"Bettering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other? They were comparatively strangers, knowing little of the antecedents of each other. Each was unhappily situated—the one from poverty, the other owing to her wealth; the one ardently desirous of bettering pecuniarily his position, the other to release herself from restraints that were tyrannical and to enjoy that independence which she felt was her natural right. Might not these considerations override the purer impulses of the heart arising from that regard for qualities which win upon the mind ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... labor, for even at that time he seems to have caught, by what must almost be looked upon as an inspiration of genius, since there was nothing apparent in his training that would have suggested it, the realization of the fact that hope for his people lay in bettering their condition, that any real benefit must begin with the benighted folk at home, that the introduction of reforms for which they were unprepared would be useless, even dangerous to them. This was not at all the popular idea among his associates ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the Dominicans in particular, by monopolizing in their hands all the studies of the Filipino youth, have assumed the obligation to its eight millions of inhabitants, to Spain, and to humanity, of which we form a part, of steadily bettering the young plant, morally and physically, of training it toward its happiness, of creating a people honest, prosperous, intelligent, virtuous, noble, and loyal. Now I ask you in my turn—have the friars fulfilled that obligation ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... are indebted to self-interest for their success, and without it the sublimest of creeds, the loftiest of principles would soon wither and die for lack of support. With every blessing that heart could wish in the present, and with no hope through change of bettering their condition in a practical point of view in the future, the idea of a great Southern empire, based upon such uncertain possibilities, would soon have disappeared from the Southern mind, even ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are glad of a chance to tell their troubles to some one. Oh, of course, they'd spot you if you went poking in for no reason but curiosity, but anybody with tact and a desire to get at the real inwardness of things for the purpose of bettering them would find a welcome. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... most wretched tenement houses, and they are compelled to dwell among the most abandoned and criminal part of the population. No wonder poverty is so much dreaded here. The poor man has little, if any, chance of bettering his condition, and he is gradually forced down lower and lower in the scale of misery, until death steps in to relieve him, or he takes ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... fellow-countrymen. In its proper place we shall see that theft is the greatest part of the criminality of the islands.... It is to be noted that they generally rob on a small and rarely on a large scale; for their ambition is limited to satisfying a vice or to bettering their present condition, but ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... to watch 'em very close; but I could n't help overbearing some of the things he said to her, for, you see, he used to follow her up into the parlor, they talked pretty low, but I could catch a word now and then. I heard him say something to her one day about "bettering her condition," and she seemed to be thinking very hard about it, and turning of it over in her mind, and I said to myself, She does n't want to take up with him, but she feels dreadful poor, and perhaps he has been saving and has got money in the bank, and she does n't want to throw away ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a whole, progressive, enlightened, educated, or highly moral. The problem now is, not for Catholic and Protestant to waste energy and spiritual strength in contending for mastery over each other, but for them to unite in changing and bettering the condition of our island peoples. What is past is past. Our present duty is to bring peace, industry, intelligence, high ideals, and spiritual living to our new countrymen. This is a work to fill the hands and heart of both churches, and perhaps, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... familiarity; I hated the thing, but it had made good its place in the map of my life; secondly, from the impossibility of inflicting a slight; thirdly, because I rather chose to bear the ills I had than fly to others that I knew not of. Who revolts save in the glowing hope of bettering his lot? I must marry; who was there to be preferred before Elsa? It did not occur to me that I might remain single; I should have shared the general opinion that such an act was little removed from treason. It would not only be to end my own line, it would be to install ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Edinburgh. He was fully ten years my senior, and when working at Douglass's I looked up to him as a man of authority. I had obtained from him many a valuable wrinkle in mechanical and technical construction. After I left Edinburgh he had emigrated to the United States for the purpose of bettering his condition. But he promised me that if disappointed in his hopes of settling there, he should be glad to come into my service if I was ever in a position to give him employment. Shortly after my removal to Patricroft, and when everything had been got into ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... rested on the seventh day, and I felt that if He needed rest on that day I was sure that I must have rest. So the Sunday work was not carried on any more in that laundry. He said that the Lord had sent me to that laundry for the bettering of all in it. The gentleman was from Philadelphia and his name ...
— A Slave Girl's Story - Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. • Kate Drumgoold
... abolish the Slave-trade, by bettering the state of the slaves in the islands, and particularly that of their offspring. His plan, with respect to the latter, was not a little curious. They were to become free, when born; and then they were to be educated at the expense ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... political ideas, but never received a penny in return. He was a Boss indeed, directing party affairs with the strong hand of a Dictator, but he sought no profit and gained none, not even the thanks of those he served. So far from bettering his fortunes, his public activities involved constant demands upon his private purse. Not only party friends but party enemies called on Thurlow Weed for help when in distress, knowing that his hands would be open and his lips closed. Closed they were, but it was generally understood ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... leading off with $1,500; which the Queen Dowager and two Royal Duchesses doubled; then came sundry Dukes, Earls, and other notables with $500 each, followed by a long list of smaller and smaller subscriptions. But this money was given to the "Society for Bettering the Condition of the Laboring Classes," to enable them to try an experiment; and that experiment has triumphantly succeeded. All those I have described, as well as one for single women only near Hatton Garden, and one for families and for ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... hast done thy duty On the earth and o'er the sea, Bearing many a beam of beauty, Ever bettering what must be, Thus reflecting heaven's pure splendour And concealing ruined clay, Up to God thy spirit render, And dissolving ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... dissent to this verdict. My friend John thought the acquisition well approved. But the people, he said, were worthless; they added superstition to ignorance and fierceness, and obstinately opposed the bettering their condition. 'Without attempting to burden your credulity, Jonathan,' interpolated John, 'the truth is, we well understood the nature of this people, and having failed to conciliate them in one way betook ourselves to another, and in our characteristic style ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... said Flynn. "It's myself thinks Ishmael has it in him to be a grand reformer; that's why I can't bear to see him wasting himself over morals and manure when he could be working away at the bettering of ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... has agreed to participate financially in the work of bettering the water approaches to Shanghai and to Tientsin, the centers of foreign trade in central and northern China, and an international conservancy board, in which the Chinese Government is largely represented, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... wonderful alteration; and the ladies withdrawing early, in order that the gentlemen might talk over their business together, Mr Smith at once entered into the subject, by telling Job that he thought he could, as he had before hinted, put him into a way of bettering his condition. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... editor of Astounding Stories magazine and applied himself at once to the task of bettering the magazine and the field of s-f writing in general. His influence on science-fiction since then has been great. Today he still remains as the editor of that magazine's evolved and ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... you getting too old to make good spears and arrows, Mok?" And the man fumed a little. Old Mok made no reply, but he thought long and deeply after Ab had left the cave. Certainly Ab must have good arrows! Was there any way of bettering them? And, the next day, the crippled old man might have been seen looking for something beside the creek where it found its exit from the valley. There were stones ground into smoothness tossed up along the shore and the old ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... done her utmost to persuade me that I was capable of great achievements; but my father, who thought ambition was the surest road to ruin, and change but another word for destruction, would listen to no scheme for bettering either my own condition, or that of my fellow mortals. He assured me it was all rubbish, and exhorted me, with his dying breath, to continue in the good old way, to follow his steps, and those of his father before him, and let my highest ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... disadvantage, and often gives up the fight altogether. Anything that tends to equalise the chances of town and country, from the point of view of mental equipment, would do more general good to Scotland, by bettering the available brain power, than any half-dozen Acts of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... internal reforms must be lost sight of. Russia had to make ready for those campaigns in which Napoleon gained every battle. Then came that peaceful meeting on the raft at Tilsit,—worse for Russia than any warlike meeting; for thereby Napoleon seduced Alexander, for years, from plans of bettering his Empire into dreams of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... these wisdoms next day when he asked her to walk with him to the village. He told her, as they walked, of the various projects for using his life to some advantage that he had used to make—projects for improved agricultural methods and the bettering of the conditions of life in the country. Althea had read a great deal of political economy. She had, indeed, ground at it and mastered it in the manner advised by Franklin to Helen. Gerald found her quiet comments ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... great work? My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race—of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance—of substituting peace for war—freedom for bondage—religion for superstition—the hope of heaven for the fear of hell? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... be moulded, raised, and transmuted from the lower to the higher. This is indeed the law of evolution, that has been through all the ages and that today is at work. It is the God-Power that is at work and every form of useful activity that helps on with this process of lifting and bettering is a form of Divine activity. If therefore we recognise the one Divine life working in and through all, the animating force, therefore the Life of all, and if we are consciously helping in this process we are ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... full of Deere, Conies, Hares, and Fowle, euen in the middest of Summer in incredible abundance. The woodes are not such as you finde in Bohemia, Moscouia, or Hercynia, barren and fruitles, but the highest and reddest Cedars of the world, farre bettering the Ceders of the Acores of the Indies, or Lybanus, Pynes, Cypres, Sassaphras, the Lentisk, or the tree that beareth the Masticke, the tree that beareth the vine of blacke Sinamon, of which Master Winter brought ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... are well assured," said mother, colouring like the furze as it took the flame and fell over, "that our kinsman here hath received rough harm on his peaceful journey from Dulverton. The times are bad, as we all know well, and there is no sign of bettering them, and if I could see our Lord the King I might say things to move him! nevertheless, I have had so much of my own account ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... boy, even were he, too, minded to make the trial and exert his Manitou utmost to that end; though, to do him justice, the Manitou king was perfectly willing—glad, you may have it—to let Ben Logan alone. He knew very well that he could do nothing for the bettering of such a boy, which nature—best of mothers—had not done for him already. No need to set Ben's heart a-bleeding to develop the good that was in it, or ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... answered: "Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you are"—cast it down ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the slightest chance of my bettering myself," said the Military Man. "Now that the Regiment has come from India, I can't afford to live at home, and I can't exchange because of my liver. Promotion was never slower than in 'Ours,' and my look-out is about the most ghastly there ever yet ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... arms at the least excuse. Before young Nathaniel Bacon set foot on Virginia soil Berkeley and his henchmen were trembling in their boots. The governor thought that if an opportunity offered itself the planters might go over to the Dutch "in hopes of bettering their condition by sharing the plunder of the country ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... affected by human action. I never heard anybody doubt that the evil may be thus increased, or diminished; and it would seem to follow that good must be similarly susceptible of addition or subtraction. Finally, to my knowledge, nobody professes to doubt that, so far forth as we possess a power of bettering things, it is our paramount duty to use it and to train all our intellect and energy to this supreme ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... character of its influence on society may be gathered from their efforts for the suppression of the slave trade; from the stricter observance of Sunday which became general towards the end of our period; from their plans for bettering the condition, and their care for the education of the poor. The institution of Sunday schools was largely due to Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, who began his work in 1780. Six years later some 200,000 children attended these schools, and in many ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... confess, being human, that our conversation is not always free from offense. But while we share this weakness with our enemies, we nevertheless do our duty diligently, by spreading God's Word, by teaching the churches, by bettering the evil, by urging the right, by consoling the weak, by chiding the stubborn, and, in brief, by doing whatever ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... rulers, to a general reformation of the church in Gaul. Here the clergy were sadly demoralized, and the churches and monasteries had been despoiled of much of their property in the constant turmoil of the time. Boniface succeeded, with the help of Charles Martel, in bettering affairs, and through his efforts the venerable church of Gaul, almost as old as that of Rome itself, was brought under the supremacy of the pope. In 748 the assembled bishops of Gaul bound themselves to maintain the Catholic unity of faith and follow strictly the precepts of the vicar of St. Peter, ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... birth, consciousness, and death. And if the choice must be made on the broad scale, it is our practical faith that the service of the best, even to the point of death, is due to the least in the hope of bettering the lot of man. Hence, as we are willing that in communities the noblest should die for a cause, we consent to the death of high civilizations, if they spread in some Hellenization of a Roman, some Romanizing ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... their neighbors, and using their heads in conventional patterns on the tops of gate-posts, did devote their leisure intervals to rearing fortresses like this. Edinburgh Castle could not be conceived, much less built, nowadays, when all our energy is consumed in bettering the condition of the "submerged tenth"! What did they care about the "masses," that "regal race that is now no more," when they were hewing those blocks of rugged rock and piling them against the sky-line on the top of that great stone mountain! It amuses me to think ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... and watchful benevolence, ever desirous not only to render justice, but to do good. During the peace he had spoken in parliament upon the abuses respecting prize-money, and had submitted plans to government for more easily manning the navy, and preventing desertion from it, by bettering the condition of the seamen. He proposed that their certificates should be registered, and that every man who had served, with a good character, five years in war, should receive a bounty of two guineas annually ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... such right. Some of them justified outlay upon national rivers and commercial harbors under the congressional power of raising revenue and regulating commerce. Others conceded the rightfulness of subsidies to States even for bettering inland routes. Treasury surplus at times, and the many appropriations which, by common consent, had been made under Monroe and later for the old National Road, encouraged the whig contention; but the whig policy had never met general approval down to the time when the whole ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... enough of Retirement, you may go to Church, hear Anthems, Prayers and Sermons; and if you see any Matron or Virgin remarkable for Piety, in whose Company you may get good; if you see any Man that is endow'd with singular Probity, from whom you may learn what will make for your bettering, you may have their Conversation; and you may chuse that Preacher that preaches Christ most purely. When once you come into a Cloyster, all these Things, that are the greatest Assistances in the Promotion of true Piety, you ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... said Captain Samson, over a cup of tea, while Polly, who presided, listened with sympathetic delight, "we bought a new claim or two, without much hope, however, of bettering our circumstances. One of these claims we bought for you, Jack, with part of the money you left in our charge, one for Buckley, and another for Wilkins. Well, these claims all turned out splendidly, ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... demoralize and degrade from their high sphere and noble destiny, women of all respectable and useful classes, and prove a monstrous injury to all mankind. It would be productive of no positive good, that would not be outweighed tenfold by positive evil. It would alter the relations of females without bettering their condition. Besides all, and above all, it presents no remedy for the real evils that the millions of the industrious, hard-working, and much suffering women of our country groan under and seek to redress.—Mechanic's (Albany, N. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... acquiring new experience, but we must by recall and reconstruction, as we saw in an earlier discussion, keep our imagery fresh and usable. For whatever serves to improve our images, at the same time is bettering the very foundation ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... very dryly, "you are very kind, indeed, but I don't think you can relieve me. I have excruciating neuralgia in my eyebones and temples, and my hands are cramped again. Dinah has been, rubbing, without bettering them, for the ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... helps himself to his enemy's cattle in the best way he can, and men formerly poor now suddenly become rich, which gives a zest to the extension of the contest nothing else could produce. Indeed, the poorer orders of Somali are only too glad to have a good pretext for a fight, as a means of bettering their condition, by adding a few more head of cattle to their stock. Were this not the case, there would be no fighting whatever, as the sultan would be powerless to raise an army against the inclination of the people. War only ceases when both sides become exhausted, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... you've done these things because I've driven you to them. You? You'd rather see me sitting around here starving, a worn wreck of a woman, than lend a willing hand to bettering our lot. Oh, yes, you've done these things, and—I hate you for the way ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... the representative New England girlhood of those days. We had all been fairly educated at public or private schools, and many of us were resolutely bent upon obtaining a better education. Very few were among us without some distinct plan for bettering the condition of themselves and those they loved. For the first time, our young women had come forth from their home retirement in a throng, each with her own individual purpose. For twenty years or so, Lowell might have been looked upon as a rather select ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... the stupid and the dull to help in the deterioration of the race and to breed sons as sluggish as themselves. In the New World women have taken an important part in the work of the National Grange, the greatest agency in bettering the economic and social conditions of the agricultural population in the States. In Ireland the women must be welcomed into the work of building up a rural civilization, and be aided by men in the promotion of those industries with which women ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... frequently heard it objected to foreign missions that there are works of philanthropy still to be done here. The objection is absolutely irrelevant. The work of missions is not an indefinite 'doing good.' It is the bearing of a specific good to those who have not received it. It is not, per se, the bettering of temporal conditions. It is the securing to those who believe its message the best eternal conditions. It is not a matter of 'elevation'—it is a matter of translation. Not into a bettered life, but into a new life with an eternal outlook—into a new realm ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... situation, and above all the remorseful horror with which Laing was regarding his fictitious lady's-maid, overcame Roger Deane. He burst into a laugh. After a moment the General followed heartily. Laing was the next, bettering his examples in his poignant mirth. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... citizens who were making or expecting to make corrupt gain, since they reverenced no element of the public weal in comparison with bettering themselves by such acts. But all the rest took it greatly to heart, and had much to say about it to intimates and also (as many as felt safe in so doing) in outspoken public conversation and ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... she said, "has come about in this way—we have all enough to live upon, and so many women worsen their condition by marriage, instead of bettering it, that we made up our minds to live comfortably on what we have got, and not trouble our heads about the men. We live very happily together, and are all socialists, radicals, libres penseuses and the rest. We read a great deal, and, as you will see to-morrow, my father ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... can come no improvement until the people are convinced that it is needed. Just as soon as the individual fully realizes that he himself is to blame for his suffering or his poverty in human energy, he will apply his intelligence to the bettering of his condition. If he can, in a short time, make as good a showing as public effort has made in the case of water supplies, he will ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... Peruvian was, that he could not better his condition. His labors were for others, rather than for himself. However industrious, he could not add a rood to his own possessions, nor advance himself one hair's breadth in the social scale. The great and universal motive to honest industry, that of bettering one's lot, was lost upon him. The great law of human progress was not for him. As he was born, so he was to die. Even his time he could not properly call his own. Without money, with little property of any kind, he paid his taxes in labor.38 No wonder that the government should ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... satire, describes how many Romans reverence the sabbath; and their sons, bettering the ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... country and poor inhabitants is an anomaly; and whatever is done should be prompt and effectual. If the Irish landlords looked directly into the state of their tenantry, and set themselves vigorously to the task of bettering their circumstances, they would, I am certain, establish the tranquillity and happiness of the country at large. The great secret, Colonel, of the dissensions that prevail among us is the poverty of the people. They are poor, and therefore the more easily wrought up to outrage; ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... the memory of her fathers, and loving to do as they did,—believing, for the most part, that the paths well beaten by righteous feet are safest, even though much walking therein has worn away the grass and flowers. Nevertheless, she has an indulgent ear for all that gives promise of bettering anybody or anything, and therefore is not severe on any new methods that may arise in our progressive days of accomplishing ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Him to send you a good issue out of all these troubles, & from henceforth to work a reformation in all that is amiss, & a resolute perseverance, proceeding, & growth, in all that is good, & that for His glory, the bettering of yourself, this Church & Commonwealth; whose faithful servant whilest you remain, I am a faithful servant ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... understand what they are about, instead of being merely able to go through their allotted task as so many beasts of burden; and that they should have the strong motive of making their homes decent and respectable, and of bettering their condition. All these motives are now working—strongly, too—in the public mind, and have begun to bear ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... be contented during this generation with the assurance that geographically the Union has been preserved, and that each contending warrior has once more taken up the peaceful struggle for bettering and beautifying the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... may now consider, what has been the effect of the improvement of natural knowledge on the views of men who have reached this stage, and who have begun to cultivate natural knowledge with no desire but that of "increasing God's honour and bettering man's estate." ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... very dryly, "you are very kind, indeed, but I don't think you can relieve me. I have excruciating neuralgia in my eyebones and temples, and my hands are cramped again. Dinah has been rubbing, without bettering them, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... that I am Truscomb's subordinate. I shouldn't have committed a breach of professional etiquette, or asked you to do so, if I hadn't a hope of bettering things; but I have, and that is why I've held on at Westmore for the last few months, instead of getting out ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... judgment, Goethe and George Meredith; and from them, and from others, and from my own small experience, I seem to have learned this: the importance of that process in Time in whose reality we believe does not lie merely in the bettering of the material and social environment, though we hold the importance of that to be great; it lies in the development of souls. And that development consists in a constant expansion of interest away from and beyond one's own immediate interests out into the activities of the ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... as the special matter in hand was concerned, the worsting of Hillsborough, though a gratification, did not result in the bettering of Franklin and his co-petitioners. April 6, 1773, he wrote: "The affair of the grant goes on but slowly. I do not yet clearly see land. I begin to be a little of the sailor's mind, when they were landing ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... was so great that it was feared many might attempt to deliver the colony into the hands of the Dutch. Berkeley wrote that a large part of the people were so desperately poor that they might reasonably be expected upon any small advantage of the enemy to "revolt to them in hopes of bettering their Condition by Shareing the Plunder of the Country with them".[470] A certain John Knight reported "that the planters there doe generally desire a trade with the Dutch and all other nations and would not be singly bound to the trade of England, and speake openly there that they are in ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... unpoetic word, and bettering the elocution, but missing the writer's thought (of the unknown path,—instead of going to many "worlds"). The Unitarians have their version, with substitutes for the ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... beginning of June Dr. Brendel is expecting you, and I rejoice at the thought of meeting you again there. If the affair is not too much hampered in its natural course by local miseries and malevolence, it may do much for the bettering of our suffering musical position. In any case we will not fail in ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... scene in which Cerimon, the man withdrawn from the world to study the bettering of man, revives the body of Thaisa, are the most ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... entered the Church. His writings are quite voluminous, including sermons, lectures, novels, fairy tales, and poems, published in book form, besides numerous miscellaneous sermons and magazine articles. He was an earnest worker for bettering the condition of the working classes, and this object was the basis of most of his writings. As a lyric poet he has gained a high place. The "Saint's Tragedy" and "Andromeda" are the most pretentious of his poems, and "Alton ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... who should appear to lend a hand on the side of Leslie Walker but Mr Pornsch, uncle of the late Miss Flipp. He arrived with the callousness worthy of a certain department of man's character, and addressed a meeting with as much pomp and self-confidence and talk of bettering the morals of the people, as though he had been an Ellice Hopkins. He had the further effrontery to visit Clay's and feign crocodile grief for the deplorable fate of his niece. He protested his shame and horror, together with a desire for revenge, so loudly that I resolved that he should not ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... entailed upon them, without any corresponding salaries. The case of Orange has been already alluded to, and there were many other nobles less able to afford the expense, who had been indulged with these ruinous honors. During the war, there had been, however, many chances of bettering broken fortunes. Victory brought immense prizes to the leading officers. The ransoms of so many illustrious prisoners as had graced the triumphs of Saint Quentin and Gravelines had been extremely profitable. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... us in the main, buoys us up and makes us better patriots and makes our country the great nation that we love and honor. And directly to your hands in the accomplishment of the great national purpose, making all our prosperity, all our power, all our capital and our labor instruments for the bettering of mankind, for the progress of civilization and for the coming of the effective and universal rule of the religion which we profess, right at your hands, as the first and plainest duty, is the cementing of the bonds of friendship between ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... and return to that state of liberty, which preceded the institution of government. Men would never be so foolish as to enter into such engagements as should turn entirely to the advantage of others, without any view of bettering their own condition. Whoever proposes to draw any profit from our submission, must engage himself, either expressly or tacitly, to make us reap some advantage from his authority; nor ought he to expect, that without the ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the only covering they wear at all. I did not impart all this to my petitioners, but disengaging myself from them, for they held my hands and clothes, I conjured them to offer us some encouragement to better their condition, by bettering it as much as they could themselves,—enforced the virtue of washing themselves and all belonging to them, and at length made good my retreat. As there is no particular reason why such a letter ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... chief aim in life should be to better himself, to keep bettering himself; and in this high duty the poet helps him. Poetry is the great educator of the feelings. By seizing and holding up to view the noblest and cleanest and best there is in human life, poetry elevates and refines the feelings. It reveals and strengthens the spirituality of our nature. Poetry ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... lost patience and grown angry, had that served me; but I knew it would only give pleasure to my tormentors, without bettering my condition. I therefore observed silence, and kept my eyes averted or ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... supplying. The rigors of spring were always dangerous to him in England, and it was always of advantage to get out of them: and then the sight of Naples, too; this, always a thing to be done some day, was now possible. Enough, with the real or imaginary hope of bettering himself in health, and the certain one of seeing Naples, and catching a glance of Italy again, he now made a run thither. It was not long after Calvert's death. The Tragedy of Strafford lay finished in his desk. Several things, sad and bright, were finished. ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... with me, so that I shall, to my heart's wish, be able to take a copy of them. After dinner, I by water to, White Hall; and there, with the Cofferer and Sir Stephen Fox, attended the Commissioners of the Treasury, about bettering our fund; and are promised it speedily. Thence by water home, and so all the afternoon and evening late busy at the office, and then home to supper, and Mrs. Turner comes to see my wife before her journey to-morrow, but she is in bed, and so sat talking to little ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and ever will stand shoulder to shoulder by our brethren, and all our friends in all good measures adopted by them for the bettering of our condition in this country, and surrender no rights but with our last breath; but as the subject of Emigration is of vital importance, and has ever been shunned by all delegated assemblages of our people as heretofore met, we cannot longer delay, and will not ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... where men regarded Grant Adams's activities with tolerant indifference and his high talk of bettering industrial conditions as the madness of youth, Judge Van Dorn was the town's ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... feeding close up alongside the hedge; of the going home in the evening, and the warm fireside, and the rustic song, and of the thousand and one beloved associations that he was leaving and casting behind him for ever. But then, again, he thought of "bettering his condition," of getting on in the world, of the smart figure he should look in the eyes of Polly, who would be sure now to like him better than she liked the baker. He never could see what there was ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... you for them," answered the captain. "But still, Mr Johnson, I think that you should take the lady's opinion on the subject. I suspect that when she knows the true state of the case, she would far rather you remained at home than have to go knocking about the salt ocean, without the prospect of bettering yourself." ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... so hard to attain so small a success. Still, the thing is taking shape, I think; I know a little better what I want to say all through; and in process of time, possibly I shall manage to say it. I must say I am a very bad workman, mais j'ai du courage: I am indefatigable at rewriting and bettering, and surely that humble quality should get me on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... under the conditions of communication in that day; and it long remained among the most backward and primitive portions of the United States. The admiral's father, after his long experience there, must have seen that there was little hope of bettering his fortunes. Whatever the cause, he moved to Louisiana in the early years of the century, and settled his family in New Orleans. He himself received the appointment of sailing-master in the navy, and was ordered to command a gun-boat employed in the river and on the ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... it is fundamentally anti-American to urge an uncritical deification of any form of government. Americanism involves an invitation to continuous constructive criticism in behalf of a bettering of our machinery of government. It is no solution of the foreign-born problem to preach loyalty to the status quo. We shall get further by saying to the foreigner, "We are engaged in a great democratic experiment on this continent. ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... this strange instrument was no less than a very quiet and very respectable late merchant of a little town somewhere "north," who, having failed at home, had emigrated into the new and hospitable country of Arkansas, for the purpose of bettering his fortune and escaping the heartless sympathy of his more lucky neighbors, who seemed to consider him a very bad and degraded man because he ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... educate the people into the recognition of the right of their mothers and sisters to an equal voice with themselves in the government of the city, State and nation. Nevertheless, I avail myself of your kindly request, and urge all to study the intricate problem of bettering the world; not merely the individual sufferings in it, but the general conditions. Such study will show the great need of a new balance of power in the body politic; and the conscientious student must arrive at the conclusion that this will have to be obtained by enfranchising a new class—women. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... on the days that followed. The Sea Lion steamed steadily north, and the boys were not the only ones counting the days until they should arrive on the Alaskan coast, for there were many who were taking the voyage in the hope of bettering ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... would have incurred censure. As the case stood, he drank all the wine he wanted, yet remained sober, and his pursuit of pederasty harmed no one. And even if he did delight in war, still he was satisfied with success in it,—with overthrowing a most hostile element and bettering his own side. Nor did the usual thing under such circumstances,—conceit and arrogance on the part of the soldiers,—ever manifest itself during his reign; with such a firm hand did he rule them. For these reasons Decebalus was somewhat ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... were strong but slothful. The man of initiative, of executive, of judgment and resource, was the one who later came to rule. There was no one class, either of rich or of poor, who supplied all these men. The man who had been poor in earlier life might set to work at once in bettering himself upon the frontier; and by his side, equally prosperous, might be one who in his earlier days had never needed to earn a dollar nor to thrash a fellow-man. Civilization at its later stages drives the man into a corner. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... arguments and appeals furnished by men who gave their whole souls to the work. It was a period of great mental activity on the part of the free colored people. They were discussing all probable methods of bettering their condition. It was the period that produced both writers and orators. In 1830 the first convention called by colored men to consider the general condition of the race and devise means to improve that ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... solicitude and a beating heart that Nicholas awaited the arrival of the next evening. In the meanwhile, he took another and more exact survey of his already half-ruined house; and the result was so melancholy that he felt he must stake life itself for the chance of bettering his fortune. There was not a beam, a board, a rafter, a lath, in the whole house that was not ready, upon the slightest assault, to go to wreck. Of glass windows the rumour was long since extinct. All stood open; and had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Scarron's house, and of the attention paid to him by the as yet unmarried Francoise d'Aubigne, in Dumas's Vingt Ans Apres. Nor is it easy to think of any literary following that, while no doubt bettering, abstains so completely from robbing, insulting, or obscuring its model as does Gautier's ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... benefits that could be conferred upon mankind, I found none so great as the discovery of new arts, endowments, and commodities for the bettering of man's life.... But if a man could succeed, not in striking out some particular invention, however useful, but in kindling a light in nature—a light that should in its very rising touch and illuminate all the border regions that confine upon the ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... to lament the past, to despise the present, or despair of the future; that I believe all the change and stir about us is a sign of the world's life, and that it will lead—by ways, indeed, of which we have no guess—to the bettering of all mankind. ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... which seems to have pervaded society after the period of the Crusades, encouraged vagabondage in all classes. The extent to which travelling was carried in the Middle Ages for purposes of pilgrimage and commerce, out of pure curiosity or love of knowledge, for the bettering of trade in handicrafts or for self-improvement in the sciences, has only of late years been estimated at a just calculation. "The scholars," wrote a monk of Froidmont in the twelfth century, "are wont to roam around the world and visit all its cities, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... the war our people gladly welcomed the Japanese, because this seemed to herald needed reforms and a general bettering of conditions, but soon it was seen that no genuine reforms were intended and the people had ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... hearts to care for him. And yet, if possible, there was greater dread entertained by his wife now than there had been on the former occasion. Then he could scarcely make his position worse, and there was a possibility of his bettering it; now there was everything to lose and nothing ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... ill-fortune, but only repeated in a quiet voice, with a pathos of which he was himself evidently unconscious, "I want to get home to Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia." He described himself as a printer by trade, and said that he had come over when he was a younger man, in the hope of bettering himself, and for the sake of seeing the Old Country, but had never since been rich enough to pay his homeward passage. His manner and accent did not quite convince me that he was an American, and I told him so; but he steadfastly affirmed, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a question whether the people of this Union, in forming their common social compact, as avowedly for the purpose of promoting their general welfare, have performed their work in a manner so ineffably stupid as to deny themselves the means of bettering their own condition. I have too much respect for the intellect of my country to believe it. The first object of human association is the improvement of the condition of the associated. Roads and ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... the doctor: "That, sir neighbor, I willingly grant; for myself I am always Casting about for improvement,—things new, so they be not too costly. But what profits a man, who has not abundance of money, Being thus active and stirring, and bettering inside and outside? Only too much is the citizen cramped: the good, though he know it, Has he no means to acquire because too slender his purse is, While his needs are too great; and thus is he constantly hampered. Many the things I had done; but then the cost of such changes Who does not fear, especially ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... we have referred, the "City Mission Home for Little Wanderers," and the "Five Points House of Industry," are all working hard for the purpose of bettering the condition of the poor and wretched of the City. They are employing a band of energetic, hard- working Christian men and women, and are doing good daily. There is no doubt, however, that they succeed best ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... this work that he met his wife, Frederika Muenster, who was occupied in bettering the condition of the prisoners in the penitentiary at Duesselthal. He married her in 1828, and she became a helpful, inspiring co-worker with him ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... to St. James's, and up to the Duke of York; and there in his chamber Sir W. Coventry did of himself take notice of this business of the Treasury, wherein he is in the Commission, and desired that I would be thinking of any thing fit for him to be acquainted with for the lessening of charge and bettering of our credit, and what our expence bath been since the King's coming home, which he believes will be one of the first things they shall enquire into: which I promised him, and from time to time, which he desires, will give him an account of what ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of his own labored breathing as he plunged through the East Entry, Jason heard panting behind him. Holland. Holland bettering his promised three minutes—and with a forbidden disarmer in his hand. Guiltily, Jason felt the weight of the disarmer he had himself secreted ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... for thousands of people (colored) are leaving this State, going to Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and New Jersey, where it is stated they are wanted as laborers in various pursuits. In your mind and to your knowledge, do you think it is the best thing for them to do, and are they bettering condition financially, morally and religiously; even in manhood, citizenship, etc. Our —— has been asked by the white and colored people here to speak in an advisory way, but we decided to remain silent until we can hear from reliable sources in the North and East, ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... generally injure the play; and it was from this circumstance—the frequency of blotches in the first edition—that the idea gained currency that the second edition was an example of Shakespeare's never-failing tact in bettering ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... State, "nor indeed to any other, whether free or slaveholding, for they cannot rise and become like other men, unless in countries where their own color predominates, but must always remain a degraded and inferior class of persons without the hope of much bettering their condition."[45] ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... and important condition presented itself to the comprehension of Diaz early in his administration, and compliance with it has been one of the principal contributing causes to his success. This was the necessity for the bettering of the means of communication of the country. Roads, railways, and telegraph multiplied accordingly under the fostering work of the Diaz Governments, mainly by inducements held out to foreign capitalists; partly by the expenditure of national ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... pondering. Putting Miss Collins' hints, Diana's own former confessions, and her present condition together, he saw, clearer than it was good to see, the probable state of affairs. And yet he was glad to see it; if any help or bettering was ever to come, it was desirable that his vision should be true, and his wisdom have at least firm data to act upon. But what action could touch the case?—the most difficult that a man can have to deal with. Through the night Basil alternately walked ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... trust that wherever you are located you will do all that you can for community uplift. Be active in church and Sunday-school work, help to improve the public schools, assist in bettering health conditions, help the people to secure property, to buy homes and to improve them. In doing all these things, you will be carrying out ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... all the offices then held in Ireland should be filled by Englishmen having no personal interest whatever in Ireland. The certainty that they would have a personal interest in it the very moment there was a chance of bettering their fortunes thereby, appears to have been quite overlooked. The settlers, therefore were allowed to continue their career as before, and felt all the secure for their effectual resistance ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... time, in connection with a fresh and noble endeavor after bettering the homes of the poor originated, I had almost said of course, by a woman, the experiment was in several places made of gathering small assemblies of the poor in the neighborhood of their own dwellings, that ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... also clearly sets forth the fact that little can be done towards bettering even the material conditions of living when men's hearts are not right towards God. If a man lets the spirit of avarice reign over him, no matter how much money he may have he will still want more and he will not care whom he oppresses to get it. If the spirit of ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... must apply the Fable of the Mole, That after having consulted many Oculists for the bettering of his Sight, was at last provided with a good Pair of Spectacles; but upon his endeavouring to make use of them, his Mother told him very prudently, 'That Spectacles, though they might help the Eye of a Man, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... batches; by the solicitations of the agents of American corporations seeking among the oppressed peoples of the Old World a generous supply of cheap, unorganized labor; or by the spontaneous prospect of bettering ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... and profitable on account of the fine pasture which some of the surrounding hills afford. Nothing could look more solitary. Magdalene might have left her desert, and ended her days there, without materially bettering her situation. The only sign of life is a stream that runs round a very productive small orchard in front of the house, while on a hill behind are a few maguey plants, and on the mirador, in front of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... police intelligence and ability of a very high order. Wide practical experience in the management of large business interests had admirably fitted him to improve the organization and increase the efficiency of the insular police force, and to mature and carry out plans for bettering means of communication and otherwise facilitating and stimulating the normal, healthful commercial development of the islands. I have devoted several chapters to the discussion of the results accomplished along these lines, [479] and will not ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... laws, which was made by Ferdinand and Isabella as far back as the year 1499, they are commanded to seek out for themselves masters. This injunction they utterly disregarded. Some of them for fear of the law, or from the hope of bettering their condition, may have settled down in the towns, cities, and villages for a time, but to expect that a people, in whose bosoms was so deeply rooted the love of lawless independence, would subject themselves ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... Lodge that same night a little after half-past ten o'clock. He had dined in the old house in Holland Street; served by Frederick, the German-Swiss valet, who, some weeks previously, hearing of his intended departure, had announced his intention of "bettering himself," had given Mrs. Porcher warning, and, in moving terms and three languages, implored employment of Iglesias, declaring that the other gentlemen resident at Cedar Lodge were "no class," their clothes utterly unworthy of his powers ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... to them," answered Marion with eagerness; "for all the false things they might believe about him could not destroy the true ones, or prevent them from believing in Jesus himself, and bettering their ways for his sake. And as they grew better and better, by doing what he told them, they would gradually come to disbelieve this and that ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... blacks. He suffered severely. He has withdrawn his troops from the north side of the James. I do not know what he will attempt next. He is mining on other points along our line. I trust he will not succeed in bettering his ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... that event seemed to be the signal for the long and calamitous struggle that ensued in Pernambuco and the neighbouring Captaincies. Joam Fernandes Vieyra, a native of Madeira, had, at a very early age, left his native island in hopes of bettering his fortune in Brazil. He had succeeded, and at the time we speak of, he was one of the richest Portuguese of Pernambuco, and highly esteemed by both his countrymen and the Dutch. Against the latter, however, he was animated both by patriotism ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... appropriated and used independently of them, or the object may be simply to discover their will in order to be guided by it. The first of these lines is magic, the second is divination. While the two have in common the frank and independent employment of the supernatural for the bettering of human life, their conceptions and modes of procedure differ in certain respects, and they may ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time, And though they be outstripp'd by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, Exceeded by the height of happier men. O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought: 'Had my friend's Muse ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... only with our physical senses, but by the intimations of the divinity which abides within us.* We can see, feel, and appreciate the virtue of a fellow-mortal who consecrates himself to the Divine idea through untiring exertion for the bettering of the condition of the world around him, whose agony he makes it his duty, only to satisfy his burning desire, to mitigate. The fact in its ghastly reality lies before us that the majority of mankind labour and are being crushed under the tremendous trinity of ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... this industrial institution and the immeasurable amount of good it has already done, during the lifetime of its founder, in bettering the temporal welfare of thousands of colored people in the south, have tended to make it the most prominent illustration of practical and successful industrial education among the colored people of ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... show the depressed condition in England at that period, and that many were looking to America in the hope of bettering their condition: ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... extending itself from its origin to its acme, or ne plus ultra, or to the encouragement given by the administration to monied men of all denominations; or to necessity, impelling those who can no longer live on small incomes to risk their capitals in traffic, that they may have a chance for bettering their fortunes; or lastly, to a concurrence of all these causes; certain it is, the national exports and imports have been sensibly increasing for these forty years: the yearly medium of woollen exports, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and they used wooden boards or tablets, on which they wrote with a substance which could be washed out. Such is the miserable situation of the Spanish inhabitants of the archipelago of Chiloe: yet they dare not leave their wretched birth-place in the hope of bettering their fortunes. The small-pox is hitherto unknown among them, and those, who have attempted to go elsewhere have been cut off by that loathsome disease. In 1783, the entire population of this dreary province amounted to 23,477, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... pranks might lead her to. But to me, while conferring the like present, he was good enough to say that I was a spirited lass fit for better things, and that if my Father and Mother would bring me shortly to his House in Dublin, he would see what could be done, to the end of bettering my condition in life. Whereupon he was assisted to his seat by one of four running footmen that tramped by his side, and away he went in his coach and six, leaving me in great joy and contentment. In only a few minutes came after him, not toiling, but bursting up the hill, a whole plump ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... type of the change which had passed upon Genoa and has passed or is passing upon all Italy. The trouble is that Italy is full of very living Italians, the quickest-witted people in the world, who are alert to seize every chance for bettering themselves financially as they have bettered themselves politically. For my part, I always wonder they do not still rule the world when I see how intellectually fit they are to do it, how beyond any other race they ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... sister Maggie is to you, Jean. Mind you both follow them. You'll never give folks reason to talk about you then. Don't get yourselves talked about! That's the main thing. Of course, you'll take every opportunity of bettering yourselves, both of you; but do it in a kind of sober, decent way. Do it like Andrew: I can say no more ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... silver-mounted meerschaum on his mantle-shelf. True, the butcher's shop had for some time contributed nothing to his dinners, but his vegetable diet agreed with him. He would himself have given any man time, would as soon have taken his child by the throat as his debtor, had worshiped God after a bettering fashion for forty years at least, and yet would not give God time to do His best for him—the best that perfect love, and power limited only by the lack of full consent in the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... and horses. With my master she found herself under far more stringent discipline than she had been accustomed to, and finally degraded, and sold where her condition could not be worse, and where she had not the least hope of ever bettering it. ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... discouraged him by tending to the extinction of small tenancies and freeholds that were no longer workable at a profit when common rights ceased to go with them. The industrious labourer could previously nourish a hope of bettering his condition by obtaining a small holding. Yet though the labourer suffered, impartial study does not show any intentional injustice. He held a very weak position when those interested in a common ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia |
