"Reform" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... footing of his own. He blossomed out in perpetual previous engagements whenever he was asked to dine; but he had made a bargain with Majendie by which he claimed unlimited opportunity for seeing Edie as the price of his promise to reform. This time Majendie was obliged to intimate to him that his reform must be regarded as the price ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... who had revised their attitude on reform as the shadow of Seth Craddock approached Ascalon was Earl Gray, the druggist, one of the notables on Dora Conboy's waiting list. Druggist Gray was a man who wore bell-bottomed trousers and a moleskin vest without a coat. His ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... almost every public exhibition is tinctured with insult. Yet England is always in dread of France,—terrified at the apprehension of an invasion, suspicious of being outwitted in a treaty, and privately cringing though she is publicly offending. Let her, therefore, reform her manners and do justice, and she will find the idea of a natural enemy to be only a phantom of her ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the reform in Persia there seem to be many conflicting accounts. The learned Faber concludes that there were two Zarathustras or Zoroasters, the former being identical with Menu, the law giver and triplicated deity of India, and who by various writers ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... melancholy that it seemed better to die. And so I decided that when I got quite well, I would go on a pilgrimage, then go to my brother, and let him take me as a porter. This I did. I threw myself plump at his feet! "Be a father to me!" says I, "I have lived abominably—now I wish to reform." And do you know how my brother received me! He was ashamed, you see, that he had such a brother. "But you help me out," I said to him, "correct me, be kind to me, and I will be a man." "Not at all," says he, "where can I put you when important guests, rich merchants, and ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... I am better than my neighbor," Arthur continued—"if I concede that I am no better—I also doubt whether he is better than I. I see men who begin with ideas of universal reform, and who, before their beards are grown, propound their loud plans for the regeneration of mankind, give up their schemes after a few years of bootless talking and vain-glorious attempts to lead their fellows; and after they have found that men will no longer ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... smoking. Deceit and perjury are no longer looked upon as crimes by them; they do not ignore the scandal such vices bring upon them; but while each individually exclaims against the corruption of manners, none reform themselves." ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the time of the Reform Bill did not greatly affect the two parishes, though a few villagers joined the bands who went about asking for money at the larger houses. George, Sir William's second son, told me that he remembered being locked into the strong room ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... ruin of those, who were directly involved in the Rye-house, was little to be regretted, had it not involved the fate of those who were pursuing reform, by means more manly and constitutional,—the fate of Russel, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... capital punishment and barbarous prison treatment resulted in laws which mitigated the former harsh conditions, and his criticism of the banking institutions in the crisis of 1843 led to considerable reform in that quarter. His bitter attacks on political and social conditions made many enemies. One evening, he was waylaid by several assailants and given a whipping. He was imprisoned, but he wrote in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... on the path of reform—full steam ahead, as he puts it—he is prepared to change the past, present and future in order to give happiness to his own subjects. But France is likely to pay for all this; sooner or later some new rescript ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... correct, meliorate, rectify, ameliorate, emend, mend, reform, better, improve, mitigate, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... him, in summer sports attire of careless but expensive appearance, including a silk shirt alleged by the maker to be snappy, and a cap of real character. The instinct of the male for noticeable plumage had at last worked the reform that not all of Winona's pleading had sufficed for. Wilbur Cowan at the moment might, but for his excellent golf, have been mistaken for a ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... least straw, "here's your chance to reform me. If you marry me I'll be a different person. I'd do anything for you. You know love is a great miracle worker. Won't you give me a chance to show you how nearly I can live up to your ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... with the warm approbation of Major-General Hewett, commanding the depot, he introduced that system of hospital reform which had elsewhere operated so successfully. The changes he effected, as soon as they were made, became known to the Medical Board, and were publicly approved of by one of its members. However, shortly afterwards, an epidemic broke ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... Sarva-rasi[FN95]; that is, he ate and drank and listened to music, and looked at dancers and made love much more than he studied, reflected, prayed, or conversed with the wise. After the age of thirty he began to reform, and he brought such zeal to the good cause, that in an incredibly short space of time he came to be accounted and quoted as the paragon of correct Rajas. This was very praiseworthy. Many of Brahma's viceregents on earth, be it observed, have loved food ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Lord Chancellor. Exchanges of this sort would add to the comity of nations besides enhancing the amenities of public life, and it is perhaps not too much to hope that provision for carrying this out may be in the Government's scheme for the Reform ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... evil we have learned becomes a second nature, men reach this fearful degree of wickedness. When men come to this pass, Koshi[93] and Moshi themselves might preach to them for a thousand days, and they would not have strength to reform. Such hardened sinners deserve to be roasted in iron pots in the nethermost hell. Now, I am going to tell you how it came about that the vagabond son turned over a new leaf and became dutiful, and ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... little lectures on health, religion, politics, and the various questions in which all should be interested, with copious extracts from Miss Cobbe's Duties of Women, Miss Brackett's Education of American Girls, Mrs Duffy's No Sex in Education, Mrs Woolson's Dress Reform, and many of the other excellent books wise women write for their sisters, now that they are waking up and asking: ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... that his real motive for ruining Timarchus himself was not, Heaven knows, to be found in any anxiety for the virtue of your sons. Indeed, men of Athens, they are virtuous even now; for I trust that the city will never have fallen so low, as to need Aphobetus and Aeschines to reform the morals of the young. {286} No! the reason was that Timarchus had proposed in the Council, that if any one was convicted of conveying arms or fittings for ships of war to Philip, the penalty should be death. And here is a proof. How long had Timarchus ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... immorality, and general misgovernment, led to his ultimate downfall. In 1864 the monasteries were secularised, that is to say, they were claimed as State property, a proceeding which was sanctioned by the guaranteeing Powers against payment of an indemnity. In 1865 a complete reform took place in the relations between the landed proprietors and the peasantry, who were freed from feudal obligations and became part owners of the soil. Of this reform we have already spoken at length. As we have said, however, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... most sanguine advocates; and in issuing this revised and enlarged edition the author returns her sincere thanks to both press and public, who have so substantially seconded her efforts for culinary reform. ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson
... be fain.] The commentators in general suppose that our Poet here augurs that great reform, which he vainly hoped would follow on the arrival of the Emperor Henry VII. in Italy. Lombardi refers the prognostication to Can Grande della Scala: and, when we consider that this Canto was not finished till after the death of Henry, as appears from the mention that is made of John ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... reform needed? is it through you? The greater the reform needed, the greater the Personality you ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... them, to reform them—isn't that the choice?" Biddy asked. "That's Nick's," she added, blushing ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... levy of the old tax of the deux vingtiemes, on the rich, who had, in a great measure, withdrawn their property from it, as well as on the poor, on whom it had principally fallen. This will greatly increase the receipts; while they are proceeding on the other hand, to reform their expenses far beyond what they had promised. It is said these reformations will amount to eighty millions. Circumstances render these measures more and more pressing. I mentioned to you in my last letter, that the officer charged ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... Meneval reported that he had represented to Saint-Castin the necessity of reform, and that in consequence he had abandoned his trade with the English, given up his squaws, married, and promised to try to make a solid settlement. [Footnote: Memoire du Sieur de Meneval sur l'Acadie, ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... be a man. There was John Churchill, a very decent fellow in a politic way, though in bad company. He afterward married my laconic cousin Sarah, whose shrewdness made him the first Duke of Marlborough, and last, I regret to chronicle, was George Hamilton, resting from his labors at self-reform. Soon after dark another congenial spirit, the most pusillanimous of them all, young William Wentworth, Sir William's son and Roger's nephew, entered the taproom dripping with rain. Before going to ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... another difficulty, happily easy to reform, which somewhat interfered with the success of the performance. At the end of the incantation scene the Italian translator has made Macbeth fall insensible upon the stage. This is a change of questionable propriety from a psychological point of view; while in point of view of effect it ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conversation. Like many Frenchwomen, she had a high-pitched voice; she also had definite opinions on matter-of-fact subjects. Now when you have come to talk gossamer with an attractive and sympathetic woman, it is irritating to have to discuss Tariff Reform and the position of the working classes in Germany with somebody else, especially when the attractive and pretty woman does not give you in any way to understand that she would prefer gossamer to such arid topics. The Princess was as gracious ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the regiment was moved a hundred yards nearer the wheat-field. Here it became entangled in the ebb of a charge—the brigade which had rushed by coming back, piecemeal, broken and driven by an iron flail. It would reform and charge again, but now there was confusion. All the field was confused, dismal and dreadful, beneath the orange-tinted smoke. The smoke rolled and billowed, a curtain of strange texture, now parting, now closing, and when ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... a long sentence, sir," said Dane savagely. "He is a bad man. But Morley—nothing short of death will expiate his crime so far as I am concerned. I wanted to reform, sir. Miss Anne was so good to me that I saw how wicked was the life I was living. I wished to reform and return to my mother. Morley heard of this. He followed me to New York, where I was then. ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... be proving something, to follow any other laws than those of their organization and of their nature. The artificial work of such men as those, whatever talents they may possess, does not exist for art. It is a theory, not a poetry." It is manifest that a literary reform undertaken in this spirit would not long consent to lend itself to the purposes of political or religious reaction, or to limit itself to any single influence like mediaevalism, but would strike out freely in a multitude of directions; would invent new forms and adapt old ones to its ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... my father, who gave up smoking, drinking, intoxicating drinks, and eating meat at the same time, about twenty years ago; and as I was only ten years old then, I naturally grew into my father's habits (I now eat meat, however). The blessings of that reform have ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... reformer of the religious system of the Hindus, although he lived nearly fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the earliest Brahmanical ascendency. But before we can appreciate his work and mission, we must examine the system he attempted to reform, even as it is impossible to present the Protestant Reformation without first considering mediaeval Catholicism before the time of Luther. It was the object of Buddha to break the yoke of the Brahmans, and to release his countrymen from ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Elizabeth the spiritual dominion assumed by her father and resigned by her sister, contained a clause authorising the sovereign to constitute a tribunal which might investigate, reform, and punish all ecclesiastical delinquencies. Under the authority given by this clause, the Court of High Commission was created. That court was, during many years, the terror of Nonconformists, and, under ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to be mistaken. Then again, though the heart be large, yet the mind is often of such moderate dimensions as to be exclusively filled up with one idea. When a good man has long devoted himself to a particular kind of beneficence—to one species of reform—he is apt to become narrowed into the limits of the path wherein he treads, and to fancy that there is no other good to be done on earth but that self-same good to which he has put his hand, and in the very mode that best suits his own conceptions. All else is worthless. His scheme must be wrought ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... become the candidate of his party for responsible office; and, at the election which followed, so great was the desire for a change in municipal matters, and so general the confidence in Mr. Cleveland as the man under whose direction the needed reform might be effected, that his majority for mayor was about three thousand five hundred, or nearly the same figure with which the Republican ticket had ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... defective. In Rantoul there was a lack of continuity of purpose. He was guided by his feelings and opinions. He had the temperament of a reformer. Indeed, he was a reformer. He abhorred slavery, he made war upon intemperance, he was an advocate of reform in prison discipline, and he championed the abolition of capital punishment. In neither of these movements did Cushing or Choate take an interest. They thought slavery an evil, but they had no disposition ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... wrong, why don't you reform it?" Lydia launched this challenge suddenly at him with the directness characteristic of ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... past is associated with a passion for reform. Men think of destroying that which should only be transformed. They condemn everything that has been, unconditionally, and launch out towards a new future. The suffering which has been gone through irritates and troubles the mind. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... and said to his brother, I told you how it would happen; your words and his lusts could not agree; he had rather leave your company than reform his life. But he is gone, as I said; let him go, the loss is no man's but his own; he has saved us the trouble of going from him; for he continuing (as I suppose he will do) as he is, he would have been but a blot in our company; besides, the apostle ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... those work who long for reform in the arts, and who shall they seek to kindle into eager desire for possession of beauty, and better still, for the development of the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... aspects was scarcely to be distinguished from the reddest Radicalism. One brilliant year there was in which he blazed the comet of a season. Then, thwarted in some enterprise, faced by a refusal for some daring reform of Indian administration, he acted, as ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking a pocket? A thief who was trying to reform would.—George MacDonald. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... before I leave this aspect of the subject. As the majority of inebriates are sufferers from a disease which is partly the result of hereditary predisposition, it is foolish for any woman to marry a drunkard in the belief that she can reform him. If women would realize that alcoholism is a disease and not a vice, they would understand that, while the spirit which prompts their devotion and self-sacrifice is praiseworthy, yet the probability of its success is very remote. No doubt there are women who have made this experiment and who ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... "When a man tells you," says an official report, quoted by Sir John Strachey, "that he is a Badhak, or a Kanjar, or a Sonoria, he tells you what few Europeans ever thoroughly realise, that he, an offender against the law, has been so from the beginning and will be so to the end; that reform is impossible, for it is his trade, his caste—I may almost say his religion—to commit crime." It is not poverty which makes many of these predatory races criminals. Speaking of the Mina tribe inhabiting one of the frontier districts ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... the size it was in 1990. After the ousting of former Federal Yugoslav President MILOSEVIC in September 2000, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition government implemented stabilization measures and embarked on a market reform program. After renewing its membership in the IMF in December 2000, a down-sized Yugoslavia continued to reintegrate into the international community by rejoining the World Bank (IBRD) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). A World Bank-European Commission sponsored Donors' ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... mediaeval machinery thus remained which had been formed in the time when the distinction between a public trust and private property was not definitely drawn or which had been allowed to remain for the sake of patronage, when its functions had been transferred to officials of more modern type. Reform was foiled, as Burke put it, because the turnspit in the king's kitchen was a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on the civil list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which the king could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult, irresponsible, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... observable a growing sentiment of humanity towards the bondsman. Imperial edicts take away from the master the right to kill his slave, or to sell him to the trader in gladiators, or even to treat him with any undue severity. This marks the beginning of a slow reform which in the course of ten or twelve centuries resulted in the complete abolition of slavery ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... me! how serious you are about it," he returned, teasingly. "Of course, if you insist, I'll risk my job with the committee and come out flat-footed for the new schoolhouse and reform." ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... our own frailty and stupidity, and the bad influence of other individuals. There is a permanent force of organized evil which vitiates every higher movement and sows tares among the grain over night. You work hard on some law to reform the ballot or the primary in order to protect the freedom and rights of the people, and after three years your device has become a favorite tool of the interests. You found a benevolent institution, and after you are dead it becomes a nest of ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... better,' was the rueful response. 'Unhappily, he and Gage think their mission is to reform me. Now, Michael, do be quick, or the dinner-bell will ring;' and Audrey waved her hand gaily, and turned into the house, while Michael and his faithful ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... just that. Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people's has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass. Think back through history, and you will know it. What will this lowest deep—thieves, ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... generous outbursts. [A Bachelor's Establishment.] In 1822, having risen to second clerk, he left Maitre Derville to become head-clerk in Desroches' office, who was greatly pleased with him. Godeschal even undertook to reform Oscar Husson. [A Start in Life.] Six years later, while still Desroches' head-clerk, he drew up a petition wherein Mme. d'Espard prayed a guardian for her husband. [The Commission in Lunacy.] Under Louis Philippe he became one of the advocates of Paris and paid half his fees—1840—proposing ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... (29 3 x 33) 31/128 their determination of the length of the tropical year has been extremely exact. The discovery of the period of thirty-three years is ascribed to Omar Khayyam, one of the eight astronomers appointed by Jel[a]l ud-Din Malik Shah, sultan of Khorasan, to reform or construct a calendar, about the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... their families, that we find ourselves obliged to organize an opposition. We have seen the Comedy of Errors played so dismally like a tragedy that we really cannot bear it. We are, therefore, making bold to get up the School of Reform, and we hope, before the play is out, to improve that noble lord by our performance very considerably. If he object that we have no right to improve him without his license, we venture to claim that right in virtue of his orchestra, consisting of a very ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... on which are the notes I made of a former discussion of this very issue, a discussion between a number of prominent politicians in the days before Mr. Chamberlain's return from South Africa and the adoption of Tariff Reform by the Unionist Party; and I decipher again the same considerations, unanswered and unanswerable, that leave ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... aloud. Kennedy did not attempt to quiz him. He was considering the importance of the situation. For, as I have said, it was at the height of the political campaign in which Carton had been renominated independently by the Reform League—of ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... better than their neighbours, turn out at last abject hypocrites, traitors, and hard-hearted villains; and your men of spirit, who take their girl and their glass with equal freedom, prove the true men of honour, and, (that no part of the audience may remain unsatisfied,) reform in the last scene, and leave no doubt in the minds of the ladies, that they will make most faithful and excellent husbands: though it does seem a pity, that they should be obliged to get rid of qualities which had made them so interesting! Besides, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I have arrived at last at that point where the style is adequate to the thought. Unfortunately my outside occupations absorb much of my time. The orchestra and opera of Weymar were greatly in need of reform and of stirring up. The remarkable and extraordinary works to which our theater owes its new renown—"Tannhauser," "Lohengrin," "Benvenuto Cellini"—required numerous rehearsals, which I could not give into the hands of anybody else. The day before yesterday a very pretty work, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... stream of time? How many will attain the honour of the apotheosis? And will they coexist in this exalted state with the old objects of worship? This last is a pregnant question; for each generation will in all probability furnish its quota of the great books of the language, and, if so, a reform in the superstition we have exposed is no longer a matter of mere expedience, but of necessity. We are aware that all this will be pronounced rank heresy by those who assume the style of critics, who usually make a prodigious outcry when a great author is mutilated, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... English colonies, the spirit of monopoly and of a restrictive policy was in force until about 1815. So far as relates to the evils of the colonial system, then, the two were not very unlike. But into the field of administrative reform and the grant of autonomous powers to her colonies, Spain never has entered. The abuses of the early part of the century characterize also its later years. Discrimination against the native-born, even of the purest Spanish stock; officials who regard the colony as a mine ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... means. Let them continue in the state of ignorance, and err still; think them wits and fine fellows, as they have done. 'Twere sin to reform them. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... of his coming, and Lord Silverbridge had on this occasion been on the look-out, and had come up to his father at once. "Don't let me take you away," said the Duke, "if you are particularly interested in your Chief's defence," for Sir Timothy Beeswax was defending some measure of legal reform in which he was said to have fallen ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... battery and of a strong line of battle. The Fifth at once charged upon the force in front, which scattered in all directions. The rebels were beaten back both from our own and from Sumner's front; but only to reform and press forward again from the cover of the woods to which they had retreated, to give battle with new vigor. Again the flash and roar of musketry mingled with the wild yells of the rebels and the manly shouts of the Unionists, and ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... trembled at the blow given to royalty in the person of Louis XVI. Liberals rejoiced at the successful revolt against monarchical tyranny. But neither one party nor the other for a moment foresaw what a terrible weapon reform was to become in the hands of the excitable French people. If, in the city where the tragedy was being enacted, the customary baking and brewing, the promenading under the trees, and the dog-dancing and the shoe-blacking on the Pont-Neuf could still ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... bets Gen. Fitzpatrick one hundred guineas to fifty guineas, that within two years from this date some measure is adopted in Parliament which shall be (bona fide) considered as the adoption of a Parliamentary Reform. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... fatally obstructs, it appears to me, the way of improvement. For my own part, though I am no philosopher, yet I hold to this, that whatever our reason proves to be wrong or defective, it at the same time enforces the duty of change and reform—that no palpable evil, either in life or government, is to be passively submitted to as incurable. In these spectacles I behold an enormous wrong, a terrific evil; and though I see not how the wrong is to be redressed, nor the evil to be removed, I none the less, but so much ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... useless. Our bridges, our railways, our Government are not provided for. Our young men are again becoming torpid beneath the weight imposed upon them. I was, in truth, wrong to think that so great a reform could be brought to perfection within the days of the first reformers. A divine idea has to be made common to men's minds by frequent ventilation before it will be seen to be fit for humanity. Did not ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... is difficult to decide. For them it is unhappily a mere choice between being at the mercy of unscrupulous adventurers, elated with a series of successes, and rendered ferocious by a life of rapine, but utterly unprepared to introduce any serious system of reform; or being restored to a rule which, although worn out and feeble, has the advantage of an old-established organization, and can prove, by its general policy at any rate, that it has the welfare of the governed seriously at heart. On the whole, setting ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... said that his vote should be given for that fiscal system that had made us what we are, in order that the poor man's food should not be taxed to make the rich man richer. Or else it was that he would give his vote for that system of tariff reform which should unite us closer to our colonies with ties that should long endure, and give employment to all. But it was not to the polling-booth that the motor went, it passed it and left the town and came by a small white winding road to the very top of the downs. There the poet dismissed ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... permitted to express to him my special thanks. He was unremitting in his efforts to render our visit agreeable. It is from such men that America is to draw its trained diplomatists when Civil-Service Reform has ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Carbonari in Italy, and at last escaped, with health damaged by a wound, to teach languages and military drawing in England, and, unhappily, to spread his principles among his pupils, during the excitement connected with the Reform Bill. Under his teaching my poor brothers became such democrats that they actually married the two daughters of a man from Cumberland named Lewthwayte, whom Lord Erymanth had turned out of one of his farms for his insolence and radicalism; and not long after they were engaged in the ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... restless exaltation followed. He read his Bible, studied Luther's catechism and pondered the ways and means of accomplishing a reform of his church, especially a reform inspired by pen and ink. But his New Year's Night, a small book published during this period, shows his still troublesome uncertainty, his constant wavering between the old gods and the Christ of the Gospels, between various degrees of Rationalism and a full ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... difficult to reform wide-spread abuses, even when they are acknowledged to exist, but when gigantic vices are proudly pointed to as the noblest of institutions and as the very foundations of the state, there seems nothing for the patriot to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... pipe, with a display of absolute indifference to his superior's views that the latter did not fail to note. The others knew what a trial "old Potts" had been to his troop commander, and did not believe that Gleason could "reform" him at will. The silence ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... no doubt, to get rid of what is tame and spiritless in art; and it must be owned that nearly everything that was done in architecture and decoration during the Georgian era was detestable. But it is one thing to reform, and another to revolutionise. Let us by all means go to nature for instruction; but nature under the exercise of cultivated feeling—selecting what tends to ennoble and refine, not that which degrades and sends us back to forms and ideas totally out of place ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... change: but what! because he is born ignorant, because he exists only on condition of gradual self-instruction, must he abjure the light, abdicate his reason, and abandon himself to fortune? Perfect health is better than convalescence: should the sick man, therefore, refuse to be cured? Reform, reform! cried, ages since, John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. Reform, reform! cried our fathers, fifty years ago; and for a long time to come we ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... pregnant in consequences. When the worn-out slanderer and voluptuary, Dr. Wolcot, lay on his deathbed, one of his friends asked if he could do anything to gratify him. "Yes," said the dying man, eagerly, "give me back my youth." Give him but that, and he would repent—he would reform. But it was all too late! His life had become bound and enthralled by the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... law is the worship of the philosopher—a God, of course, so incapable of filling and quieting a mind longing for God—a worship so leathern that Carneri himself cannot get rid of the opinion that, with such religious ideas of reform, he will finally lose the last reader of his book. The aim of the {205} development, also, does not promise to the mind any substitute for the rigidness of God, for the aim of the development is death—the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... Homme de Qualite as he had followed Marivaux in the Paysan Perverti. He completed this work of his own with La Paysanne Pervertie; he wrote, besides the Pornographe, numerous books of social, general, and would-be philosophical reform—Le Mimographe, dealing with the stage; Les Gynographes, with a general plan for rearranging the status of women; L'Andrographe, a "whole duty of man" of a very novel kind; Le Thesmographe, etc.,—besides, close ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... say I am sorry and promise to reform, for my conscience does not reproach me in the least. I had no evil—not even a violation of manners—in my intentions; but I am sorry that ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... a reform in the slow-moving Sawyer household. They started with the garden, and even Mrs. Winters had to admit they made an improvement there. Jake and Hannah had long felt the humiliation of their scratched and scarred front yard, in such ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... remedy? There is none, unless time brings with it a natural reaction. It is as desperate a task to touch the Press as to change the Constitution. The odds against reform are too great. A law to check the exuberance of newspapers would never survive the attacks ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... so much, have banded themselves together to do what they can to oppose it. We do our work among the children, by teaching, distributing temperance literature, etc. We seek out the intemperate and ask them to reform, assisting them with pecuniary aid when necessary. We use our influence to purify the homes and to put away ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... foreign gold," said he, "have forced their way into parliament by such a torrent of private corruption, as no private hereditary fortune could resist." He then offered several suggestions on the propriety of a reform in parliament—suggestions, he observed, not crude and undigested, but ripe and well-considered, as the subject had long occupied his attention. His scheme was, not that the rotten boroughs should be disfranchised, though he considered them as the rotten part of the constitution; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... They would stifle the fire of patriotism because they are afraid lest it annihilate them and destroy their unworthy efforts. For this reason Blucher, with his heroic soul, is as much an eyesore to them as Stein, with his plans of liberation and his energetic action for constitutional reform. One wishes to create a new Prussia, the other a new state, and both these ideas are utterly distasteful to some, for they cling to the rotten old system, and new things fill ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... so by compromising their principles? by letting their political life give the lie to their life of reform? Who will have the most influence, he whose life is consistent, or he who says one thing to-day, and swears another thing to-morrow—who looks one way and rows another? My object is to let men understand ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in connection with this the coincidence of the disappearance of the consular food prefects for Italy on the one hand and the reappearance of the pretorial district prefects on the other, it will not appear overbold to suppose that Macrinus, in the course of the reform affecting the iuridici, also detached from them the right to supervise foods, restored it to the curators of roads (as in the original arrangement) and abolished the central bureau in Rome.]—A certain Domitius Florus had formerly had charge of ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... temperament or from his educational training under such teachers as Mr. Mivers, who carried out the new ideas of reform by revering nothing in the past, and Mr. Welby, who accepted the routine of the present as realistic, and pooh-poohed all visions of the future as idealistic, Kenelm's chief mental characteristic was a kind of tranquil ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... transcribed by Billings his man, whom, as be tells me, he can most confide in for secresy; and is much pleased with it, and earnest to have it be: and he and I are like to be much together in the considering how to reform the office, and that by the Duke of York's command. Thence I, mightily pleased with this success, away to the office; where all the morning, my head full of this business. And it is pretty how Lord Brouncker this day did tell me how he hears that a design is ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... sad beggar, I know, Miss Marvin, but I'm going to reform! I never wanted to be different until, well, ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... of Egyptian politics ended. Another dream began—a bright if vague vision of Imperial power, of trans-continental railways, of African Viceroys, of conquest and commerce. The interest of the British people in the work of regeneration grew continually. Each new reform was hailed with applause. Each annual Budget was scrutinised with pride. England exulted in the triumph of failure turned into success. There was a general wish to know more about Egypt and the men who had done these great things. In 1893 this desire ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... depends very largely on the kind of organization that holds them, whether, for instance, as in the case of Sorosis, it is a club of refined and educated women, of literary and artistic pursuits and tastes, or whether it is one for reform, as temperance, suffrage, social purity, or religious development and work. The members of Sorosis, when in session, are well-bred, if not always clear-headed and reasonable. Religious gatherings of women are seldom other than ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... said, "you can't realize what you are saying. The stage has always been a hotbed of immorality from the very beginning of theatrical art, and nothing can reform it." ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... know how to value this. But, as to what the Germans are doing, good or not, they will never appreciate that—what does it matter? The Belgians do not care one bit for German reforms; they do not even deign to consider them; they simply ignore them. There is one—only one—reform that they will appreciate; the German evacuation. All the rest does not count. When the Germans speak of cleaning the country, the Belgians do not understand. From their point of view, there is only one way to clean it—and that is for ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... to having their feelings hurt. A man who is over-fond of drink may sit through a play on the screen in which the evil results of intoxication are depicted and come away filled with a determination to reform his way of living, but the man who after paying his admission is asked to sit through five or more reels of film almost every foot of which is a shock to his religious or his political sensibilities will come away filled only with the determination to avoid that ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... music was not religious." The remark, however, would be more pertinent were it not for the fact that the Church itself has not always been a good critic of its own music, or a good judge of what its music should be, as Liszt discovered when he went to Rome full of his purposes of reform in the musical service. Heine, in a letter to the "Allgemeine Zeitung" in 1842, replying to certain German criticisms, went so far as ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... demi-philosophe. He went to church, that is to say, only twice a year, on the Feast of St. Cecilia and on the Sunday when the Luthiers offered the pain benit. It was his opinion that everything in the State needed reform except the Corporations. The relations of the husband to his affectionate, satiric, pleasure-seeking wife, who knew so well all the eighteen theatres which then existed in Paris, are treated with much quiet humour. On Sundays the four set forth together for a ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... eloquence of the great English advocate and parliamentary orator a family likeness to that of his renowned American kinsman; or to find in the fierceness of the champion of Queen Caroline against George IV., and of English anti-slavery reform and of English parliamentary reform against aristocratic and commercial selfishness, the same bitter and eager radicalism that burned in the blood of him who, on this side of the Atlantic, was, in popular oratory, the great champion of the ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... peculiar dogma, which she could not have understood if she had, and finding herself on the threshold of Divine grace, she knelt down in all humility, prayed, and was comforted. Old Ford was a furious Methodist: he owned that he never could reform; and, as he daily drained the cup of sin to the very dregs, he tried, as an antidote, long prayer and superabounding faith. The unction with which he struck his breast, and exclaimed, "Miserable sinner that I am!" could only be exceeded by the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... glacier was and succeeded in exciting his interest. I told him he must reform, for a man who neither believed in God nor glaciers must be very bad, indeed ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... approaching the two million mark, and Belgium was rocked by great Socialist demonstrations, and the Socialist deputies in the French Chamber numbered fifty, and even England was beginning to toy gingerly with new schemes of social reform, by Bismarck out of Lassalle, the total strength of the Socialists of Spain was still not much above five thousand votes. In brief, the country seemed to be removed from the main currents of European thought. There was unrest, to be sure, but it was unrest that was largely ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... gaming; 'tis a rich topic, and affords noble declamation. Go, preach against it in the city: you'll find a congregation in every tavern. If they should laugh at you, fly to my lord, and sermonize it there: he'll thank you and reform. ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... froth. Millions upon millions are annually expended in the effort to construct still more deadly and terrible engines of death. Industry is crippled, honest toil is robbed, and even beggary is taxed to defray the expenses of Christian murder. There must be some other way to reform this world. We have tried creed and dogma, and fable, and they have failed—and they have failed in all the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... had always been friendly with the Whigs, who wanted power for the people. Those who went furthest among them were called Radicals, because they wanted a radical reform—that is, going to the root. In fact, it was time to alter the way of sending members to the House of Commons, for some of the towns that had once been big enough to choose one were now deserted and grown very small, while on the other hand, others ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... branchin' out in the cement block buildin' business. Son is messin' in politics more or less too; mixin' it up with the machine, and gettin' the short end of the returns every trip. But it's on account of this reform stunt of his that the old gent seems to be so proud of him, not appearin' to care whether he ever got ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... manifestations in favor of popular government. His will was to be the law of the province. "If any one," said he, "during my administration shall appeal, I will make him a foot shorter, and send the pieces to Holland, and let him appeal in that way." He went to work with vigor to reform matters in the colony, extending his efforts to even the morals and domestic affairs of the people. He soon brought about a reign of material prosperity greater than had ever been known before, and exerted himself ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Th' entreaties of your Mistresse? Satisfie? Let that suffice. I haue trusted thee (Camillo) With all the neerest things to my heart, as well My Chamber-Councels, wherein (Priest-like) thou Hast cleans'd my Bosome: I, from thee departed Thy Penitent reform'd: but we haue been Deceiu'd in thy Integritie, deceiu'd In that ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... princes of the country were accustomed to make.[321] Fortunately a small minority was found to offer a request of an entirely opposite tenor; and Jeanne d'Albret, with her characteristic firmness, declared in reply "that she would reform religion in her country, whoever might oppose." So much discontent did this decision provoke that there was ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... prices and increased foreign competition. Togo serves as a regional commercial and trade center. The government's decade-long effort, supported by the World Bank and the IMF, to implement economic reform measures, encourage foreign investment, and bring revenues in line with expenditures has stalled. Political unrest, including private and public sector strikes throughout 1992 and 1993, has jeopardized the reform ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Administration. In and out of Parliament the question became a subject of keen and vehement discussion. The energy and the eloquence of Brougham had held a commanding place among the forces by which Parliamentary reform had been effected, and the wonder was how any Reform Ministry could venture to carry on the work of government, not merely without the co-operation of such a man, but with every likelihood of his active and bitter hostility. At one time the report went abroad, and found many ready believers, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Andrew Karlovitch to transfer you from the fortress of Belogorsk to some still more distant place. Upon hearing of your wound your mother was taken ill, and is still confined to her bed. What will become of you? I pray God to reform you, but can scarcely hope for so much from his goodness. Your ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... the first time in her life, became unhappy. She had never before heard any but the voice of kindness; and now, from him she loved best in the world she received sometimes sharp and disagreeable words. He was very sorry afterwards, and all would seem well again, but he did not really reform, and, many a time, my locks, falling over her innocent round cheek, were wetted with ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own progress by meddling with mundane affairs. The ordinary reader will say: "This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness." .... But let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world, would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation. And is the result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently encouraging to prompt a renewal of ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... beset with inquiries for these wonderful implements. We do not intimate that Mr. Gisborne, and those who so often quote the above language, are not reliable. Mr. Gisborne "is an honorable man, so are they all honorable men;" but we must reform our tiles, and our land too, most of it, we fear, before we can open four-foot trenches, and lay pipes in them, without putting a foot "within twenty inches of the floor ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... but, in the most important sense, they were true. He was pointed out as a miracle of mercy—the great convert—a wonder to the world. He could now suffer opprobrium and cavils—play with errors—entangle himself and drink in flattery. No one can suppose that this outward reform was put on hypocritically, as a disguise to attain some sinister object; it was real, but it arose from a desire to shine before his neighbours, from shame and from the fear of future punishment, and not from that love ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... assured that Sir James was decidedly against the Catholic Emancipation, although after he obtained a peerage he voted for the Reform Bill, being clearly of opinion that some reform of acknowledged and flagrant abuses was necessary. He did not, however, intend to go so far as many of his friends; he may be said to have nearly followed the politics of Earl Grey, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... From that time matters between the two moved smoothly as at first; but Elizabeth did not relax her vigilance. She realized how others might be inconvenienced and mortified by her carelessness. From an economical point of view, too, it was better to reform; for she had lost much time, and been tardy at class frequently on account of having to ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... understand a disposition so totally different from her own. Susan saw that much was wrong at home, and wanted to set it right. That a girl of fourteen, acting only on her own unassisted reason, should err in the method of reform, was not wonderful; and Fanny soon became more disposed to admire the natural light of the mind which could so early distinguish justly, than to censure severely the faults of conduct to which it led. Susan was only acting on the same ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... said this new party of self-styled Americans professed to have organized with a view to purify and reform the old political parties. A beautiful set, said he, to reform! The Order of Know Nothings was composed of the worst men in the Whig and Democratic parties. As a sample of these men, he pointed out Andrew J. Donelson, by name—exclaiming as ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... weakened and rotted to the marrow by all such useless and degrading discussions. Why, a great battle resulting in the loss of 50,000 men would exhaust us less than ten years of this abominable parliamentary system. You must call on me some morning. I will show you a scheme of military reform, in which I point out the necessity of returning to the limited professional armies which we used to have, for this present-day national army, as folks call it, which is a semi-civilian affair and at best a mere herd of men, is like a dead weight ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... reign of Louis the Fourteenth,—a period which was deemed the acme of elegance and refinement,—exhibit a grossness, a vulgarity, and a coarseness, not to be found among the lowest of our respectable poor. And the biography of Beau Nash, who attempted to reform the manners of the gentry, in the times of Queen Anne, exhibits violations of the rules of decency among the aristocracy, which the commonest yeoman of this Land ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... acres of land; representatives in South Carolina were required to have a 500 acre freehold and 10 Negroes; and in Georgia 250 acres and support the Protestant religion.[18] In all of these slave States, suffering from such unpopular government, the mountaineers developed into a reform party persistently demanding that the sense of the people be taken on the question of calling together their representatives to remove certain defects from the constitutions. It was the contest between the aristocrats and the progressive westerner. The aristocrats' ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... concern for my loss, and recommended most strongly to the King of France my famyly. His Majesty has been most extremely good and gracious to them. My son, that was Captain in Dillon's, has now the Brevet of Colonel reform'd with appointments of 1800 livres a-year; his sisters have 150 livres a-year each of them, with his royal promis of his protection of the famyly for ever. The Marquise de Mezire, and her daughter the Princess de Monteban have ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... same's you did afore she went away. She ain't hardly got her wisdom teeth cut, in love affairs! She ain't broke the laws of the State o' Maine, nor any o' the ten commandments; she ain't disgraced the family, an' there's a chance for her to reform, seein' as how she ain't twenty year old yet. I was turrible wild an' hot-headed myself afore you ketched me ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... folly and vileness of the Whigs. 'King Jog,' the 'Bogey,' 'Mother Cole,' and the rest of them—they were either knaves or imbeciles. Lord Grey was an exception; but then Lord Grey, besides passing the Reform Bill, presented Mr. Creevey with the Treasurership of the Ordnance, and in fact was altogether a most ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... of Mendelssohn's circle were: Isaac Euchel, the "restorer of Hebrew prose," as he has been called, whose chief purpose was the reform of the Jewish order of service and Jewish pedagogic methods; Solomon Maimon, a wild fellow, who in his autobiography tells his own misdeeds, by many of which Mendelssohn was caused annoyance; Lazarus ben David, a modern Diogenes, the apostle of Kantism; and, above all, David Friedlaender, an ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... and just, he was able to diminish the imposts, to introduce order among the soldiery, and above all, by the ordinances of 1499, to improve the organization of justice. He was also zealous for the reform of the church, and particularly for the reform of the monasteries; and it is greatly to his credit that he did not avail himself of the extremely favourable opportunities he possessed of becoming a pluralist. He regularly spent a large income in charity, and he ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... bright eyes and smooth velvet paws, and promises them fun; and they go to bad places; they get to smoking, and then to drinking; and, finally, the bad habit gets them in its teeth and claws, and plays with them as a cat does with a mouse. They try to reform, just as your robin tried to get away from the cat; but their bad habits pounce on them and drag them back. And so, when the time comes that they want to begin life, they are miserable, broken-down creatures, like ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... three condemned, and the two latter executed on gibbets erected before their own doors. A covenant, as a test, was taken by the lords and commons, and imposed on their army, and on all who lived within their quarters. Besides resolving to amend and reform their lives, the covenanters their vow, that they will never lay down their arms so long as the Papists, now in open war against the parliament, shall by force of arms be protected from justice; they express their abhorrence of the late conspiracy; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... say whether her success or her failure involved the greater tragedy. For behind all these aims was a larger ideal that was not to be realised—the dream, entertained as passionately by Catherine Benincasa as by Savonarola or by Luther, of thorough Church-reform. Catherine at Avignon, pleading this great cause in the frivolous culture and dainty pomp of the place; Catherine at Rome, defending to her last breath the legal rights of a Pope whom she could hardly have honoured, and whose claims she ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... Southern motives, that active sympathy, which can alone evoke effective assistance.... The best assurance you can give that the destinies of the negro race are safe in Southern hands is, not that the South will repent and reform, but that she has consistently and conscientiously been the friend and ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... take nothing from the human mind; to suppress is bad. We must reform and transform. Certain faculties in man are directed towards the Unknown; thought, revery, prayer. The Unknown is an ocean. What is conscience? It is the compass of the Unknown. Thought, revery, prayer,—these ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... should be free to participate in the agitation to drive the criminal liquor traffic out of the country without being called upon to suffer the loss of income. The man who braved the liquor party, and nearly sealed his devotion to the temperance reform with his life blood, was not the man to abandon his convictions at the command of ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... continente m. manner, mien, gait. contino adv. constantly, continually; de —— continually. continuo, -a continual, constant. contra prep. against; en —— against. conversin f. conversion, reform. convertir convert, reform, change; —se en change to, become. convidar invite, entice, allure. convocar convoke, summon. convulso, -a convulsive. copa f. foliage, branches. corazn ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... corruption proof against all disinfectants. Pure humor cannot flow from so turbid a source as soeva indignatio, and if man be so filthy and disgusting a creature as Swift represents him to be, if he be truly "by nature, reason, learning, blind," satire is thrown away upon him for reform ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... "that they embarrass me a great deal in my project of reform. The violence with which one loves them is harsh and injurious. The pleasure they give is not peaceful, and does not lead to joy. I have committed for them, in my life, two or three abominable crimes of which no one knows. I doubt whether I shall ever invite you ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... work satisfactorily, notwithstanding difficulties arising from the conflicting interests of industry and agriculture, Free Trade and Protection and differences of creed and race. At the end of this year it was near falling asunder in connection with the question of judicial reform, but Prince von Buelow kept it together for a while by an impassioned appeal to the patriotism of both parties. In the course of the speech he told the House how, when he was standing at Bismarck's death-bed, he noticed on the ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... You promised reform; but I trusted in vain; Your pledge was but made to be broken again, And the lover so false to his promises now, Will not as a husband be ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... quickset hedge. Some like a spade, some like a forke, some square, Some round, some mow'd like stubble, some starke bare, Some sharpe Steletto fashion, dagger like, That may with whispering a mans eyes out pike: Some with the hammer cut, or Romane T,[163] Their beards extravagant reform'd must be, Some with the quadrate, some triangle fashion, Some circular, some ovall in translation, Some perpendicular in longitude, Some like a thicket for their crassitude, That heights, depths, bredths, triforme, square, ovall, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Spenser was a busy man of affairs, but in him the poet and the scholar always predominates. He writes as the idealist, describing men not as they are but as he thinks they should be; he has no humor, and his mission is not to amuse but to reform. Like Chaucer he studies the classics and contemporary French and Italian writers; but instead of adapting his material to present-day conditions, he makes poetry, as in his Eclogues for instance, more artificial even than his foreign models. Where Chaucer looks ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... marriages and other ceremonies, and do anything for them which does not involve touching them or any article in their houses. In Bengal, Sir H. Risley writes, the employment of Brahmans for the performance of ceremonies appears to be a very recent reform for, as a rule, in sacrifices and funeral ceremonies, the worshipper's sister's son performs the functions of a priest. "Among the Pasis of Monghyr this ancient custom, which admits of being plausibly interpreted ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... those rare occasions when effects remote from nature and life are desired. Nature seems to abhor equalities, never making two things alike or the same proportion if she can help it. All systems founded on equalities, as are so many modern systems of social reform, are man's work, the products of a machine-made age. For this is the difference between nature and the machine: nature never produces two things alike, the machine never produces two things different. Man could solve the social problem to-morrow if you could produce him equal ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... nor a philosopher. He was an empiricist, with a touch of pragmatism—though he did not know it. He was "a practical man." Even reform administrations have been known to advocate a liberal enforcement of the laws. Can you blame Delany for being practical when others so much greater than he have prided themselves upon the same attribute of practicality? There were of ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... note of the evil. All were agreed upon abolishing secular words from the mass, and some even urged the banishment of counterpoint itself, and a return to the plain song or chant, but fortunately this sweeping reform met with a vigorous protest from others. At last the whole matter was referred to a committee of eight cardinals, who wisely sought the aid of an equal number of the papal singers, and the outcome ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... Chesterton left two books, one a kind of autobiography, the other a work on prison reform. It was a moment of enthusiasm for reform, of optimism and of energy. Dickens was stirring the minds of Englishmen to discover the evils in their land and rush to their overthrow. Darwin was writing his ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... again, and they believed and rejoiced, and carried the news abroad. At the third meeting a society was formed for prayer. I returned to the city then. Drifting down the river, under the stars, which never seemed so bright and so near, I evolved this lesson: To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty—to the poor and humble. And then I laid a plan and devoted my life. As a first step, I secured my vast property, so that the income would be certain, and always at ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... and follow squad leader. No advantage in cover, but used to advance more quickly over rough or brush grown ground. (It might be desirable to teach men to take squad columns from column of squads.) In assembling from Platoon or Squad columns, the men reform by platoons or squads and are conducted by their leaders to point indicated by captain. Thin lines are used to cross wide stretches under artillery fire or heavy, long range rifle fire ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... our notice, that we are to estimate the power and the purposes of that important corporation. It had been rapidly brought into the form which it now bore, by the political exigencies of the age. Its members had no less in hand than a wide religious and political reform—whether to be carried out in New England, or in Old England, or in both, it was for circumstances, as they should unfold themselves, to determine. The leading emigrants to Massachusetts were of that brotherhood ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... Juan kills him without an effort. Not until the slain father returns from heaven as the agent of God, in the form of his own statue, does he prevail against his slayer and cast him into hell. The moral is a monkish one: repent and reform now; for to-morrow it may be too late. This is really the only point on which Don Juan is sceptical; for he is a devout believer in an ultimate hell, and risks damnation only because, as he is young, it seems so far off that repentance can be postponed until he has amused himself ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... the toddy stick was hardly interrupted in the barroom inside from morning till night. The temperance reform had not made great headway in my youthful days. It was not uncommon to see farmers, bearing names highly respected in the town, lying drunk by the roadside on a summer afternoon, or staggering along the streets. The unpainted farmhouses and barns had their broken ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... colic. Old Slott intended the boy to be a minister; but as soon as he was old enough to take notice he cried for every newspaper that he happened to see, and no sooner did he learn how to write than he began to slash off editorials upon "The Need of Reform," etc. He ran away from school four times to enter a newspaper office, and finally, when the paternal Slott put him in the House of Refuge, he started a weekly in there, and called it the House of Refuge Record; and one day he slid over the wall and went down to the Era office, where ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... system had spread rapidly since the Restoration, and had already effected an important reform in the English roads. Turnpike roads were ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... contemporaries, although the duration of his life was but fifty-two years. Of these probably the most noteworthy was Gregory XIII (1572-1585), in whose reign occurred the fearful Massacre of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572, and the reform of the calendar from that known as the Julian to the new style named the Gregorian Calendar ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... ecclesiastical matters, but to have unjustly stripped churches of their pastors—to have sold them to unworthy subjects guilty of simony, whose very ordination was questionable—and implores the Pope to begin the reform with the Cathedral of Milan, which is in schism by ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... year 1815 was one of incessant struggle for reform, and chiefly the reform of a Parliament which no longer represented the people's wishes. Considerably more than half the members were not elected at all, ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne |
