"Bettering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... promotion of his 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
... more contentedly than ever to hammer the soles of the new shoes and patch up the old, Mr. Stewart was taking silent but effective measures for bettering his condition. He first went to the old watchman, from whom he heard much in behalf of our hero, and which served to strengthen him in his benevolent project. He found out from the old man, too, that Mr. Walters ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... Dolly, her humour bettering as mine went down. "Oh, no; you are jealous. He is more sought after than any gentleman at the assemblies, and Miss Dulany vows his steps are ravishing. There's for you, my lad! He may not be able ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stood talking a while about certain public schemes that were in progress for the bettering of Ancoats. Then he said with ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is firmly persuaded that my remaining at Thorpe Ambrose is referable to my having some private means of communicating with the major which it is impossible for her to discover. With this conviction in her mind, she has become so unmanageable that no person, with any chance of bettering herself, could possibly remain in attendance an her; and sooner or later, the major, object to it as he may, will be obliged to place her ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... over Wordsworth lately: which has had much effect in bettering my Blue Devils: for his philosophy does not abjure melancholy, but puts a pleasant countenance upon it, and connects it with humanity. It is very well, if the sensibility that makes us fearful of ourselves is diverted to become a cause of sympathy and interest with Nature and mankind: and this ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... 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 ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... are bettering yourself. It is seldom that they over there take any notice of us over here, or request the services of any of my men. But your work has attracted some attention. I shall request that your services are not entirely lost to this department. Herr Stammer ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... ideas, received no encouragement; the majority of men died without ever having ventured out of the neighborhood in which they were born. For them there was no hope of personal improvement, none of the bettering of their lot; there were no comprehensive schemes for the avoidance of individual want, none for the resistance of famines. Pestilences were permitted to stalk forth unchecked, or at best opposed only by mummeries. ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... than have been (1) the picturesque reconstructions of ancient cities, and the presentment of their city life, and (2) the corresponding surveys of the present conditions of town life, and of the resources and means of bettering them. ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... hopes are here meant some of the various schemes in which Irishmen have indulged and still indulge with the view of bettering their country. This chapter will aim at showing that, for the resurrection of Ireland, the reconstruction of her past is impossible; parliamentary independence or "home rule," insufficient, physical force and violent revolution, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... the Negro, saying, "While this process is going on the colored classes are gradually diffusing themselves throughout the country and are making steady advances in intelligence and refinement, and if half the zeal were displayed in bettering their condition that is now wasted in the vain and fruitless effort of sending them abroad, their intellectual and moral improvement would be steady and rapid." William Lloyd Garrison was untiring and merciless in flaying the inconsistencies and selfishness of the colonization organization. ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... credit toward the reduction of the debt. To make the hardship greater, if a relative or friend comes forward to pay the debt, the creditor has the right to refuse payment, and to keep his slave, whose only hope of bettering himself is in getting his owner to accept payment for him from a third party, so that he may become the slave of the person who has ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... 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 ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... fared very badly in the new country, it often happened that he came out very well in the end. Among the white people who came here as slaves there were often convicts and paupers; but even some of these succeeded in bettering their condition and establishing themselves as good citizens, and in ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... characterize their modern standard of gaining their livelihood.[28] A constantly increasing number of emigrants are streaming into the Holy Land, although the Zionists are devoting their main endeavors toward firmly establishing the resident inhabitants and bettering their condition. On April 3, 1914, the London Jewish Chronicle reported the emigration from the single port of Odessa as numbering 250 ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... 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 ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Lady Castlefort's marriage, the younger, the beautiful being now the successful lady of the ascendant, the elder writhed in all the combined miseries of jealousy and dependance, and an everyday lessening chance of bettering her condition. Lord Castlefort, too, for good reasons of his own, well remembered, detested Lady Katrine, and longed to shake her off. In this wish, at least, husband and wife united; but Lady Castlefort had no decent ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... cognizance of, not 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 Ignorance, Vice, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... for water was 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 in making friends in every manly way ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... 