Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Reform   /rəfˈɔrm/  /rɪfˈɔrm/   Listen
Reform

verb
1.
Make changes for improvement in order to remove abuse and injustices.
2.
Bring, lead, or force to abandon a wrong or evil course of life, conduct, and adopt a right one.  Synonyms: reclaim, rectify, regenerate.  "Reform your conduct"
3.
Produce by cracking.
4.
Break up the molecules of.
5.
Improve by alteration or correction of errors or defects and put into a better condition.
6.
Change for the better.  Synonyms: see the light, straighten out.  "The habitual cheater finally saw the light"



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Reform" Quotes from Famous Books



... B.C. 126, the Tribune M. Junius Pennus carried a law that all aliens should quit the city. Caius Gracchus spoke against this law, and his friends still remained faithful to the cause of the Italians. In the following year (B.C. 125), M. Fulvius Flaccus, who was then Consul, brought forward a Reform Bill, granting the Roman citizenship to all the Italian allies. But it was evident that the Tribes would reject this law, and the Senate got rid of the proposer by sending him into Transalpine Gaul, where the Massilians had implored the assistance of Rome ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... who can believe that Sir Robert Peel would not be ready to carry out their views? Readers, it may be that to you such deeds as those are horrible even to be thought of or expressed; to me I own that they are so. So also to Sir Robert Peel was Catholic Emancipation horrible, so was Reform of Parliament, so was the Corn Law Repeal. They were horrible to him, horrible to be thought of, horrible to be expressed. But the people required these measures, and therefore he carried them, arguing on their behalf with all the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... before the people of New York could realise the depths of degradation to which the politics of that time could sink. If Tweed had stolen only half as much as he did, investigation and discovery and reform would have been impossible. The re-election of Morrisey was necessary. He was elected not by the vote of his old partisans alone, but by Republicans. Hamilton Fish, General Grant's secretary, voted for him. Peter Cooper, the friend of education and the founder ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... have the fate of all freedom; it will not be introduced into our laws until after it has taken possession of our minds. But if it be true that a reform must be generally understood, in order that it may be solidly established, it follows that nothing can retard it so much as that which misleads public opinion; and what is more likely to mislead ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... Downing Street and accredited Semblance? but, How do you agree with God's Universe and the actual Reality of things? This Universe has its Laws. If we walk according to the Law, the Law-Maker will befriend us; if not, not. Alas, by no Reform Bill, Ballot-box, Five-point Charter, by no boxes or bills or charters, can you perform this alchemy: 'Given a world of Knaves, to produce an Honesty from their united action!' It is a distillation, once for all, not possible. You pass it through alembic after alembic, it ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... as nobly in and after this second attempt (all her senses about her) as she has done after the first, she will come out an angel upon full proof, in spite of man, woman, and devil: then shall there be an end of all her sufferings. I will then renounce that vanquished devil, and reform. And if any vile machination start up, presuming to mislead me, I will sooner stab it in my heart, as it rises, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... precepts which all are taught and so few obey, they would find rules for every emergency; and, most of all, would they learn the great secret which lies so profoundly hid from them and their philosophy, in the contented mind. Nothing short of this will ever bring the mighty reform that the world needs. The press may be declared free, but a very brief experience will teach those who fancy that this one conquest will secure the victory, that they have only obtained King Stork in the lieu of King Log; a vulgar and most hideous tyrant for one of royal birth ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... as this foolish law is unrepealed it must be carried out. Neither party is in favor of civil service reform, and never was. The Republican party did not carry it out, and did not intend to. The President has the right to nominate. Under the law as it is now, when the President wants to appoint a clerk, or when one of his secretaries wants one, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... innumerable: Slovak candidates were prevented from being elected by being imprisoned. Corruption and violence are the two main characteristics of all elections in "democratic" Hungary. Even to-day when some Radicals in Budapest talk of electoral reform, they want suffrage to be extended to Magyar electors only, and also stipulate that the candidates shall be of Magyar nationality. No Magyar politicians will ever abandon the programme of the territorial ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... were brought to an end when Mrs. Osbourne discovered that her husband had again betrayed her, and she returned to her father's house in Indiana. After nearly a year she yielded to entreaties and promises of reform, and again journeyed to California, taking Cora Van de Grift, one of her younger sisters, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... to stay here and drive cattle, because, when you get to feeling differently, you will want to get back among your friends where you can do more and be more benefit to the world than you can driving cattle. If you can't think of anything else to do, you can go home and start a reform. You would make a good reformer. You always want to make things better instead ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... decline of his profession[142], or Peniculus and Gelasimus indulge in haunting threnody on their perpetual lack of food[143]. Bankers, lawyers and panders come in for their share of satire[144]. Our favorite topic today, the frills and furbelows of woman's dress and its reform, held the boards of ancient Athens and Rome[145]. In Mil. 637 ff, Periplecomenus descants on the joys of the old bon vivant and the expense of a wife. The delights or pains of love[146], the ruminations of old age[147], marriage reform[148] and divorce[149], the views of meretrices ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... housing, clean water, electricity, medical care, and jobs, but the Afghan government and international donors remain committed to improving access to these basic necessities by prioritizing infrastructure development, education, housing development, jobs programs, and economic reform over the next year. Growing political stability and continued international commitment to Afghan reconstruction create an optimistic outlook for maintaining improvements in the Afghan economy in 2005. Expanding poppy cultivation and a growing opium ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... useless to deny that he belonged—that he was perfectly innocent of any piratical act, having been carried off to act as cook—that he had at first taken an interest in me, and had done his best to reform me, but in vain, and that lately he had given my case up ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... acquired during the solitude of the first years of his childhood. This excellent woman first made him familiar with the maternal feminine solicitude, closer observation of which afterwards led him, as well as Pestalozzi, to a reform of the system ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... assumed the singularities of a man of genius and enrolled himself among those adorers of art, whose intentions, let us say, were excellent; for surely nothing could be more ridiculous than the costume of Frenchmen in the nineteenth century, and nothing more courageous than an attempt to reform it. Raoul, let us do him this justice, presents in his person something fine, fantastic, and extraordinary, which needs a frame. His enemies, or his friends, they are about the same thing, agree that nothing could harmonize better with ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... 1.9% in 1995 and 1.5% in 1996. Although tourism and the Panama Canal posted growth in 1996, most sectors remained stagnant, and some, like the Colon Free Zone, banana and shrimp exports, and construction, were down from 1995. Although the PEREZ BALLADARES administration has advanced an economic reform program designed to liberalize the trade regime, attract foreign investment, privatize state-owned enterprises, institute fiscal reform, and encourage job-creation through labor code reform, the positive effects of this program have not yet been felt at the macroeconomic level. In 1996, the government ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Chosroes is a reform of the administration of the army. Under the system previously existing, Chosroes found that the resources of the state were lavishly wasted, and the result was a military force inefficient and badly accoutred. No security was ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... of railroads everywhere, I might have been tempted at times in Italy to abjure my creed if I had not always reflected that the state there had just come into possession of the roads, with all their capitalistic faults of management and outwear of equipment which it would doubtless soon reform and repair. I venture to suggest now, however, that its prime duty is to have platforms level with the car-doors, as they are in England, and not to let Italian ladies stand in the doorways with their umbrellas. ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... government must be directed, in order to raise Sardinia to the rank she is entitled to hold by the extent of her resources, and the intelligence of great numbers of her inhabitants, we can only enumerate, without observation, the educational system generally, including a reform of the Universities of Cagliari and Sassari,—sanitary measures tending, at least, to alleviate the insalubrity which is the scourge of the island,—improved police arrangements throughout the interior,—an increased supply of the circulating medium, the deficiency of which is represented as extreme ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... other wish than to atone for his error, and die in their defence; he looked for no reward beyond the King's forgiveness of his having joined the Orleans faction; he never had any view in joining that faction but that of aiding the Duke, for the good of his country, in the reform of ministerial abuses, and strengthening the royal authority by the salutary laws of the National Assembly; but he no sooner discovered that impure schemes of personal aggrandisement gave the real impulse to these pretended reformers than he forsook their unholy ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... this passage but in many other places evidence of the fact that Cornaro lived a cheerful, contented life. The reform was evidently not merely in his eating and drinking but fully as much in the inner thought of his life. This is shown in many ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry

... mend it, and remoove the Prince, That's highest Treason: change his Councellours, That's alteration of the Government, The common cloke that Treasons muffled in: If laying force aside, to seeke by suite And faire petition t'have the State reform'd, That's tutering of the Prince and takes away Th' one his person, this his Soveraigntie. Barely in private talke to shew dislike Of what is done is dangerous; therefore the action Mislike you cause the doer likes you not. Men are not fit to live ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... you will make money out of a company for reforming the people of Megalia, making them civilized, Christian—a thing that is not at all possible—ever, in any way. Tell me, my friend, could you not start a company to develop, reform, improve Corinne and me. Believe me, it ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... struggles with an unsustainable fiscal deficit, an overvalued exchange rate, soaring inflation, and bare shelves. Its 1998-2002 involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo drained hundreds of millions of dollars from the economy. The government's land reform program, characterized by chaos and violence, has badly damaged the commercial farming sector, the traditional source of exports and foreign exchange and the provider of 400,000 jobs, turning Zimbabwe into a net importer of food products. ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... is obeying a behest of William the Conqueror, issued eight hundred years ago, ordaining that his native tongue should be employed in the courts of England. The irresistible progress of improvement and reform have gradually displaced the intruding language again—except so far as it has become merged and incorporated with the common language of the country—from all the ordinary forms of legal proceedings. It lingers ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... alarming timid party-men by a Toryism which in certain aspects was scarcely to be distinguished from the reddest Radicalism. One brilliant year there was in which he blazed the comet of a season. Then, thwarted in some enterprise, faced by a refusal for some daring reform of Indian administration, he acted, as he had ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... two roads that came in from the south, and sent for Hill's division, which was in rear and which had not been engaged, to take the front, while the other two divisions fell back to the open space at Dowdall's Tavern to reform their lines. Pending this movement he rode out on the Plank Road with part of his staff and a few orderlies to reconnoitre, cautioning his pickets not to fire at him on his return. When he came back new men had been posted, and his approach was mistaken for the advance of Pleasonton's cavalry. His ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday

... ever. Now when the king was riding through the country he came to the neighbourhood where Asmund was, and he sent out men-at-arms to seize him. The king then had him laid in irons, and kept him so for some time in hope he would reform; but no sooner did Asmund get rid of his chains than he absconded again, gathered together people and men-at-arms and betook himself to plunder, both abroad and at home. Thus he made great forays, killing and plundering all around. When the people who suffered ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... to reform the jail. The mockery, and roguery, and Vicar's perseverance, while a practised hand is picking his pocket—are admirably represented. "I therefore read them a portion of the service, with a loud unaffected voice, and found my audience ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... seemed room for suspicion, might have been prevented by better management. Through long disuse the army had rusted in its scabbard, and everything seemed to go wrong but the courage of officers and men. A great demand arose for reform in the whole administration of the country. A movement, now much forgotten, though not fruitless at the time, was started for the purpose of making the civil service more efficient, and putting John Bull's ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... months Enid's car travelled more than two thousand miles for the Prohibition cause, it could not be said that she neglected her house for reform. Whether she neglected her husband depended upon one's conception of what was his due. When Mrs. Wheeler saw how well their little establishment was conducted, how cheerful and attractive Enid looked when one happened to drop in there, she wondered that Claude was not happy. And Claude himself wondered. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... contrasted heads of dirty and clean. Necessity, in this respect, has generated fixed habits; and they are, consequently, as great strangers to the refined feeling which actuates cleanly housewives, as lawyers are to a spirit of benevolence, or ministers of state to a passion for reform. Their furniture consisted merely of some dirty rags and blankets, and of two or three bags, baskets, and boxes; while their tents were formed of a pole at each end, with a ridge pole, covered with blanketing, which was stretched obliquely to the ground ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... tingle with possibilities. Wait? He could wait an eternity with her by his side and every waiting minute would be a golden minute. He could go back to that little office now and find a thousand things to do. He could hew out a career that would honor her. He saw numberless chances for reform work into which he could throw himself, heart and soul, while waiting. But there would be no waiting; life would begin from the first hour. What more did he need than her? He shuddered back from his luxurious room at the ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... army, and disbanded seamen, Poor's rate, Reform, my own, the nation's debt, Our little riots just to show we're free men, Our trifling bankruptcies in the Gazette, Our cloudy climate, and our chilly women, All these I can forgive, and those forget, And greatly venerate our recent ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... due to my father, who gave up smoking, drinking, intoxicating drinks, and eating meat at the same time, about twenty years ago; and as I was only ten years old then, I naturally grew into my father's habits (I now eat meat, however). The blessings of that reform have come down ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... Ginsburg and Pasquale Gallino and carried them along differing channels toward differing destinies. While Hyman was in the grammar grades, a brag pupil, Pasquale was in the Protectory, a branded incorrigible. While Hyman was attending high school, Pasquale was attending reform school. When Hyman, a man grown, was taking his examinations with the idea of getting on the police force, Pasquale was constructing an alibi with the idea of staying out of Sing Sing. One achieved his ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... we shall be left," she retorted; and in the thirty-five minutes they had at the station before their train started she outlined a scheme of social reform which she meant to put in force as soon as people began to gather in summer ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... counsel sometimes comes too late. Should these pages meet the eye of any who have been misled, let them remember that they have begun a career which multitudes repent bitterly; and from which few are apt to return. But there have been instances of reform; therefore none ought to despair. 'What man has done, man ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... of affairs Gluck found his new sphere of labor—Gluck, himself overflowing with the revolutionary spirit, full of the enthusiasm of reform. At first he carried everything before him. Protected by royalty, he produced, on the basis of an admirable libretto by Du Rollet, one of the great wits of the time, "Iphigenia in Aulis." It was enthusiastically received. The ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... movement party, and the countenance he has from time to time given to measures of a decidedly liberal cast, he never was, and is still as far from being, a Democrat. Throughout his career he has been a consistent Liberal: always advocating such measures of reform as were calculated to remove abuses, while they in no way affected the stability and integrity of the institutions of the country. While, on the one hand, he has declared his most unequivocal opposition to the ballot and universal suffrage, on the other ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... I get to thinking that if the Declaration of Independence isn't going to hold out that I'll change my politics and then see what will happen. When a fellow who is as set in his ways as I am changes his politics, reform must be coming, for I would probably be the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... the thanksgiving services appointed to-day in Sancta Sophia, and declared it an opportunity from Heaven, sent them and all the faithful in the city, to begin a crusade for reform; not by resort to sword and spear, for they were weapons of hell, but by refusing to assist the Patriarch with their presence. A vision had come to him in the night, he said—an angel of the Lord ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... it organic and permanent. Such moments of expansion in modern history were the Confession of Augsburg, the plantation of America, the English Commonwealth of 1648, the Declaration of American Independence in 1776, the British emancipation of slaves in the West Indies, the passage of the Reform Bill, the repeal of the Corn-Laws, the Magnetic Ocean-Telegraph, though yet imperfect, the passage of the Homestead Bill in the last Congress, and now, eminently, President Lincoln's Proclamation on the twenty-second of September. These are acts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... complained of. There public contracts are given to favorites, which occasion the most lavish expenditures. There also we find officers with incomes which shock all correct ideas of public compensation. These things have their effect upon the general tone of public morals. County reform is a duty enjoined by every consideration of ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... reform whose fame now fills the land with Temperance, Anti-Slavery, Non-Resistance, No Government, Equal Labor, fair and generous as each appears, are poor bitter things when prosecuted for themselves as an end."—"I say to you plainly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... collective property which he partly shares," while the latter does not even draw this distinction, but grabs whatever he can lay his hands on. "The luck of the Wallace fountains," cries one moralizer, "shows how hard it is to reform the Paris gamin so long as the law contents itself with its present measures. If the state does not speedily educate children found straying in the street, it is all up with the present generation." Thereupon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... this number no business could be transacted. Thus it would become impossible, when the country was almost equally divided, for one party to impose its will on the nation by force of a bare majority. Again, therefore, a very necessary reform would be achieved on ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... the men who own the house in which the working man lives. I must speak, too, of the wealthy tradesman; I must speak- -it is a sad thing to have to say it—of our own class as well as of others. Sanitary reform, as it is called, or, in plain English, the art of health, is so very recent a discovery, as all true physical science is, that we ourselves and our own class know very little about it, and practise it very little. And this society, I do hope, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... counter and laughed until he was forced to brush the tears from his cheeks at the idea of Chester Perkins being Jethro's candidate. Where was reform now? If Chester were elected, it would be in the eyes of the world as Jethro's man. No wonder he sat in a corner and refused ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... in the home, and by its guardian, woman. There is a movement lately inaugurated, looking to retrenchment in the matter of unnecessary expenditure, which, if it is to be regarded other than as a temporary expedient, is worthy of the patriotic enthusiasm which called it forth. I allude to the dress-reform movement made by the loyal women of the great Northern cities. The spirit of this movement I could wish to see illustrated both during the continuance of and after the war. It is this economical habit of mind for the sake of patriotic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... that respect, that confidence in the rectitude of Southern motives, that active sympathy, which can alone evoke effective assistance.... The best assurance you can give that the destinies of the negro race are safe in Southern hands is, not that the South will repent and reform, but that she has consistently and conscientiously been the friend and benefactor of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... already approaching the two million mark, and Belgium was rocked by great Socialist demonstrations, and the Socialist deputies in the French Chamber numbered fifty, and even England was beginning to toy gingerly with new schemes of social reform, by Bismarck out of Lassalle, the total strength of the Socialists of Spain was still not much above five thousand votes. In brief, the country seemed to be removed from the main currents of European thought. There was unrest, to be sure, but it was unrest that was largely inarticulate ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... but scarcely with fairness. It is the duty of the parent to educate and correct the child, but it is the duty of the citizen to reform and improve the character of his country. How can the latter be done, if nothing but eulogies are dealt in? With foreigners, one should not deal too freely with the faults of his country, though even with the liberal among them one would wish to be liberal, for foreigners cannot repair ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... wisdom of the world have never improved on the teachings of the Founder of Christianity. What the individual and society need to-day is not Socialism, Communism, or Nihilism; no temporary palliative sought in political, social, or financial Reform; what we each need is a closer personal contact with the simple truths of the New Testament. The last word on all political, philosophical, and social questions may still be found in the Sermon on the Mount. It is a significant ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... to my friend here, who has interested himself in the Armenian cause in London. He at once expressed a keen desire to make your acquaintance, so I ventured to bring him here and introduce him to you. This is Mr. Reginald Brett, an English barrister, and one who keenly sympathizes with the reform movement ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... Ph.D., LL.D., Director of the School of Economics and Political Science in the University of Wisconsin; Author of "Socialism and Social Reform," "Monopolies and Trusts," etc. ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... getting more numerous every day. Yet the finest golfers are always the least loquacious. It is related of the illustrious Sandy McHoots that when, on the occasion of his winning the British Open Championship, he was interviewed by reporters from the leading daily papers as to his views on Tariff Reform, Bimetallism, the Trial by Jury System, and the Modern Craze for Dancing, all they could extract from him was the single word "Mphm!" Having uttered which, he shouldered his bag and went home to tea. A great man. I wish there were ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... but is the better for America. That our people and their labors have done it all it would be absurd to say; but the Old World's progress in the period under review can be but very partially accounted for by any internal force of its own. None of its rulers or peoples adventure a reform of any kind without a preliminary, if often only a half-conscious, glance of inquiry westward. Collectively as members of a European republic of nations, and internally each within itself, they have in this way learned, after many recalcitrant struggles, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... 39th Street is the sumptuous building of the Union League Club. It has over 1500 members, all pledged to absolute loyalty to the Government of the United States, to resist every attempt against the integrity of the nation, and to promote reform in national, state, and municipal affairs. The club equipped and sent two full regiments to the front ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... spring disguised as a wooden cannon, who is thus hoisted a few feet into the air, where he catches hold of his swinging bar and completes the usual act of an "aerial acrobat." "Fi on't!" as Hamlet says; "reform ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... nearly all the most interesting people are social reformers: and the only circles of society in which you are not bored, in which there is real conversation, are the circles of social reform. These people alone have an abounding and convincing faith. Their faith has, for example, convinced many of the best literary artists of the day, with the result that a large proportion of the best modern imaginative literature has been inspired by the dream ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett

... declared himself to be a prophet. [Sidenote: and claim to be a prophet and reformer.] This announcement was at first confined to the members of his own immediate family, till, at the end of four years, Mahomet proclaimed that he had a mission from God to reform the state of religion in his native city, Mecca, and to put down the idolatry which prevailed there. [Sidenote: Flight to Medina.] The opposition which the false prophet encountered from his fellow-citizens did not hinder him from making many converts to the religion he was beginning to invent for ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... State, had thoroughly antagonized the country districts—and the country districts' vote. From even the solid communities had come rumors of restlessness and discontent. Ward bosses were worried, county magnates were dodging reform committees instigated by the traditionally conscientious minority, and the Governor knew that certain bills which awaited his signature were not likely to increase ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... war in his court against the monstrous etiquette which, under the last Austrian princes, had palsied Spanish royalty. This was one of the labours to which the camerara mayor devoted herself; but she took good care not to reform anything appertaining to her own functions, comprehending clearly enough the policy of keeping to herself sole access to the royal personages, and sacrificing without grudge her dignity to her power and influence. A contrary policy, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... they openly transgress the Koran by drinking, gambling, and smoking. Deceit and perjury are no longer looked upon as crimes by them; they do not ignore the scandal such vices bring upon them; but while each individually exclaims against the corruption of manners, none reform themselves." ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... between the young squires and his daughters, of the profligacies—dissoluteness with women and at the gaming-table—of both these young men. And it is little wonder that he resolutely opposed the union of Thornton and Maisie—she a girl of nineteen!—at least until there was some sign of reform in the youth, some ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... saying, "if the Rajadid not punish the guilty, the stronger would roast the weaker like a fish on the spit," he began the work of reform with an iron hand. He confiscated the property of a councillor who had the reputation of taking bribes; he branded the forehead of a sudra or servile man whose breath smelt of ardent spirits, and a goldsmith having been detected in fraud he ordered him to be cut in shreds with razors as the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... of a separation, and said I would make Ellen an allowance myself—of course intending that it should come out of Ernest's money; but he would not hear of this. He had married Ellen, he said, and he must try to reform her. He hated it, but he must try; and finding him as usual very obstinate I was obliged to acquiesce, though with little confidence as to the result. I was vexed at seeing him waste himself upon such a barren task, and again began to feel him burdensome. I am afraid I showed ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... own aspiration carried it swiftly beyond the prosaic demand for Parliamentary Reform. It evolved its programme for the reconstruction of all human institutions, and projected the amendment of human nature itself. America had made an end of kings and France was in the full tide of revolution. Nothing was ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... of South Carolina, in his legislative message of 1855: "The administration of our laws, in relation to our colored population, by our courts of magistrates and freeholders, as these courts are at present constituted, calls loudly for reform. Their decisions are rarely in conformity with justice or humanity." This trial, as reported by the justices themselves, seems to have been no worse than the average,—perhaps better. In all, thirty-five were sentenced to death, thirty-four to transportation, twenty-seven ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... he said humorously of himself. And so he was. He was, in a sense, "anti-everything," and though, sometimes through the training of previous environments, sometimes through other reasons, he was "anti" things that were right and of good report, he was never against social reform—never against "the cause that needs assistance"; never against the oppressed wherever and whenever they crossed his path. Newman thus gave up his Balliol Fellowship, and with it—more or less—his chances of ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... says, "I have been so happy as to reform two highwaymen who had robbed me; and from this I think that few of our fellow-creatures are so hardened, as to be impenetrable to repentance. One of these men has since been twice in the Gazette promotions, as a military officer. The ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... know, then, that evil and suffering are not temporary elements of man's evolution, just about to be eliminated by the new reform, the last formula, the fresh panacea. To those who have tasted grief and smelt the fire such easy preaching and such confident solutions are a grave offense. They know that evil is an integral part of our universe; ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... whole Afternoon, in a Room hung round with the Industry of their Great Grandmother. Pray, Sir, take the laudable Mystery of Embroidery into your serious Consideration, and as you have a great deal of the Virtue of the last Age in you, continue your Endeavours to reform the present.' ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Dick—the ladies used to call him 'Apollo Unarmed,' you know. Ah, I was jealous enough of Dick in my day, though he never knew it. He rather took Julia's fancy when I first began courting her, and, for a time, he pretended to reform and refused to touch a drop even at the table. I've seen him sit for hours, too, in Julia's Bible class of little negroes, with his eyes positively glued on her face while she read the hymns aloud. Yes, he ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... the reform in Persia there seem to be many conflicting accounts. The learned Faber concludes that there were two Zarathustras or Zoroasters, the former being identical with Menu, the law giver and triplicated deity of India, and who by various writers is recognized as the Noah ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... shadows of a felon's cell and the night of a drunkard's grave may appear in the saddening visions of that fond father's soul; yet, convinced by experience of the impossibility of bringing about that son's reform, he foresees the dread developments of the future, and he finds but sorrow and anguish in his knowledge. Can it be said that the father's foreknowledge is a cause of the son's sinful life? The son, perchance, has reached his maturity; he is the master of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... gambling places which were catering especially to boys, and found nearly one hundred throughout the city. The publication of their findings was one of many "shots heard 'round the ward."[2] When in later years Frank Nelson spoke for the City Charter or Reform Party, he knew from first-hand experience the moral and spiritual influence of good government in the lives of boys and young men. Behind the youthful clergyman's deep concern for decent government was a vital religious faith, without which he was convinced social service and ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick

... otherwise, and throwing over the little band of neo-Catholics who were making a struggle for continuity by applying the principle of evolution to their own faith, joining hands with modern science, and outflanking the hesitating English instinct towards liturgical reform (a flank march which I at the time quite expected to witness, with the gathering of many millions of waiting agnostics into its fold); since then, one may ask, what other purely English establishment than the Church, of sufficient dignity and footing, ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... of La Grange. In order to reform two silly, romantic girls, La Grange and Du Croisy introduce to them their valets, as the "marquis of Mascarille" and the "viscount of Jodelet." The girls are taken with their "aristocratic visitors;" but ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... Tories put the blame of the Revolution on the compromises of Louis XVI, and accordingly they were hostile to any political change. The Whigs, on the other hand, saw the rottenness of England as a cause that would incite her to revolution also, and they advocated reform while yet there was time. The general fear of a revolution gave the government of England to the Tories, and kept them in power for several decades. And England was ripe for trouble. The government was but nominally representative. No Catholic, Jew, Dissenter or poor man had a ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... of changes had to be made in the interest of efficiency. The view taken of one of these may not only interest the reader, but give him an idea of what people used to think of government service before the era of civil service reform. The proof-reader was excellent in every respect except that of ability to perform his duty. He occupied a high position, I believe, in the Grand Army of the Republic, and thus wielded a good deal of influence. When his ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... when he awoke. He wondered what her first name was. He wondered how far Irish's acquaintance with her had progressed, but he did not worry much about Irish. Having represented himself to be an exceedingly dangerous man, and having permitted himself to be persuaded into promising reform and a calm demeanor—for her sake—he felt tolerably sure of her interest in him. He had heard that a woman loves best the taming of a dangerous man, and he whistled and sang and smiled until the dust of ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... achieved power and control in the national councils, had suppressed free thought and free speech, had degraded labor, encouraged ignorance, and established aristocracy. The first step in this measure of counter-revolution and reform was to take from the inhabitants of the township the power of electing the officers, and to greatly curtail, where they did not destroy, the power of such officers. It had been observed by these sagacious statesmen that in not a few instances incapable ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... been through the third degree, half blind from the terrible lights and the terrible circle of terrible eyes, that isn't writing at all. It's life—a raw, palpitating picture of a social abuse that can touch the public as a reform measure can never hope to. Then the character of the boy—a delinquent. We've one right here in this apartment. One of those sweet, shy, half-frightened boys as gentle as a girl. The kind that tells the neighborhood children Peter Pan and reads his grandmother ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... to have any of these exercises abandoned. While some of them demand reform, they are all, on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... throw out these hints of University Reform, well aware of the opposition such views must encounter in deep-rooted prejudice and fixed routine; aware also of the rashness of attempting, within the limits of such an occasion, to grapple with such a theme; but strong ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... poems; in close association with the romanticism of the day the missionary movement in religion began to gather force; and the same impulse which in England began the agitation for a free press and for parliamentary reform, and which in France accounted for the French Revolution, in America led to the revolt from Great Britain. No patriot could come under the influence of any one of these movements without having his heart and his sense of justice stirred to some degree in behalf ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... that child is growing older every day. Do you want to spoil her? Thus far she has been utterly unconscious of her extraordinary power. And therein lies the secret of her success. The minute she CONSCIOUSLY sets herself to reform somebody, you know as well as I do that she will be simply impossible. Consequently, Heaven forbid that she ever gets it into her head that she's anything like a cure-all for poor, sick, ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... which mortifies me most, that I should fear to write what I think, or my country bear such a state of things. Yet Lyon's judges, and a jury of all nations, are objects of national fear. We agree in all the essential ideas of your letter. We agree particularly in the necessity of some reform, and of some better security for civil liberty. But perhaps we do not see the existing circumstances in the same point of view. There are many considerations dehors of the State, which will occur to you without ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Plantagenets; Rise of the English Nation[1] VII. The Self-Destruction of Feudalism VIII. Absolutism of the Crown; the Reformation; the New Learning[1] IX. The Stuart Period; the Divine Right of Kings versus the Divine Right of the People X. India gained; America lost—Parliamentary Reform—Government by the People A General Summary of English Constitutional History Constitutional Documents Genealogical Descent of the English Sovereigns[2] A Classified List of Books Special Reading References on ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... pastorate of the Walloon Reformed Church in Middelburg, Zeeland. At Middelburg he became embroiled with the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, because of controversial writings and because, filled with zeal to reform the Reformed Church in the Netherlands and to awaken it from its formalism, he carried his own congregation into positions and practices manifestly tending toward schism. Driven out of Middelburg, he established a church at ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... courage, perhaps a field-marshal; and if bigoted on disputable matters and speculative opinions in religion, he was considered to be nothing less than an inquisitor. This was a pleasant and useful project to reform the manners of the Polish youth; and one of the Polish kings good-humourdly observed, that he considered himself "as much King of Baboonery as King of Poland." We have had in our own country some attempts at similar Saturnalia; but their success ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... for you," she said. "I am going to live here this summer, and keep house for you and Dad while you run and reform ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... finally, that there are some points of public interest which demand some reform, in what pertains to the religious estate of the Filipinas, we shall not be the ones to deny that. But the Church has the desire and the means to remedy these supposed or recognized evils. If, peradventure, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... and he must trust to his daughter's prudence and high sense of right not to treat her lover with too tender an acknowledgment of her love till he should have been made to pass through the fire of reform. ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... soil was unprepared. Still, a taste was kindled which continued to propagate itself until the time when the religious houses became active seats of education. This did not happen until the second half of the tenth century, when the reform of the monasteries by thelwold and Dunstan produced that great educational and literary movement of which the representative ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... it. Such an idea gives them a fresh way of looking at the world, so that the world grows young again with their new interpretation. In the highest instances, poets may become makers of epochs; they reform as well as reveal; for ideas are never dead things, "but grow in the hand that grasps them." In them lies the energy of a nation's life, and we comprehend that life only when we make clear to ourselves the thoughts which inspire it. ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... business. There is every likelihood that his ministry will not endure long enough, to cause it to feel the effects of his false principles of administration: and it is he alone who is able, if any one can, to preserve order in the finances, until the reform is effected which we hope from the assembling of the States General. In the mean time, the public estimation of his talents and virtue is not so high as it has been. There are persons who pretend that he is more firmly established in public opinion than he ever was. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... act enlarge the common-law rule as to what restraints were unlawful? How these questions have been settled. Statement of the common-law rule. Incompatibility between the law and present economic conditions. Suggestions for legal reform. The holding company device, its abuses and the possibility of abolishing it. Advantages of the ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... "It came to the attention of the department as the result of a reform I have inaugurated. When I went in office I found that many of the death certificates were faulty, and in the course of our investigations we ran across one that seemed to be most vaguely worded. I don't ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... all the wretched, terrible years of her married life, she had prayed and hoped for deliverance from the earthly hell in which she and her children lived. The week before Adjutant Lee's visit she had in desperation gone to a spiritual leader and implored him to try and reform her husband, and had received the extraordinary reply, 'Well, you must bear with this little habit. I may tell you I have the same ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter

... Belloc and H. Chesterton, The Party System (London, 1911). There is no adequate history of English political parties from their origins to the present day. G. W. Cooke, The History of Party from the Rise of the Whig and Tory factions in the Reign of Charles II. to the Passing of the Reform Bill, 3 vols. (London, 1836-1837) covers the subject satisfactorily to the end of the last unreformed parliament. Other party histories—as T. E. Kebbel, History of Toryism (London, 1886); C. B. R. ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... of his history. For instance he did not know that Del Mar's real name was Percival Grunsky, and that at grammar school he had been called "Brownie" by the girls and "Blackie" by the boys. No more did he know that he had gone from half-way-through grammar school directly into the industrial reform school; nor that, after serving two years, he had been paroled out by Harris Collins, who made a living, and an excellent one, by training animals for the stage. Much less could he know the training that for six years Del Mar, as assistant, had ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... John, telling him in a severe tone that unless he returned to his old love and gave up all acquaintance with the new, he would withdraw his friendship from him, as a creature unworthy of it. This had a deep effect upon Clare, and though the immediate promise of reform made by him, was not fulfilled to the letter, his life, for the next seven or eight months, was a constant struggle between duty and affection, in which duty at last got ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... sacred music. She felt guilty if she talked on any subject except religion. She was, in all respects, a fitting mate for her attractive husband. Exquisitely refined in feeling and manner, beautiful in face and form, earnest and sincere, she sympathized with him in all his ideas of religion and reform. Together they passed through every stage of theological experience, from the uncertain ground of superstition and speculation to the solid foundation of science and reason. The position of the Church in the anti-slavery conflict, opening as it did all questions of ecclesiastical authority, Bible ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... hundred times, prayed, argued, conjured, but all to no purpose. I had thrown myself at her feet, and strongly represented the catastrophe that threatened her, had earnestly entreated that she would reform her expenses, and begin with myself, representing that it was better to suffer something while she was yet young, than by multiplying her debts and creditors, expose her old age to ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... went over the flank of the enemy's works, Devin's division of cavalry, which had been assaulting the front, went over in company with it; and hardly halting to reform, the intermingling infantry and dismounted cavalry swept down inside the intrenchments, pushing to and beyond Five Forks, capturing thousands of prisoners. The only stand the enemy tried to make was when he attempted ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... yourself," cried Blackbeard, "and I won't have it; I don't want any of that lazy piety on board my vessel. If you don't reform me, and do it rightly, I'll ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... memorandum, legibly written, and on one of my best sheets of vellum:—'Mem.—Oct. 20th, 1769, left the Grecian after having read ——'s Poems, with a determined resolution to write a Periodical Paper, in order to reform the vitiated taste of the age; but, coming home and finding my fire out, and my maid gone abroad, was obliged to defer the execution of my plan to another opportunity.' Now though this event had absolutely slipped my memory, I ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... had escap'd Notice, for want of Revisals, in the former Edition, are here reform'd: and the Pointing of innumerable Passages is regulated, with all the Accuracy I ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... supplied me by the committee) of my opponent, who was a dyed-in-the-wool politician, and indisputably I had a great many friends. Could I afford to disregard the piteous, eloquent argument of the spokesman, Honorable David Flint, that the sacred cause of Reform demanded me as its champion, and that victory was possible only under my banner? I had promised to think it over, which was a coy way of stating that I would accept. Having made up my mind to run, I was obliged to tell Josephine ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant



Words linked to "Reform" :   crusade, create from raw material, better, effort, moralize, ameliorate, amend, improvement, movement, improve, chemistry, housecleaning, moralisation, self-improvement, chemical science, alter, change integrity, drive, regenerate, campaign, cause, change, meliorate, create from raw stuff, modify, moralization, moralise



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com