"Unimproved" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... house of the best of parents; be it so; I flee to you; I share your destiny, faithful to the end. The day that I have concluded upon for this task is SABBATH next, when the family with the citizens are generally at church. For Heaven's sake let not that day pass unimproved: trust not till tomorrow, it is the cheat of life—the future that never comes—the grave of many noble births—the cavern of ruined enterprise: which like the lightning's flash is born, and dies, and perishes, ere the voice ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... appropriation to ornament and use. Many a one of these noble forests, and open, natural parks have been appropriated already to embellish the comfortable family establishment which has been built either on its margin, or within it; and thousands more are standing, as yet unimproved, but equally inviting the future occupant to ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... devour, as the epicure eats his dinner. Where is the happiness of devouring books with no attempt to profit by them, except in the temporary pleasure of satisfying an appetite? So even the highest means of happiness may become a savor of death unto death when perverted or unimproved. Never should we stimulate the intellect merely to feed upon itself. Unless intellectual culture is directed to what is useful, especially to the necessities or improvement of others, it is a delusion and a snare. Better far to be ignorant, but ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... the hotels of the larger towns; and, until one can build for himself, a hotel offers a very pleasant substitute—at a slightly increased expense. Land, for building purposes, or in an unimproved state, can be leased for a sum that is almost nominal, except in a few highly favored localities. Purchasers of land are more than likely to find themselves immediately embroiled in a lawsuit over the title. If no flaw exists in your title, then it does ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... furniture; but where they only pamper the appetite or the vanity or any foolish and hurtful lust, they are foolish and hurtful. Be thrifty of comfort. Never allow an opportunity for cheer, for pleasure, for intelligence, for benevolence, for any kind of good, to go unimproved. Consider seriously whether the sirup of your preserves or the juices of your own soul will do the most to serve your race. It may be that they are compatible,—that the concoction of the one shall provide the ascending sap of the other; but if it is not so, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... pretty heavy, were in his eyes a very unimportant consideration. Marston, on the other hand, was poor, and played with the eye of a lynx and the appetite of a shark. The ease and perfect good-humor with which Sir Wynston lost were not unimproved by his entertainer, who, as may readily be supposed, was not sorry to reap this golden harvest, provided without the slightest sacrifice, on his part, of pride or independence. If, indeed, he sometimes suspected that his guest was a little more anxious to lose than to ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... its complex relations of life. And it may be asked what advantage, as far as we can see, would it be to an infusorian animalcule—to an intestinal worm, or even to an earthworm—to be highly organized. If it were no advantage, these forms would be left, by natural selection, unimproved or but little improved, and might remain for indefinite ages in their present lowly condition. And geology tells us that some of the lowest forms, as the infusoria and rhizopods, have remained for an enormous period in nearly their present state. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... rival, heart and mind, ere I condemn her. I will engage in the conflict to which she challenged the loving wife and mother! But—this is my right—I will compel her to show herself to me as Antony so often saw me during the past few weeks, unaided and unimproved by the arts which we ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... too inviting to those who were privileged there to allow any proper opportunity for a visit to pass unimproved. Indeed, it became so attractive to strangers and lion-hunters, that some of those whose entree was quite legitimate and acceptable refrained, especially during the last two years, from adding to the heavy ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... forest-town is still through beautiful forest-roads—roads that cleave grand avenues, traverse black barren heaths, ford shallow rivers, and climb over ferny knolls whence the sea is visible. The church is unrestored, the parsonage is unimproved, the long low house opposite is still the residence of Mr. Carnegie, the local doctor, and looks this splendid summer morning precisely as it looked in the splendid summer mornings long ago, when Bessie Fairfax was a little girl, and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... really over, was that of elation that the crisis to which he had looked forward with so much apprehension, had passed without his receiving any bodily harm. This was soon replaced by regret that the long-coveted opportunity had been suffered to pass unimproved, and still another strong sentiment—that keen sense of disappointment which comes when we have braced ourselves up to encounter an emergency, and it vanishes. There is the feeling of waste of valuable accumulated energy, which is as painful as that ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... to be borne in mind, in disposing of the canoes; for that of Gershom was to be secreted, as well as that of the bee-hunter. A tall aquatic plant, that is termed wild rice, and which we suppose to be the ordinary rice-plant, unimproved by tillage, grows spontaneously about the mouths and on the flats of most of the rivers of the part of Michigan of which we are writing; as, indeed, it is to be found in nearly all the shallow waters ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... leaving home for the first time, or the death of a dearly-loved friend, has sufficed to arouse the question, "What must I do to be saved?" We must beware of allowing such opportunities for decisive action to slip away unimproved. When a vessel has grounded at the harbour-bar, she must wait till the tide lifts her, or she will not reach a safe anchorage; but when the tide does flow in, no sane man will let the chance go by, lest a storm should rise and wreck her within ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... period, from two years of age to ten, is allowed to pass unimproved, the task of learning them later is rendered ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... rotting carcass of what had once been a brother man, than I do from this once cherished but now abhorred and forced connection." The policy which he recommends, now that the occasion which the "admission of California and the dismemberment of Texas" might have afforded, has passed away unimproved is, "to teach that disunion is a thing certain in the future; to direct, in contemplation of this, all the energies of oar people first to preparation for a physical contest," and then "to develop all our own resources, and cut off, as far as possible, all intercourse ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... mesme favorise les hereticques, dautant que lors que ce scandale advynt, il estoit seul pres du roy, sans que personne luy peust resister ne l'empescher duser de la puyssance que sadicte Sainctete luy a donnee." Of course, Paul could not let pass unimproved so fair an opportunity for repeating the trite warning that subversion of kingdoms and other dire calamities follow in the train of "mutation of religion." The punishment of D'Andelot, however, to which he often returned ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... no longer in rows. There were some vegetable gardens, and German women were weeding in them; then tracts of rather rocky land, wild and unimproved. After a while it began to grow more diversified and beautiful—country residences and well-kept grounds full of shrubbery at the front and vegetables in the rear, with barns and stables, betraying a rural aspect. The air was so sweet ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... on the very spot that twenty years ago was defiled by the presence of idolatry. What a subject for an eloquent Bible-meeting orator! Nor has such an opportunity for a display of missionary rhetoric been allowed to pass by unimproved!—But when these philanthropists send us such glowing accounts of one half of their labours, why does their modesty restrain them from publishing the other half of the good they have wrought?—Not until I visited Honolulu was I aware of the fact that the small remnant of the natives ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Nuevitas, along the northern slope of the island, are many vast tracts of unimproved land of the best quality. Much of it is overgrown with cedar, ebony, mahogany, and other valuable timber; but a large proportion is savanna or prairie, which might, with little difficulty, be reduced to cultivation. The timber ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... very poor form. The result is not the important thing, but the process. And sometimes teachers have understood this to mean, "Hands off!" and left the children to their crude impulses, unaided and unimproved. When the child shows what he is trying to do the teacher may show him how he can do what he wants to do. By suggestion and criticism she may get him to improve his first effort, provided she permits him to be absolutely ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... every year beyond Sea, and never returns; whereby our Wealth is made a Prey to other Nations, whose Poor are imploy'd and maintain'd thereby, whilst in the mean time our Nation is in a Consumption, our Poor live by Begging, Poverty increases, and our Lands lye unimproved, for want ...
— Proposals For Building, In Every County, A Working-Alms-House or Hospital • Richard Haines
... establishing, within these reserves, game refuges, where no hunting whatever shall be permitted. Aside from his love for nature, and his wish to have certain limited areas remain in their natural condition, absolutely untouched by the ax of the lumberman, and unimproved by the work of the forester, is that broader sentiment in behalf of humanity in the United States, which has led him to declare that such refuges should be established for the benefit of the man of moderate means and the poor man, whose opportunities ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... centuries ago tells of semen being carried by wind. Notoriously there was no limit either to the absurdity or crudity of these conceptions. Were these men—the wisest of their time—insane? Here again we may quote the last patient—"Insanity," he says, "is the elemental human mind left to itself, unimproved by other minds." The last is the important phrase. What minds were there to improve those of the alchemists? What critic was there to tell Joan of Arc that visions and voices were pathological? That was the regulation form of inspiration ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... frequently no more than a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon its improvement. This, no doubt, may be partly the case upon some occasions; for it can scarce ever be more than partly the case. The landlord demands a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon the expense of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent. Those improvements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes by that ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... Advertisement for encouraging the Resort of Protestants from Europe to settle upon the Northern Frontier of the said Province (in the route from Fort Edward to Crown Point) promising to each family two hundred acres of unimproved land out of 100,000 acres purchased from the Indians, without any fee or expences whatsoever, except a very moderate charge for surveying & liable only to the King's Quit Rent of one shilling and nine pence farthing per hundred acres, which ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... discreditable reasons for all that he said and did. That inexhaustible capacity of devising base motives for conduct, which is an especial attribute of mean minds, had now opportunity to put forth its full powers in the way of insinuation and assertion. It did not go unimproved. A common charge brought against him after the publication of the "Letter to His Countrymen" was that it had been written for the sake of gaining office. It was even said that Van Buren had a hand in it. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... of our confidence in you, and the sense we entertain of your friendship and fidelity. Mr. Behring informs him that none of the money which will be due from us to him, as the assignee of France, will be wanting at Paris. Be assured that our dispositions are such as to let no occasion pass unimproved, of serving you, where occurrences will ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... town, the road continually grew worse until it was little better than the average unimproved country highway in America, and the sharp loose stones everywhere were ruinous on tires. It finally plunged sharply down to a steamboat ferry, over which we crossed the Dart and landed directly in the town. There are few towns in England more charmingly ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... administration. In 1861 it was comparatively a small city. Its population numbered only about 65,000. The magnificent modern residences had not been built. The houses were few, low, not handsome, with hideous spaces of unimproved land lying between. The streets were not paved with asphalt. Some were paved with cobble stones, and some consisted of plain aboriginal mud. The dome of the Capitol was but half finished when Lincoln saw it for the first time, and the huge derrick which ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... thou to contend against the rude heroes of the Norse, with their ancestral strategy unimproved! The civilisation of Battle meets thee now!—and all the craft of the Roman guides the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... individual who receives a return because of his property ownership, receives a property income. This man has a title deed to a piece of unimproved land lying in the centre of a newly developing town. A storekeeper offers him a thousand dollars a year for the privilege of placing a store on the land. The owner of the land need make no exertion. ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... but seven feet of earth up there on the edge of the wilderness." Tisdale's voice vibrated gently; an emotion like the surface stir of shaken depths crossed his face. "And a tract of unimproved desert down here in ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... '80. In 1881 the May Laws were passed in Russia. In 1882 there was a ritual murder trial in Hungary. Our statutes and sciences, after all, are but ways and means, improved ways and means, to what?—often to unimproved ends, it seems. Our learning and knowledge are what?—but channels to educate, to lead out (e-duco) the noble qualities in man? yes; perhaps also his jealousies and hatreds. And thus there comes a time of doubt. The courtesies and learning of this ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... remained unimproved by the results of the treaty of 1871, and a grave condition of affairs, presenting almost identically the same features and causes of complaint by the United States against Canadian action and British default in its correction, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... less insanitary articles, but of a number, great or small, and elaborate or otherwise, in accordance with the means of the owner, of what I will term quilts. The Japanese pillow is a fearful and wonderful article. I can never imagine how it was evolved and why it has remained so long unimproved. It is made of wood and there is a receptacle for the head. The European who uses it finds that it effectually banishes sleep, while the ordinary Japanese is apparently unable to sleep without it. In most ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... which swept the State in the last election. Every branch of the government was captured by the farmers, whose platform declared for the untaxing of all kinds of farm-improvements and an increase in the tax rate on unimproved land as a means of developing the State and ending the idle-land ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... were not unimproved by Henrich. His character was formed, and his principles were fixed, and his mind and spirit grew strong and ripe beyond his years. Never were these hours of peaceful happiness forgotten; and often amid the strange and stirring ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... to Elizabeth. She had arrived at the conviction that among her people in the new world was to be her sphere of duty; she felt a call thither which she could not disregard; and when her father, who was unwilling that the property should lie unimproved, offered the tract of land in New Jersey to any relative who would settle upon it, she gladly availed herself of the proffer, and begged that she might go herself as a pioneer ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... is not confined to the food which feeds the laborers, but includes machinery, buildings, and, in fact, every product due to man's labor which can be applied to assist his industry" (chap. iv). General Walker ("Political Economy," pages 68-70) defines capital as that portion of wealth (excluding unimproved land and natural agents) which is employed in the production of new forms of wealth. Henry George ("Progress and Poverty," page 41) returns to Adam Smith's definition: "That part of a man's stock which he expects ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the day drew near to a close, I was conducted to a small temporary hut or cabin, where I was informed I might repose peaceably for the night, which I did without being disturbed by any one. This was another opportunity that I did not suffer to pass unimproved to pour out my soul to that Being, who had already given me reasons to believe that he did not say to the house of Jacob, seek you me in vain. Oh! that all sincere Christians would in every difficulty make Him their refuge; He is a ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... 21, 33, 112.] National and state highways must be built as object-lessons to the towns and counties that still leave their roads a stretch of mud or sand.[Footnote: It is estimated that ninety per cent of the public roads in the United States are still unimproved; that the average cost of hauling produce is twenty-five cents a mile-ton, as against twelve cents in France; that $300,000,000 a year would be saved in hauling expenses if our roads were as good as those of western Europe.] All of these material ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the hand of the Teton belle, and he greatly envied the position Do-ran-to occupied in the eyes of Ni-ar-gua. In fact, he entertained the most deadly hate toward the Pawnee captive, and suffered no opportunity to show it to pass unimproved. Do-ran-to was by no means ignorant of the young warrior's feelings of jealousy and hate, but he felt his disability as an alien in the tribe, and pursued a course of forbearance as most likely to ensure the accomplishment of his designs. Still, there were bounds beyond ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... published the second part of 'England's Improvement,'[20] in which he gave a summary account of its then limited growths and manufactures, pointing out that England and Ireland were the only northern kingdoms remaining unimproved; he re-urged the benefits and necessity of a voluntary register of real property; pointed out a method of improving the Royal Navy, lessening the growing power of France, and establishing home fisheries; proposed the securing ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... the frequent recurrence of the accompanying noise would bring the skipper on deck and spoil the fun, so on second thoughts he desisted, and glanced eagerly about for something else, afraid that the golden opportunity would pass by unimproved. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... business, and constantly leaving it, when that was over. The ingenious authoress of David Simple, perhaps the best moral romance that we have, in which there is not one loose expression, one impure, one unchaste idea; from the perusal of which, no man can rise unimproved, has represented, her hero, a character likewise of universal benevolence, agreeably to the part he was to act; of tender years, quite unimproved by education, unexperienced, and ignorant of the ways of the world. Should we now consider the matter a little deeply, we shall find ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... (then almost the city's edge, and which now is a girdle worn high about its gigantic middle) petered out into violently muddy and unmade streets and great patches of unimproved vacant lots that in winter ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Verplank's, in which Colonel Webster commanded, and be in readiness to attack them the instant General Wayne should obtain possession of Stony Point. That this detachment might not permit the favourable moment to pass unimproved, Wayne had been requested to direct the messenger who should convey the intelligence of his success to the Commander-in-chief, to pass through M'Dougal's camp, and give him advice of that event. He was also ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... "who in any way countenances slavery is derelict to his duty, as a Christian, a patriot, a man; and every one does countenance and authorize it who suffers any opportunity of expressing his deep abhorrence of its manifold abominations to pass unimproved." The whole world has an interest in this matter. The influence of our democratic despotism is exerted against the liberties of Europe. Political reformers in the Old World, who have testified to their love of freedom by serious sacrifices, hold but one language ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... overt act. Discouraged by this supineness on the part of the government, Mr. Astor did not think fit to renew his overtures in a more formal manner, and the favorable moment for the re-occupation of Astoria was suffered to pass unimproved. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... however, as we can not find the record of the language used on the occasion. It was published at the time, and commented on, freely, by the newspapers at the North. He said: "We must prevent the increase of manufactories, force the surplus labor into agriculture, promote the cultivation of our unimproved western lands, until provisions are so multiplied and reduced in price, that the slave can be fed so cheaply as to enable us to grow our sugar at three cents a pound. Then, without protective duties, we can rival Cuba in the production of that staple, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... getting nothing in the world for it but wrinkles, seemed felicitously legal and almost supernaturally qualifying for law-writing. BLADAMS was about forty years old, though appearing much older: with a slight cast in his left eye, a pimply pink countenance, and a circular piece of unimproved property on ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... and houses and sold insurance of all the commoner varieties on the side, had stalked O'Day to this point and was lying in wait for him as he came out of the courthouse into the Public Square, being anxious to describe to him some especially desirable bargains, in both improved and unimproved realty; also, Mr. Overall was prepared to book him for life, accident and health policies on ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... both ocean and inland, would have a preponderant effect upon the contest. It was clear to reason, for there was a long seaboard with numerous interior navigable watercourses, and at the same time scanty and indifferent communications by land. Critical portions of the territory involved were yet an unimproved wilderness. Experience, the rude but efficient schoolmaster of that large portion of mankind which gains knowledge only by hard knocks, had confirmed through the preceding French wars the inferences ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... inconsistency of a person who dislikes the modern caravansary, and yet grumbles when he finds a hotel of the superannuated sort, one ought to choose, it would seem, and make the best of either alternative. The two old taverns at Arles are quite unimproved; such as they must have been in the infancy of the modern world, when Stendhal passed that way, and the lumbering diligence deposited him in the Place des Hommes, such in every detail they are to-day. Vieilles auberges de France, one ought to enjoy their gritty floors and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various |
