whom he shall be held to answer with power likewise to our said justice, for the better execution of this commission to take the lymphads, galleys, birlinns, and boats, in the next adjacent Isles, and in the Lewis, for the furtherance of them in their service, the said justice being always answerable to the owners of the said lymphads, galleys, birlinns, ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... that adultery is hell cannot be better seen than from considering their origin. The origin of true marriage love is the Lord's love for the church; and this is why the Lord is called in the Word a "Bridegroom" and a "Husband," and the church a "bride" and a "wife." It is from this marriage that the ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... and better. Mousie was charmed with her Kid and led it off to the music-shop, where she had to pay a bill. While the man was writing a receipt to the bill, his wife killed the Kid, and began to roast it for dinner. Mousie looked round, and wanted to ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... particular work was assayed or marked, as well as the markers. These marks," he adds, "are every year new made, for the use of fresh wardens; and although the assaying is referred to the assay master, yet the touch-wardens look to the striking of the marks." To acquaint the public the better with this business of the assay, the writer of the "Touchstone" has prefixed a frontispiece to his work, intended to represent the interior of an assay office (we should suppose that of the old Goldsmiths' Hall), and makes reference by numbers to the various objects shown—as, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... he feared that there was every reason to believe that the intention was real. Jaques Coeur, religiously, was shocked at the idea, and, politically, wished the Dauphin to make a more profitable alliance. He whispered that the sooner the lady was out of reach the better, and even offered to advance a ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... opinion," said the youth; exchanging with de jars a singularly significant look; "and you had better treat her well, uncle, or I shall play you ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... their own, to have preferences, and reasons for their preferences. I do not want them to follow my taste, but to trust their own. I do not in the least care about their amassing correct information. It is much better that they should learn how to use books. It is very strange how theories of education remain impervious to development. In the days when books were scarce and expensive, when knowledge was not formulated and summarised, men had to depend largely on their own stores. But ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... yonder in the orchard, looking at us. He will be puzzled to know who is with me, here, in the old chaise. Horace thinks he can drive a horse better than any one about here, so you must be careful how you hold the reins, or ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... exclaimed, gazing down into the face already set in death. . . "You were my enemy, yet had I known whom this suit encased, methinks my arm had dealt an easier blow. Nathless, you were a better knight than churchman and, mayhap, it was a proper ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... he's better out of the way for the next fortnight. The girls ought to go to bed early, and keep the roses in their cheeks for the wedding. Moya's head is full of her frocks and fripperies. She is trying to run a brace of sewing women; and all those boxes are coming from the ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... had better break off this discussion. I cannot—I do not—believe you will carry out what you say. But if you do, I shall stand by the ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... be hanged if I do, then!" said I, passionately; for my blood was noo gettin up. It wad hae been far better for me, in the end, if I had taen things calmly—for I could easily hae proven my identity, and, of course, the messengers' error in apprehendin me; but my prudence and patience baith gave way before the strong feelin ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... child, who lay for the better part of the half-mile to her home in a kind of stupor, opened her eyes again beneath her mother's frightened gaze and was heard to ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... interposed Desire, snatching away her apron and showing a swollen and tear-stained face, "I hate and despise thee, John Howland, and always have and always will; and if I took thee for my bachelor at all it was only in hope that 't would give a jealous twinge to the heart of a better man, and if at the last I failed of him thou wouldst be better than none; but I've changed my mind, and now I'll none of thee, not if ne'er ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... part, had been on the side of the Crown during the long struggle for independence. But it is not possible to destroy what God holds in His hand. The passions of men work vast evil till, in calmer moments, they subside and a better light shines through ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... by careful investigation. Then she used great diplomacy to persuade her parents to change their route and pass by this way again during vacation. After a year of scheming she succeeded. She had not seen him for two years, and scarcely recognized him, he was so changed, had grown taller, better looking and was imposing in his uniform, with its brass buttons. He pretended not to see her, and passed by without a glance. She wept for two days and from that time ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Way, at the Conclusion of a Treaty, to desire you will use your Endeavours with the Traders, that they may sell their Goods cheaper, and give us a better Price for our Deer-Skins. Whenever any particular Sort of Indian Goods is scarce, they constantly make us pay the dearer on that Account. We must now use the same Argument with them: Our Deer are ...
— The Treaty Held with the Indians of the Six Nations at Philadelphia, in July 1742 • Various
... can asseverate this is no nonsense—he who from childhood lived with Garibaldi on the highways and in great cities, who followed him so impetuously with that lame leg of his that he remembers Garibaldi's heroic feats better than Garibaldi himself. "But now you will stay here," he says persuasively. "Now we'll work up the business—we'll get all the fine work of the whole island." Garibaldi has nothing against this; he has had enough ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... We need not be alarmed. It is wholesome repose,—much better than nervous restlessness. He can bear the journey, if he gets such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... his graphic style enabled him to give the appearance of scrupulous accuracy. I incline to think that the author of the sixth and seventh books of the History must have visited Syracuse, and that if we could see his own map of Epipolae, we should better be able to understand the difficulties of the backward night march of Demosthenes, by discovering that there was some imperative necessity for not descending, as seems natural, upon the open slope of the hill to the south. The position of Euryalus at the extreme point called Mongibellisi ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... "Well," she said very affectionately, "if you feel like that, it's all right. I just wanted you to say you liked me better than anything else. Of course you must go, Lark. I really take all the credit for you and your talent to myself, and it's as much an honor for me as it is for you, and I want you to go. But don't you ever go to liking the crazy old stories any ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... better argued, Doctor-dagger," said Fontrailles, half-laughing, "I see you will be a good travelling-companion. You shall go with me to Spain ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... in the conning tower of the Iron Duke, within those two short minutes, he had calmly thought out every chance and change and way of going into action under conditions which could not have been worse for him or better for the Germans. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... give what resistance they could. These, the Doon and the Hardy, drew the fire of the German guns, and, seeing it was impossible to withstand the German fire, they made off and escaped. This time the Germans were better informed about the conditions they dealt with, and evidently had no fear of mines, for they came to within two miles of the shore. The forts on shore were bombarded and private houses near by were hit by German shells, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... been thinking as I was walking back here, and I'll give you a little piece of advice: 'Laugh at those who cry, and cry at those who laugh.' Just go back to your little room and think that over and you will feel better." ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... me a black woman of lively and agreeable features, who held in her hand two bitches of the same colour, fastened together. I sat up, and asked her who she was? "I am," said she, "the serpent whom you lately delivered from my mortal enemy. I did not know in what way I could better requite the important services you have rendered me than by what I have just done. The treachery of your sisters was well known to me, and to avenge your wrongs, as soon as I was liberated by your generous assistance, I called together several of my ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... exterior. He was either gauging the unknown person, or feeling that he was being gauged. Monckton Milnes was another. Seeing me correcting some proof sheets, he said, 'Let me give you a piece of advice, my young friend. Write as much as you please, but the less you print the better.' ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... been the great guiding light of my life," he wrote to her. "You will always be, because I can not learn to forget. But for you it would be easier and better to forget. You will be happier—" And then he heard the door open, and she stood before him. The words that he had meant to write rushed to his lips, but no further. Moved by a common impulse, they advanced to meet each other, and ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... These men say there is a communication from its eastern extremity by a chain of lakes with a shallow river which discharges its waters into the sea. This stream they call the Thloueetessy, and report it to be navigable for Indian canoes only. The forms of the south and western shores are better known from the survey of Sir Alexander Mackenzie and in consequence of the canoes having to pass and repass along these borders annually between Moose-Deer Island and Mackenzie's River. Our observations made the breadth of the lake between Stony Island and the ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... in a degree, yet it is often necessary, you say. Physicians say not, except in a very few cases as a medicine; and even in these cases it is doubtful whether they have not other remedies as good, or better. Spirits are necessary, you say, to enable a man to endure great extremes of heat, cold, fatigue, and in exposure to wet, and attendance upon the sick. If this be correct, farmers will sometimes need them. But many of the most hard-working and thorough farmers in the land have, within a few years ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... to this end of it," he said. "Peggy, you had better go in to your father. I'll be in there in a minute. He's a pretty sick ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... But this method cannot guarantee the infallibility of the determination of cause and effect relation; and if by the assumption of a cause-effect relation no higher degree of certainty is available, it is better to accept a natural relation without limiting it to a cause-effect ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... "advised me to try and digest a little better, and gave me a water which he said was only raine water of the autumnal equinox exceedingly rectified, and smelt like ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... my head, as with a buckler, stayed: For little ill my dying would have wrought. Anyhow I shall die; and — that debt paid — My melancholy death will profit nought: When, had I died, defending thee in strife, I could not better have bestowed my life. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... were knockit against the Bell-Rock rather! it wad be better, and the bonnier voyage o' the twa. A shilling for thae twa bonnie ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... thorough annoyance, and before I had finished half I had to say, rose from her seat, and, showing her broad stern to the company, walked straight away. The officers then drew near me, and begged I would sleep there another night; but as they had nothing better to offer than the hut of last night, I declined and went my way, begging them to call and make friends ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... author of all their troubles, and as deluding them with promises of a fairy land, which seemed to recede in proportion as they advanced. It was of no use, they said, to contend against fate, and it was better to take their chance of regaining the port of Panama in time to save their lives, than to wait where they ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... too conspicuously the very head and front of the American cause. Some men, doubtless open to dishonest suggestions, wished to get rid of him in order that they might carry on their treasonable conspiracy with greater ease and with a better chance of success. Others bluntly coveted his position. Perhaps some of them really thought that he was pursuing wrong methods or policy. However it may be, few commanders-in-chief in history have had to suffer more than Washington did from malice ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... proposed; the patient, however, would not consent to an operation. On the twenty-sixth day an abscess formed on the left side below the nipple, and from it was discharged a large quantity of pus and blood. Four days after this, believing himself to be better, the man began to redress the wound, and from it he saw the end of a stick protruding. A physician was called, and by traction the stick was withdrawn from between the 3d and 4th ribs; forty-nine days after the accident the wound had healed completely. Two years ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... time to be sick in; for if any one complained, it was immediately said he had the plague; and though I had, indeed, no symptoms of that distemper, yet, being very ill both in my head and in my stomach, I was not without apprehension that I really was infected. But in about three days I grew better. The third night I rested well, sweated a little, and was much refreshed. The apprehensions of its being the infection went also quite away with my illness, and I went ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... the while to get off to a battle of rats among the corn-stacks, he was not yet fifty. There might therefore be some time left to him for the promised joys of companionship if he could only convince the boy that politics were better ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... clear voices burst into 'Glory be to God in the Highest,' and this was the refrain all through the service. I passed the time with our Lord and my darling, who had many masses said for him in London and all over England that night. I am better and have stronger nerves, and am perhaps ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... in 1629, Mrs. Peirce reported, that she had lived for 20 years in the Colony, and from her garden of three or four acres at Jamestown, she had gathered about 100 bushels of figs, and that she could keep a better house in Virginia for three or four hundred pounds a year ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... the old inhabitants in the shape of clay-baked rough pots or their broken sherds; and in several, roughly-formed querns or mill-stones, made, not of the rock in which the houses were cut, but of a hard grit that would act better upon the grain they ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... him for a pot of ale? Thus, when the learned and the wise Conceal their talents from our eyes, And from deserving friends withhold Their gifts, as misers do their gold; Their knowledge to themselves confined Is the same avarice of mind; Nor makes their conversation better, Than if they never knew a letter. Such is the fate of Gosford's knight, Who keeps his wisdom out of sight; Whose uncommunicative heart Will scarce one precious word impart: Still rapt in speculations deep, His outward senses ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Jack. "No; Bartlett's a better hand at this sort of work than I am. He and Lenny will show you plenty of sport, and help to rid the seas of some of these dangerous brutes. Now ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... that it needed a generation of Bishops, with all the authority and all the courage of Saint Celsus, Saint Malachy, and Saint Lawrence, to rescue from ruin a Priesthood and a people, so far fallen from the bright example of their ancestors. That the reaction towards a better life had strongly set in, under their guidance, we may infer from the horror with which, in the third quarter of the twelfth century, the elopement of Dermid and Dervorgoil was regarded by both ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... slipped down from the wooden chair upon which she had seated herself, "I'd better go home and ask about it," she remarked. "I'd much rather have some one beside grandpa teach me; he uses such terribly long words and talks so long about things I don't understand. Sometimes I can't make out whether ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... forest-land," retorted Ulrich. "When my men come to release us you will wish, perhaps, that you were in a better plight than caught poaching on a neighbour's land, ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... and reduce it to its most essential content. For it not only puts itself in the place of the unity of a system, but frequently also in the place of a harmonious and complete creed. Hence the rule of faith is necessary as a guiding principle, and even an imperfect one is better than a mere haphazard ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Jools, Jools! my pore, noble, dear, misguidened friend! ef you hed of hed a Christian raisin'! May the Lord show you your errors better'n I kin, and bless you for your good intentions—oh, no! I cayn't touch that money with a ten-foot pole; it wa'n't rightly got; you must really excuse me, my dear friend, but ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... assessment: fair system operating below capacity and being modernized for better service; very small aperture terminal (VSAT) system under construction domestic: trunk service provided by open-wire, microwave radio relay, tropospheric scatter, and fiber-optic cable; some links being made digital international: country code - 255; satellite earth stations - ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... question rang in his ears. Was it the boy's fault that his legs were crooked, and his back misshapen and awkward? Was it his fault that he must go through life, receiving pity or contempt from his more fortunate fellow-creatures, whose limbs were better formed than his own? ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... compositors is apt to be imperfectly appreciated by authors, because it rather interferes with what the author wishes to say, although it may often say something better. But there is no reason why the general reader should not thoroughly enjoy it. Certainly it ought to be more generously recognised than it is. So many persons at present think of it as merely accidental and fortuitous, as if there was no mind in it, as if all the ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... God bent forward and took this man in his hand, and held him up on his palm as if to see him better. He was just a little dark stroke in the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... now and then. Madge and Lois both had good voices and good natural taste and feeling; and Mrs. Barclay's instructions had been eagerly received. This evening Philip joined the choir; and Charity declared it was "better'n they could do in ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... first place—although, as he became better acquainted with Rachel's varying moods and aspects, he fell more and more deeply under the charm of her temperament—a temperament at once passionate and childish, crude, and subtle, with many signs, fugitive and surprising, of a deep ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... how he is cajoling you. Step aside, that I may have a word with you. Your uncle is getting the better of you, my poor friend.[369] The law will not allow you an obolus of the paternal property, for you are a bastard and not a ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... valuable in Acton's work would remain buried. Here, for instance, we have extracted nothing from the Chronicle; and Acton's gifts as a leader-writer remain without illustration. Yet they were remarkable. Rarely did he show to better advantage than in the articles and reviews he wrote in that short-lived rival of the Saturday Review. From the two bound volumes of that single weekly, there might be made a selection which would be of high interest to all who ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... opera which was popular in the days of Meyerbeer. It is cut up into airs and recitatives, and the accompaniment is sedulously subordinated to the voices. Without desiring to discredit the beauties of 'Mireille' or 'Romeo et Juliette,' one cannot help thinking that it would have been better for Gounod's reputation if he had written nothing for the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... courtesies had been returned Tammy came in at the gate with his college books strapped on his back. The old Cunzic Neuk had been demolished by Glenormiston, and Tammy, living in better quarters, was studying to be a teacher at Heriot's. Bobby saw him settled, and then he had to escort Mr. Brown down from the lodge. The caretaker made his way about stiffly with a cane and, with the ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... if I did not come myself; concluding with a hearty tender of his friendship, and that of his family; and sent me as a present seven fine leopards' skins, which he had, it seems, received from Africa, by some other ship that he had sent thither, and which, it seems, had made a better voyage than I. He sent me also five chests of excellent sweetmeats, and a hundred pieces of gold uncoined, not quite so large as moidores. By the same fleet my two merchant-trustees shipped me one thousand two hundred chests of sugar, eight hundred rolls of tobacco, and the rest ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... demanded to know what I was doing. I admitted to overpowering curiosity that got the better of my manners. They wanted to know who I was and why I was on the island. I told them the truth, of course, at least partly. I identified all of us. Then I'm afraid I told a slight untruth. I said we had found reference to the Maiden Hand in an old manuscript, and were diving in hopes ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... the Blake mansion and were promptly admitted. Miss Betty, bearing up bravely under Reginald's reassurances, greeted us before we were fairly inside the door, though she and her brother were not able to conceal the fact that their mother was no better. Miss Sears was out, for an airing, and the new nurse, Miss Rogers, was ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the speed of the various vessels. The Pike and Madison were fast, weatherly ships; but the Oneida was a perfect slug, even going free, and could hardly be persuaded to beat to windward at all. In this respect Yeo was much better off; his six ships were regular men-of-war, with quarters, all of them seaworthy, and fast enough to be able to act with uniformity and not needing to pay much regard to the weather. His force could act as a ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the castle of Melusine, but none appeared. At last I descried a building on an eminence, which I converted at once into the object desired; but, as the rain had come on violently and the atmosphere was somewhat dull, I was not surprised that I did not obtain a better view of the turrets and donjon, which no doubt frowned ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Defense Department's black employees, military and civilian, was closely linked to his concern for military efficiency. Less than a week on the job, he called for information on the status of Negroes in the department. He had heard that some services were better integrated than others, and he wanted his Assistant Secretary for Manpower to investigate. He wanted to know if there was a "fair" proportion of Negroes in the higher civilian grades. If not, he asked, "what do you recommend be done about it?"[20-12] These questions, and indeed ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... to the other man, and then we will apply for leave. We had better start soon, or else Umhlonhlo may have gone to some ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... mother, who in her youth, could perform every species of trick upon stilts, was discovered by her trained nurse mounted on stilts and perambulating the garden on them, in her eighty-sixth year, for the better instruction of her little great-grandson. Again, during a great rat-hunt we had organised, the nurse missed her ninety-year-old charge, to discover her later, in company with the stable-boy, behind a barn, both of them armed with sticks, intently watching a rat-hole into which ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... mistakes had been discovered, he began to be known merely as "Old Nick the Lawyer," or "Old Nick the Liar," which some ignorant people look upon as convertible terms. I think Lizard Skin, the cannibal, was a better Christian than old Nick the lawyer, as he was brave and honest, and scorned to tell ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... abundance of Elk in the vally about the Fishery on the Kooskooske River. our meat being exhausted we issued a pint of bears oil to a mess which with their boiled roots made an agreeable dish. Potts's legg which has been much swolen and inflamed for several days is much better this evening and gives him but little pain. we applyed the pounded roots and leaves of the wild ginger & from which he found great relief.- neare our encampment we saw a great number of the yellow lilly with reflected petals in blume; this plant was just as forward here at this time ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... out of it, my dear Eugie. Dudley and I will manage it. We'll see Diggs and get a retraction from him—that's sensible and simple. There's no scandal the better for dragging a ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... interested in our castle, and urged me to make a sketch of it, so that she may know what it now looked like. She had seen it when a little girl, but never since, and had been afraid to wander very far in this direction by herself. I told her that it would be far better for her to see the castle with her own eyes, and that I could conduct her to an eminence, not half a mile away, where she could have an excellent view of it. This plan greatly pleased her; but looking at her watch she said that it would be too late for her to go that morning, ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... Anthony thought it better under these circumstances to accept the invitation, so he gave the man something, and slipped through. On the quay was a pile of plunder from the ship: a dozen chests carved and steel-clamped stood together; half-a-dozen barrels of powder; the ship's bell rested amid a heap of rich clothes ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... her virtues and her faults—of her merits and defects? Will it not be better to leave them all to time and the coming pages? That she was proud of her birth, proud of being an Irish Desmond, proud even of her poverty, so much I may say of her, even at that early age. In that she was careless of the world's esteem, fond ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... was with me. At first I was conscious of nothing but a sense of utter bereavement, of the shipwreck of all my hopes. But, by degrees, as I threaded my way among the moving crowds, I came to a better and more worthy frame of mind. After all, I had lost nothing that I had ever had. Ruth was still all that she had ever been to me—perhaps even more; and if that had been a rich endowment yesterday, why not to-day also? And how ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... months, being obliged to go to Lisbon about some mercantile affairs, he took the two philosophers with him in his ship. Pangloss explained to him how everything was so constituted that it could not be better. James was ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labour; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of better things; he thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time and means, small ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... unprecedented detective are, however, sufficiently tangible. He had been a K.C. and a judge. He had left the Bench because it annoyed him, and because he held the very human but not legitimate belief that some criminals would be better off with a trip to the seaside than with a sentence of imprisonment. After his retirement from public life he stuck to his old trade as the judge of a Voluntary Criminal Court. "My criminals were tried for the faults which really make social life impossible. They were tried ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... single meaning; the plausible schemes of philosophers give no solution to the everlasting riddle; the nostrums of politicians touch only the surface of the deeply-rooted evil; it is folly to be querulous, and as silly to fancy that men are growing worse, as that they are much better than they used to be. The evils under which we suffer are not skin-deep, to be eradicated by changing the old physicians for new quacks. What is to be done under such conditions, but to hold fast as vigorously ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... much better," cried the man; "but, you see, I have gone thoroughly into the question with Mr. Alder already. He said he would mention what I told him to the editor—put my position before ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... these men Susan regarded as far better qualified for the Presidency than General Grant, who now was the obvious choice of the Republicans for 1868. "Why go pell-mell for Grant," asked The Revolution, "when all admit that he is unfit for the position? It is not too late, if true ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... his way towards Ousebank. As it was evident that Sarah meant to go to the town, it was better that she should go with him than alone, which he was convinced she would do if he did not let her come with him; so he only said testily, 'I never did pretend to understand women, but you beat every one of ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... not mentioned with high praise by some ancient writer. Yet one of them, the Trachiniae, is, to my thinking, very poor and insipid. Now, if we had nineteen plays of Sophocles, of which twelve or thirteen should be no better than the Trachiniae,—and if, on the other hand, only seven pieces of Euripides had come down to us, and if those seven had been the Medea, the Bacchae, the Iphigenia in Aulis, the Orestes, the Phoenissae, the Hippolytus, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Bee came in with her hat on. "Excuse me for interrupting you," she said, with a far-away look in her eyes. "But do you mind if I copy that pink negligee? It hangs so much better than those I got in Paris. I won't take a moment. Just stand up and let me see. You needn't look so despairing, I am not going to stay. No, Billy, you stay there. Mother will be down directly. Oh, baby, why will you step on poor Tattah's ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... that there be found out a better harborough then yet there is, which must be to the Northward, if any there bee, which was mine intention to haue spent this Summer in the search of, and of the Mine of Chawnis Temoatan: the one I would haue done, if the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... to be subject to the will of others, even to the small extent to which American servants are subordinate, is offensive to an American's pride of citizenship, it is contrary to his conception of American equality. He is a servant only for the time, and until he finds something better to do. He accepts a menial position only as a stepping stone to some more independent employment. Is it to be wondered at that American servants have different manners from their brethren in other countries? ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... had seen enough of her, he would return to her. She had the vague, passionate idea that, when Edward had exhausted a number of other types of women he must turn to her. Why should not her type have its turn in his heart? She imagined that, by now, she understood him better, that she understood better his vanities and that, by making him happier, she ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... from the first Woman's Rights Meeting at Worcester, a friend said to me, "I intend getting up a Man's Rights Society; you misunderstand the matter; all the efforts of society are for the elevation of woman, and man has to perform the drudgery. The consequence is, the women are far better educated than the men." The answer was obvious. "If women are, according to your admission, fitted for the higher plane, why keep them on the lower?" My friend then went on to say, that the whole of this scheme was considered to be of the most morally visionary character, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... understand how the friendship between Toulmin Smith and Frank Newman began. For the decentralization of the nation, better forms of local self-government, were also, each of them, a dream of the latter's, which he longed eagerly to see realized. There was another keen common interest between them. Both ardently desired the freedom of Hungary. Both wrote strongly in favour of it. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... that Hood would follow him when he started on his march through Georgia, as Hood had supposed that Sherman would follow him into Tennessee. Was there any more reason for the one supposition than the other? Ought not Sherman as well as Hood to have known his antagonist better than such a supposition would imply? Was it not extremely unreasonable to suppose that Hood, after he had marched hundreds of miles west from Atlanta and reached the base of his projected operations in Tennessee, would turn back and follow Sherman at such a distance in his rear? It ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... at that galled spot on Snowfoot's neck! Peakslow has got all he could out of him the past week,—kept him low and worked him hard in a cruel collar. Never mind, old Snowfoot! better times have come now, for both of us. Here, Link, you are lame; want ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... first time of late, she wondered uneasily if Miss Forsyth had been right, on that August day which now seemed so very long ago. Would it not have been better, even from Anna's point of view, to have sent her back to her own country, to Berlin, to that young couple who seemed to have so high an opinion of her, and with whom she had spent so successful a ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... speeches and letters, and which the people of several countries of Europe can appreciate to-day. His affection for his own country and its institutions is curiously dependent upon a wider cause of human good, and is not a whit the less intense for that. There is perhaps no better expression of this widespread feeling in the North than the unprepared speech which he delivered on his way to become President, in the Hall of Independence at Philadelphia, in which the Declaration of Independence had been signed. "I have never," he said, "had a feeling politically ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Jerusalem."[526] The saints of God are come "to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven;" but they are also come to "Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel." And according to their distinguished destination they endeavour to reduce to practice the exhortation, "Wherefore we, receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... of him from some who knew him well. He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth. The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in 1815. He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible in the open air; and a fortnight ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Greece from the impending invasion of Darius, and postponed it to the reign of his feebler son, and during its second revolt Athenian ships had sailed up the Nile and assisted the Egyptians in the contest with the Persians. If Egypt could not be free, it was better that its ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... was good to look upon. Tall, fair-haired, with a good complexion and splendid health, he was physically, at twenty-four, no unworthy descendant of the great Louis. He had, too, many amiable qualities calculated to win affection; but he was mentally little better than a clown. His education had been shamefully neglected; he had been suppressed and kept in the background until, in spite of his manhood, he had all the shyness, awkwardness and dullness of ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... character of the hours maintained, the lack of sleep and the continuous round of banquets; must have tried the mind and heart and body about equally. In the end the experience must have broadened the conceptions and ideas of the Prince; educated him in a better perception of his immense responsibilities; trained him in an iron school of etiquette and helped to teach him that inflexible routine of duty which must ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... as much as they did provide equal treatment and opportunity for the black minority. His opinion was reinforced by the continual assurances of his military subordinates that in open competition with white soldiers few Negroes would ever achieve a proportionate share of promotions and better occupations. And when his subordinates added to this sentiment the notion that integration would disrupt the Army and endanger its efficiency, they quickly persuaded the already sympathetic Royall that segregation was not only correct ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... stakes against it. Podvysotsky comes, sees a thousand gold pieces, stakes against the bank. The banker says, 'Panie Podvysotsky, are you laying down the gold, or must we trust to your honor?' 'To my honor, panie,' says Podvysotsky. 'So much the better.' The banker throws the dice. Podvysotsky wins. 'Take it, panie,' says the banker, and pulling out the drawer he gives him a million. 'Take it, panie, this is your gain.' There was a million in the bank. 'I didn't know that,' says Podvysotsky. 'Panie Podvysotsky,' ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... reflects on (and still better sees) the enormous masses of lava apparently shot miles high up, like cannon-balls, the force seems out of all proportion to the mere gravity of the liquefied lava; I should think that a channel a little straightly or more open would determine the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... come with us and we will marry thee to her; thou shalt lie with her to-night and on the morrow divorce her and we will give thee what I said." Quoth Ala al-Din to himself, "By Allah, to bide the night with a bride on a bed in a house is far better than sleeping in the streets and vestibules!" So he went with them to the Kazi whose heart, as soon as he saw Ala al-Din, was moved to love him, and who said to the old man, "What is your will?" He replied, "We wish to make this young man an intermediary husband for my daughter; but ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... what a hold he has over Mr. Gledware,—can make him testify in such a way as to ruin my poor Brick. If Brick knew this, he'd understand how important it is to flee for his life and never, never let himself be taken. But he thinks nobody could get the better of Red Feather. You see, if he just dreamed what has happened, he'd KNOW Mr. ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... object, viz. what is marked by difference. And a person who maintains the existence of a thing devoid of difference on the ground of differences affecting that very thing simply contradicts himself without knowing what he does; he is in fact no better than a man who asserts that his own ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Knowledge do not regard anything other than Knowledge. Persons fully conversant with the Vedas and depending upon the utterances contained in them, are rare. They that are more intelligent desire the path of abstention from acts as the better of the two, viz., heaven and emancipation.[727] Abstention from acts is observed by those that are possessed of great wisdom. That conduct, therefore, is laudable. The intelligence which urges to abstention ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown |
