"Bettering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as something intended to make them better satisfied with their condition, and more valuable as pieces of property, without preparing them for the world to come. Mrs. Carlton found in her husband a congenial spirit, who entered into all her wishes and plans for bettering the condition of their slaves. Mrs. Carlton's views and sympathies were all in favour of immediate emancipation; but then she saw, or thought she saw, a difficulty in that. If the slaves were liberated, they must be sent ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... you are located you will do all that you can for community uplift. Be active in church and Sunday-school work, help to improve the public schools, assist in bettering health conditions, help the people to secure property, to buy homes and to improve them. In doing all these things, you will be carrying out the ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... of Science and Law towards the elevation of man and the bettering of his condition in this world—the procuring for him of greater personal advantages, dignity, and liberty—that have ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... of his own labored breathing as he plunged through the East Entry, Jason heard panting behind him. Holland. Holland bettering his promised three minutes—and with a forbidden disarmer in his hand. Guiltily, Jason felt the weight of the disarmer he had himself secreted under ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... Mr. Carleton had a very large tenantry around him and depending upon him, in bettering whose condition, if he had but known it, all those energies might have found full play. It never entered into his head. He abhorred business,—the detail of business; and his fastidious taste especially shrank from having anything to do among those whose ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... seem to have been a man of small practical capacity or staying power, for he moved about from place to place, changing his business in the hope of bettering his condition; now going to Peekskill to set up a brewery; thence to Catskill, where he added brick-making to making beer; then to Brooklyn to try hatting again; and finally to Newburgh, where he returned to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... could not recollect how or where. Then she recalled it as that of a young daily governess, her predecessor at the Fergusons', who had left them "to better herself," as she said—and decidedly to the bettering of ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... The World's Classics and are advertised alongside of Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies" and the "De Imitatione Christi." I leave you to think this out; adding but this for a suggestion: that as the Hebrew outgrew his primitive tribal beliefs, so the bettering mind of man casts off the old clouts of primitive doctrine, he being in fact better than his religion. You have all heard preachers trying to show that Jacob was a better fellow than Esau somehow. You have ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the thing is taking shape, I think; I know a little better what I want to say all through; and in process of time, possibly I shall manage to say it. I must say I am a very bad workman, mais j'ai du courage: I am indefatigable at rewriting and bettering, and surely that humble quality should ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 Wilberforce ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... has ceased to discourage men from trying to help their fellows by the shortest cut they can find, whether it fits in a theory or not. I don't care two pins for all the social theories that were ever made unless they help to make better men and women by bettering their lot. I have had cranks of that order, who rated as sensible beings in the ordinary affairs of life, tell me that I was doing harm rather than good by helping improve the lot of the poor; it delayed the final day of justice we were waiting for. Not I. I don't propose to ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... effect of the improvement of natural knowledge on the views of men who have reached this stage, and who have begun to cultivate natural knowledge with no desire but that of "increasing God's honour and bettering man's estate." ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... a spirit of fanaticism, undoubtedly, have labored with as much earnestness as if the world's salvation depended upon their efforts, without the least hope of bettering its condition, for the false philosophy of materialism which they advocate gives to a man nothing to live for except his own animal nature. This philosophy says all is well as long as you dodge the sharp corners of the laws ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... Morning and Evening Service there is another important question that imperatively demands discussion, namely, a week-day worship. The movement for "shortened services," so-called, has shared the usual fate of all efforts at bettering the life of the Church, in being at the outset of its course widely and seriously misunderstood. The impression has gone abroad, and to-day holds possession of many otherwise well-informed people, ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... married elder—what 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 a little farm, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... said Flynn. "It's myself thinks Ishmael has it in him to be a grand reformer; that's why I can't bear to see him wasting himself over morals and manure when he could be working away at the bettering of ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... 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
... 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 ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... interference of the mother country in the management of the slaves." We, are informed also on the same authority, that the clauses of this Act, which had given a promise of better days, "had been wholly neglected." In short, the Acts passed in our different Islands for the pretended purpose of bettering the condition of the slaves have been all of them most shamefully neglected; and they remain only a dead letter; or they are as much a nullity, as if they had never existed, at the ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... hour when nature was constituted to be its mode of birth, consciousness, and death. And if the choice must be made on the broad scale, it is our practical faith that the service of the best, even to the point of death, is due to the least in the hope of bettering the lot of man. Hence, as we are willing that in communities the noblest should die for a cause, we consent to the death of high civilizations, if they spread in some Hellenization of a Roman, some Romanizing of a barbaric world; and to the extinction of aristocracies, if their virtues thereby are ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... work of the evangelicals lies outside our subject, the character of its influence on society may be gathered from their efforts for the suppression of the slave trade; from the stricter observance of Sunday which became general towards the end of our period; from their plans for bettering the condition, and their care for the education of the poor. The institution of Sunday schools was largely due to Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, who began his work in 1780. Six years later some 200,000 children attended these schools, and in many cases ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... the laundry. Out of her $18.50 per week she paid $6. for her room and board. The rest went mainly for clothes. Her opportunities for bettering her taste and manners were few compared with Nancy's. In the steaming laundry there was nothing but work, work and her thoughts of the evening pleasures to come. Many costly and showy fabrics passed under her iron; and it may be that her growing fondness for dress was thus transmitted ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... repulse, instead of bettering my position, rendered it still more complicated. Somewhat confusedly, I rejoined: "I am on the way to visit the White Eagle. I thought—perhaps—you might—that possibly you might have some ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... wooden boards or tablets, on which they wrote with a substance which could be washed out. Such is the miserable situation of the Spanish inhabitants of the archipelago of Chiloe: yet they dare not leave their wretched birth-place in the hope of bettering their fortunes. The small-pox is hitherto unknown among them, and those, who have attempted to go elsewhere have been cut off by that loathsome disease. In 1783, the entire population of this dreary province amounted to 23,477, of whom 11,985 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... the 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 ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... besides being restricted by their financial ability, regularly consist of arrangements to buy up only the chief articles, and those which promise most advantage, with least trouble; as that restless inquietude which impels man on, under the hope of bettering his condition, acts even amidst rigor of oppression, a certain degree of stimulus and scope is still left in favor ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... economics are new sciences developed under the active interest of college women in the last twenty-three years. Their real hold upon the public, however, and their enlarged avenue for bettering the home, the food, the health of the nation, and consequently its usefulness, happiness, and prosperity has come within the ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... lot of humanity, but regardless of right and justice they seldom are, and ungrateful or ungenerous they cannot be. The evidence of their native spirit of enterprise is found in their daily braving destitution in the hope of bettering their hard lot. Their hatred of oppression is proved by their ill-directed, but constant struggles for equal rights; and, if kind-heartedness and charity cover a multitude of sins, no people on earth can justly claim a larger stock. In illustration ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... he knew the rest of the little army had cleared the 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 ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... to show the depressed condition in England at that period, and that many were looking to America in the hope of bettering ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... that the person desirous of being initiated into the Black Art—the Art of communicating with the Unknown (Daramara) in order to acquire certain great powers, should dismiss from his mind all ideas of moral progress, and wholly concentrate on the bettering of his material self—on acquiring riches and fame in the physical sphere. His aspirations must be entirely earthly, and all his affections subordinate to his main desire for wealth and carnal pleasures. Having acquired this preliminary ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... as the special matter in hand was concerned, the worsting of Hillsborough, though a gratification, did not result in the bettering of Franklin and his co-petitioners. April 6, 1773, he wrote: "The affair of the grant goes on but slowly. I do not yet clearly see land. I begin to be a little of the sailor's mind, when they were landing a cable out of a ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... also, Taylor began to write a series of novels, in the hope of bettering his fortunes thereby. The books brought him some reputation, but to-day "Hannah Thurston" and "John Godfrey's Fortunes" are ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... his pontificate, softened some of the rigors with which they were afflicted, and had directed that they might spread beyond that ignominious precinct; nor, however great was the outcry about it among the mob, did he forego the idea of bettering the condition of the followers of the Mosaic law." He was disposed to give them civil rights; and if he did not think of extending his concessions even to political privileges, yet he would give this as the main reason for it, that, in a constitutional ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Dohors are a well-known subcaste of Chamars, but in Berar they appear to have obtained a separate name, under which about 6000 persons were returned in 1911. They work in leather like the Chamars or Mochis. With the ambition of bettering their social status among the Hindus the caste strictly observe the sanctity of animal life. No Dohor may molest an animal or even pelt it with stones. A man who sells a cow or bullock to butchers is put out of caste, but if he repents and gets the animal back ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... 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, and when this is ...
— 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
... on friendly terms with the villains, as long as he was in their power. To express disapproval of their conduct would have incurred the enmity of the whole crew, without bettering his own situation. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... a dear child, and I have felt a great interest in her from the moment she entered the school. I wish I knew of some way of bettering her circumstances. Mr. Burgess is a most estimable man, but not one liable to advance rapidly through his own efforts, I fear. He is most reliable and capable, but seems to lack the push so essential in this bustling ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... superhuman agents may be appropriated and used independently of them, or the object may be simply to discover their will in order to be guided by it. The first of these lines is magic, the second is divination. While the two have in common the frank and independent employment of the supernatural for the bettering of human life, their conceptions and modes of procedure differ in certain respects, and they may ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... 