"Bettering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... outside our subject, the character of its influence on society may be gathered from their efforts for the suppression of the slave trade; from the stricter observance of Sunday which became general towards the end of our period; from their plans for bettering the condition, and their care for the education of the poor. The institution of Sunday schools was largely due to Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, who began his work in 1780. Six years later some 200,000 ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... poring over Wordsworth lately: which has had much effect in bettering my Blue Devils: for his philosophy does not abjure melancholy, but puts a pleasant countenance upon it, and connects it with humanity. It is very well, if the sensibility that makes us fearful of ourselves is ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... dozen Cossacks supposed to keep order and collect tribute of one-tenth as homage from American Indians for the Czar. English buccaneers didn't scruple as to blood when they sacked Spanish cities for Spanish gold. These Russian outlaws scrupled less, when their only hope of bettering a desperate exile was the booty of precious furs plundered, or bludgeoned, or exacted as tribute from the Indians of Northwest America. The plunder, when successful, or trade, if the crazy planks ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days, perhaps, in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low; in England, for example, than in Scotland; ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... hundred goes! As if that wasn't stunning enough, Vittle-us (and well named too) eats six millions' worth, English money, in seven months! Wegg takes it easy, but upon-my-soul to a old bird like myself these are scarers. And even now that Commodious is strangled, I don't see a way to our bettering ourselves.' Mr Boffin added as he turned his pensive steps towards the Bower and shook his head, 'I didn't think this morning there was half so many Scarers in Print. But ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... behoove a Jew to become so intimate with a goy, and a Governor at that. They claimed that the Rabbi labored only to promote his own private ends; but, as these malcontents were among the first to seize the opportunity of bettering their condition, Mendel could afford to shrug his shoulders ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... clear, as she recognized the sincerity of his suit, she withdrew from it. Some coarse, ill-natured people in the house, who at first, with significant nods, had intimated that "the little school-ma'am" was bent on bettering her fortunes, were soon nonplussed by ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... viejo" (old mill), another hacienda belonging to these rich lady proprietors; and profitable on account of the fine pasture which some of the surrounding hills afford. Nothing could look more solitary. Magdalene might have left her desert, and ended her days there, without materially bettering her situation. The only sign of life is a stream that runs round a very productive small orchard in front of the house, while on a hill behind are a few maguey plants, and on the mirador, in front of the house, some creepers have been trained with a good deal of taste. There are bleak hills ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... periodical nearly (and I assure you I have been put in the pillory among them) the poems are going into a second edition, Chapman says, and 'Aurora Leigh' into a fifth. Also Chapman junior, who has come out here to see after Lever, smoothes me down a little about Robert, and says that the sale is bettering itself, and that a new edition of the 'Poems' will soon be wanted. I just now see a pleasant notice of myself in 'Bentley's Magazine.' Abuse of the 'Congress Poems,' of course. Then a side stroke at 'Aurora Leigh,' which ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... State association actively opposed has been passed by the General Assembly and every bill which it actively supported has been enacted into law. It has thus conclusively been proved that, while women must band themselves together for bettering the condition of their sex and for the general good of the State, yet having planned together they must work out their problems through their political parties. The association has consistently opposed the so-called National Woman's Party with its "militant" methods, giving wide ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... one night in New Mexico a cowboy sang to me, in typical cowboy music, Larry Chittenden's entire "Cowboys' Christmas Ball"; since that time the poem has often come to me in manuscript form as an original cowboy song. The changes—usually, it must be confessed, resulting in bettering the verse—which have occurred in oral transmission, are most interesting. Of one example, Charles Badger Clark's "High Chin Bob," I have printed, following Mr. Clark's poem, a cowboy version, which I submit to Mr. Clark and his admirers for ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... open his mouth against this Enterprise. No man (I say) who either hath Charitie toward his brother (and would be glad of his furtherance in vertuous knowledge): or that hath any care & zeale for the bettering of the Common state of this Realme. Neither any, that make accompt, what the wiser sort of men (Sage and Stayed) do thinke of them. To none (therefore) will I make any Apologie, for a vertuous acte doing: and for commending, or setting forth, ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... contrary, religion bears a more tender regard to human nature. It prescribes to a very miserable man the means of bettering his condition; nay, it shews him that the bearing of his afflictions as he ought to do, will naturally end in the removal of them: It makes him easy here, because it can make ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... malady was not giving him serious trouble, thus far. Near the end of January he wrote: "Life continues here the same as usual. There isn't a flaw in it. Good times, good home, tranquil contentment all day and every day, without a break. I shouldn't know how to go about bettering my situation." He did little in the way of literary work, probably finding neither time nor inclination for it. When he wrote at all it was merely to set down some fanciful drolleries with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... power of the unions unjustly, cultivate amicable relations with everybody, and try in all possible ways to make true men of themselves? If the men had worked along this line they would have found they were bettering themselves in every way faster than they could ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... are here meant some of the various schemes in which Irishmen have indulged and still indulge with the view of bettering their country. This chapter will aim at showing that, for the resurrection of Ireland, the reconstruction of her past is impossible; parliamentary independence or "home rule," insufficient, physical force and violent revolution, in conjunction with European radicals particularly, is as unholy ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... livelihood.[28] A constantly increasing number of emigrants are streaming into the Holy Land, although the Zionists are devoting their main endeavors toward firmly establishing the resident inhabitants and bettering their condition. On April 3, 1914, the London Jewish Chronicle reported the emigration from the single port of Odessa as numbering ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... to the higher. This is indeed the law of evolution, that has been through all the ages and that today is at work. It is the God-Power that is at work and every form of useful activity that helps on with this process of lifting and bettering is a form of Divine activity. If therefore we recognise the one Divine life working in and through all, the animating force, therefore the Life of all, and if we are consciously helping in this process we ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... in which Cerimon, the man withdrawn from the world to study the bettering of man, revives the body of Thaisa, are the most ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... a necessity for bettering the family circumstances, and by certain minor forces which cannot now be named, my father began to think seriously of casting his lot with the great stream of emigrants. Many family councils were held before it was agreed that the plan must be carried out. Then came the parting; for it was impossible ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... conceptions. These two instincts form a part of his makeup; he has them from his birth, "as birds have their feathers, and bears their hair. Hence he is perfectible through nature, and merely conforms to nature in improving his mind and in bettering his condition. Extend the idea farther along with Turgot and Condorcet,[3121] and, with all its exaggerations, we see arising, before the end of the century, our modern theory of progress, that which founds ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Intercommunication and locomotion, which tend so powerfully to expand the ideas, received no encouragement; the majority of men died without ever having ventured out of the neighborhood in which they were born. For them there was no hope of personal improvement, none of the bettering of their lot; there were no comprehensive schemes for the avoidance of individual want, none for the resistance of famines. Pestilences were permitted to stalk forth unchecked, or at best opposed only by mummeries. Bad food, wretched clothing, inadequate ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the age of eighty-two, with one foot in the grave and the other uplifted to follow it, I do not permit myself to take part in any new enterprises, even for bettering the condition of man, not even in the great one which is the subject of your letter, and which has been through life that of my greatest anxieties.[137] The march of events has not been such as to render its completion ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... against the new arrangement, which proposed that all the offices then held in Ireland should be filled by Englishmen having no personal interest whatever in Ireland. The certainty that they would have a personal interest in it the very moment there was a chance of bettering their fortunes thereby, appears to have been quite overlooked. The settlers, therefore were allowed to continue their career as before, and felt all the secure for their effectual resistance ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... mistrusting his own capacity for self-government, he knows the necessity for a master; and instances are numerous, of slaves, having misjudged their own capacity for self-government, having fled from supposed wrongs, they found they were mistaken as to the means of bettering their condition, and returned to voluntary servitude, begging, with tears, to be again admitted to the sacred precincts ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... but I do not see how these can be better spent than in making life cheerful & honourable for others and for ourselves; and the gain of good life to the country at large that would result from men seriously setting about the bettering of the decency of our big towns would be priceless, even if nothing specially good befell the arts in consequence: I do not know that it would; but I should begin to think matters hopeful if men turned their attention to such things, and I repeat ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... his own labored breathing as he plunged through the East Entry, Jason heard panting behind him. Holland. Holland bettering his promised three minutes—and with a forbidden disarmer in his hand. Guiltily, Jason felt the weight of the disarmer he had himself ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... he entered the dismantled sitting-room at Cedar Lodge that same night a little after half-past ten o'clock. He had dined in the old house in Holland Street; served by Frederick, the German-Swiss valet, who, some weeks previously, hearing of his intended departure, had announced his intention of "bettering himself," had given Mrs. Porcher warning, and, in moving terms and three languages, implored employment of Iglesias, declaring that the other gentlemen resident at Cedar Lodge were "no class," their clothes utterly unworthy of his powers of brushing ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... benefits that could be conferred upon mankind, I found none so great as the discovery of new arts, endowments, and commodities for the bettering of man's life.... But if a man could succeed, not in striking out some particular invention, however useful, but in kindling a light in nature—a light that should in its very rising touch and illuminate all the border regions that confine upon the circle of our present knowledge; and so spreading ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... hiding," he said when Neal asked why they had left the ravine during the hottest portion of the day. "If the Indians should besiege us here, it would only be a few hours before surrender must be made, because of lack of water, therefore we can render our position no worse, and may succeed in bettering it ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... Germans. From abstractions they turned with a new intoxication to what they conceived to be the concrete. Entering thus late upon the stage of national politics, they devoted themselves, with their accustomed thoroughness, to learning and bettering what they conceived to be the principles and the practice which had given success to other nations. In this quest no scruples should deter them, no sentimentality hamper, no universal ideals distract. Yet this, ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... me so. There was another man who told me the same thing about five years ago, John Henry, Sandsting, in Walls. With regard to the price paid for lines, I wish also to say that we have to furnish our own lines in the Faroe fishing. You were asking me if I thought there was a possibility of our bettering ourselves. I thought there was, and that was one of the ways in which I thought we might do so. I have always thought that the owner, when he provided a vessel, ought also to provide the material for the catching of the fish; but instead of that ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... naught to tell of their ways till they came out of the thicket into the fields about the Burg of the Four Friths; and even there was a look of a bettering of men's lives; though forsooth the husbandmen there were much the same as had abided in the fields aforetime, whereas they were not for the most part freemen of the Burg, but aliens who did service in war and otherwise thereto. But, it being eventide, there were men and women and children, ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... Britain to obtain over the United States. It might be a humiliating story for me to tell, had not the fault so evidently arisen from the shortcomings of others. The time has come to reveal this piece of history, and I do so in the hope that it may aid in bettering the condition in which the Congress of the United States has, thus far, left ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... to the very deepest levels of depression before he loses his power to laugh, or to be cheered by an unexpected bettering of his financial position. John Fulton was in a bad way, but certain things still struck him as funny, and the money which he had been enabled to borrow from the bank had eased his mind. Still, so Lucy told me, he could not sleep at night, and it must have been ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... a natural and not unlawful desire of bettering their condition, they determined on crossing the Atlantic, encouraged by the offer of considerable grants of wild land, which at that period were freely awarded by Government to persons desirous ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... proclamation' in 1786, which was supplemented by the society for 'the Suppression of Vice' in 1802. I don't suppose that vice was much suppressed. Sydney Smith ridiculed its performances in the Edinburgh for 1809. The article is in his works. A more interesting society was that for 'bettering the condition of the poor,' started by Sir Thomas Bernard ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... youth, Or comrades of his riper years; The poor who felt his kindly ruth, And mourn him with unpurchased tears; Men of the world whose mordant sense Shorn of all maudlin sentiment Seemed the sharp touchstone of pretence; Soft hearts on swift world-bettering bent, All miss, all mourn the man whom all Responsive found to each ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... singular; never offend against good taste; have a tinge of religiousness, but remember too much is impracticable for daily life; whatever you do, don't be poor; never yield an inch, unless you are going to make something by the concession; take every advantage of bettering your position, it matters not at what cost to others—they must look after themselves, ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... the new ideas; they center current history. Men are made in New York State in the schools. ... The better the schools the finer the quality of the men produced. Therefore, the school exhibit of New York State should interest every citizen, as the schools have been bettering year by year and the product increasing in value. ... The Commission in charge of this exhibit has spared no expense to make this educational showing a storehouse of novel ideas and suggestions dealing with the advance in pedagogy, ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... and important condition presented itself to the comprehension of Diaz early in his administration, and compliance with it has been one of the principal contributing causes to his success. This was the necessity for the bettering of the means of communication of the country. Roads, railways, and telegraph multiplied accordingly under the fostering work of the Diaz Governments, mainly by inducements held out to foreign capitalists; partly by the expenditure of national funds. When troops ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... to run off with the young lady — for I suppose there is no chance in the world of your marrying her in any other way — it will be better both for you and her that you should avoid for the future these meetings in the gardens or elsewhere, and cast your thoughts in some other direction for the bettering ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... sent a message to Governor Taft at Manila. Soon after was the old prophecy fulfilled, when President Roosevelt, no doubt with Puck at his elbow, sent a message round the world in twenty minutes, thus bettering Puck's ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... remaining at Thorpe Ambrose is referable to my having some private means of communicating with the major which it is impossible for her to discover. With this conviction in her mind, she has become so unmanageable that no person, with any chance of bettering herself, could possibly remain in attendance an her; and sooner or later, the major, object to it as he may, will be obliged to place her under ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... annuity, about which no one at the present time knew anything, the chevalier really had, therefore, a bona fide income of a thousand francs. But in spite of this bettering of his circumstances, he made no change in his life, manners, or appearance, except that the red ribbon made a fine effect on his maroon-colored coat, and completed, so to speak, the physiognomy of a ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... because thereby it will appeare that he hath not withdrawne himselfe from seruice of the state to liue idle or wholly priuate to himselfe, but hath spent some time in doing that which may greatly benefit others, and hath serued not a little to the bettering of his owne mind, and increasing of his knowledge; though he for modesty pretend much ignorance, and pleade want in wealth, much like some rich beggars, who either of custom, or for couetousnes, go to begge of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... the Triangle factory, in hope of bettering their conditions, had formed a union, and had informed their employers of their action. The employers promptly locked them out of the shop, and ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... were confined within certain limits, by order of the Siamese Government, and supported themselves principally by taking fish. Their exhibition to the world was suggested to the mother as a means of bettering their condition; to which proposition she acceded for a liberal compensation, and the promised return of her sons at a specific time. She accompanied them on board the ship and, as it was not about to sail for some time, she was invited to remain on board; but she declined, observing that she ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... philanthropy still to be done here. The objection is absolutely irrelevant. The work of missions is not an indefinite 'doing good.' It is the bearing of a specific good to those who have not received it. It is not, per se, the bettering of temporal conditions. It is the securing to those who believe its message the best eternal conditions. It is not a matter of 'elevation'—it is a matter of translation. Not into a bettered life, but into a new life with an eternal outlook—into a ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... she seemed to have seen it before, but could not recollect how or where. Then she recalled it as that of a young daily governess, her predecessor at the Fergusons', who had left them "to better herself," as she said—and decidedly to the bettering ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... with a young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea; where, after a variety of good and ill fortune, a little before I was acquainted with him he had been set on shore by an American privateer, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... natural dews of heaven distill; For these require no honors, take no care For gratitude from men—but more are blessed In the sweet ignorance that they are fair; And through their proper functions live and rest, Breathing their fragrance out with joyous air, Content with praise of bettering what ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... them is the traditional American—and human—view that the natural world exists for the primary purpose of bettering the lot of such human beings or groups of human beings as may have the ingenuity and the vigor to extract its treasures or to adapt it to their use. Quite often the activities for which this view provides justification are exploitative—they ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... editor of Astounding Stories magazine and applied himself at once to the task of bettering the magazine and the field of s-f writing in general. His influence on science-fiction since then has been great. Today he still remains as the editor of that magazine's evolved and redesigned ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... silver-mounted meerschaum on his mantle-shelf. True, the butcher's shop had for some time contributed nothing to his dinners, but his vegetable diet agreed with him. He would himself have given any man time, would as soon have taken his child by the throat as his debtor, had worshiped God after a bettering fashion for forty years at least, and yet would not give God time to do His best for him—the best that perfect love, and power limited only by the lack of full consent in the man ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... its expression in matter. What makes progress possible is that rational action may leave traces in nature, such that nature in consequence furnishes a better basis for the Life of Reason; in other words progress is art bettering the conditions of existence. Until art arises, all achievement is internal to the brain, dies with the individual, and even in him spends itself without recovery, like music heard in a dream. Art, in establishing instruments for human life beyond the human body, and moulding ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... life should be to better himself, to keep bettering himself; and in this high duty the poet helps him. Poetry is the great educator of the feelings. By seizing and holding up to view the noblest and cleanest and best there is in human life, poetry ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... bettering myself, to be sure," answered Lambourne, "as the old woman said when she leapt over the bridge at Kingston. Look you, this purse has all that is left of as round a sum as a man would wish to carry in his slop-pouch. You are here well established, it would seem, and, as ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... you are well assured," said mother, colouring like the furze as it took the flame and fell over, "that our kinsman here hath received rough harm on his peaceful journey from Dulverton. The times are bad, as we all know well, and there is no sign of bettering them, and if I could see our Lord the King I might say things to move him! nevertheless, I have had so much of my own ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... any injury; I was only desirous of doing something better for myself than working all my life on a sewing-machine. And besides, I have no doubt there were folks around us who were quite as inquisitive as to how we managed to get along, and that, too, from mere idle curiosity, without any view to bettering themselves by imitating us. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... considerably annoyed, and told me that Major Swinley should not have permitted me to leave Tauranga before the application for leave had been approved by himself; but, as he had done so, he would not stand in the way of my bettering my position, and would accept my resignation. I thanked him and returned to the steamer, which sailed next morning ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... reader to dwell upon this fact, that, the moment life has an inspiring significance, and the moment also the men, industries, and conditions around us become instrumental toward resolving that, in this moment one must begin, so far as he may, bettering these conditions. If I hire a man to work in my garden, how much is it worth to me, if he bring not merely his hands and gardening skill, but also an appreciable soul, with him! So soon as that fact ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... tell us that Christ has come, and is constantly coming, more and more, into our common life. The higher ideals that are crowding for expression, the more spiritual conceptions of man and his brotherly relations, the constant striving toward better civilization, the bettering of the condition of the poor and less fortunate, the increased recognition of men's rights in the complex industrial world, the increasing effort to correct evils by legislation, the great moral reforms that are sweeping aside the awful liquor curse, and loosening women's bonds, and safeguarding ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... is so full of sorrow and suffering, it will always please me to remember that my name is connected with some efforts after alleviation, nor less so with purposes of innocent recreation which, after all, are the only certain means at our disposal for bettering human life. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in India, have failed to pass the Civil Service examinations, or, having originally intended to take up the teaching profession in England, are subsequently induced to come out to India by disappointments at home or by the often illusory hope of bettering their material prospects. When they arrive they begin work without any knowledge of the character and customs of the people. Some are employed in inspection and others as professors, and the latter especially are ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... ever produced, an ardent supporter of Bible societies and foreign missions, a champion of the anti-slavery movement, and also of the ruthless "Combination Laws," which denied to British wage-slaves all chance of bettering their lot. Wilberforce published a "Practical View of the System of Christianity", in which he told unblushingly what the Anglican establishment is for. In a chapter which he described as "the basis of all politics," ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... since Mr. Butt in 1870 raised the standard of Irish Land Reform under the name of Home Rule, it seems a little absurd, not to say Hibernian, of the British authorities to prosecute Father M'Fadden merely for bettering their own instruction in his own way. I could better understand a prosecution of Father M'Fadden on such grounds by the authorities of ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... improve the condition of the poorer classes. A rich country and poor inhabitants is an anomaly; and whatever is done should be prompt and effectual. If the Irish landlords looked directly into the state of their tenantry, and set themselves vigorously to the task of bettering their circumstances, they would, I am certain, establish the tranquillity and happiness of the country at large. The great secret, Colonel, of the dissensions that prevail among us is the poverty of the people. They are poor, and therefore the more easily wrought up to outrage; they are poor, ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... devoted himself not only to healing the sick, but also to bettering the condition of the fishermen. His skill was applied to the healing of their moral as well as their physical ills. Of necessity their life was a rough and rugged one, but there were opportunities to introduce some pleasure into it and to make it happier in many ways. Here was a strong ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... their promises, (as happens in all conditional contracts) and return to that state of liberty, which preceded the institution of government. Men would never be so foolish as to enter into such engagements as should turn entirely to the advantage of others, without any view of bettering their own condition. Whoever proposes to draw any profit from our submission, must engage himself, either expressly or tacitly, to make us reap some advantage from his authority; nor ought he to expect, that without the performance of his ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... I have said with the certain knowledge in me that I am a dying man. There is no disguising, Mr. Blake, that you interest me. I have attempted to make my poor friend's loss of memory the means of bettering my acquaintance with you. I have speculated on the chance of your feeling a passing curiosity about what he wanted to say, and of my being able to satisfy it. Is there no excuse for my intruding myself on you? Perhaps there is some excuse. A man who has lived as I have lived has his bitter ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... reality of duty, which is the same as the establishment of the possibility of the Imperative as a synthetic practical proposition a priori, at present altogether apart. Suppose a man tempted to commit suicide, with the view of bettering his evil condition; but it is contradictory that the very principle of self-conservation should lead to self-destruction, and such a maxim of conduct cannot therefore become a universal law of nature. Next, the case of a man borrowing without meaning to ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... class, whose riches are the cause of the poverty of the masses, is the justification for the Socialist demand that the cost of bettering the condition of the people must be met by the taxation of the rich. The Socialist's ideas of taxation may be briefly summarised as follows: (1) Both local and national taxation should aim primarily at securing for the communal benefit all 'unearned' or 'social' increment of ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... object with Governor Moore was to improve his time, not knowing how long his precarious power might last, for bettering his low and indigent circumstances. It appeared to him, that the traffic in Indians was the shortest way to riches. He therefore granted commissions to several persons, to assault, trepan and captivate as many Indians as they could, and resolved to turn the profits of such trade to his ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... abolish the Slave-trade, by bettering the state of the slaves in the islands, and particularly that of their offspring. His plan, with respect to the latter, was not a little curious. They were to become free, when born; and then they were to be educated at the expense of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... when they saw that two had shaken off the yoke, would go over to the party of that nation which professed the patronage of liberty. If freedom was not actually preferable to servitude, yet the hope of bettering their circumstances by a change, was more flattering to every one ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... homes are the most wretched tenement houses, and they are compelled to dwell among the most abandoned and criminal part of the population. No wonder poverty is so much dreaded here. The poor man has little, if any, chance of bettering his condition, and he is gradually forced down lower and lower in the scale of misery, until death steps in to relieve him, or he takes refuge ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Inocencio's play as soon as possible. That same afternoon, the poet expressed his thanks to his patroness and promptly took her into his confidence. He belonged to a distinguished provincial family, although without great financial resources. It was in the hope of bettering them that he had come to Madrid, relying solely upon his genius. In his native town they said that he had talent, and that if the verses which he had contributed to the Tagus Echo had been published in Madrid, he would be talked of as a second Nunez de Arce y Grilo. ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... is in man comes from his environment or from his heredity, the only way in which the race of men can be advanced is by improving their environment or by bettering their heredity. The first of these is the province of the sociologist; the second that of the eugenist. The sociologist has for some time been giving his careful attention to the improvement of the environment. ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... voice, with a pathos of which he was himself evidently unconscious, "I want to get home to Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia." He described himself as a printer by trade, and said that he had come over when he was a younger man, in the hope of bettering himself, and for the sake of seeing the Old Country, but had never since been rich enough to pay his homeward passage. His manner and accent did not quite convince me that he was an American, and I told ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... chopping their neighbours, and using their heads in conventional patterns on the tops of gate-posts, did devote their leisure intervals to rearing fortresses like this. Edinburgh Castle could not be conceived, much less built, nowadays, when all our energy is consumed in bettering the condition of the 'submerged tenth'! What did they care about the 'masses,' that 'regal race that is now no more,' when they were hewing those blocks of rugged rock and piling them against the sky-line ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Douglass's I looked up to him as a man of authority. I had obtained from him many a valuable wrinkle in mechanical and technical construction. After I left Edinburgh he had emigrated to the United States for the purpose of bettering his condition. But he promised me that if disappointed in his hopes of settling there, he should be glad to come into my service if I was ever in a position to give him employment. Shortly after my removal to Patricroft, and when everything had been got into full ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... what may be either advantageous for them in their work, or make them happy after their work. In my class, they are especially tempted to think of rising above their own rank, and becoming artists,—becoming something better than workmen, and that effect I particularly dread. I want all efforts for bettering the workmen to be especially directed in this way: supposing that they are to remain in this position forever, that they have not capacity to rise above it, and that they are to work as coal miners, or as iron ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... to keep on friendly terms with the villains, as long as he was in their power. To express disapproval of their conduct would have incurred the enmity of the whole crew, without bettering his own situation. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... or by designing demagogues? why will ye strive to inflict the most irreparable injury upon the objects of your misplaced sympathy? reduce to ruins this fair fabric of liberty, and this happy land to desolation? Your own leaders acknowledge that, hitherto, your agitation, far from bettering the condition of the slaves, has only made it worse; and in some respects this is true. So long as you confine yourselves to making or hearing abolition speeches, or forming among yourselves anti-slavery societies; ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... to find out more than they now know of the folk among whom it grew, and the land in which they dwelt. In so doing they will come to see how needful are a few lessons from the healthy life and speech of those days, to be applied in the bettering of ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... of that ilk has ceased to discourage men from trying to help their fellows by the shortest cut they can find, whether it fits in a theory or not. I don't care two pins for all the social theories that were ever made unless they help to make better men and women by bettering their lot. I have had cranks of that order, who rated as sensible beings in the ordinary affairs of life, tell me that I was doing harm rather than good by helping improve the lot of the poor; it delayed the final day of justice we ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... palace, and were received by Lady Nugent with marked simplicity and kindness. We were introduced to Lord L. and other persons of influence, took tea, and spent a most agreeable evening, and I hope a profitable; for all our conversation was on the subject of bettering the condition of the poor ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... plenty to occupy his attention. He could discover numerous ways of bettering the conditions of affairs, and took keen delight in making changes calculated to lessen ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... in the laundry. Out of her $18.50 per week she paid $6. for her room and board. The rest went mainly for clothes. Her opportunities for bettering her taste and manners were few compared with Nancy's. In the steaming laundry there was nothing but work, work and her thoughts of the evening pleasures to come. Many costly and showy fabrics passed under her iron; and it may be that her growing ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... on expenditures, and a member of the judiciary, &c. I directed my attention to the incorporation of a Historical Society; to the preparation of a system of township names derived from the aboriginal languages; and to some efforts for bettering the condition of the natives, by making it penal to sell or give them ardent spirits, and thus desired to render my position as a legislator useful, where there was but little chance of general action. As chairman of the committee on ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... reason, and had sunk, had run away with the woman, and had come back to Chicago penniless. The woman was supporting him, some one said. Enough of this pretty tale could be read in the bearing of the men to make Sommers sorry that he had come, and sorrier that he had come in the hope of bettering his condition. He slipped out unobserved and walked the six miles back to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... widely disseminated among the masses, and these are not engendered or fostered by the prevalence of distress or that want of employment which not unnaturally turns the thoughts of the idle and unoccupied to the most desperate expedients for bettering their condition, but they are the mere aspirings of a fierce democracy who have been gradually but deeply impregnated with sentiments of hatred and jealousy of the upper classes, and with a determination to 'level' ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Sophy all the gossip and clash of gossip there had been about Christina Binnie and her lover, and how the marriage had been broken off, no one knowing just why, but many thinking that since Jamie Logan had got a place on "The Line," he was set on bettering himself with a girl something above the like ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... work in bettering conditions in prison camps, especially at Ruhleben, will be long remembered. When conditions were at their worst he went out daily to keep himself informed, and then daily went to the Foreign Office or wrote to the Ministry of War in an effort to get better accommodations for the men. One day he ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... to be now bettering with more resolution. Many days had passed since Aurora had shown herself,—many days since the rising sun and the world had seen each other. But yesterday this sulky estrangement ended, and, after the beautiful reconciliation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... I must apply the Fable of the Mole, That after having consulted many Oculists for the bettering of his Sight, was at last provided with a good Pair of Spectacles; but upon his endeavouring to make use of them, his Mother told him very prudently, 'That Spectacles, though they might help the Eye of a Man, could be of no use to a Mole.' It is not therefore ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to any other, whether free or slaveholding, for they cannot rise and become like other men, unless in countries where their own color predominates, but must always remain a degraded and inferior class of persons without the hope of much bettering ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... types of men as John Howard, the prison reformer, and George Peabody, who devoted his great fortune to bettering the housing of the poor and to multiplying and improving schools. These men—especially the latter—were practical and sane, and were prompted in their endeavors by an active and tender benevolence. Yet we should scarcely think of them as conspicuous examples ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... a happiness derived from the respective merits and congenial natures of the two known to each other? They were comparatively strangers, knowing little of the antecedents of each other. Each was unhappily situated—the one from poverty, the other owing to her wealth; the one ardently desirous of bettering pecuniarily his position, the other to release herself from restraints that were tyrannical and to enjoy that independence which she felt was her natural right. Might not these considerations override the purer impulses ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... unpoetic word, and bettering the elocution, but missing the writer's thought (of the unknown path,—instead of going to many "worlds"). The Unitarians have their version, with substitutes for the ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... blacks have no hope, no chance to rise; and they submit—though I judge not cheerfully—to an iron necessity. The Northern laborer, if very poor, may be discontented; but discontent urges him to effort, and leads to the bettering of his condition. I tell you, my friend, slavery is an expensive luxury. You Southern nabobs will have it; and you have to pay ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... in the former village boy who had become a London detective he was in the presence of a young man of soaring ambition. Caldew had gone to London fifteen years before with the idea of bettering himself. After tramping the streets of the metropolis for some months in a vain quest for work, he had enlisted in the metropolitan police force rather than return to his native village and report himself a failure. At the end of two years' ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... which we have referred, the "City Mission Home for Little Wanderers," and the "Five Points House of Industry," are all working hard for the purpose of bettering the condition of the poor and wretched of the City. They are employing a band of energetic, hard- working Christian men and women, and are doing good daily. There is no doubt, however, that they succeed best with children. After the devil has set his mark on men and women, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... for years after. She married against his will. He never forgave her. My father did not seem to have the knack of getting along in the world, and he moved to America in the hope of bettering his condition. He did not better it. My father died ten years ago, a prematurely broken down man, and my mother and I struggled along as best we could until she died two years ago. My grandfather returned her letter unopened when mother wrote to him ten years ago, although the letter ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... full of disease, and totally unfit for human habitation. The Popes, learning this sad state of affairs, tried to remedy it. Clement V was particularly zealous in his attempts at prison reform.[2] That he succeeded in bettering, at least for a time, the lot of these unfortunates, in whom he interested himself, ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... sign had she ever given him that she could care greatly? Was not any form of emotion always distasteful to her? Was not her mind always occupied with abstract questions? Was she not always engaged in her own self-improvement—with schemes, it is true, for bettering the world; but did her heart ever ache once for the individual? What was it, then, he loved? Something he imagined this girl to be, or was he in love with the fact that his own nature had been so mightily stirred? Was it not the joy of caring greatly which had carried him along? And if this ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... early days when the people were poor and ignorant, and had little hope of bettering themselves in this world, their thoughts turned much to the other world. The country was often swept by storms of religious excitement; at the camp-meetings the devout fell in fits and trances or ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... the binding force of familiarity; I hated the thing, but it had made good its place in the map of my life; secondly, from the impossibility of inflicting a slight; thirdly, because I rather chose to bear the ills I had than fly to others that I knew not of. Who revolts save in the glowing hope of bettering his lot? I must marry; who was there to be preferred before Elsa? It did not occur to me that I might remain single; I should have shared the general opinion that such an act was little removed from ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... befell; according to all the human indications as we saw them revealed amongst the Allies we had a right to expect a better peace; according to our abiding and abounding faith we had a right to expect a great bettering of life after the war, and even in spite of the peace. It is all a non sequitur, and still we ask the reason and ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... often morbidly far-sighted. Mr. Carleton had a very large tenantry around him and depending upon him, in bettering whose condition, if he had but known it, all those energies might have found full play. It never entered into his head. He abhorred business,—the detail of business; and his fastidious taste especially shrank ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Then Benson says: 'Dinner'll be ready in five minutes; how tired I do feel! 'Then he takes the libbuty of sitting hisself down on his royaliness's rug, and he says, asking your pardon, 'I 've had about enough of service here. I 'm about tired, and I thinks of bettering myself. I wish I was at the ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... makes husbands look upon their own wives with a vicious disdain, and many fathers their children; so I, betwixt two equal merits, should always be swayed against my own; not so much that the jealousy of my advancement and bettering troubles my judgment, and hinders me from satisfying myself, as that of itself possession begets a contempt of what it holds and rules. Foreign governments, manners, and languages insinuate themselves into my esteem; and I am sensible that ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... hedge; of the going home in the evening, and the warm fireside, and the rustic song, and of the thousand and one beloved associations that he was leaving and casting behind him for ever. But then, again, he thought of "bettering his condition," of getting on in the world, of the smart figure he should look in the eyes of Polly, who would be sure now to like him better than she liked the baker. He never could see what there was ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... owners of Centralia are urged to attend a meeting tomorrow in the Chamber of Commerce rooms to meet the officers of the Employers' Association of the state to discuss ways and means of bettering the conditions which now confront the business and property interests of the state. George F. Russell, Secretary-Manager, says in his note to business men: 'We need your advice and your co-operation in support of the movement for the defense of property and property rights. ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... Catherine labored to reform its institutions and to civilize her subjects. Her labors in bettering the laws and improving the administration of the government, have caused her to be likened to Solon and to Lycurgus; while her enthusiasm for learning and her patronage of letters led Voltaire to say, "Light now comes from ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... increase in hours, a deterioration of labor conditions mean wholesale moral as well as economic degeneration, and the needless sacrifice of human lives and human happiness, while a rise of wages, a lessening of hours, a bettering of conditions, mean an intellectual, moral and social uplift of millions of American men and women. There are employers to-day who, like the great coal operators, speak as though they were lords of these countless armies of Americans, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... projects, failures hitherto, for supplying. The rigors of spring were always dangerous to him in England, and it was always of advantage to get out of them: and then the sight of Naples, too; this, always a thing to be done some day, was now possible. Enough, with the real or imaginary hope of bettering himself in health, and the certain one of seeing Naples, and catching a glance of Italy again, he now made a run thither. It was not long after Calvert's death. The Tragedy of Strafford lay finished in his desk. Several things, sad and ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... point they knew his strictness so well that they seldom ventured to go into arrear, and never did so with impunity. . . . They would have cheated, loved, and despised a more easy landlord, and his property would have gone to ruin, without either permanently bettering their interests or their morals. He, therefore, took especial care that they should be convinced of his strictness in punishing as well as of his ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... was finally taken into the small counting-house of which Mr Peter Crank's father was the head. To the firm, through all its various changes, he had remained attached, and though frequently offered opportunities of bettering himself, had refused to leave it. "No, no; I'll stick to my old friends," he always answered; "their interests are mine, and although I am but a poor clerk, I believe I ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... this strange instrument was no less than a very quiet and very respectable late merchant of a little town somewhere "north," who, having failed at home, had emigrated into the new and hospitable country of Arkansas, for the purpose of bettering his fortune and escaping the heartless sympathy of his more lucky neighbors, who seemed to consider him a very bad and degraded man because ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... after that. The importance of her position was borne into her in a new and better way. By being Lady Hurdly she might hope, perhaps, to do some little service in bettering the lots of those who were at the other extreme of life's scale from her, whereas if she had remained in her former position she would have had as little value at one end as ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... 1705. For the encouragement and bettering of the markets in the said town, Be it enacted, That no dead provision, either of flesh or fish shall be sold within five miles of any of the ports or towns appointed by this act, on the same side the great river the town shall stand upon, but within the limits of the town, ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... essential that the person desirous of being initiated into the Black Art—the Art of communicating with the Unknown (Daramara) in order to acquire certain great powers, should dismiss from his mind all ideas of moral progress, and wholly concentrate on the bettering of his material self—on acquiring riches and fame in the physical sphere. His aspirations must be entirely earthly, and all his affections subordinate to his main desire for wealth and carnal pleasures. Having acquired this preliminary ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... helps to show the depressed condition in England at that period, and that many were looking to America in the hope of bettering their condition: ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman |