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 ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... 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 ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... tension, although peripheral nerve irritation may be diminished. Hence a fair dose of morphin hypodermicaly with a small dose of atropin, if respiratory depression is feared, is a physiologic method of bettering the condition. In this kind of heart attack a drug which often acts well is nitroglycerin. It may be given hypodermically in a dose of from 1/200 to 1/100 grain, or a tablet may be dissolved on the tongue, and the dose be repeated once or twice ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... thou survive 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 ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... groom, and coachman, like his father before him, at the Hall thirty years; his father died in our service. Mr. Flitch had not a single grievance here; only one day the demon seizes him with the notion of bettering himself he wants his independence, and he presents himself to me with a story of a shop in our county town.—Flitch! remember, if you go you go for good.—Oh, he quite comprehended.—Very well; good-bye, Flitch;—the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 as this should ever come to an end, I ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... center current history. Men are made in New York State in the schools. ... The better the schools the finer the quality of the men produced. Therefore, the school exhibit of New York State should interest every citizen, as the schools have been bettering year by year and the product increasing in value. ... The Commission in charge of this exhibit has spared no expense to make this educational showing a storehouse of novel ideas and suggestions dealing with the advance in pedagogy, and of the ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... 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 ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... as your 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 ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... 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 man studied them ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... who live so much in the world of imagination fed by poetry and romance. Watch the throng seated about an Arab or Indian or Persian story-teller and poet, men and women with all the marks of want, hungry, almost naked, without any prospect in life of ever bettering their sordid condition; see their eyes kindle, their breathing suspended, their tense absorption; see their tears, hear their laughter, note their excitement as the magician unfolds to them a realm of the imagination in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... serious to quite make it work out. Sometimes he actually gave people orders. It came to him as a surprise that he must be almost as rich as old J. John Reynolds, who was still drawing wealth from a comparatively small loan—futilely at his age, unless he had really aimed at the ideal of bettering ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... to use the power of the unions unjustly, cultivate amicable relations with everybody, and try in all possible ways to make true men of themselves? If the men had worked along this line they would have found they were bettering themselves in every way faster than they ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... "Do as others do; don't be singular; never offend against good taste; have a tinge of religiousness, but remember too much is impracticable for daily life; whatever you do, don't be poor; never yield an inch, unless you are going to make something by the concession; take every advantage of bettering your position, it matters not at what cost to others—they must look after themselves, as ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... Lord made the heavens and the earth and He 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 was ...
— A Slave Girl's Story - Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. • Kate Drumgoold
... dressing-room. She had not undressed, but was standing by a window. She made no sign that she heard him enter, and he hesitated. Why try to talk things out with her? Why hurt her? Why not let things drift along? There was no hope of bettering them. One of two things he must do, either tear open the situation ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... society for 'the Suppression of Vice' in 1802. I don't suppose that vice was much suppressed. Sydney Smith ridiculed its performances in the Edinburgh for 1809. The article is in his works. A more interesting society was that for 'bettering the condition of the poor,' started by Sir Thomas Bernard and ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... study, too, would be the evolution of the modern methods of raising and bettering the condition of the poor,—the evolution, especially, of the idea that men are to be helped to help themselves, in opposition to the old theories of indiscriminate giving, which, taking root in some of the most beautiful utterances of our sacred books, grew in the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... stand for a 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 seem still equipped for their ancient primacy. Possibly it is their ancient primacy ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... 