"Reformer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those who have too much. Now, I may probably assume that we all agree in approving the contemplated end—a greater equality of wealth, and especially an elevation of the lower classes to a higher position in the scale of comfort. Every social reformer, whatever his particular creed, would probably agree that some of us are too rich, and that a great many are too poor. But we still have to ask, in what sense it is conceivable that a real suppression of competition can contribute ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... earth are you talking about? I can understand a man attended by black dogs that nobody sees but himself. The Catholics tell it of John Knox, and of another Reformer, a fellow called Smeaton. Moreover, it is common in delirium tremens. But you say ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... is a glowing and fantastic description of the privileges of the "elect," cast in the form of a monologue, and illustrated in the person of the speaker. Johannes Agricola was a German reformer of the sixteenth century, and alleged founder of the sect of the Antinomians: a class of Christians who extended the Low Church doctrine of the insufficiency of good works, and declared the children of God to ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Ming dynasty coincided with the birth of Tsong-kha-pa,[944] the last reformer of Lamaism and organizer of the Church as it at present exists. The name means the man of the onion-bank, a valley near the monastery of Kumbum in the district of Amdo, which lies on the western frontiers of the Chinese province of Kansu. He became a monk at the age of seven and from the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... could love. There he could feel not the past alone nor the present, but the future also; and, like all brave men, when he saw the future he was a little afraid of it. For of all tests by which the good citizen and strong reformer can be distinguished from the vague faddist or the inhuman sceptic, I know no better test than this—that the unreal reformer sees in front of him one certain future, the future of his fad; while ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... with, it would not suit me to run my estate as though it were a University Settlement. Handle me gently—that's all. You've had your way about some of the farms—you'll get it no doubt with regard to others. But don't go about playing the reformer—on this dramatic scale!—at my expense. I don't believe in this modern wish-wash; and I don't intend to don ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... forest pony—an ill-favoured animal with a wall-eye, pink muzzle, bristly upper and hanging lower lip, more accustomed to carry a keg of smuggled spirits strapped beneath its belly than a cosmopolitan savant and social reformer on its back—he rode the three miles to Marychurch, proposing there to take the coach to Southampton and, after a measure of rest and refitting, a post-chaise to Canton Magna, his elder brother's fine place lying in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the philosopher introduced the sociologist to the study of society. But it was the reformer, the social worker, and the business man who compelled ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... liberties of the subject, and assistance furnished to a corrupt hierarchy, had become odious, and was to be resisted and restrained. The idea of abolishing the monarchy had indeed not entered the mind of the most daring reformer; but it is certain, that when his feelings were inflamed by brooding over real and fancied wrongs from the established Church, his anger would overflow upon the government, which, with no sparing hand, wielded the sword to enforce pains and penalties, imposed, ostensibly ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... bar of our worthy friend, whose heart was as light as a feather. I saw at least half a dozen come in and sip a glass of Sub-Treasury, who I knew had not tasted liquor for months. I marked them; and shall be about their path occasionally. But the best thing of all that I saw, was a reformer break his pledge. He was, years ago, a noted drunkard, but had been a reformed man for four years. In that time he had broken up several grog-shops, by reforming all their customers, and had got, I suppose, not less than five or six hundred persons to sign the pledge. I had, of ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... 1415, the Bohemian Reformer, John Hus, was burned at the stake. But those who had silenced him could not unsay his message, and at last there drew together a little body of earnest men, who agreed to accept the Bible as their only standard of faith and practice, and established ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... iron tyranny of Strafford and Laud. But, whatever judgment the Whig or the Tory of that age might pronounce on transactions long past, there can be no doubt that, as respected the practical questions then pending, the Tory was a reformer, and indeed an intemperate and indiscreet reformer, while the Whig was conservative even to bigotry. We have ourselves seen similar effects produced in a neighboring country by similar causes. Who would have believed, fifteen years ago, that M. Guizot and M. Villemain would ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was not expecting it, to greet A Doll's House. Ibsen was stirred by the reception of his latest play into a mood rather different from that which he expressed at any other period. As has often been said, he did not pose as a prophet or as a reformer, but it did occur to him now that he might exercise a strong moral influence, and in writing to his German translator, Ludwig Passarge, he ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... thought of his realty interests in town, as they lay exposed to spoliation, to confiscation. "I am afraid I shall not be a reformer," he said, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... Zendavesta, is the sacred book ascribed to Zoroaster, or Zerdusht, the founder or reformer of the Magian religion. The modern edition or paraphrase of this work, called the Sadda, written in the Persian of the day, was, I believe, composed about three hundred ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... by Frederick Froebel in a very small village in the heart of the Thuringian forest. Like Owen, his aim was education solely for its own sake, and he had a simple faith in the human goodness of the older Germany. But he came to education as a philosopher rather than a social reformer, with a strong belief in its power to improve humanity. This belief remained with him; it is embodied in his aim, and ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... Dr Reid, then, as a reformer of philosophy, amount in our opinion to this:—he was among the first[23] to say and to write that the representative theory of perception was false and erroneous, and was the fountainhead of scepticism and idealism. But this admission of his merits must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... first place the Free Press, being a reformer, suffered from what all reformers suffer from, to wit, that in their origins they must, by ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... has a lively quarter-of-an-hour in coping with the contradictory conundrums of Cobdenites and Chamberlainites. On the whole he treads the fiscal tight-rope with an imperturbability worthy of BLONDIN. A Tariff Reformer, indignant at the increased imports of foreign glass-ware, provoked the query, "Does my hon. friend regard bottles as a key-industry?" And a Wee Free Trader who sarcastically inquired if foreign countries complained ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... amongst them like a new raised spirit To speak of dreadful judgments that impend, And of the wrath to come. —THE REFORMER. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... this we recognise the work of the great reformer who had already produced the Corpus Juris Civilis, consisting of the Institutes, Digest, Code, and Novellae, which more than anything else he did—and he did everything—determined that Europe, which he had secured for ever, should be a Roman thing established upon Roman ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... bishopric of Gaeta, and in 1517 Pope Leo X. made him a cardinal and archbishop of Palermo. The year following he went as legate into Germany, to quiet the commotions raised by Luther. It was before him that the Reformer appeared at the diet of Augsburg; and it was he who, in 1519, helped in drawing up the bull of excommunication against Luther. Cajetan was employed in several other negotiations and transactions, being as able in business ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... pictures'd make a reformer laugh. I picked up the book in German on an Ann Street sidewalk stand, caught the Big Idea right then and there; to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... don't say he doesn't," admitted Druro. "But he does it on principle. He's a born reformer—aren't you, Tobe? Picks a scrap with any one he considers a disreputable, dissipated character." Toby's master smiled mockingly ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... stopping at every turn to read the inscriptions and monuments. At length they reached the summit of the hill, where the lofty column stood which had been erected to the memory of John Knox, the great Scottish reformer. The column stood upon a pedestal, which contained an inscription on each of the four sides of it. One of these inscriptions said that John Knox was a man who could never be made to swerve from his duty by any fear or any danger, ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... rest of the kingdom. In his new and more enlarged sphere of action, Turgot's abilities expanded; or, perhaps it should rather be said, had a fairer field for their display. He showed himself equally capable in every department of his duties; as a financial reformer, as an administrator, and as a legislator. No minister in the history of the nation had ever so united large-minded genius with disinterested integrity. He had not accepted office without a full perception of its difficulties. He saw all that had to ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... take part in the needed reforms. He was immediately made Principal of Glasgow University, at that time in a state of utter collapse and ruin. He had matured his plans, after consultation with George Buchanan, and they were worthy of a great reformer. He sketched a curriculum, substantially the curriculum of the second University period. The modifications upon the almost exclusive Aristotelianism of the first period, were significant. The Greek language was introduced, and Greek classical authors read. The reading in the Roman classics was extended. ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Bellomont and to public opinion, and because Evans and Bayard had lesser influence than the other landed functionaries. But the owners of the other estates tenaciously held them intact. The people regarded Bellomont as a sincere and ardent reformer, but the landed men and their following abused him as a meddler and destructionist. Despairing of getting a self-interested assembly to act, Bellomont appealed to ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... Curio, the 'quondam' patriot, reformer, and semi-revolutionist, abjure his opinion, and yell the foremost in the hunt of persecution against his old friends and fellow-philosophists, with a cold clear predetermination, formed at one moment, of making L5000 a year by his ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... ready for the inevitable reaction, and Buddhism was again restored. This is a comparatively modern instance. Away back two hundred and more years B.C., we find the famous builder of the Great Wall attempting an impossible task with no better result. He was a great reformer—indeed the first universal emperor of all existing China, which was consolidated by his genius. The privileged classes, of course, opposed his reforms and gave him much trouble by holding up to the admiration of the people the feudal times of the past, and extolling the heroes ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... concourse of unruly people who robbed him, and treated with savage rudeness his extraordinary services.' Something of a visionary, too, was Sir Balthazar;—yet, with all his vanity as to his own merits—his coxcombry about his proceedings,—a sort of reformer and benefactor also in a small way. At one time we find him advertising that, besides lecturing gratis, he will lend from one shilling to six, gratis, 'to such as are in extreme need, and have not wherewithal to endeavour their subsistence, whereas week ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... first conceived her. Had she continued to be such a magnificent and heroic creature, he would have loved her less. She gained infinitely more than she lost by this more intimate view. She was no longer a possible reformer and a subject for the historian, but a woman pure and simple, with all a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... class in Denmark, yet both are advancing; and the gigantic evils of despotism and anarchy have in a great measure vanished before the meliorating manners of Europe. Innumerable evils still remain, it is true, to afflict the humane investigator, and hurry the benevolent reformer into a labyrinth of error, who aims at destroying prejudices quickly which only time can root out, as the public opinion ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... become of Metastasio under his true name of Trapasso? What impression would Melanchthon have made with his name of Schwarzerd? Would he then have dared to raise the voice of a moralist philosopher, of a reformer of the Eucharist, and so many other holy things? Would not M. de Beauharnais have caused some persons to laugh and others to blush if he had kept his name of Beauvit, even if the first founder of his family had been indebted for ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... when men think to do best, if they go furthest from the superstition, formerly received; therefore care would be had that (as it fareth in ill purgings) the good be not taken away with the bad; which commonly is done, when the people is the reformer. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... accused with the Hebertists; he was arrested, imprisoned in the Luxembourg, condemned by the Revolutionary tribunal and executed on the 13th of April 1794. Chaumette's career had its brighter side. He was an ardent social reformer; he secured the abolition of corporal punishment in the schools, the suppression of lotteries, of houses of ill-fame and of obscene literature; he instituted reforms in the hospitals, and insisted on the honours of public burial for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... structure of the mind, inaccuracy brings a partial deviation from the truth, and it does not take long for this slight error to generalize itself, if not corrected by its natural reformer—common sense. ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... other day about a religious reformer who arose in Eastern lands a few years since, and gathered many disciples. He and his principal follower were seized and about to be martyred. They were suspended by cords from a gibbet, to be fired at by a platoon ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Almighty, as he comes with the forms of things to be, woman and her progeny, in the fold of his garment! What a sense of wrong in those two captive youths, who feel the chains like scalding water on their proud and delicate flesh! The idealist who became a reformer with Savonarola, and a republican superintending the fortification of Florence—the nest where he was born, il nido ove naqqu'io, as he calls it once, in a sudden throb of affection—in its last struggle for liberty, yet believed always that he had imperial blood in his veins and ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... however, the flag of battle was still unfurled. It was so obvious that Kennedy had been put into the house as a reformer, and the seniors of Kay's had such an objection to being reformed, that trouble was only to be expected. It was the custom in most houses for the head of the house, by right of that position, to be also captain of football. The senior dayroom was aggrieved ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... honest statesmanship was the employment of individual meanness for the public good. He never asked perfection of any one; he did not even insist, for others, upon the high standards he set up for himself. At a time before the word was invented he was the first of opportunists. With the fire of a reformer and a martyr in his heart, he yet proceeded by the ways of cautious and practical statecraft. He always worked with things as they were, while never relinquishing the desire and effort to make them better. To a hope which saw the Delectable Mountains ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... a negative was invited, gave the required assurance. "As a matter of fact," said he, "it was the Prince who asked me to go—suggested it, that is to say." And immediately official confidence was restored, for to the Lord Functionary Max as a reformer was still unknown, while his taste for frivolous diversion was more easily assumed. And so in due course a copy of the play reached ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... one day went into the house of a Wesleyan Reformer, and saw the portraits of three expelled ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... is a narrow basis, because the possession of money is of itself no guarantee of political ability, and the system leads to the very questionable proposition that every rich man is a competent social reformer. It is, however, a sort of competence, but a competence very precariously established and on ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... known as the Wesleyan College, St. Stephen's Green, that I struggled through my first pages of Caesar and stumbled over the "pons asinorum," and here I must mention that although the Wesleyan College bears the name of the great religious reformer, a considerable number of the boys who studied there—myself included—were in no way connected with the Wesleyan body. I merely say this because I have seen it stated more than once that I am a Wesleyan, and as this ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... students should turn to the works of a man who by actual experience, or by force of imagination, comprehended all the conditions of his own age, and exhibited in his life and in his writings an individualism of the noblest sort. The conservative and the reformer, the king and the radical, the priest and the heretic, the man of affairs and the man of letters, have taken their seats, side by side, on the scholars' benches, before the same teacher, and, after listening to his large discourse, have discussed among themselves the questions in religion, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... heal him afar off! He called him to him, and put his hands on him! Remember this, my boy.' If I had lived to grow up under her care, she might have stimulated me to I know not what of enthusiasm. I might have been a saint, reformer, martyr,—but, alas! alas! I went from her when I was only thirteen, and I never saw ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is concerned with our personal and profoundest being. But the symbol of the Kingdom is social, collective—the power of every reformer, every servant ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... d'Ailly, a highly important ecclesiastic, head of the College of Navarre, chevalier of the University of Paris, Cardinal, a leader in the discussions at the Councils at Pisa and Constance, a drastic reformer of the morals and customs of the Church, did not evince any marked originality as a philosopher, but maintained the already known doctrines of nominalism ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... the beginning, Paine did not aspire to be the political Prometheus of England. He rather looked to the Whig party and to Mr. Burke as the leaders in such a movement. As for himself, a veteran reformer from another hemisphere, he was willing to serve as a volunteer in the campaign against the oppressors of mankind. He had adopted for his motto, "Where liberty is not, there is my country,"—a negative variation of Franklin's saying, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... hospitality by having lads of the sixth form as his guests,—not for purposes of study, but of recreation, and, yet more, to give them that element of education which consists in familiarity with the noblest natural scenery. The hue and cry which arose when he showed himself a reformer, in Church matters as in politics, followed him here, as we see by his letters; and it was not till his "Life and Correspondence" appeared that his neighbors here understood him. It has always been difficult, perhaps, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... congress went on at Birmingham. The fat Italian from Tuscany read his paper; but as he, though judge in his own country and reformer here in England, was somewhat given to comedy, this morning was not so dull as that which had been devoted to Von Bauhr. After him Judge Staveley made a very elegant, and some said, a very eloquent speech; and so that day was done. Many other days also wore themselves away in this ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Europe which prevented his rule from solving a great problem. He, in this, was invariably the aggrieved. The plan which he had carried into practical solution was wrecked by the allies, and in less than a century after the great reformer had been removed from the sphere of enmity and usefulness, Prince Bismarck forced these small States into unification with the German Empire, thereby carrying into effect the very system Napoleon was condemned for bringing under his suzerainty. What satire, what malignity ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... however, have been a pet name for little Marie de Viry, Procter's niece, and the chere amie of his verse, whom Eothen must have met often at his friend's house. The St. Simonians of p. 83 were the disciples of Comte de St. Simon, a Parisian reformer in the latter part of the eighteenth century, who endeavoured to establish a social republic based on capacity and labour. Pere Enfantin was his disciple. The "mystic mother" was a female Messiah, expected to become the parent of a new Saviour. "Sir Robert once said a good thing" (p. 93), refers ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... Story Curtis, the Reformer, joined us, brought down from the Rand by his physician and sick nurse; he was suffering from partial paralysis, induced by the excitement of the revolution and ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... the charge, said: "As the Lord has signally favored our beloved Church, as her tenets are Biblical, and her veriest enemies cannot point out an important error in her articles of faith, no more than could the enemies of the truth at the Diet of Worms prove the books of the immortal Reformer erroneous, therefore the Church which entrusts you with the preparation and formation of her pastors, demands of you (and in her behalf I solemnly charge you) to establish all students confided to your care in that faith which distinguishes ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... metal part of a shoemaker's awl in the rear but most fleshy part of his adversary's anatomy, making sitting unpleasant for a time. There was usually uncertainty as to the point of compass from which the hint came to leave, but none as to the fact of its arrival. Hence the reformer did not stand on the order of his going, but generally left the line. These votes, of course, were not thrown out, for the reason they never got in. It diminished, but did not abolish the necessity of stuffing ballot boxes. In the West I once knew an old magistrate named Scott, noted for ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... The present Duke of Hatfield has none of the dash, if he has more than the prudence, of his grandfather. He was elected to the present Upper Chamber as a strong anti-Church Liberal, but he never has had the spirit to be a true reformer. It is now due to the "feelings" which fill no doubt the bosoms of these two anti-Fixed-Period seniors, that the doctrine of the Fixed Period has for a time been quenched in Britannula. It is sad to think that the strength and intellect ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... "Mother's a food-reformer," he vouchsafed. "She lectures on it. She makes Pop and me live on vegetables and nuts ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... how Cleveland would meet it. No one could doubt that he would enforce fairly the statute, but would he content himself with this and use the offices not covered by the act to reward his followers in the old Democratic fashion? An avowed civil service reformer, and warmly supported by independents and some former Republicans on that account, he justified the confidence which they had reposed in him and refused "to make a clean sweep." In resisting this very powerful pressure from his ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... further narrate the deeds of Bonivard as a martial hero, though they are neither few nor uninteresting.[10] But he is equally worthy of himself as a religious reformer. It was about this time that the stirrings of religious reformation at Berne and elsewhere began to be heard at Geneva, and the thought began to be seriously entertained by some of the patriotic "Sons of Geneva" that perhaps that liberty for which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... highest offices of the State, showing abilities indeed, but not that extraordinary genius which has made him immortal. He was the leader of the political party which Sulla had put down, and yet was not a revolutionist like the Gracchi. He was an aristocratic reformer, like Lord John Russell before the passage of the Reform Bill, whom the people adored. He was a liberal, but not a radical. Of course he was not a favorite with the senators, who wished to perpetuate abuses. He was intensely disliked by Cato, a most excellent and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... in the field. They had swept through Flanders, destroying all the beauty and wealth that the piety of ages had accumulated, and here was rich plunder for these apostles of the ugly. There is real tragedy in the thought that the Reformer is sometimes sincere. ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... on politics to-day is indifference. When men and women begin to feel that elections and legislatures do not matter very much, that politics is a rather distant and unimportant exercise, the reformer might as well put to himself a few searching doubts. Indifference is a criticism that cuts beneath oppositions and wranglings by calling the political method itself into question. Leaders in public affairs recognize this. They ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... overcome at a theatre as by her performances.... Kean, the prodigy, is to me insufferable. He is vulgar, full of trick, and a complete mannerist. This is merely my opinion. He is cried up as a second Garrick, as a reformer of the stage, etc. It may be so. He may be right, and all the other actors wrong. This is certain: he is either very good or very bad. I think decidedly the latter; and I find no medium opinions concerning him. I am delighted ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... held those old Jews in His hand, of course; but as for the election next month, that was quite another thing. If Joel thrust the history out of the touch of common life, the Doctor brought it down, and held it there on trial. To him it was the story of a Reformer who had served his day. Could he serve this day? Could he? The need was desperate. Was there anything in this Christianity, freed from bigotry, to work out the awful problem which the ages had left for America to solve? People called ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... "Troilus and Cressida" and "The Legend of Good Women"; his late or English period, in which he worked at his masterpiece, the famous Canterbury Tales. (2) Langland, the poet and prophet of social reforms. His chief work is Piers Plowman. (3) Wyclif, the religious reformer, who first translated the gospels into English, and by his translation fixed a common standard of English speech. (4) Mandeville, the alleged traveler, who represents the new English interest in distant lands following ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... herein mentioned was of course the distinguished Scotch politician and social reformer, Duncan M'Laren, for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... monsieur in the same hat and boots as yourself—only the face was not the same." "Very possibly. Are you a doctor, and do not recognise Jaeger garments? I am not, it is true, in coat and continuations of that sanitary reformer, because I had to discard them. The fact is, I had a complete suit, but having been out in the rain in them, they shrank on me to such an extent that I entered the house contracted like a trussed fowl, and had to be cut out of the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... reformer of that day was John Wycliffe, rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire and lecturer at Oxford (S246). He boldly attacked the religious and the political corruption of the age. The "Begging Friars," who had once done such good ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... point of view. He is a physiognomist, a physiologist, a bit of an anatomist, a bit of a mesmerist, a bit of a geologist, a Flemish painter, an upholsterer, a micrological, misanthropical, sceptical philosopher; but he is no moralist, and certainly no reformer." ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he tells them that if they have followed, a different "Reformer's Guide" from his, it is "mainly the fault of us parsons, who have never told you that the true 'Reformer's Guide,' the true poor man's book, the true 'Voice of God against tyrants, idlers, and humbugs, was the Bible.' ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... appeal to these men. They marveled at her industry. Thirty-four years old now, not handsome but wholesome, simply and neatly dressed, her brown hair smoothly parted and brought down over her ears, she had nothing of the scatterbrained impulsive reformer about her, and no coquetry. She was practical and intelligent, and men liked to discuss their work with her. William Henry Channing, admiring her executive ability and her plucky reaction to defeat, dubbed her the Napoleon of the woman's ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... with his pack, Forth went the dreaming youth To seek, to find, and make his own Wisdom, virtue, and truth. Life was his book, and patiently He studied each hard page; By turns reformer, outcast, priest, Philosopher ...
— Three Unpublished Poems • Louisa M. Alcott
... Party of the People—is greatly in the ascendant. But it must be remembered that Het Volk numbers many British adherents. For instance, Mr. Hull, Botha's treasurer in the outgoing Government, is an old Johannesburg "reformer," of the Uitlander days, and fought against the Boers in the war. In the Orange Free State the party called the Unie (or United party) has a large majority, while at the Cape Dr. Jameson's party of progressives can make no stand against Mr. Merriman, Mr. Malan, Mr. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Gibson-Craig, who was born in March 1799, was the second son of Mr. James Gibson, the political reformer, who, on succeeding under entail to the Riccarton estates in 1823, assumed the name of Craig, and in 1831 was created a baronet. He was educated at the High School and the University of Edinburgh, and after spending some time in foreign travel, he ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... purple mountain that overshadowed the town, and would have to be starved into submission. Meanwhile the usual message ran through the island, and so admirable were the arrangements which Arthur the reformer had initiated, that, before noon of the next day, not a signal station on the coast but knew that No. 8942, etc., etc., prisoner for life, was illegally at large. This intelligence, further aided by a paragraph in the Gazette ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... they did resist, its first and only dangerous charge; and it accords with this hypothesis that Marcus Furius Camillus, the most celebrated Roman general of the Gallic epoch, is presented in various detached notices as the reformer of the Roman military system. The further traditions associated with the Samnite and Pyrrhic wars are neither sufficiently accredited, nor can they with certainty be duly arranged;(23) although ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... looked about for a more humane reformer. At last they found some one who could do that sort of thing better than anybody else. His name was Solon. He belonged to a noble family and he had travelled all over the world and had studied the forms of government of many other countries. After a careful study of ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... prophetess. Who first proclaimed Christ as the true Messiah in the streets of Samaria, once the capital of the ten tribes? It was a woman! Who ministered to the Son of God whilst on earth, a despised and persecuted Reformer, in the humble garb of a carpenter? They were women! Who followed the rejected King of Israel, as his fainting footsteps trod the road to Calvary? "A great company of people and of women;" and it is remarkable that to them alone, ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... Lyndsay's exposure of ecclesiastical abuses in his various satires, especially in his 'Complaynts' and his Dialog, 'powerfully forwarded the movement that culminated in the Reformation. It would, however, be a mistake to consider him an avowed Protestant reformer. He was concerned about the existing wrongs both of Church and State, and thought of rectifying ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... precautions are taken, the sound of whistling outside the kitchen door at nightfall will often indicate the presence of loafers on their evil quest. In the rural districts domestic morality is at a very low ebb also, and on the whole there is much to be done here by both reformer and educationalist. ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... 'General of the Fleet.' Two others were associated with him in the command; but Blake seems at least to have been recognised as primus inter pares. The navy system was in deplorable need of reform; and a reformer it found in Robert Blake, from the very day he became an admiral. His care for the well-being of his men made him an object of their almost adoring attachment. From first to last, he stood alone as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... "but arms in the hands of the wise are instruments of peace, and the massacre of Vassy has shown the necessity under which the Protestants were laid." When Navarre exclaimed: "Whoever touches my brother of Guise with the tip of his finger, touches my whole body!" the reformer reminded him, as one whom Antoine had himself brought to France, that the way of justice is God's way, and that kings owe justice to their subjects. Finally, when he discovered, by Navarre's adoption of all the impotent excuses of Guise, that the former had sold ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... see how he once turned to Erasmus in a devout meditation, written in the journal he kept during his journey to the Netherlands. His voice comes to us from an atmosphere charged with the electric influence of the greatest Reformer, Martin Luther, who had just disappeared, no man knew why or whither; though all men suspected foul play. In his daily life, by sweetness of manner, by gentle dignity and modesty, Duerer showed his religion, the admiration and love that bound ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... greatest influence on the development of prose was exercised by means of his sermons and treatises. In these, the reformer gives himself full scope; he alters his tone at need, employs all means, from the most impassioned eloquence down to the most trivial pleasantry, meant to delight men of the lower class. Put to such varied uses, prose could not but become a more workable ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... step until Mrs. Ducker should find time to empty her pitcher. Mary was strictly an outsider. Mary's father was a Reformer. He ran the opposition paper to dear Mr. Evans. Mary was never well dressed, partly accounted for by the fact that the angels had visited the McSorley home so often. Therefore, for these reasons, Mary sat on the back step, a ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... woman, of less note, but also a reformer, is Eliza Farnham. She is not so emotional, has less sentiment and considerable originality, and is honest in her opinions and determined in her efforts to uplift her sex ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... of another reformer, Dr. Marusitch, a Montenegrin who had but recently returned from Manchuria after many years' service as a surgeon in the Russian Army. A wild, enthusiastic creature—good-natured, well-meaning and indiscreet. For Montenegro he was rich. He had ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... exclaimed Mr. Stryker, shrugging his shoulders. "The position of a reformer is not sufficiently graceful ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... giving all they most care for, for the prosecution of the war against Germany still support industrial and political policies and dogmas which are in spirit essentially Prussian. The professional Reformer here in America is not even yet fully conscious that German paternalism (a phase of German efficiency) is the token of ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... revision, radical reform; second thoughts, correction, limoe labor [Lat.], refinement, elaboration; purification &c 652; oxidation; repair &c (restoration) 660; recovery &c 660. revise, new edition. reformer, radical. V. improve; be better, become better, get better; mend, amend. advance &c (progress) 282; ascend &c 305; increase &c 35; fructify, ripen, mature; pick up, come about, rally, take a favorable turn; turn over a new leaf, turn ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he cried, "because he run away! And left an old man in the street—dead, for all he knowed—nor cared neither. Yah!" shrieked the Tammany heeler. "HIM a Reformer, yah!" ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... sentence of a venturous edge, uttered in the height of zeal (and who knows whether it might not be the dictate of a divine spirit?) yet not suiting with every low decrepit humour of their own, though it were Knox himself, the reformer of a kingdom, that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash: the sense of that great man shall to all posterity be lost, for the fearfulness or the presumptuous rashness of a perfunctory licenser. And to what an author this violence hath been lately done, ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... to become the Imperial capital, T[o]ki[o], enabled me to see some things now so utterly vanished, that by some persons their previous existence is questioned. One of the most interesting characters I met personally was Fukuzawa, the reformer, and now "the intellectual father of half of the young men of ... Japan." On the day of the battle of Uyeno, July 11, 1868, this far-seeing patriot and inquiring spirit deliberately decided to keep out of the strife, and with four companions of like mind, began the study of Wayland's Moral Science. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... ambition; of a genial nature in his own family circle and among his friends, he withdrew from the multitude, and refused to lower his standard of cultivated intercourse in order to win favour with coarser natures. He is chiefly remembered now as an educational reformer and as the guide of Maria Edgeworth in the earlier stages of her literary career. What she achieved was in great part due to her father's judicious ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... was a geologist and social reformer. He was very influential in improving the conditions of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... your own road, Davy," said Jane with irritating mockery. "You were born to be thoroughly conventional and respectable. As a reformer you're ideal. As a—an imitator of Victor Dorn, you'd ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... that's about all politics seems to amount to," said the reformer. "If those lamps are to be a souvenir of the campaign, they ought to ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... that the opportunity which my official position gave me of learning by personal observation the necessary conditions of the practical conduct of public affairs, has been of considerable value to me as a theoretical reformer of the opinions and institutions of my time. Not, indeed, that public business transacted on paper, to take effect on the other side of the globe, was of itself calculated to give much practical knowledge of life. But the occupation accustomed me to see and hear ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... which curiously resembles parts of the Book of the Dead, from the foundation of Egyptian ethics and theology which had filtered through to the Israelites in general, or had been furnished specially to himself by his early education; just as the great Genevese reformer built up a puritanic social organisation on so much as remained of the ethics and theology of the Roman Church, after he had trimmed them to ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... prince of India who tired of good times and turned reformer. Advised his congregations to adopt the recall and referendum. Nailed several anti-saloon and burlesque planks in his platform. After B.'s death his friends filled the Orient with his bronzes. He was fat and wore a fascinating wart on ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... superstructures of ignorance, inhibiting and insisting by turns, which add the glamour of irrationality to so much of the behaviour of mankind, and disguise its native rationalism and its morality too. Beset by fear and pride, craftsman and cultivator and explorer and reformer alike are in the same predicament. 'I could do this or that and do it thus, but may I?' and if such opinion as counts says 'Thou shalt not', the fallacious substitution of 'shalt not' for 'mayst' cannot fail to endanger advancement. It may be over ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... of our catechism was Dr. Martin Luther (b. 1483, d. 1546), the great Reformer, through whom God effected the Reformation of the Church, in the sixteenth century. He began the Reformation with his Ninety-five Theses against the sale of indulgences, contended against the many ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... best to make the world over, we are apt to be dismayed by finding it in much the old shape. As he said of the moral government of the universe, the scale is so vast, and a little difference, a little change for the better, is scarcely perceptible to the eager consciousness of the wholesale reformer. But with whatever sense of disappointment, of doubt as to his own deeds for truer freedom and for better conditions I believe his sympathy was still with those who had some heart for hoping and striving. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sale or lease of city property and the letting of contracts; and a reform council was elected. Immediately upon the heels of this reform movement followed the shameful regime of Fernando Wood, an able, crafty, unscrupulous politician, who began by announcing himself a reformer, but who soon became a boss in the most offensive sense of that term—not, however, in Tammany Hall, for he was ousted from that organization after his reelection as mayor in 1856. He immediately organized a machine of his own, Mozart Hall. The ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... art is beginning to feel she must utter our emotion towards it. Such art is exposed to an inherent and imminent peril. Its very bigness and newness tends to set up fresh and powerful reactions. Unless, in the process of creation, these can be inhibited, the artist will be lost in the reformer, and the play or the novel turn tract. This does not mean that the artist, if he is strong enough, may not be reformer too, only not ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... to continue the work of administrative reform in that particular field of labor. The people had called him "up higher." His reputation as a true Democrat, an honest reformer, and a faithful public servant, had spread abroad through the State, and when the Democratic State Convention assembled in the early autumn of that year it was clearly apparent that the nomination of Grover Cleveland, the reform mayor of Buffalo, as the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... of the prescriptive right of every member of the community to food and shelter was the first step to vast changes in social legislation. Cavour's natural inclinations were more those of a social and economic reformer than of the political innovator. Gasworks, factories, hospitals, and prisons were in turn inspected. Cavour went thoroughly into the questions of prison labour and diet. He did not object to the treadmill in itself, but thought unfruitful labour demoralising. ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... used sometimes to talk to Sir Richard concerning his cousin; and once, more particularly, spoke of his restless, reforming spirit in the church, in the university, physic, &c. "And please your Majesty," replied Sir Richard, "if my cousin were in heaven he would be a reformer!"—Wadd's Memoirs. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... said Pen, with, as usual, somewhat of melancholy in his voice. "I have no laws from Heaven to bring down to the people from the mountain. I don't belong to the mountain at all, or set up to be a leader and reformer of mankind. My faith is not strong enough for that; nor my vanity, nor my hypocrisy, great enough. I will tell no lies, George, that I promise you: and do no more than coincide in those which are necessary and pass current, and can't be got in without recalling the whole circulation. ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... must be peculiarly painful for me to find that the ethical import of Dorian Gray has been so strongly recognised by the foremost Christian papers of England and America that I have been greeted by more than one of them as a moral reformer. ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... in order that we may review the supreme labours of his life. It was a time of confusion: Knox was dead, and the Church needed a leader to shape its discipline and policy in order to conserve the fruits of the Reformer's work. Two years before Melville's return, viz. in 1572, the electroplate Episcopacy—the Tulchan[4] Bishops—had been imposed on the Church by the Regent Morton. Up to this time the constitution of the Church had been ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... utmost of the life that is his, he neither complains of it nor is elated by it, nor does he complain against the better fortune of others. All alike, as he well knows, are but learning a lesson; and he smiles at the socialist and the reformer who endeavor by sheer force to re-arrange circumstances which arise out of the forces of human nature itself. This is but kicking against the pricks; a waste ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... more interesting and appropriate topic for art of a serious kind would be the problem presented by a body of men of the highest ability and integrity who are yet doomed to work a cumbrous and inadequate system. But the popular reformer, to whom everything seems easy and obvious, explains all abuses by attributing them to the deliberate intention of particular fools and knaves. This indicates Fitzjames's position at the time. He was fully conscious of the administrative abuses assailed, and was as ardent on law reform ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... we've all heard somethin' about him," laughed Captain Sol; "but we're willin' to hear more. He was a reformer, wa'n't he?" ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... responding to the treatment. Many other crops are adding their quota to the produce of the Southern farms, and an all-round improvement, moral as well as material, is accompanying the educational discipline through which this reformer is putting the communities with whom and for whom ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... condition, and we can now really study his face, which is full of character. There is no trace of passion in it, but a philosophical calm with great obstinacy and impracticability. He was no vigorous fanatic, but rather a high bred theorist and reformer: not a Cromwell but a Mill. An interesting historical study awaits us here from his physiognomy and his reforms. No such cast remains of any other personage in ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... bright array from your glorious fanes, and would ye be measured by the measure of his stature? Behold you not in him a more illustrious and more venerable presence? Statesman, soldier, patriot, sage, reformer of creeds; teacher of truth and justice, achiever and preserver of liberty, the first of men, founder and saviour of his country, father of his people—this is he, solitary and ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... palace walls, And Canada on some reformer waits; Shall vice within the Legislative Halls Be rampant as the lions ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... good work—their schemes are at least suggestive, and moreover they point out signs of the times. They show us unmistakably that with our advance there is a tendency to become more and more selfish and to regard with less true charity the condition of the weak. One social reformer will say that there will not be any suffering because therapeutics will have overtaken every disease that the flesh is heir to, or better still, that some new discovery will have made it possible to heal all sicknesses without the ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... pay so much attention to what is written and spoken, let them hear once more the voice of one of the noblest statesmen of former ages; let them consider his acts, and ponder over his sad fate. If we regard him merely as a reformer of the Church, he may perhaps appear to us surrounded by a brighter glory; but history demands a full representation, and such a representation exhibits him as a man "possessed of like passions with ourselves." Yet, just in the acknowledgement of his own infirmities ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... the boy became a man he joined the Anti-Slavery Society, and openly avowed that he regarded Africans as brethren of the great human family. His relatives were grieved to see him pursuing such an injudicious and disrespectable course. Whereupon, a witty reformer remarked, "They took most commendable pains to present Jesus and the Good Samaritan as models of character, but they were surprised to find that he had taken ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... It would appear that in former days the women of Persia had an assigned and honorable place in society; and we must conclude that an equal rank with the male creation, which is secured to them by the ordinances of Zoroaster, existed long before the time of that reformer, who paid too great attention to the habits and prejudices of his countrymen to have made any serious alteration in so important an usage. We are told by Quintus Curtius, that Alexander would not sit in the presence ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... crowd of sovereign voters from my district who have come up to Washington to see me perform. So, of course, I've got to make a showing; Don't mind what I say. You know I don't mean it, but the old fogies will go back home and tell their neighbors what a rip-snortin' reformer ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... led him into scrapes with His Majesty of Cho-sen. As he jocosely said to me, it was a marvel to him that his head was still on his shoulders. It was too good, and some one else might wish to have it. He was an ardent reformer and a great admirer of Western ways. His great ambition was to visit England and America, of which he had heard a great deal. Strangely, on the very morning which succeeded the afternoon on which I had this ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... so, and because I cannot conveniently class it otherwise. The facts which are to be related are too valuable to be lost. They were first published, I believe, in the Northampton Courier; and subsequently in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, and in the Moral Reformer. In the present case, the ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... was a religious reformer, sincerely and profoundly pious, and conscientious to the point of honor. Indeed, his conscience was so sensitive, that he had been known to confess two and three times on the same day. The cavaliere called him an atheist because he was ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... poets, have been all employed in exploding this insatiable thirst of money, and all equally controlled by the daily practice of mankind. Nothing new remains to be said upon the occasion, and if there did, I must remember my character, that I am an Examiner only, and not a Reformer. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... of these entries of the Overseers, but more especially in the Parish Constable's accounts, was the extraordinary liberty taken in the spelling of words! In a general way Dogberry, especially, was a spelling reformer, in so far as he went in for a phonetic spelling, but many entries occur in old constable's accounts which are governed by no principle ever yet laid down by scholars, with the {47} result very often that it would ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... pretends to the learned Languages, and assumes to herself the name of a Critic." This was a character, however, which she would not have protested against with much vigour, for she had now quite definitely taken up the position of a reformer and a pioneer. She posed as the champion of women's intellectual rights, and she was accepted as representing in active literary work the movement which Mary Astell had recently foreshadowed in her remarkable Serious Proposal to Ladies of 1694. We turn again to The Female Wits, and we ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... a magnate in the frontier newspaper field. His career is particularly interesting because it is, in more ways than one, typical of the qualities which made many western men successful. Basically, he was a reformer, a public-spirited man who backed, with every means at his command, and great personal courage, the issues he believed for the good of the country, and fought with equal ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... which come it must—some day—but now lies dormant in the lap of the gods, its alluring, visionary, transcendental form depicted, for an optimistic instant, in the fervent, hopeful heart of a sincere but far-sighted reformer. But it is written: false prophets must come, deceiving in respect to all things in heaven and earth. "Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur." (The world wishes to be deceived, therefore, let it be deceived.) The world elects to be deceived. It is so—often on ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann |
