"Self-improvement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... things that have been too long neglected. It has succeeded in calling attention to the fact that the Negro race has a good deal more intelligence and virtue than it uses for its own advancement. The controlling spirit of this new association of colored women is first of all for self-improvement. It is the most distinct voice of self-admonition and self-examination yet uttered by a national body of Afro-Americans. In other words these women coming from all parts of our country and from various conditions of the people, seem burdened with an earnestness to make pure and strong ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, has said: "The workers want more wages; more of the comforts of life; more leisure; more chance for self-improvement as men, as trade-unionists, as citizens. These were the wants of yesterday; they are the wants of today; they will be the wants of tomorrow, and of tomorrow's morrow. The struggle may assume new forms, but the issue is ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... leave school at about thirteen years of age, but they make a very great mistake if they leave off learning at that age. Time might be roughly divided off into four parts—necessary work, work for others, self-improvement, and recreation. A man's education is never completed. A man is never too old to learn. Whilst you are a boy and lad you need to be taught; afterwards you can to a great extent learn for yourself. You should never be content to ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... hours on her toilet every day. Her sister had a simpler taste, and, if she had done altogether as she liked, might even have slighted dress. They all three took long naps every day, and sat hours together minutely discussing what they saw out of the window. In her self-guided search for self-improvement, the elder sister went to many church lectures on a vast variety of secular subjects, and usually came home with a comic account of them, and that made more matter of talk for the whole family. She could make fun of nearly everything; Irene complained that she scared away the young men ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... case, each of us has to deal with a tremendous problem; and the more earnestly and honestly we try to deal with it, the more we shall feel how grave it is. You can cure a great deal, I know. God forbid that I should say one word that seems to deny a man's power to do much in the direction of self-improvement, but after all that is done, again you are brought short up on this fact, the testimony of conscience. And so I see men labouring at a task as vain as that of those who would twist the sands into ropes, according to the old fable. I see men seeking after higher ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... were possible or desirable to choke off initiative and adventure or to devise a society in which the man whose ambition is to avoid work will set the pace for the man who loves it for itself and whose discontent goads him on to self-improvement! As if it were possible or desirable for the man who works half-heartedly eight hours a day to keep down the man who works whole-souledly eighteen hours a day! ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... reading up on rules, laws and regulations, and his bent was for books and instruction from them. While his days passed in attending to the business of the Post Office, his nights were given to study and self-improvement. He was never satisfied with what he achieved; to learn and to know more and more was his ruling passion. Many citizens now called upon him for advice. He would be asked to speak when a new building was opened or a public ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... the Holy Ghost, the fruit of the Spirit, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the prepared inheritance of all who enter in, the greatest obtainment of faith, not the attainment of works. It is divine holiness, not human self-improvement, nor perfection. It is the inflow into man's being of the life and purity of the infinite, eternal and Holy One, bringing His own perfection and working out His own will. How easy, how spontaneous, how delightful this heavenly way of holiness! Surely it is a "highway" and not the low way of man's ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... it will be a pleasure; for, Phebe, it will not be fit for you to live alone at Upfold Farm; and I wish you to come here—to make your home with me till you are of age. It would be a great pleasure to me, and I would take care you should have every opportunity for self-improvement. I know you are not a fine young lady, my dear, but you are sensible, modest, and sweet-tempered, and we should get on well together. If you were happy with me I should regard you as my adopted daughter, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... an old gentleman named Neif, who had served in the guards of Napoleon. The method of instruction practiced by him seems to have been unsystematic and discursive; but Farragut, who was ever attentive to make the most of such opportunities as offered for self-improvement, derived profit here also, and said afterward that the time thus passed had been of service to him throughout his life. Until very lately there were residents of that neighborhood who could recall the young midshipman as he was at ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... soil, he fell into a commercial serfdom to the cities well-nigh as complete as the feudal bondage had been. By reason of his isolated and unsocial life he was uncouth, unlettered, out of touch with culture, without opportunities for self-improvement, even if his bitter toil had left him energy or time for it. For this reason the dwellers in the towns looked down upon him as one belonging to an inferior race. In all lands, in all ages, the countryman ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... fees during the remainder of his stay at the little institute. His post was by no mean an easy one, for he was servant-of-all-work as well as student; but he cared very little for that as long as he could gain the means for self-improvement. ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... Habits furnish the final encouragement of woman to constant self-improvement. In the sequestered paths of home, having hours and days, in which the needle is her quiet employer, how may she meditate on the touching and lofty themes of human concern. Why should she wander from the ways of truth, integrity, and purity? She has her temptations it is true. ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... the day of his charge at Little Cumbrae he steps before us what he remained until the end, a man of the most zealous industry, greedy of occupation, greedy of knowledge, a stern husband of time, a reader, a writer, unflagging in his task of self-improvement. Thenceforward his summers were spent directing works and ruling workmen, now in uninhabited, now in half-savage islands; his winters were set apart, first at the Andersonian Institution, then at the University ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... look at Catholic countries, we find that in Spain and Piedmont the constitution has served only to pillage, oppress, and insult the Church; whilst in Austria, since the empire has been purified in the fiery ordeal of the revolution, she is free, secure, and on the highroad of self-improvement. In constitutional Bavaria she has but little protection against the Crown, or in Belgium against the mob. The royal power is against her in one place, the popular element in the other. Turning to Protestant countries, we find that in Prussia the Church is comparatively free; whilst the more ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... what will come, must come; whether it be for our happiness or misery, our life or death? Where shall we find something to trust in, something to give us confidence and hope that we can mend ourselves, that self-improvement is of use, that working is of use, that prudence is of use, for God will reward every man according to his work? St. John tells us—In that within you which is born ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Arcady is its exile, not its home. Soon weary of the dalliance of Tempe, it ascends to its mission—the archer of the silver bow, the guide of the car of light. Speaking more plainly, genius is the enthusiasm for self-improvement; it ceases or sleeps the moment it desists from seeking some object which it believes of value, and by that object it insensibly connects its self-improvement with the positive advance of the world. At present Lenny's genius had no bias that was not to the positive and useful. It took the direction ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... ties, produces a most agonising mental state and afflicts the poor wretch with untold horrors. He is made to drag out an existence under most unnatural conditions, conditions in which every effort he makes towards self-improvement is a useless one, every aspiration is routed, the natural affections crave in vain for an object to fasten upon, and where an artificial atavistic process is set in motion so powerful as to defy the resistance of all in time. This is no imaginary ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... summer in Europe, and it strikes me as an excellent opportunity for you to cut adrift from the objectionable associations you have formed during the past few months. With a fresh start, and surroundings calculated to inspire in you a desire for self-improvement, it will not be too late to hope for better things. I have every confidence in the natural stability of your character if you are once put upon the right track. I blame your advisers more than I ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... powers are enlarged and strengthened, as the almond in the peach is not only more luscious in its fruit, but more graceful in its branches. Culture, in a broad sense, is the aid rendered to each individual creation in its work of self-improvement. It is not a noble and generous culture which dwarfs the tree that early ripened or peculiarly flavored fruit may be obtained; and it is not a noble and generous culture of the child which forces into unnatural activity certain faculties ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... we were much impressed by the great desire for self-improvement, for study and debate, exhibited by many of the young men. This very tendency, in fact, brought one of the most promising of our earlier clubs to an untimely end. The young men in the club, twenty in number, had grown much irritated by the frivolity of the girls during their ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... of the prisoners who are unable to read and write soon acquire these useful arts if they have any ambition for self-improvement. If there was room, and this school could be conducted in the evening, as well as on Sunday afternoons, much more good could be accomplished. I would suggest that it would be a good act on the part ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... be a priggish Ellen, or a moral Fleda, and I do detest bothering about self-improvement all the time. I know I ought, but I'd rather wait another year or two, and enjoy my vanities in peace just a LITTLE longer." And Carrie tucked Wanda under the sofa pillow, as if a trifle ashamed of her society, with Eva's innocent eyes upon her own, and Alice sadly regarding her over the rampart ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... for a moment deny that there may be, and occasionally is, a magnificent force of will and persistency of purpose in efforts at self-improvement on the part of perfectly irreligious men. But, if by the occasional success of such effort, a man conquers one form of evil, that does not deliver him from evil. You have the usurping dominion deep in your nature, and what does it matter in essence which part of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... may become masters of themselves and their environments—a law unto themselves—fitting them for a perfect citizenship of a perfected republic. This most desirable of all accomplishments, requires better surroundings, more leisure and opportunity for self-improvement, more money, shorter hours of more remunerative labor—labor transformed from a hated drudgery to a desirable occupation. Behold, friend Gaylord, you have before you the outlines of the problem. Can you suggest ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... first requirement of good society, so self-improvement should be the aim of each and all of its members. Manners will improve with the cultivation of the mind, until the pleasure and harmony of social intercourse are no longer marred by the introduction of discordant elements, and they only will be excluded from the best society ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... as one of the most thriving and enterprising in Manchester. Long years after, when addressing an assembly of working men, Mr. Fairbairn, while urging the necessity of labour and application as the only sure means of self-improvement, said, "I can tell you from experience, that there is no labour so sweet, none so consolatory, as that which is founded upon an honest, straightforward, and honourable ambition." The history of any prosperous business, however, so closely resembles every other, and its details ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Mr. Mortimer saluted him. Rising from the steps of the caravan, he rubbed a hand down his trouser-leg and extended it. "Permit me to grasp, sir, the horny palm of self-improvement. A scholar in humble life! and—as your delicacy in this small matter of the saucepan sufficiently attests—one of Nature's gentlemen to boot! I prophesy that you will go far, Mr. Bossom. May I ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to go to meetings, and determined that Lizzie should go along. It was one of the curses of the system, he said, that it deprived working-class women of all chance for self-improvement. So he had paid a visit to the "Industrial Store", a junk-shop maintained by the Salvation Army, and for fifteen cents he had obtained a marvellous broad baby-carriage for twins, all finished in shiny black enamel. One side of it was busted, but Jimmie had fixed that ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... kind, considerate friend, who taught her to read and spell. Thirdly, she was placed in favorable circumstances after she came to the North; having frequent intercourse with intelligent persons, who felt a friendly interest in her welfare, and were disposed to give her opportunities for self-improvement. ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... a crypt-like place, windowless, dark, and musty, and at this mournful climax one of the tourists who was nervous moved suddenly off that particular stone upon which she had been standing; the school teachers out for self-improvement began to write it all in their note-books, while a stout matron evidently of good old Dutch stock looked sadly down at the flat, gray stones. "Poor things!" she murmured, "and there ain't one of them ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... against. To combine a didactic aim with artistic excellence is among the most difficult of literary experiments. If the lesson or principle to be inculcated be given too much prominence, the reader who opens the book for entertainment will shut it very soon in spite of any prospective self-improvement. If narrative interest or artistic beauty be the most striking feature of the work, its serious aim will be unnoticed. The safest plan for the writer of the novel of purpose to pursue, is to openly acknowledge his object, and to place that object ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman |