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. We have settled a few principles in our minds. We ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... a Job's comforter at hand to put these black thoughts into my head they would not have helped me nor harmed me much. My whole heart had been set on getting my sights, and filled with the inconsequent hope that in getting them I somehow would be bettering my chances of coming out safe at last; and so it seemed to me when I could not get them—and in this, though the sight-taking had nothing to do with it, there was reason in plenty—that all likelihood of my being ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... death, after the congestion of both lungs had shut off any probability of recovery, and the sculptor had asked his pupil to send his body home. "It's not a pleasant place to be lying while the world is moving and doing and bettering," he had said with a feeble smile, "but it rather seems as though we ought to go back to the place we came from in the end. The townspeople will come in for a look at me; and after they have had their say I shan't have much to fear from the judgment of God. The wings of the Victory, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... but I will never part with mine." "Well, my good woman, the offer to educate them has done no harm: let me hope it will do good. I would have you recollect that you have now a proposal made you of bettering their present and future condition. You and I must soon meet at the judgment-seat of Christ, to give an account of this meeting; and you know that I can do better for your little ones than you can." She was silent. The author ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... and Honore de Balzac undoubtedly put their heads together, to seek for some means of bettering a situation so painful and humiliating for a young man of twenty-five. Accordingly, when chance seemed to offer them a good opportunity, they hastened to ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... which will go down well with the House of Commons. Our politicians are at present in a state of extreme servility before the enterprising gentlemen who are now at the head of what is called the Labour Party. Every one will sympathise with the aspirations of this party in so far as they aim at bettering the lot of those who do the hard and uninteresting work of the world, and giving them a larger share of the productions that they help to turn out; but that is not the same thing as giving obsequious attention to the views ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... bettering conditions in prison camps, especially at Ruhleben, will be long remembered. When conditions were at their worst he went out daily to keep himself informed, and then daily went to the Foreign Office or wrote to the Ministry of War in an effort ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea; where, after a variety of good and ill fortune, a little before I was acquainted ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... greeted Beroes. Mefres declared at that time that Egypt had fallen because the priestly order was lowered, while I asserted that the misery of the people was the cause of the suffering of the State, to which thou, so far as I remember, didst answer: Let Mefres occupy himself with bettering the priesthood, Pentuer in improving the lot of common people, while I will avoid destructive war between Egypt ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... again there was some emigration of the well-to-do and influential. But, as in the South, the people who moved were mainly those who were having difficulty in making ends meet and who could see no way of bettering their condition in their old homes. The back country of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and western Massachusetts was filled with people of this sort—poor, discontented, restless, without political influence, and needing ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... girlhood, with its superficial desires and ambitions. When her husband first met her, she was a woman of thirty, and had been chastened by deep sorrows and some bitter experiences. Years before, she and her mother had come to this town from a New England city in the hope of bettering their circumstances. They had no weapons other than their needles with which to fight life's battle, but they were industrious and frugal—characteristic traits which won the confidence of the ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... it came to present to itself as its aim or goal a special kind or degree of knowledge, to be inspired and guided by the hope of that. Practical as in many ways was the concern of ancient philosophy—its whole bent was towards the bettering of human life—it sought to achieve this by the extension and deepening of knowledge, and not either through the cultivation or refinement of emotion or the organization of practical, civil or social or philanthropic activities. It ...
— Progress and History • Various
... versed in demonology that we do not recollect to have heard of this particular infernal before. Be that as it may, Count Hardyknute of Holstein, having been sent into the world deformed in person and poor in circumstances, and being resolved to sell his soul to damnation for the bettering of his body, makes a contract with the demon, in condition of his being made handsome and powerful, to sacrifice to him a human victim on a particular day in each year; in failure of which he is to become the prey of the demon, who is very handsomely ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... lieutenant has been giving you the news," replied Smith, with a genuine blush. "Well, the fact of it is, she is too sensible a woman to regret the absence of one whom she knows is bettering himself, so that there were but few tears shed ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... traditional American—and human—view that the natural world exists for the primary purpose of bettering the lot of such human beings or groups of human beings as may have the ingenuity and the vigor to extract its treasures or to adapt it to their use. Quite often the activities for which this view provides justification are exploitative—they ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... carry large 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 their ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... disposer of events with an eye of gratitude for the blessing which I hope He intends to bestow on me, in bestowing you. I sincerely wish that He may bless my endeavours to make your life as comfortable and happy as possible, both in sweetening the rougher parts of my natural temper, and bettering the unkindly circumstances of my fortune. This, my dear, is a passion, at least in my view, worthy of a man, and, I will add, worthy of a Christian. The sordid earth-worm may profess love to a woman's person, whilst, in reality, his affection is ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... long triall and experience, hath bin found to be very profitable for the bettering of land, and especially for the increase of corne and tillage, within the counties of Devon and Cornwall, where the inhabitants have not commonly used any other worth, for the bettering of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... someone, step in and deal with the matter comprehensively, without paying regard to vested interests? Surely, if the right people would only put their heads together, they must hit on some method of bettering the present wretched condition of those much ill-used but patient and long-suffering creatures, among whom the first to subscribe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... of his good counsel to the door of relief; and he said, None can save thee from this thy strait and sorrowful state save the Barmecides.' Quoth I, Who can brook their pride and put up patiently with their arrogant pretensions?' and quoth he, Thou wilt put up with all this for the bettering of thy case.'"—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... it were yet endeavoring to make the world believe, that the opposition to it arose from a few men only, of "no property" and "desperate fortunes," who were "endeavoring to bring things into confusion, that they might have the advantage of bettering their fortunes by plunder." Little did they think that it was then known, as it now appears in fact, that those who were assiduously watching for places, preferment and pensions, were in truth the very men of NO PROPERTY, and had no other way of mending ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... for bettering the family circumstances, and by certain minor forces which cannot now be named, my father began to think seriously of casting his lot with the great stream of emigrants. Many family councils were held before it was agreed that the plan must ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... place and could secure some rest, whilst he was still in easy communication with both the marching column and his own men. He reaped the advantage of his forethought. As my command had to assist the wagons and the artillery, no such means of bettering the situation was possible for us. I had notified Willich that I would be in person at the extreme rear of my command so that he could communicate with me most promptly and obtain my support if he were seriously attacked. The brigade in the lead was directed to give the wagons and ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Cerimon, the man withdrawn from the world to study the bettering of man, revives the body of Thaisa, are the most lovely things in ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... after that. The importance of her position was borne into her in a new and better way. By being Lady Hurdly she might hope, perhaps, to do some little service in bettering the lots of those who were at the other extreme of life's scale from her, whereas if she had remained in her former position she would have had as little value at one ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... 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 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... degrees E. Most of the ponies had 600 lb. leads on their sledges, Meare's dog team 750, and Wilson's 600. We found the surface very bad, most of the ponies sinking deep in the snow. After doing roughly five miles we halted and had a meal. Oates was called into our tent and consulted with a view to bettering the conditions for the ponies. As a result it was decided to march by night and rest during the day when the sun would be higher and the air warmer. There was quite a drop in the temperature between noon ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... occupy his attention. He could discover numerous ways of bettering the conditions of affairs, and took keen delight in making changes calculated to lessen the ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... always heard my father say that civilisation was founded upon the instinct of ownership, and that it was the only thing that had advanced the world. And if you dread the danger of giving her advantages, as you say, or bettering her worldly lot," she continued, with a smile for his quixotic scruples, "why, I'll do my best to reduce her blessings to a minimum; though I don't see why the poor little thing shouldn't get some good from the inequalities that there always must be ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... knew "how to behave himself," and dealing to every man full justice—meted by his own measure—he was liable even to generous acts, after being severe and having his own way. But if any body ever got the better of him by lies, and not fair bettering, that man had wiser not begin to laugh inside the Riding. Stephen Anerley was slow but sure; not so very keen, perhaps, but grained with kerns of maxim'd thought, to meet his uses as they came, and to make a rogue uneasy. To move him from such thoughts was hard; but to move him from a spoken word ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... And not only must we thus put ourselves in the way of 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
... have warned Selina that she was not bettering her case. Instead, her belated attempt at caution flew away ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... on starting a new topic. Trudaine was preoccupied, and disinclined to talk. It was necessary, however, in common politeness, to say something. Hardly attending himself to his own words, he began with a commonplace phrase: "I regret, Monsieur Lomaque, that we have not had more opportunities of bettering our acquaintance." ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... a large class, Denyven. Every soul of us has the privilege of bettering out condition if we have the brain and the industry to do it. Energy and intelligence come to the front, and have the right to be there. A skillful workman gets double the pay of a bungler, and deserves it. Of course there will always be rich and poor, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... which makes me cruelly nervous. I don't know why it should be so, for I have nothing particularly disagreeable to look at; far from it, I am better than I was at this time last year, my hopes firmer, my health stronger, my affairs bettered and bettering. Yet I feel an inexpressible nervousness in consequence of this employment. The memory, though it retains all that has passed, has closed sternly over it; and this rummaging, like a bucket dropped suddenly into a well, deranges and confuses the ideas ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... no particular use crying over spilt milk—it's no use to move when there is no idea existing of bettering one's self, so here I'll roost until daylight, unless Doctor comes back to hunt me up!" I judged it was not far from 2 o'clock, A. M., and believed it possible that our venison might only whet a grizzly bear's appetite ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... weariness, if for nothing else. This is in my eyes the second part of a woman's parish work. I entreat you to bear it in mind when you hear, as I trust you will, lectures in this place upon that SANITARY REFORM, without which all efforts for the bettering of the masses are in my eyes not only ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... master and told him that he had an opportunity for bettering himself, and should not work for him ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... family was an old Connecticut one, which had come down in the world. Everything went wrong with his father. He was hard-working, kind-hearted, and strictly honest, but nothing succeeded. With the hope of "bettering his condition," he moved five times in ten years, getting so desperately poor at last that a borrowed two-horse sleigh carried all his worldly goods, including a wife and five children. Joel Weed was, perhaps, as unfortunate a man as ever brought an illustrious son into ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... all the 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 circle of our present ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... helping to 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 ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... they are men of substance; most honourable; most humane, too; and, as events were to show, most human. With fine foresight they detected in the conflagration of patriotism which consumed the consumer, a chance of bettering themselves. Having a constitutional right to do it, they took this tide in their affairs at what they (rather hastily) conceived to be its flood. Actuated by motives of the new ("enlightened") self-interest, they had proceeded to run ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... grievances and political rights have been widely disseminated among the masses, and these are not engendered or fostered by the prevalence of distress or that want of employment which not unnaturally turns the thoughts of the idle and unoccupied to the most desperate expedients for bettering their condition, but they are the mere aspirings of a fierce democracy who have been gradually but deeply impregnated with sentiments of hatred and jealousy of the upper classes, and with a determination to 'level' all political distinctions and privileges, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... work, what a pyramid of work, his life represents! The young labourer left with his mother and brothers and sisters to keep, learning carpentering, and bettering his wages—learning mason-work, picking up the way to manage machinery, inspiring men with confidence, and beginning to get the leverage of borrowed money, getting a good name at the bank, managing ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... which has not been deliberately fixed, but forced upon us by competition, excessive population, public burdens, and the necessities of social position. In a new country, however, where all these circumstances are absent, and whither employers and employed resort alike for the purpose of bettering their condition, we should like to see traditions cast aside, and the fabric of society erected on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... mischief! But the harm I did you last night I will undo this evening. Ladies and Gentlemen!—I will give you, presently, the pleasure of hearing some lines written expressive of my wishes toward the unknown—but supposed—mistress of my life and affections. Any suggestions toward the bettering of them—I will hear." ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... in Africa seem to have engaged in personal combat with the natives. Even of Mr. Rhodes it is not set down that he has killed many Matabele with his own hands. Times change, not always for the bettering of ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... made up their minds early to seek a career in India, have failed to pass the Civil Service examinations, or, having originally intended to take up the teaching profession in England, are subsequently induced to come out to India by disappointments at home or by the often illusory hope of bettering their material prospects. When they arrive they begin work without any knowledge of the character and customs of the people. Some are employed in inspection and others as professors, and the latter especially are apt to lose heart when they realize the thanklessness of their task ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... with Governor Moore was to improve his time, not knowing how long his precarious power might last, for bettering his low and indigent circumstances. It appeared to him, that the traffic in Indians was the shortest way to riches. He therefore granted commissions to several persons, to assault, trepan and captivate as many ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... 