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 man was respectful: he looked ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... an American be lost in admiration of a group of Oxford students because they went out to mend a disused road, inspired thereto by Ruskin's teaching for the bettering of the common life, when all the country roads in America were mended each spring by self-respecting citizens, who were thus carrying out the simple method devised by a democratic government for providing highways. No humor penetrated my high mood even as I somewhat ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... citizens who were making or expecting to make corrupt gain, since they reverenced no element of the public weal in comparison with bettering themselves by such acts. But all the rest took it greatly to heart, and had much to say about it to intimates and also (as many as felt safe in so doing) in outspoken public conversation and the ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... 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 ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... 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 into the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... plenty to 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 Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... event. It is the subject of one short elegy, [115] and enters largely into another. When travelling with the pro-praetor Memmius into Bithynia, he visited his brother's tomb at Rhoeteum in the Troad. It was on his return from this journey, undertaken, but without success, in the hope of bettering his fortune, that he wrote the little poem to Sirmio, [116] which dwells on the associations of home with a sweetness perhaps ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... probabilities we had no right to expect the war that befell; according to all the human indications as we saw them revealed amongst the Allies we had a right to expect a better peace; according to our abiding and abounding faith we had a right to expect a great bettering of life after the war, and even in spite of the peace. It is all a non sequitur, and still we ask the reason and the meaning ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... of this strange instrument was no less than a very quiet and very respectable late merchant of a little town somewhere "north," who, having failed at home, had emigrated into the new and hospitable country of Arkansas, for the purpose of bettering his fortune and escaping the heartless sympathy of his more lucky neighbors, who seemed to consider him a very bad and degraded man because he ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... provided with money, and this need, rather than Vincent's love-lorn babbling about Olympia, reminded Rosa to call upon the Spragues for help. She wrote at once to Olympia, telling the distressing story, and then set about bettering Vincent's surroundings. ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... great material prosperity. This prosperity was, to be sure, not exactly distributed, and it is not without its resemblance to some of our modern instances of commercial prosperity, in that it was not so much a general bettering of economic conditions as the very rapid increase of the wealth of a relatively small number, an increase gained at the expense of positive detriment to a large element in the population. Thus it was that a century ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... of knocking about will not make your position worse, and by the time you come back, you may have ceased to struggle against fate. It will afford you a remote —but distinctly remote—opportunity of bettering your position, will give you something else to think about besides that young lady's charms, and you may even come to recognize that life is, after all, possible without her. You may shake your head, lad; but you know children ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... coming home to fetch her; from which expressions they hoped the division might not owe its origin to anything so hopelessly permanent as that. He had told them that she was with her relatives, and in their doubts they had decided not to intrude into a situation which they knew no way of bettering. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... this industrial institution and the immeasurable amount of good it has already done, during the lifetime of its founder, in bettering the temporal welfare of thousands of colored people in the south, have tended to make it the most prominent illustration of practical and successful industrial education among the colored people of ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... "Christian Connection" in the New England States, and had been eminently successful in winning converts. But these churches were poor, and he having married a wife, his compensation did not meet his necessities, and like many others he went to California with a hope of bettering his fortunes. Afterwards he came to Lawrence, in Kansas, under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Society. But his freighting teams having been plundered of a stock of goods, which they were bringing ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... had sunk, had run away with the woman, and had come back to Chicago penniless. The woman was supporting him, some one said. Enough of this pretty tale could be read in the bearing of the men to make Sommers sorry that he had come, and sorrier that he had come in the hope of bettering his condition. He slipped out unobserved and walked the six ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... serve him unless he go fast and watch and pray for himself too. And if I should add thereto and say further that I trust my diligent intercession for him may be the means that God should the sooner give him grace to amend, and fast and watch and pray and take affliction in his own body, for the bettering of his sinful soul, he would be wonderous wroth with that. For he would be loth to have any such grace at all as should make him go leave off any of his mirth, and so sit and mourn for his sin." Such mind as this, lo, have some ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... 1897 Michigan held several Western records. The first of Michigan's all-round athletes was John F. McLean, '00, who not only won regularly the hurdles and broad jump, equaling or bettering the Western records, but was also half-back on the football team. Charles Dvorak, '01, '04l, also held the Western record in the pole vault, while Archie Hahn, '04l, speedily developed into one of the country's greatest sprinters, equaling several times the world's record ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... from the lower to the higher. This is indeed the law of evolution, that has been through all the ages and that today is at work. It is the God-Power that is at work and every form of useful activity that helps on with this process of lifting and bettering is a form of Divine activity. If therefore we recognise the one Divine life working in and through all, the animating force, therefore the Life of all, and if we are consciously helping in this ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... tone of reflection, the doctor: "That, sir neighbor, I willingly grant; for myself I am always Casting about for improvement,—things new, so they be not too costly. But what profits a man, who has not abundance of money, Being thus active and stirring, and bettering inside and outside? Only too much is the citizen cramped: the good, though he know it, Has he no means to acquire because too slender his purse is, While his needs are too great; and thus is he constantly hampered. Many the things I had ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... off with $1,500; which the Queen Dowager and two Royal Duchesses doubled; then came sundry Dukes, Earls, and other notables with $500 each, followed by a long list of smaller and smaller subscriptions. But this money was given to the "Society for Bettering the Condition of the Laboring Classes," to enable them to try an experiment; and that experiment has triumphantly succeeded. All those I have described, as well as one for single women only near Hatton ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... devised by Hormisdas II. for bettering the condition of his people the most remarkable was his establishment of a new Court of Justice. In the East the oppression of the weak by the powerful is the most inveterate and universal of all evils, and the one that well-intentioned monarchs have ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... "others may part with their children, if they like, 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 then addressed ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... previously operating on the South from the North, and from the rest of the world, by the lights of comparison, by the interchange of a friendly intercourse, and by a friendly discussion of the great subject, all tending to the bettering of the slave's condition, and, as was supposed, to his ultimate emancipation. Before this agitation commenced, this subject, in all its aspects and bearings, might be discussed as freely at the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... realizing that chance had brought him to the most important decision of his life; for he could no longer doubt that he had won complete mastery over the heart of the loving girl. He had never thought of bettering his condition; he had never even wished such a thing, for a life without needs is a happy life, good for body and soul. He loved his freedom; he was exactly what he wanted ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... experience, however stern its teachings, could not teach unwilling learners. It was at this period that Mr. Sikes was reading the late Archbishop Sumner's "Records of Creation," and met with the following passage: "The only true secret of assisting the poor, is to make them agents in bettering ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... map of my life; secondly, from the impossibility of inflicting a slight; thirdly, because I rather chose to bear the ills I had than fly to others that I knew not of. Who revolts save in the glowing hope of bettering his lot? I must marry; who was there to be preferred before Elsa? It did not occur to me that I might remain single; I should have shared the general opinion that such an act was little removed from treason. It would not only ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... steamship companies to whose profit it was to 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 condition ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... was not acceptable to the people of that State, "nor indeed to any other, whether free or slaveholding, for they cannot rise and become like other men, unless in countries where their own color predominates, but must always remain a degraded and inferior class of persons without the hope of much bettering their condition."[45] ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... may praise, I neither, when I think of what history has been, am inclined to lament the past, to despise the present, or despair of the future; that I believe all the change and stir about us is a sign of the world's life, and that it will lead—by ways, indeed, of which we have no guess—to the bettering ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... the editor of Astounding Stories magazine and applied himself at once to the task of bettering the magazine and the field of s-f writing in general. His influence on science-fiction since then cannot be underestimated. Today he still remains as the editor of that magazine's evolved and ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... of internal improvements, is, in other words, a question whether the people of this Union, in forming their common social compact, as avowedly for the purpose of promoting their general welfare, have performed their work in a manner so ineffably stupid as to deny themselves the means of bettering their own condition. I have too much respect for the intellect of my country to believe it. The first object of human association is the improvement of the condition of the associated. Roads and canals are among ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... to see the priest at the head of every movement for the bettering and uplifting of ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... none the less, capable of inscribing itself automatically in sensation and of sending a vague idea to the deadened intellect. The intellect will still affirm, in implicit terms. And consequently, neither distinct concepts, nor words, nor the desire of spreading the truth, nor that of bettering oneself, are of the very essence of the affirmation. But this passive intelligence, mechanically keeping step with experience, neither anticipating nor following the course of the real, would have no wish to deny. It could not ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... him who, bettering not with time, Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will, And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime, Or seeming-genial venial fault, Recurring and suggesting still! He seems as one whose footsteps halt, Toiling in immeasurable sand, And o'er a weary sultry land, Far beneath ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... in her 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 between ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... For the encouragement and bettering of the markets in the said town, Be it enacted, That no dead provision, either of flesh or fish shall be sold within five miles of any of the ports or towns appointed by this act, on the same side the great river the ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... reception, which was a great disappointment to Miss Anthony. They had shared so much trouble that she felt most anxious they should share this one great pleasure. In the diary at midnight is recorded: "Fiftieth birthday! One half-century done, one score years of it hard labor for bettering humanity—temperance—emancipation—enfranchisement—oh, such a struggle! Terribly stormy night, but a goodly company and many, many splendid tributes to my work. Really, if I had been dead and these the last words, neither ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... which (as you justly say) is so full of sorrow and suffering, it will always please me to remember that my name is connected with some efforts after alleviation, nor less so with purposes of innocent recreation which, after all, are the only certain means at our disposal for bettering ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ahead. Encouraged by agents of interested parties, many a man accumulates or borrows enough money to pay his passage and to get by the immigration officer on the American side, and faces westward with high hope of bettering ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... trying the drink often, and took my glass with the Laird, my uncle, but it would not be bettering me any, and a man that drink will not be making merrier company of is in ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... were given these prison commands at the commencement of the war. Both of them were naturally kind-hearted but curiously sensitive and not always of even temper. On the whole I think that they sympathised with the prisoners and did their best to obtain a bettering of the conditions of their confinement. The prisoners organised themselves in their various barracks, each barrack having a captain of the barrack, the captains electing one of their number as ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... at a very serious disadvantage, and often gives up the fight altogether. Anything that tends to equalise the chances of town and country, from the point of view of mental equipment, would do more general good to Scotland, by bettering the available brain power, than any half-dozen Acts ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... father's consent to the marriage engagement. He refused it again more positively than before. More than a year passed away. The time was approaching fast when Alfred would be of age. I returned from college to spend the long vacation at home, and made some advances toward bettering my acquaintance with young Monkton. They were evaded—certainly with perfect politeness, but still in such a way as to prevent me from offering my friendship to him again. Any mortification I might have felt at this petty repulse ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... all the years no bill which the State association actively opposed has been passed by the General Assembly and every bill which it actively supported has been enacted into law. It has thus conclusively been proved that, while women must band themselves together for bettering the condition of their sex and for the general good of the State, yet having planned together they must work out their problems through their political parties. The association has consistently opposed the so-called National Woman's Party with its "militant" ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... be contented during this generation with the assurance that geographically the Union has been preserved, and that each contending warrior has once more taken up the peaceful struggle for bettering and beautifying the home so ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... has agreed to participate financially in the work of bettering the water approaches to Shanghai and to Tientsin, the centers of foreign trade in central and northern China, and an international conservancy board, in which the Chinese Government is largely represented, has been provided for the improvement ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... evacuation of the Papal territory may be rendered safe at an early period by a policy of wisdom and justice, and they entertain a hope that the measures agreed upon by the governments of France and Austria will lead to a gradual withdrawal of their respective forces, and to bettering the condition of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... either she lacked inventiveness or was too honest, for no method could she discover which avoided confession of the simple truth. As the days passed without catastrophe and without news save that her lover was bettering in hospital, she staved off the truth, trusting that the next night would bring inspiration. Almost she hoped—being quite unwise in such matters—that his sufferings would be accepted as cancelling his offence. So she played the coward. The blow fell on the evening when Endymion ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... If in his writings he is inconsistent, let them [i.e., the Arians] not draw him to their side, for on this assumption he is not worthy of credit. But if, when he had written his letter to Ammonius, and fallen under suspicion, he made his defence, bettering what he had said previously, defending himself, but not changing, it must be evident that he wrote what fell under suspicion by ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Cooley and others of Maryland, and representatives from other States which cannot now be recollected, the data not being at hand, assembled in the city of Philadelphia, in the capacity of a National Convention, to "devise ways and means for the bettering of our condition." These Conventions determined to assemble annually, much talent, ability, and energy of character being displayed; when in 1831 at a sitting of the Convention in September, from their previous ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... to tell of their ways till they came out of the thicket into the fields about the Burg of the Four Friths; and even there was a look of a bettering of men's lives; though forsooth the husbandmen there were much the same as had abided in the fields aforetime, whereas they were not for the most part freemen of the Burg, but aliens who did service in war and otherwise thereto. But, it being eventide, there were men and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... reality of duty, which is the same as the establishment of the possibility of the Imperative as a synthetic practical proposition a priori, at present altogether apart. Suppose a man tempted to commit suicide, with the view of bettering his evil condition; but it is contradictory that the very principle of self-conservation should lead to self-destruction, and such a maxim of conduct cannot therefore become a universal law of nature. Next, the case of a man borrowing ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... are other motives for education, besides bread winning and bettering one's material condition. I remember at Harvard how Charles Eliot Norton, Prof. Thayer, the New Testament Greek scholar, and Dean C. C. Everett, of the Harvard Divinity School, impressed students ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... after her kind, to Donal as well as to Gibbie. She had by no means ceased to grow, and already was slowly bettering under the influences of the New Testament in Gibbie, notwithstanding she had removed the letter of it from her public table. She told Gibbie that he must talk to Donal about his dress and his speech. That he was a lad of no common gifts was plain, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... pathetic records of tragic cases of brutality or murder on shipboard, which it was Hawthorne's duty as consul to investigate. These things, as one might have divined they would, made a very strong and deep impression upon him; and he tried strenuously to interest the United States government in bettering the state of the marine by new laws. But though this evil was and is still quite as monstrous as that of slavery, there was no means of mixing up prejudice and jealousy with the reform, to help it along, and he could ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... part, Paul! The only man whom I utterly love, and trust, and respect on the face of God's earth, is you; and I cannot lose sight of you. If we are to earn our bread, let us earn it together; if we are to endure poverty, and sorrow, and struggle to find out the way of bettering these wretched millions round us, let us learn our lesson together, and help each other to spell ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... 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 future. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... paeaning for a better day, for the new life, for the heaven upon earth, for the glorification of the proletariat, he could stand hard and fast by the common necessity of sticking to an agreement and as fast as possible bettering conditions. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... states, when they saw that two had shaken off the yoke, would go over to the party of that nation which professed the patronage of liberty. If freedom was not actually preferable to servitude, yet the hope of bettering their circumstances by a change, was more flattering to every one ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... his mind, Tasso at this epoch turned his thoughts to bettering himself, as servants say. His friend Scipione Gonzaga pointed out that both the Cardinal de'Medici and the Grand Duke of Tuscany would be glad to welcome him as an ornament of their households. Tasso nibbled at the bait all through the summer; and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... noteworthy fact [Footnote: Though one of rare occurrence, Parker's case was not altogether unique; for now and then a pressed man by some lucky chance "got his foot on the ladder," as Nelson put it, and succeeded in bettering himself. Admiral Sir David Mitchell, pressed as the master of a merchantman, is a notable example. Admiral Campbell, "Hawke's right hand at Quiberon," who entered the service as a substitute for a pressed man, is another; and ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Physical Education, Chicago, have proved that track men can far surpass their best previous times under hypnosis. Their tests, incidentally, proved that there is no danger of an athlete going beyond his physiologic limit while bettering his former marks. They attribute the superior performances to the removal of inhibitions, which psychologically prevent an athlete from doing his best. This report was made before the International Congress on Health and Fitness in the Modern World held in Rome ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... expending millions of dollars and every dollar for some worthy object. The list demonstrates beyond question that every one of these great associations exists for the purpose of improving the conditions of society and helping and bettering humanity. They represent the highest form of effort for education, morality, temperance, religion, justice, patriotism and co-operation. Are not these the very qualities most needed in our electorate? Is not the nation suffering because of the lack of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... did have any idea of bettering conditions as they now prevailed; for not a word came in reply, to Thad's request for several minutes. During this time the boys sat there and watched the queer actions of the engine that Thad was bending over, ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... corresponding salaries. The case of Orange has been already alluded to, and there were many other nobles less able to afford the expense, who had been indulged with these ruinous honors. During the war, there had been, however, many chances of bettering broken fortunes. Victory brought immense prizes to the leading officers. The ransoms of so many illustrious prisoners as had graced the triumphs of Saint Quentin and Gravelines had been extremely profitable. These sources of wealth had now been cut off; yet, on the departure of the King ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... must have descended to the very deepest levels of depression before he loses his power to laugh, or to be cheered by an unexpected bettering of his financial position. John Fulton was in a bad way, but certain things still struck him as funny, and the money which he had been enabled to borrow from the bank had eased his mind. Still, so Lucy told me, he could not sleep at night, and it must have been obvious to the ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... suddenly become rich, which gives a zest to the extension of the contest nothing else could produce. Indeed, the poorer orders of Somali are only too glad to have a good pretext for a fight, as a means of bettering their condition, by adding a few more head of cattle to their stock. Were this not the case, there would be no fighting whatever, as the sultan would be powerless to raise an army against the inclination ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... pondering. Putting Miss Collins' hints, Diana's own former confessions, and her present condition together, he saw, clearer than it was good to see, the probable state of affairs. And yet he was glad to see it; if any help or bettering was ever to come, it was desirable that his vision should be true, and his wisdom have at least firm data to act upon. But what action could touch the case?—the most difficult that a man can have to deal with. Through the night Basil alternately walked the floor and knelt down, sometimes ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... was as follows: After thinking over our financial condition and puzzling her brain to find out some way of bettering it, she had come to the conclusion that she would make some money by her own exertions, to help defray our household expenses. She never had made any money, but that was no reason why she should not begin. It was too ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... undergone an improvement, if indeed anything so excellent could admit of bettering. The little round glutinous stopper—india-rubber, I believe—from the peculiar inconvenience of which I presume the odious little thing derives its title as patent, has come unfastened from the top, and now, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... ever since Mr. Butt in 1870 raised the standard of Irish Land Reform under the name of Home Rule, it seems a little absurd, not to say Hibernian, of the British authorities to prosecute Father M'Fadden merely for bettering their own instruction in his own way. I could better understand a prosecution of Father M'Fadden on such grounds by the authorities ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... youth, Or comrades of his riper years; The poor who felt his kindly ruth, And mourn him with unpurchased tears; Men of the world whose mordant sense Shorn of all maudlin sentiment Seemed the sharp touchstone of pretence; Soft hearts on swift world-bettering bent, All miss, all mourn the man whom all Responsive found ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... royal road by which men can raise themselves from a position which they feel to be uncomfortable and unsatisfactory, as regards their mental or physical condition, except by the practice of those virtues by which they find numbers amongst them are continually advancing and bettering themselves." ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... through the field. "Tumble up! Tumble up, and to work, work," is the cry; and, now, from twelve o'clock (mid-day) till dark, the human cattle are in motion, wielding their clumsy hoes; hurried on by no hope of reward, no sense of gratitude, no love of children, no prospect of bettering their condition; nothing, save the dread and terror of the slave-driver's lash. So goes one day, and so comes ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... 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 ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... day when he asked her to walk with him to the village. He told her, as they walked, of the various projects for using his life to some advantage that he had used to make—projects for improved agricultural methods and the bettering of the conditions of life in the country. Althea had read a great deal of political economy. She had, indeed, ground at it and mastered it in the manner advised by Franklin to Helen. Gerald found her quiet comments and criticisms very illuminating, not only of his theme, but of his own comparative ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... chose over the land instead of working at their vocations, the country would be full of vagrants who, for want of other means for a living, would soon become robbers. Then, too, very many would flock to the towns, and so far from bettering their condition, would find themselves worse off than before, for there would be more people than ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... philanthropy still to be done here. The objection is absolutely irrelevant. The work of missions is not an indefinite 'doing good.' It is the bearing of a specific good to those who have not received it. It is not, per se, the bettering of temporal conditions. It is the securing to those who believe its message the best eternal conditions. It is not a matter of 'elevation'—it is a matter of translation. Not into a bettered life, but into a new life with an ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... Why shouldn't I think it? That's why I've tried to favour you—I've had a little chance or two of bettering ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... there must be very strict. He had noted that everything about the girl, her apparel and her ornaments, was cheap and tawdry. She must be both poor and unhappy. Why should she not jump at the chance of bettering herself? ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Society is naturally and rightly the result of self-interest. The man who spends his time altogether in the bettering of others does not establish reforms on the surest basis. Society usually has to do his work after him, with considerable delay and additional cost. He is all right in the abstract, but he delays matters. ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... empty fireplace and was leaning towards it as towards a place whence comfort ought to be looked for. His wife had persuaded him to exchange the wet coat for an old dressing-gown, which change, however, seemed to have wrought no bettering ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... association, and continue his work; but having a neighbor whom it was impossible for him to deceive, he went to him and said that he knew his circumstances, and that his family must perish or go to "the bettering-house" unless he continued to work. This neighbor, Swain, replied that he knew his condition was desperate, but that a man had better make any sacrifice than turn a "scab" at that time. He presently informed against him, and Mr. Bedford (his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... continuous work was put in mending and bettering the trenches, training the drafts which were arriving, performing tactical exercises and battalion routine affairs. By this time several ceremonies had taken place at which decorations were bestowed upon ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... conditions and directed to practical ends. Instead of a general physiology describing bones, arteries, and nerve centres, I found a little book on {169} "Sanitation and Hygiene in the Tropics," written in simple language, profusely illustrated, and with information which the pupil can use in bettering the health of himself, his family, and his neighborhood. Instead of a general book on agriculture, I found a book written so as to fit the special needs, crops, and conditions in the Philippines. Moreover, I found the officials exhibiting as their chief treasures the specimens of ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... started new, He saw fit to put the sons of Ham in subjection. They're slaves of each other in Africa, and I reckon they're treated no better than they are here. Abuses can't be helped in any system, sir, though we are bettering them. Were the poor in London in the days of the Edwards as well off as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... 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, in conjunction with European radicals particularly, is ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Commonwealth came into power in England the new government turned its attention to the navy, which had languished under the Stuarts. A great reform was accomplished in the bettering of the living conditions for the seamen. Their pay was increased, their share of prize money enlarged, and their food improved. At the same time, during the years 1648-51, the number of ships of the fleet was practically ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... obtained a chieftainship over the Ottawas, started out on the war path and conquered all the country east and north of Lake Huron. The drum and rattle were now heard resounding through all the villages of the combined forces, and they extended their conquests to Saut St. Mary. For the purpose of bettering their condition they removed from the Island to the Detour, or the mouth of the St. Mary's river, where they occupied a deserted village, and there separated, part going up to the Saut, which had also been deserted, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... 