"Reformer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who hated inactivity; he was never happy except he was in motion, and never contented unless he had a prospect of change before him. Born in England, he would have been a universal philanthropist or a radical reformer, or an inventor of patent machines, or, in late days, a railroad projector; he would have employed his time in haranguing popular assemblies on the rights of man, and the freedom of religion, and he would have been a loud advocate of the cause of the Poles, and Greeks, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... poems are "Troilus and Cressida" and "The Legend of Good Women"; his late or English period, in which he worked at his masterpiece, the famous Canterbury Tales. (2) Langland, the poet and prophet of social reforms. His chief work is Piers Plowman. (3) Wyclif, the religious reformer, who first translated the gospels into English, and by his translation fixed a common standard of English speech. (4) Mandeville, the alleged traveler, who represents the new English interest in distant lands following the development of foreign trade. He is famous for Mandeville's Travels, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... down to the borough accordingly, made a "long speech," which the electors said they expected from him, "as he was a lawyer: it being also a treat which they had not enjoyed for thirty years." Lord Surrey, (afterwards Duke of Norfolk,) a prodigious reformer—a profession which, however, did not prevent him from constantly dabbling in the intrigues of electioneering—had harangued against him at Hereford, while Scott retorted at Weobly by smartly saying—"That though then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... eliminating agency of enormous efficiency, a present condition that sterilizes and exterminates individuals and lines of descent rapidly enough for all but the most sanguinary reformer. All that is needed for a practical solution of the eugenic problem is to reverse the present tendency for the better families to be drawn into the city and facilitate the drafting of others for urban duty.... The most practical eugenists of our age are the men who are solving the problems of living ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... indorsed by Lord John Russell, who said, "If that is the name that pleases them, if they say that the old distinction of Whig and Tory should no longer be kept up, I am ready, in opposition to their name of Conservative, to take the name of Reformer, and to stand by that opposition." Sir Robert Peel defined Conservatism when he said, "My object for some years past has been to lay the foundation of a great party, which, existing in the House of Commons, and deriving its ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... but little hope of a happy future for our race. I will also say, in order to be perfectly frank, that even if we should admit that our civilization was advancing, we should not attribute it to the influence of the Jewish reformer." ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... The Reformer had lectured on this Epistle of St. Paul's in 1519 and again in 1523. It was his favorite among all the Biblical books. In his table talks the saying is recorded: "The Epistle to the Galatians is my epistle. To it I am as it were in wedlock. ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... The assessors' lists are padded by tens of thousands of dollars and majorities are returned to keep the "machine" and the party it represents in power, regardless of the actual vote cast.... The cry of the reformer is, "We must waken the better element to save our cities. We must make honesty and morality the supreme question in our politics." Who represents these if not women?... Let us for the moment think of a great city ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... provender, too, sure of a crowd, offering creed, propaganda, patent medicine, and politics. It is the pulpit of the reformer and the housetop of the fanatic, this soap-box. From it the voice to the city is often a pious one, an impious one, and almost always a raucous one. Luther and Sophocles and even a Citizen of Nazareth made of the four winds of the street corner the walls of a temple of wisdom. What ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... He was as splendidly serious as a reformer. By a single urgent act of thought he would have made himself a man, and changed imperfection into perfection. He desired—and there was real passion in his desire—to do his best, to exhaust himself in doing his best, in living according to his ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... can boast of several natives of note, and a roll of still more distinguished residents. The birds of passage, whose stay shed a transient glory on the gay city, are legion. Amongst those who claim Bath as their birthplace are William Edward Parry, the Arctic explorer, John Palmer, the postal reformer, and William Horn, the author of the Every Day Book. The list of famous residents includes Quin, the actor, R.B. Sheridan, Beckford, Landor, Sir T. Lawrence, Gainsborough, Bishop Butler (who died at 14 Kingsmead Square), Gen. Wolfe and Archbp. Magee. Nelson ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... disregarding this hint, "is to have people assume that newspaper men are a lot of semi-crooks and shysters. What does the petty grafting that a few reporters do—and, mind you, there's mighty little of it done—amount to, compared with the rottenness of a paper run by my church-going reformer ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... reverence for the sacred character of the popes, and who regarded Leo X. merely as a successful rival who had thwarted his own plans, espoused, with cautious development, but with true interest, the cause of the reformer. And now came the great war of the Reformation, agitating Germany in every quarter, and rousing the lethargic intellect of the nations as nothing else could rouse it. Maximilian, with characteristic fickleness, or rather, with characteristic pliancy before every breeze of self-interest, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... rendered more heart-touching, by being set to words in the vernacular tongues, which every body could understand. Luther's hymn, "Great God, what do I hear and see," led the way. Henry VIII. hated the German reformer, and all that he did, but he burned to rival him in every thing, and he gave a stimulus to the public taste, by composing words and music for the service of the English church. In France, soon after the middle of the sixteenth century, when it was doubtful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... provided for all by simply taking something from those who have too much. Now, I may probably assume that we all agree in approving the contemplated end—a greater equality of wealth, and especially an elevation of the lower classes to a higher position in the scale of comfort. Every social reformer, whatever his particular creed, would probably agree that some of us are too rich, and that a great many are too poor. But we still have to ask, in what sense it is conceivable that a real suppression of competition can contribute to the desired end. It is obvious that when ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... given away four times the value of this said cow, every Christmas, for ten or fifteen years together, without having ever once had, or wishing to have, my name held up in a public newspaper, as an example of charity and liberality to the poor. Yet, twenty years ago, before I was known as a reformer, when, for instance, I was in the King's Bench, a pound note, a fifth part of what Mr. Waddington and I gave away privately, besides the ton of potatoes, would have caused my name to cut a pompous figure in all the vehicles ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... was as satisfied as Luther had been that this was a temptation of the devil; but before him was no such apparition as that against which the great reformer could hurl his ink-horn without ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... came to Union College, to this end, and had been recommended to my mother for board and lodging, and she gladly availed herself of the opportunity to get for me lessons in drawing in return for his board. He was a constitutional reformer, a radical as radicalism was then possible, had become an atheist with Robert Dale Owen, indignant at the treatment accorded him by destiny, and was au fond an honest and philanthropic man. He taught me the simplest rudiments of portrait and landscape in water-color, and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... The reformer does not generally count on the aid of representatives of the great Government departments, yet the independent and non-party attitude of Sir Charles and the friends who worked with him for Social Reform secured ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... slender and dark, with heavy hair and the clear, thoughtful eyes, which may be seen in the potrait of Paul Dudley to-day. There were few of what we consider the typical Englishmen among these Puritan soldiers and gentry. Then, as now, the reformer and liberal was not likely to be of the warm, headlong Saxon type, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and open to every suggestion of pleasure loving temperament. It was the dark-haired men of the few districts who ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... the moral imagination and to his general sentiment about human life; but to become one of the promoters would require, in a man so wary, so hard-headed and cool as he naturally was in one half of his brain at least, a certain pressure of fact upon him. No man was less of a reformer than Hawthorne; he was constitutionally phlegmatic about society, a party man in politics, and an ironical critic of all "come-outers," as these people were then popularly named; and, in this instance, which ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... the University, the payment of the M.A. is one that is fully due; it should be regarded by all Oxford men as an expression of the gratitude to their Alma Mater, which they are in duty bound to show. The future of Oxford finance would be brighter if some reformer could devise means by which the relation of the M.A. to his University might become more of a reality, so that he might realize his obligations to her. The doctrine of Walter de Merton that a foundation should benefit by the 'happy fortune' (uberiore fortuna) of its sons in subsequent life, is ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... England, if you remembered us at all. And we haven't met since that day at Ashley Church when I put my foot in it,—or rather on your pet protege's, the Indian's: you remember Major Atherly's tomb? And to think that all the while we didn't know that you were a public man and a great political reformer, and had a fad like this. Why, we'd have got up meetings for you, and my father would have presided,—he's always fond of doing these things,—and we'd have passed resolutions, and given you subscriptions, and Bibles, and flannel shirts, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... subtile benediction of a cheerier mood. No rank held place there; for the democratic sea toppled down the greatest statesman in the land, and dashed over the bald pate of a millionnaire with the same white-crested wave that stranded a poor parson on the beach and filled a fierce reformer's mouth with brine. No fashion ruled, but that which is as old as Eden,—the beautiful fashion of simplicity. Belles dropped their affectations with their hoops, and ran about the shore blithe-hearted girls again. Young men forgot their ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... chief aim of true education, the homely experiments of Pestalozzi offer a far more suggestive and important field for observation than the barrack-like methods of the French Emperor. The Swiss reformer sought to train the mind to observe, reflect, and think; to assist the faculties in attaining their fullest and freest expression; and thus to add to the richness and variety of human thought. The French imperial system sought to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions of life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had a hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau was suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why after the Reformation the peoples massacred one ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the scholar retorted. "There have been good men of all religions, though we dare not say as much in public, or in Geneva. 'Tis not the religion. 'Tis the way men live it! Was John Bernardino of Assisi, whom some call St. Francis, a worse man than Arnold of Brescia, the Reformer? Or is your Beza a better man than Messer Francis of Sales? Or would the heavens fall if Geneva embraced the faith of the good Archbishop of Milan? Words, Messer Blondel, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... taken my measures to abscond and fly from my native place, in order to free myself of this tormenting, intolerant, and bloody reformer, he had likewise taken his to expel me, or throw me into the hands of justice. It seems that, about this time, I was haunted by some spies connected with my late father and brother, of whom the mistress of the former was one. My brother's death had been witnessed by ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... in each case is the emblem of the sun or of fire, as the male or active generative power. The second denotes the passive nature or female principle or the emblem of water. The third symbol indicates the destroyer, the reformer or the renewer, (the uniter of the two) and thus the preserver or perpetuater eternally renewing itself. The universality of serpentine worship (or Phallic adoration) is attested by emblematic sculptures or architecture all ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... to act on the tacit assumption that thoroughgoing Socialism means something like a garden-city idyll, with play-houses, open-air theatres, excursions, picturesque raiment and fire-side art. This in itself quite decent ideal of the average architect, art-craftsman and art-reformer if expressed in dry figures would, "at the lowest estimate" as they say, demand about fivefold the capacity for production attainable by the utmost exertions and with a ten hours' day before the ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... some days in the family whether it was not proper to stifle her as a monster; but, her deformity diminishing, she was spared, and afterwards obtained such a degree of beauty, that she had her admirers. From her childhood to her old age she had an extraordinary turn of mind. She set up for a reformer, and published a great number of books, filled with very singular notions; the most remarkable of which are entitled "The Light of the World," and "The Testimony of Truth." In her confession of faith, she professes her belief in the Scriptures, the divinity and atonement of Christ. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... mentioned was of course the distinguished Scotch politician and social reformer, Duncan M'Laren, for sixteen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other hand it is a narrow basis, because the possession of money is of itself no guarantee of political ability, and the system leads to the very questionable proposition that every rich man is a competent social reformer. It is, however, a sort of competence, but a competence very precariously established and on ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... was returned to parliament by the voters of Liskeard. He retained this seat until he died in London on the 29th of November 1848, leaving behind him, so Charles Greville says, "a memory cherished for his delightful social qualities and a vast credit for undeveloped powers." An eager reformer and a friend of John Stuart Mill, Buller voted for the great Reform Bill, favoured other progressive measures, and presided over the committee on the state of the records and the one appointed to inquire into the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... disjointed, that scarcely a trace of the original scheme remains! Thus, between the resistance of power, and the unsystematical process of popularity, the undertaker and the undertaking are both exposed, and the poor reformer is hissed off the stage ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... passion That is in prevalence and fashion, Save one, the sufferer or lover May, by the grace of God, recover: Alone that spiritual tetter, The zeal to make creation better, Glows still immedicably warmer. Who knows of a reformed reformer? ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... aristocratic pride, but a man of honour, and of as much liberal feeling as was compatible with wealth and station, had sat at the feet of the old Radical, Home Tooke. He had sympathised with the French revolution; but was mainly, like his mentor, Tooke, a reformer of the English type, and a believer in Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights. He had sat in parliament, and in 1802 had been elected for Middlesex. After a prolonged litigation, costing enormous sums, the election had been finally annulled in 1806. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... unbounded resources of genius and invention so richly possessed by the prince of allegorists, John Bunyan. It reminds us of the dialogue between Lucifer and Beelzebub, in that rare work by Barnardine Ochine, a reformer, published in 1549, called, A Tragedy or Dialogue of the unjust usurped Primacy of the Bishop of Rome.[4] In this is represented, in very popular language, the designs of Lucifer to ruin Christianity by the establishment of Popery. Lucifer thus addresses his diabolical ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... feeling, no embittering of relations that should be cordial as between citizens of the same republic, whose differences are infinitely small as compared with the well-being of a great nation. Of all the dangers that threaten the path of the reformer that of injustice is the greatest. It is better even that abuses should continue for a time longer than that they should be corrected by injustice and by the infliction of hardships upon those who are wholly ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... extraordinary concourse of unruly people who robbed him, and treated with savage rudeness his extraordinary services.' Something of a visionary, too, was Sir Balthazar;—yet, with all his vanity as to his own merits—his coxcombry about his proceedings,—a sort of reformer and benefactor also in a small way. At one time we find him advertising that, besides lecturing gratis, he will lend from one shilling to six, gratis, 'to such as are in extreme need, and have not wherewithal ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... is a reformer. A reformer is one who re-crystallizes the social ideals of man, who breaks up idols and bad customs, and sweeps away abuses. But we must first ask: What is an idol? What is a bad custom? What is an abuse? They are social standards which are out of harmony ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... after catholicity of taste, and wide admiration, receives some rude shocks from Carlyle's treatment of humanity, as Dr. Garnett has well shown in his excellent biography of Carlyle; indeed it has led with some to the parting of the ways. For the hopes and inspirations of poet, reformer, teacher, became in great part to him as "the idle chatter of apes" and "the ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... of the religion of the ancient Persians is principally derived from the Zendavesta, or sacred books of that people. Zoroaster was the founder of their religion, or rather the reformer of the religion which preceded him. The time when he lived is doubtful, but it is certain that his system became the dominant religion of Western Asia from the time of Cyrus (550 B.C.) to the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. Under the Macedonian monarchy the doctrines of Zoroaster ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... starvation if they rebel. Another element, which, viewed from the plane of justice and equity may be rightly termed criminal, is the popular and conservative economist who caters to the plutocracy and with brazen effrontery denies facts susceptible of proof, while he denounces every reformer who seeks to expose the iniquities of the present. This course is precisely a repetition of the policy of those who minified the real danger and misrepresented the grave facts to the Court of France, at a time when an honest, truthful representation might have ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... let us listen to Luther himself. In 1523, the great Reformer, 1, in his "Method of conducting Christian Mass," addressed to Rev. Nicolas Hausman, after having rejected such portions of the Romish mass, as he thought wrong, he approved others, as explained by himself, such as the, Introitus, the Kyrie eleison, ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... of our country and the institutions of our country, and always ready to take up the quarter-staff in our defence. A great reformer, and honest as the day is long. Wrote much in favor of American independence in 1774, and, with Sir Francis Burdett and others, who chose to meddle with the British Constitution wherever they found ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... altered. I think we should praise everything or ignore everything. To slate a book, good or bad, is taking the bread out of a fellow's mouth. I have been the chief sinner in this way, and I am going to be the first reformer." "Not in my paper," ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... scientist, the minister and the reformer, were all combined in this one purposeful man. The people believed him to be a wizard, and even credited him with power to raise the dead. Heathen, sick and curious, crowded about his wagon, but not an article was stolen. One day the chief of a savage tribe said: "I wish you would change ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... out of the window, "here is our coming Member." He opened the door. "Mr. Hull, let me introduce you to the Reverend Richard Boyle, preacher and moral reformer. Mr. Boyle—Mr. Hull, the ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... Prince at this juncture. There to measure the hold of the Christian idea upon the Church, it seemed Scholarius had brought him an answer which finished his interest in the passing Vigils. In brief, the Reformer's interest in the Mystery was past, and he wished with his whole soul to retreat to the sedan, but a ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... we should expect moral and intellectual worth of a high order, added to the purest and most exalted motives. He is in spirit a reformer, taking an interest in every measure for the improvement of our race, and sympathizing with every ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ideal life. As this music-drama rests historically upon the opera it is but natural that the second triumvirate of German music should be composed of the founder of German opera, C. M. von Weber, the reformer of the old opera, Christoph Wilibald Gluck, and Richard Wagner. To trace therefore the development of the youngest of these masters, will lead us to consider theirs as well, and in doing this the knowledge of what he is will disclose ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... the Executive but less interference and a freer hand for the capitalist. He believes in individual enterprise. He accepts the good old English principle that the man who pays taxes should have a voice in spending them; but he appeals not to an abstract political principle but to tradition. The reformer, as so often happens, calls himself a restorer; his political bible begins with the great charter and comes down to the settlement of 1688. Meanwhile the true revolutionary movement—represented by Paine and Godwin, appeals ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... (see Chapter XVII.), will necessarily also be introduced. A publication issued by the most scientific body of British Socialists, the Fabian Society, urges: "There is only one safe principle to guide the reformer. The tramways, the light railways, and the railways must be regarded as the modern form of the king's highway. Our fathers spent time and trouble ridding the roads of tolls; and railway rates and passenger fares are merely modern tolls. Their abolition ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... a stronger forward movement, than that of humor. It is the one universal dispensary for human kind: a medicine for the poor, a tonic for the rich, a recreation for the fatigued and a beneficient check to the strenuous. It acts as a shield to the reformer, as an entering wedge to the recluse and as a decoy ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... faithful labour as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous conflict, in times all violent, dismembered: a more perilous service, and a more memorable one, be it higher or not. These two men we will account our best Priests, inasmuch as they were our best Reformers. Nay I may ask, Is not every true Reformer, by the nature of him, a Priest first of all? He appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible force; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone strong. He is a believer in the divine truth of things; a seer, seeing through the shows of things; a worshipper, in one way ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... 'The Social Reformer, a Weekly Advocate of the New Economy,' achieved at once an immense success among the working classes, and grew before long to be one of the most popular journals of the second rank in all London. The interest that Ernest had aroused by his big pamphlet was ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... wrote it. You preach a doctrine of abnegation, of self-obliteration, and you sign your name to your words as high on the tablets as you can reach, so that all the world may see, not the poem, but the poet. Presley, there are many like you. The social reformer writes a book on the iniquity of the possession of land, and out of the proceeds, buys a corner lot. The economist who laments the hardships of the poor, allows himself to grow rich upon the sale ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... fragmentary measure in human progress, but to utter the highest truth clearly seen in all directions, and thus to round out and perfect a well balanced character. Was not the sum of influence exerted by John Stuart Mill on political, religious and social questions far greater than that of any statesman or reformer who has sedulously limited his sympathies and activities to carrying one specific measure? We have many women abundantly endowed with capabilities to understand and revise what men have thus far written. But they are all suffering ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... come home and take part in the needed reforms. He was immediately made Principal of Glasgow University, at that time in a state of utter collapse and ruin. He had matured his plans, after consultation with George Buchanan, and they were worthy of a great reformer. He sketched a curriculum, substantially the curriculum of the second University period. The modifications upon the almost exclusive Aristotelianism of the first period, were significant. The Greek language was introduced, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... that is a private thing." It may, however, have been a pet name for little Marie de Viry, Procter's niece, and the chere amie of his verse, whom Eothen must have met often at his friend's house. The St. Simonians of p. 83 were the disciples of Comte de St. Simon, a Parisian reformer in the latter part of the eighteenth century, who endeavoured to establish a social republic based on capacity and labour. Pere Enfantin was his disciple. The "mystic mother" was a female Messiah, expected to become the parent of a new Saviour. "Sir Robert once said a good thing" (p. 93), refers ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... declared a heretic, and burnt without opportunity of abjuration; whoso spoke against the other five articles should, for the first offense, forfeit his property; and whosoever refused to abjure his first offense, or committed a second, was to die like a felon." Art. Henry VIII. "The royal reformer persecuted alike Catholics and Protestants. Thus, on one occasion, three Catholics who denied that the king was the rightful head of the church, and three Protestants who disputed the doctrine of the real presence in the sacrament,... ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... Navarre, had encouraged the Reformers. Francis had leagued with the German Protestants because they were foes to the Emperor, while he persecuted the like opinions at home to satisfy the Pope. John Calvin, a native of Picardy, the foremost French reformer, was invited to the free city of Geneva, and there was made chief pastor, while the scheme of theology called his "Institutes" became the text-book of the Reformed in France, Scotland, and Holland. His doctrine was harsh and stern, aiming at the utmost ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... permanent good comes from aspirations so lofty that they have grown fantastic and have become impossible and indeed undesirable to realize. The impracticable visionary is far less often the guide and precursor than he is the embittered foe of the real reformer, of the man who, with stumblings and shortcomings, yet does in some shape, in practical fashion, give effect to the hopes and desires of those who strive for better things. Woe to the empty phrase-maker, to the empty idealist, who, instead ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... reading the other day about a religious reformer who arose in Eastern lands a few years since, and gathered many disciples. He and his principal follower were seized and about to be martyred. They were suspended by cords from a gibbet, to be fired at by a platoon of soldiers. And as they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... set up in his day. He had learned his ethics in a school which taught that, for great and pious objects, the end justified the means. In the ardor of his zeal for what he deemed the Christian faith, Columbus committed many glaring mistakes and errors; but what over-zealous apostle or reformer has failed to do the same? Columbus was unduly eager after gold, they say; but in our advanced age, when that which Virgil called "the accursed hunger for gold" pervades all ranks, and our cities are nothing but great encampments of fortune-hunters, does it lie ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... I'm a root-and-branch reformer, and my hand would not have been stayed for fear of the vengeance of the guilty, and God alone knows what would have come of that. The only cardinal fit to be pope was Tamburini; but it can't be helped now. I hear people coming; ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... is difficult to grasp; very shy. My chance of observing it lies precisely in this: that I am neither a sky-pilot, nor a district visitor, nor a reformer, nor a philanthropist, nor any sort of 'worker,' useful or impertinent; but simply a sponge to absorb and, so far as can be, an understander to sympathize. It is hard entirely to share another people's life, to give oneself ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... these words are addressed, was one of the most pious of the Jewish kings, and the most eminent reformer of them all. On him, the last sovereign of David's house (for his sons had not an independent rule), descended the zeal and prompt obedience which raised the son of Jesse from the sheep-fold to the throne, as a man after God's own heart. Thus, as an honour to David, the blessing ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... within as well as danger from without. His last letter showed plainly that he was engaged in an enterprise which his adversaries would call a plot. Roma remembered her father, doomed to a life-long exile and a lonely death, and asked herself if it was not always the case that the reformer partly reformed his age, and was ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... written with the express purpose of laying bare all the social evils of one of the most corrupt periods in recent history, in the belief that through publicity might come regeneration. Zola was all along a reformer as well as a novelist, and his zeal was shown in many a bitter newspaper controversy. It has been urged against him that there were plenty of virtuous people about whom he could have written, but these critics appear to forget that he was ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... me to run my estate as though it were a University Settlement. Handle me gently—that's all. You've had your way about some of the farms—you'll get it no doubt with regard to others. But don't go about playing the reformer—on this dramatic scale!—at my expense. I don't believe in this modern wish-wash; and I don't intend ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this work has been to trace briefly the evolution of a life and a condition. The transition of the young Quaker girl, afraid of the sound of her own voice, into the reformer, orator and statesman, is no more wonderful than the change in the status of woman, effected so largely through her exertions. At the beginning she was a chattel in the eye of the law; shut out from ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... subject well. John Harrington was a reformer, she knew; or, to speak more accurately, he desired to be one. He believed great changes were necessary. He believed in an established Civil Service, in something which, if not exactly Free Trade, was much nearer to it than the existing tariff. Above all, he believed in ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... another side of the problem to his bewildered friend—a phase of the question commonly ignored by every fiery reformer, whose particular reformation is the ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... physiognomist, a physiologist, a bit of an anatomist, a bit of a mesmerist, a bit of a geologist, a Flemish painter, an upholsterer, a micrological, misanthropical, sceptical philosopher; but he is no moralist, and certainly no reformer." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... belief controlled conduct. As a man sincerely believes so will he act. Franklin, with his accustomed candor, in his Autobiography, wrote in the following terms, the effects of the preaching of this remarkable reformer: ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... 400 years, especially since the memorable date of 1917 is soon to be celebrated by universal Protestantism. Luther in all languages and Lutherans in all lands go together. We ought to consider most carefully the great Reformer in his relation to the modern world and modern world-evangelization. The known world in his day was not so large. He had, however, a clear view of it all in his writings, which is due to his faithful study of the Scriptures. The Bible gave him a knowledge ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... gigantic evils of despotism and anarchy have in a great measure vanished before the meliorating manners of Europe. Innumerable evils still remain, it is true, to afflict the humane investigator, and hurry the benevolent reformer into a labyrinth of error, who aims at destroying prejudices quickly which only time can root out, as the public opinion becomes subject ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... ourselves the luxury, of private feelings in a matter which concerns the national expansion. We must not give way to sentiment. Our friend in the body of the hall spoke—he will forgive me for saying so—like a poet, rather than a serious reformer. I am afraid that if we let ourselves drop into poetry, the birth rate of this country will very soon drop into poetry too. And that I think it is impossible for us to contemplate with folded hands. The resolution I was about ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... animosity between the Whigs and Reformers and Radicals in England is more bitter, if possible, than between the Radicals and Tories, and far more rancorous than between the Whigs and Tories. There is just as much difference between an English Reformer and an avowed English Radical as there is between a Canadian Reformer and an avowed Canadian Republican. In the interests of the Methodists, therefore, religiously and politically, the allusion to Mr. Hume was justifiable ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... was becoming too deep for the spirit of Oxford to endure, so the archdeacon walked off one way and the chancellor another, followed by their disciples, and the bishop and the young reformer were ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... [1] Indeed, a reformer is to-day called a crusader, though the knight of the twelfth century armed cap-a-pie for a joust with the Saracen would hardly recognize as his spiritual descendant a sedentary person preaching against rum. Yet to the student of character ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... things in Strengnaes fell upon Laurentius Andreae, at the time archdeacon. Andreae, though fifteen years his senior, was of a kindred spirit, and by a contemporary is described as a willing pupil of the young reformer. There can be no question that even at this period Petri was regarded as a man of strength. A portrait of him painted when still a youth shows in a marked degree the traits by which he was distinguished later. The face is full and ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... interesting subject to my hobby, political economy and measures for saving the nation from its impending doom. A man who can't make much headway toward home-building before or after marriage usually becomes a reformer. Men with families take things as they are, if they live at home instead of a club, and find plenty to do. I could not be moved without ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... anointed man of truth! When we reached that, I and my followers Would rend you limb from limb. There!—ha! ha! ha! [Laughing.] Have I not caught the slang these fellows preach; A grand, original idea, to back it; And all the stock in trade of a reformer? ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... you talking about? I can understand a man attended by black dogs that nobody sees but himself. The Catholics tell it of John Knox, and of another Reformer, a fellow called Smeaton. Moreover, it is common in delirium tremens. But you say Bolter ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... how much longer the fiction will endure that journalists of this order represent public opinion. It may be doubted whether any honest and serious Tariff Reformer would for a moment maintain that there was any majority for Tariff Reform in the country comparable to the ludicrous preponderance which money has given it among the great dailies. The only inference is that for purposes of real public opinion the press is now a mere plutocratic ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... churches were saved from violence, and the art treasures of the city were not destroyed. Among the most important Lutherans was Pirkheimer, Duerer's friend. We do not know that Duerer became a Lutheran, but he wrote of his admiration for the great reformer in his diary, and it is a meaning fact that during the last six years of his life Duerer made no ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... grasp of the contemporary developments he will presently be called upon to influence and control, and send him on to the university to be made a leading and ruling social man. It is easy enough to carp at schoolmasters and set up for an Educational Reformer, I know, but still it is impossible not to feel how infinitely more effectually—given certain impossibilities perhaps—the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... having strayed into the world of those romancers who forecast the future; a slaughter-house of tasteful architecture, set in a grove of lemon trees and date palms, suggested the dreamy ideal of some reformer whose palate shrinks from vegetarianism. To my mind this had no place amid the landscape which spread about me. It checked my progress; I turned abruptly, to lose the impression as ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... is the flapper who has done it for us. What's more, she has done it frankly and purposefully—because the reformer, in his naive innocence, has explained to her that what she is doing is wicked and will get that kind of "results." Similarly those of 'em who had not yet taken off their corsets at dances, promptly did so when shocked elders began repeating the corset ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... steaming hot biscuit and custard pie. If they would only let me sit in the dear old-fashioned kitchen, or on the door-stone—if they knew how dismally the new black furniture looked—but, never mind, I am not a reformer. No, I should rather ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... figure. But Turgot was not the first statesman, both able and patriotic, who had been disgraced for want of compliance with the conditions of success at court; he was only the last of a series. Chauvelin, a man of vigour and capacity, was dismissed with ignominy in 1736. Machault, a reformer, at once courageous and wise, shared the same fate twenty years later; and in his case revolution was as cruel and as heedless as reaction, for, at the age of ninety-one, the old man was dragged, blind and deaf, before the revolutionary ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... were controlled by Parliamentary and statutory exigencies. He had also been asked to improve their rates on foreign letters and parcels, as well as to cheapen the delivery of letters and parcels from abroad; but it was entirely forgotten that he had to reckon with foreign Powers. A Postal Reformer had declared, in a letter, that it was possible to create an ideal Post Office. He wished he could accede to every one of his requests, but he had to consider Parliament; he was not master himself. He thought that if they were to meet the requirements of the public as they were ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... of Ariosto was to amuse the reader by countless stories of romantic adventure. It was not as a great creative genius, as the inventor of new characters, as the earnest and philosophical reformer, that he appears to mankind, but as the supreme artist. Ariosto represents in its highest development that love for form, that perfection of style, which is characteristic of the Latin races as distinguished from the Teutonic. It ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... class it otherwise. The facts which are to be related are too valuable to be lost. They were first published, I believe, in the Northampton Courier; and subsequently in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, and in the Moral Reformer. In the present case, the account ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... English-American politician, reformer, and writer on economics, denounced coffee as "slops"; but he was one of a remarkably small minority. Before his day, one of England's greatest satirists, Dean Swift, (1667-1745) led a long roll of literary men who ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... indicate an approaching convulsion. The greatest Churchmen of the day, Morton, Warham and Fox, were absorbed—albeit reluctantly—in affairs of State. Blameless, even austere in their own lives, patrons of learning, sincerely pious, they lacked the Reformer's passion, without which it was vain to combat the vis inertiae; generated by long years of clerical sloth, and of the formalism by which the highest Mysteries were vulgarly distorted into superstitions and Faith into ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... spelling reformer indicted For fudge was before the court cicted. The judge said: "Enough— His candle we'll snough, And his sepulchre ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the ruffians of reformation, in the manner of which Knox has given what he himself calls a merry narrative.' Johnson's Works, ix. 3. In May 1546 the Cardinal had Wishart the Reformer killed, and at the end of the same month ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... was a reformer, and reformers have but one theme, and that theme is Liberty. We grow by expression. There is no doubt that the university lecture and the Fourth of July oration added cubits to the stature of Henry George. In these two addresses ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... this time in his mind, and that is the immense utility of woman in the work of regenerating society. She it is who feels even more than man the effects of social vices and sins, and to her the moral reformer should strenuously appeal for aid. And this, with the instinct of genius, Garrison did in the temperance reform, nearly seventy years ago. His editorials in the Philanthropist in the year 1828 on "Female Influence" may be said to be the courier ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... neglected." The Catholic priests, however, opposed this circulation, and one of them called on a Catholic, to whom I had given a Bible at his own particular request, and after anathematizing our great reformer, asked him to give it up. The man refused with this pointed and pertinent question, "From whence, Sir, do you get your knowledge of religion?" In this refusal, he acted upon the enlightened principle, that we derive all true sentiments in religious ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... the equities of this conflict. It is a grave failure. They ought never to have suffered such an alienation to occur between themselves and the people who constitute the very bone and sinew of our civilization," says a prominent preacher and reformer. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... Elector," replied Count Schwarzenberg, to whom the Elector had turned with his query—"nothing further than that your honor drive me away, nothing further than that you dismiss the hated minister, whom they abhor, simply because he is a Catholic and not a Reformer, and because he is named Schwarzenberg and not Rochow or Quitzow, nor blessed with some country ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... to sacrifice all for socialism, as he had at first conceived her. Had she continued to be such a magnificent and heroic creature, he would have loved her less. She gained infinitely more than she lost by this more intimate view. She was no longer a possible reformer and a subject for the historian, but a woman pure and simple, with all a woman's ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Dickens was the most original genius in our fictitious literature since the days of Walter Scott. As a social reformer his fame is quite as great as it is as a master of romance. His pen was mighty to the pulling down of many a social abuse, and from the loving kindness of his writings has been got many an inspiration to deeds of charity. But how could a man who went so far as he ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... repeated. "Surely you don't mean Jefferson Jenkins, the social reformer? I mean the man who's fighting for the new cottage-estate scheme. It would be as interesting to meet him as any Cabinet Minister in the world, if you'll excuse ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... warrior of distinguished fame. By his valour and conduct he had risen from the lowest ranks of the army to command it as its captain. And arrived at that dignity, he did not put a stop to all improvements, like other chiefs, who rejoice to rest and return thanks. On the contrary, he became such a reformer that, to some extent, he remodelled the art ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Estienne from the ordinary Protestant scholars and publishers of his time is the fact that he was not only a Reformer but a humanist of broad and tolerant culture. In all the illustrious group of that age there is scarcely another like him in this union of religious zeal and of scholarly culture. Luther and Calvin and Tyndale ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... the world has grown old, and that latter-day men cannot be expected to undergo the rigorous fasts and penances achieved by St. Antony and St. Benedict. He is quite alive to the weakness of the age, to the need for improvement in the monasteries; and the word Reformer is applied with praise to the leaders of the movement. This was before the days of Luther, ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... feel the pressure of personal responsibility. They drift with the tide, doing as their neighbors do, and resting satisfied. The heroism of self-sacrifice or self-denial is something to which they cannot rise. Nothing is farther from their ambition than the role of a reformer. Comfortable, self-indulgent, placid, they move with the current and manage to keep away from its eddies. Such a man was Mr. Birtwell. He knew of some of the disasters that followed so closely upon his grand ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... alarmed him; and it is a supreme proof of the greatness and courage of his reforming Minister, Stadion, that his innovations should have been tolerated for so long. Now that disasters were shaking his throne he began to suspect the reformer; and Stadion confessed to the publicist, Gentz, that it was impossible to reckon on the Emperor for a quarter of an hour together, unless one stayed by him all the twenty-four hours.—"After a great defeat, he will take ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... knowledge (I am talking now only of the three as I found them in conversation). Don Marquis, while equally serious (and all the best humourists are serious at heart), has a more grotesque fancy and is more of a reformer, or, at any rate, a rebel. His dissatisfaction with hypocrisy provoked a scorn that Mr. Cobb is too elemental to entertain. Some day perhaps Don Marquis will induce an editor to print the exercises in unorthodoxy which he has been writing and which, in ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... But the real reformer of that day was John Wycliffe, rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire and lecturer at Oxford (S246). He boldly attacked the religious and the political corruption of the age. The "Begging Friars," who had once done such good ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... selfishness, its want of humanity and imagination; in his hatred of wealth, the scandalous triumph of which had already reached a pitch which the next generation was to see outdone. In all this, as cannot be too often insisted upon, it was essential for a reformer to be prudent. The People had no voice, and that their interests should be defended was inconceivable.[14] In the next century, after the reign of Louis XV. was over and speech had, in a great measure, become free, it was not understood ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... common? Miss Corelli sweeps the board. She is angry because some people will not take her seriously, but whilst her pages are charged with this kind of matter, she cannot fairly blame anybody but herself. She burns to be a social reformer. It would be unjust to deny her ardour. But when she tells the tale of a penniless nobleman who lives on his wife's money and breaks her heart, and assures us that 'there are thousands of such cases every day,' she undoes her own sermon by one rampant phrase of nonsense There are such men, ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... taste—and had the same dislike for extremists of all kinds. With the exception of Turgenev's quiet but profound pessimism, his temperament was very similar to that of the great German—such a man will surely incur the hatred of the true Reformer type. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... neglect of the sacred Scriptures in general, so even among the first reformers the Apocalypse was viewed with suspicion as to its claim to inspiration. It is probable that many of the unlearned will hear with wonder, and doubt the assertion, that even the great reformer Luther rejected the Apocalypse, as being no part of the sacred canon! The same judgment he formed of the epistle by James! With characteristic boldness, he wrote as follows:—"The epistle of James hath nothing evangelical in it. I do not consider it the writing of an apostle at all.... It ascribes ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... asperse the intelligence of the flock," deprecated the reformer quickly. "I've been thought to idealize The People; perhaps I do, but it is good for a man to keep sweet his faith in humanity. There's a saying of Emerson's that fits the case if I could remember it." He scoured his ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... considere l'etat de l'Irlande, et plus il semble qu'a tout prendre un gouvernement central fortement constitue serait, du moins pour quelque temps, le meilleur que puisse avoir ce pays. Une aristocratie existe, qu'on veut reformer. Mais a qui remettre le pouvoir qu'on va retirer de ses mains? Aux classes moyennes?—Elles ne font que de naitre en Irlande. L'avenir leur appartient; mats ne compromettront-elles pas cet avenir, si la charge de mener la societe est confiee des ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... mordant tailpiece vignettes, he was hailed in terms that have hardly been matched for adulation. Certainly no mere book illustrator ever received equal acclaim. He was pronounced a great artist, a great man, an outstanding moralist and reformer, and the master of a new pictorial method. This flood of eulogy rose increasingly during his lifetime and continued throughout the remainder of the 19th century. It came from literary men and women who saw him as the ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... famous old fortress of the Wartburg, which, in its time, dealt a deadly blow to Roman Catholicism by sheltering, in the hour of need, the Protestant champion, Luther. Like the good Protestants her Majesty and the Prince were, they went to see the great reformer's room, and looked at the ink-splash on the wall—the mark of his conflict with the devil—the stove at which he warmed himself, the rude table at which he wrote and ate, and above all, the glorious view over the myriads of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... Mayor Wayne had all of the rest of the town in his hand. He'd been in twice, and had lifted the graft take by a truly remarkable figure. From where Gordon stood, it looked like a clear victory for the reformer, Nolan. ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... a "day of vanities" and laid all their rich robes and jewels at Savonarola's feet. They made him ruler of the city. But, alas! they soon tired of his severities, sighed for their vanities back again, and at last burned the reformer at the stake.[23] ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... purest form in the heart of a child, and that it consists in nurture and development of this early grace through all the years that may be allotted. The same thing is true of all that concerns the ideal life. The artist, the reformer, the inventor, the poet, the man of pure science, the really fruitful and original man of affairs,—these are the incorrigibles. They refuse to accept the hard-and-fast rules that are laid down for them. They insist upon finding time and room for activities that ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... get a boy to be a law to himself, the sooner you make a man of him. This end is impossible without freedom. Let those who have no choice, or who have not the same end in view, do the best they can with such boys as they find: I chose only such as could bear liberty. I never set up as a reformer—only as an educator. For that kind of work others were more fit than I. It was not my calling.' Hence Mr Elder no more allowed labour to intrude upon play, than play to intrude upon labour. As soon as lessons were over, we were free to go where we would and do what we would, under ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... right strawy epistle." In like manner, he did not believe that Jude's epistle proceeded from an apostle. Considering it to have been taken from 2 Peter, and not well extracted either, he put it lower than the supposed original. The Reformer, as also his successors, made a distinction between the books of the New Testament similar to that of the Old; the generally received (homologoumena) and controverted books (antilegomena); but the Calvinists afterwards obliterated it, as the Roman Catholics at the Council ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... the present day is too often to separate itself from religion; for religion cannot work fast enough to satisfy its haste; cannot, at the end of each year, count the steps it has advanced in arithmetical numbers. The reformer asks not always for general growth and advancement in Christian Character; but demands special evidences, startling results, tangible proofs. These things all have their value, and the persons who strive for them doubtless ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... until he was fifty-seven years old. It was then that he determined, after a severe attack of sclerosis, to consecrate the remainder of his life to the moral regeneration of the world. He became a reformer among reformers. Emulating the magnificent efforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he levelled a varied assortment of uppercuts and body-blows at liquor, literature, vice, art, patent medicines, and Sunday theatres. His mind, under the influence of that insidious ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... preacher—reigned supreme, where her Secularist father and his associates, hot-headed and early representatives of a phase of thought which has since then found much abler, though hardly less virulent, expression in such a paper, say, as the 'National Reformer,' were for ever rending and trampling on all the current religious images and ideas, Dora shrank into herself more and more. She had always been a Baptist because her mother was. But in her deep reaction ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of another reformer, Dr. Marusitch, a Montenegrin who had but recently returned from Manchuria after many years' service as a surgeon in the Russian Army. A wild, enthusiastic creature—good-natured, well-meaning and indiscreet. For Montenegro he was rich. He had just married an extremely beautiful ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... more ill-used. The fact was that the Reverend T. W. Beasley was accustomed to university students, and could not focus his mind to the intellectual range of girls of thirteen to seventeen. Moreover, he was by nature a reformer. He liked to give others the benefit of his advice, and he had much to say in private to his sister upon the subject of her pupils' lessons and general management. Perhaps poor Miss Beasley had not expected quite so much criticism. She was accustomed, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the middle of his disquisitions, which would keep her breathless with a sense of being whirled through space at the tail of an electric kite, the kite would come down with a run, and the preacher and reformer would come hat in hand to the girl beside him, asking her humbly to advise him, to pour out on him some of that practical experience of hers among the poor and suffering, for the sake of which he would in an instant scornfully fling out of sight all his own magnificent plannings. Never ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Farwell, Chicago's well-known reformer, here tells briefly the story of two young girls, whom I have often met in his office, who were lured by a false theatrical agency to go to a vile resort. The agency of a wicked woman, or two of them, will be noted in this case, along with the base deeds of an unscrupulous man. ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... the Controversy Concerning an Intermediate State: appendix. It is probable that the great Reformer's opinion on this point was not always the same. For he says, distinctly, "The first man who died, when he awakes at the last day, will think he has been asleep but an hour" Beste, Dr. M. Luther's Glaubenslehre, cap. iv.: Die Lehre von den Letzen Dingen. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... as was implied, for example, in remedying the grievances of paupers or of children in factories. The conflict with morality, again, was so plain as to need no demonstration. It seems to be a questionable logic which assumes the merit of a reformer to be in proportion to the flagrancy of the evil assailed. The more obvious the case, surely the less the virtue needed in the assailant. However this may be, no one can deny the moral excellence of such men as Wilberforce and Clarkson, nor the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... might have entertained such a scheme, but not a Caesar. The Senate knew him. They knew what he had done. They knew what he would now do, and for this reason they feared and hated him. Caesar was a reformer. He had long seen that the Roman Constitution was too narrow for the functions which had fallen to it, and that it was degenerating into an instrument of tyranny and injustice. The courts of law were corrupt; the elections wore corrupt. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... and Frobisher had returned, and Marion was once more in her Stepney rooms. She was apparently not much worse; would allow no talk about herself; and though she had quietly relinquished all her old activities, her room was still the centre it had long been for the London thinker and reformer. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tyranny of faith, customs, laws; if we examine what the personal character of the preacher is, we begin pretty clearly to understand the value of the doctrine. Any one can see why Rousseau should be such a whimpering reformer, and Byron such a free and easy misanthropist, and why our accomplished Madame Sand, who has a genius and eloquence inferior to neither, should take the present condition of mankind (French-kind) so much to heart, and labor so hotly to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... issue. It was so in old times; Moses began the emancipation of the Jews, but didn't take Israel to the Promised Land after all. He had to make way for Joshua to complete the work. It looks as if the first reformer of a thing has to meet such a hard opposition and gets so battered and bespattered that afterward when people find they have to accept his reform they will accept it more easily ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... propensities. Their passion for what is genteel might be used most advantageously in the same direction; and indeed, I think it would be difficult to find people who offered such a fair purchase by so many of their characteristics to the hand of the reformer. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... licence to be printed, or reprinted, if there be found in his book one sentence of a venturous edge, uttered in the height of zeal (and who knows whether it might not be the dictate of a divine spirit?) yet not suiting with every low decrepit humour of their own, though it were Knox himself, the reformer of a kingdom, that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash: the sense of that great man shall to all posterity be lost, for the fearfulness or the presumptuous rashness of a perfunctory licenser. And to what an author this violence hath been ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... found Mr. Chauncey, a good and great man, from England, who had known their grandfather, and was an honored friend of the family. The boys loved to hear him talk, and all tea-time listened with interest to the conversation, for Mr. Chauncey was a reformer as well as a famous clergyman, and it was like inspiring music to hear him tell about the world's work, and the brave men and women who were carrying it on. Eager to show that they had, at least, begun, the boys told him about their ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... her pluck? There were ladies in those day too "unwomanly" to remain helpless burdens on overworked fathers and mothers, too "unsexed" to marry the first man that came along for the sake of their bread and butter. They fought their way into journalism, into the office, into the shop. The reformer is not always the pleasantest man to invite to a tea-party. Maybe these women who went forward with the flag were not the most charming of their sex. The "Dora Copperfield" type will for some time remain the young man's ideal, the model the young girl puts before herself. Myself, I think Dora Copperfield ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... other hand, look at the portrait of the great Italian orator and reformer, Savonarola, on page 193. It looks more like the hunting Indians of North-western America than any of the preceding faces. In fact, if it was dressed with a scalp-lock it would pass muster anywhere as a portrait of ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... disturbed' education was next resumed at Woburn Abbey under Dr. Cartwright; the Duke's domestic chaplain, and brother to Major Cartwright, the well-known political reformer. The chaplain at Woburn was a many-sided man. He was not only a scholar and a poet, but also possessed distinct mechanical skill, and afterwards won fame as the inventor of the power-loom. He was quick-witted and accomplished, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... further reformed; the latter by encroachments on the liberties of the subject, and assistance furnished to a corrupt hierarchy, had become odious, and was to be resisted and restrained. The idea of abolishing the monarchy had indeed not entered the mind of the most daring reformer; but it is certain, that when his feelings were inflamed by brooding over real and fancied wrongs from the established Church, his anger would overflow upon the government, which, with no sparing hand, wielded the sword to enforce pains and penalties, imposed, ostensibly for the protection ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... who, as professor in the university, author of text-books, editor of journals, and reformer of the local stage, won a great though transitory prestige. He was a stedfast champion of clarity, regularity, and good taste, laid great stress on probability and reasonableness, and held that a strict observance of the three unities was essential in tragedy. His advocacy of French ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... Episcopalian or a Baptist, a free trader or a tariff advocate or a Manchester economist without asking why. Such "complexes" were probably referred to by the celebrated physician who emphasized the hopelessness of most individuals over forty. And every reformer and forum lecturer knows how difficult it is to convert the average audience of seasoned adults to a new idea: he finds the most responsive groups in the universities and colleges. It is significant that the "educated" adult audiences in clubs and prosperous churches ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... such (Hen. [780]Neuhusius makes a doubt of it, [781] Valentinus Andreas and others) or an Elias artifex their Theophrastian master; whom though Libavius and many deride and carp at, yet some will have to be "the [782]renewer of all arts and sciences," reformer of the world, and now living, for so Johannes Montanus Strigoniensis, that great patron of Paracelsus, contends, and certainly avers [783]"a most divine man," and the quintessence of wisdom wheresoever ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... The Reformer is either a Savior or a Rebel, all depending on whether he succeeds or fails, and your point of view. He is what he is, regardless of what other men think of him. The man who is indicted and executed as a rebel, often afterward has ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... that no theological dissertation can ever convey. Nor did he feel that in so doing he was in any sense diverging from true Lutheranism. The fact that Luther himself chose the creed and the words of institution of the sacrament as a basis for his catechism, showed, he contended, that the great Reformer also had ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg |