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 ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... St. Croix was released, when he flew to the Marchioness and instructed her in the art, in order that she might employ it in bettering the circumstances of both. She assumed the appearance of a nun, distributed food to the poor, nursed the sick in the Hotel Dieu, and tried the strength of her poisons, undetected, on these hapless wretches. She bribed one Chaussee, St. Croix's servant, to poison her own ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... 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 ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... risk was very great. Also, Agathemer argued, we were too near to Rome to be safe if we got clear away. Between dread of death if caught and fear of we knew not what if we escaped, we stuck to our cookery. Mixed with our projects for bettering our prospects we talked much of our amazement at the treatment which the deputation and its associates had met in Italy. Manifestly the townsfolk and their officials were not only overawed, but helpless. If there had been no Rome, no Republic, no Praetorians, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the reader to dwell upon this fact, that, the moment life has an inspiring significance, and the moment also the men, industries, and conditions around us become instrumental toward resolving that, in this moment one must begin, so far as he may, bettering these conditions. If I hire a man to work in my garden, how much is it worth to me, if he bring not merely his hands and gardening skill, but also an appreciable soul, with him! So soon as that fact is apparent, fruitful relations are established between us, and sympathies begin to fly like bees, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... rags, the people were ready to rise in 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
... himself ideas of health and hope and happiness and usefulness, instead of brooding upon the emptiness and unanswered needs of his life or upon his failing physical powers. Mrs. Eddy's sect, more than any other one of the cults which believe in and practise this method of bettering the patient's physical condition through his mind, has forced the most hide-bound medical practitioners to take account of this old but ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... combustible per effective horse hour is remarkable, and fully shows what may be expected of the gas motor supplied by a gas generator in putting to profit certain improvements that will hereafter be possible, such, for example, as the lightening of the movable parts of the motor, the bettering of its organic rendering (now quite feeble), the use of better oils, the reduction of the consumption of water, the superheating of the steam injected ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... the impulse that prompted to action. No one can be utterly miserable who has a hope, even a remote one, of bettering his condition; and with a motive such as this to cheer him, Johnny persevered; young as he was, he understood the necessity. But how often, during the four weary weeks that succeeded, did the memory of the Saturday night he had ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... i.e. without the motive of bettering one's own self, or without any motive at all. (This contains the germ of the doctrine preached more elaborately in the ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... confined in narrow cells full of disease, and totally unfit for human habitation. The Popes, learning this sad state of affairs, tried to remedy it. Clement V was particularly zealous in his attempts at prison reform.[2] That he succeeded in bettering, at least for a time, the lot of these unfortunates, in whom he interested himself, ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... 1850. Week after week and month after month slipped away between the start and the arrival on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas. Delicate women and children of tender years developed extraordinary endurance, and showed remarkable fortitude on the wearisome trip. But the hope of bettering their fortunes was the magnet that drew them steadily on, day after day, in ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... character. And when you think of your sorrows, disappointments, losses, when you think of your pains and sickness, and all the ills that flesh is heir to, principally as being 'trials,' in the deep sense of that word—viz., a means of testing you, and thereby helping you, bettering you, and building up character—then it is more possible to blend the sorrow that they produce with the joy to which they may lead. The Apostle adds the other thought of the transitoriness of sorrow, and yet further, the other of its necessity for the growth of humanity. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... kinsman Sir John Hawkins in the bay of Mexico, but was again unfortunate, returning from the voyage rich in character and fame, but with almost ruined circumstances. These disappointments served only to increase his desire of bettering his fortunes at the expence of the grand enemy of his country, against whom he made two other voyages into these parts; the first in 1570 with two ships, the Dragon and Swan and the second in 1571, in the Swan alone, chiefly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... 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! ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin |