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, no Prefect ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... debtor's earnings belonging to the creditor, who allows no 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 ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... The colored race being here, I assume that its education, with the probabilities this involves of its elevation, is a duty as well as a necessity. I speak both of the inherent justice there is in giving every human being the chance of bettering his condition and increasing his happiness that lies in education—unless our whole theory of modern life is wrong—and also of the political and social danger there is in a degraded class numerically strong. Granted integral membership in a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the leading representative men of the city. He grew up with Cleveland, and was alive to the interests of the growing city. No scheme of real improvement but found a friend in him. He was energetic in forwarding movements for bettering the condition of the streets; he took a leading part in the location and establishment of the Water Works. Anxious to effect an improvement in the business architecture of the city, in which Cleveland was so far behind ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... absence, who should appear to lend a hand on the side of Leslie Walker but Mr Pornsch, uncle of the late Miss Flipp. He arrived with the callousness worthy of a certain department of man's character, and addressed a meeting with as much pomp and self-confidence and talk of bettering the morals of the people, as though he had been an Ellice Hopkins. He had the further effrontery to visit Clay's and feign crocodile grief for the deplorable fate of his niece. He protested his shame and horror, together ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... hacienda belonging to these rich lady proprietors; and profitable on account of the fine pasture which some of the surrounding hills afford. Nothing could look more solitary. Magdalene might have left her desert, and ended her days there, without materially bettering her situation. The only sign of life is a stream that runs round a very productive small orchard in front of the house, while on a hill behind are a few maguey plants, and on the mirador, in front of the house, some creepers have been trained with a good deal of taste. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... was at the crisis of her fortunes. She was an elderly lady, in those uncertain years beyond fifty, and had been left suddenly with more millions than she could easily count. Personally she was inclined to spend her money in bettering the world right off, in such ways as might from time to time seem attractive. This course, to her husband's former partner and present executor, Mr. Edward Easterly, was not only foolish but wicked, and, incidentally, distinctly unprofitable to him. He had ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... done these things because I've driven you to them. You? You'd rather see me sitting around here starving, a worn wreck of a woman, than lend a willing hand to bettering our lot. Oh, yes, you've done these things, and—I hate you for ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... the Americans are increasing in wealth, from necessity, because their country is becoming better, by being cultivated, in order to produce what is necessary. They cannot have what they want, in the way they wish, without increasing or bettering the property of which they ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... I am afraid it may be pretty serious! And after listening to all your story I can't help feeling, my dear fellow, that there is not the chance of things bettering themselves, as I had hoped in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... chopping their neighbours, and using their heads in conventional patterns on the tops of gate-posts, did devote their leisure intervals to rearing fortresses like this. Edinburgh Castle could not be conceived, much less built, nowadays, when all our energy is consumed in bettering the condition of the 'submerged tenth'! What did they care about the 'masses,' that 'regal race that is now no more,' when they were hewing those blocks of rugged rock and piling them against the sky-line ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... your pardon," said his Highness. "Captain Laurence made us laugh so much at a tale he was telling, that I fear the introductions were a little slipshod. I shall make my apologies to the young lady when I have the opportunity of bettering ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... both. Oh, Frank, my lad, he's a fine example to you; just 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 say no ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... a god of it? That is why you deify strenuousness. You dare not forgo it. The Eskimo doubtless deifies seal-blubber; he could not survive without it. Yet nobody would be an Eskimo if he had a chance of bettering his condition. By all means let us take life seriously. But let us be ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... As the mercantile system found a great minister in Colbert to carry those opinions into effect on a national scale, so the Physiocrats found in Turgot(22) a minister, under Louis XVI, who gave them a national field in which to try the doctrines of the new school. Benevolently devoted to bettering the condition of the people while Intendant of Limoges (1751), he was made comptroller-general of the finances by Louis XVI in 1774. Turgot had the ability to separate political economy from politics, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... can come no improvement until the people are convinced that it is needed. Just as soon as the individual fully realizes that he himself is to blame for his suffering or his poverty in human energy, he will apply his intelligence to the bettering of his condition. If he can, in a short time, make as good a showing as public effort has made in the case of water supplies, he will accomplish much ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days, perhaps, in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... sinners and must freely confess, being human, that our conversation is not always free from offense. But while we share this weakness with our enemies, we nevertheless do our duty diligently, by spreading God's Word, by teaching the churches, by bettering the evil, by urging the right, by consoling the weak, by chiding the stubborn, and, in brief, by doing whatever duty God lays ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Channing that Dorothea Lynde Dix drank in this theory with passionate faith, and proceeded at once to convert it into action. She was governess of Dr. Channing's children, and had long been interested in bettering the condition of convicts; but now her attention was turned to the insane and she proceeded at once to master the whole question of insanity, its origin, its development, and its treatment, so far as it was then known. Enlisting ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson |
