"Improver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... engraver; and finding after a few years that he was making but little progress, young Swain applied for instruction to Thomas Williams. That distinguished engraver was one of the few excellent "facsimile men" of the day; and he agreed to accept the applicant as "improver." At that time he was engaged in engraving the blocks of an edition of "Paul et Virginie"—the well-known illustrated edition which was published in Paris in 1838. For at that time there were fewer facsimile engravers in Paris than in ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the average size was almost doubled, while the meat, and in some cases the wool, was improved in quality in even greater proportion. The names of such men as Jethro Tull, who introduced the "drill husbandry," Bakewell, the great improver of the breeds of cattle, and Arthur Young, the greatest agricultural observer and writer of the century, have become almost as familiar as those of Crompton, Arkwright, Watt, and other pioneers of the factory system. The general improvement in agricultural methods was due, not so much ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... admire the patriotism which directs your conduct, do your neighbors and friends now address you. Themes less splendid, but more endearing, impress our minds. The first and best of citizens must leave us; our aged must lose their ornament; our youth their model; our agriculture its improver; our commerce its friend; our infant academy its protector; our poor their benefactor; and the interior navigation of the Potomac (an event replete with the most extensive utility, already, by your unremitted exertions, brought into partial use) its ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... gradually multiplied. Greathead became a noted improver and builder of them. He was handsomely rewarded for his useful labours by Government and others, and his name became so intimately and deservedly associated with the lifeboat, that people erroneously gave him the credit of being ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... PASQUALIGO of Venice as an improver of these amatory epistles, by introducing a deeper interest and a more complicate narrative. Partial to the Italian literature, Denina considers this author as having given birth to those novels in the form of letters, with which modern Europe has been inundated; and he refers the curious ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... ancient name of this manufacture, which it is said to have taken from the country of Pergamus; and to Eumenes, king of that country, its invention is usually ascribed, though in reality, that prince appears to have been the improver, rather than the inventor of parchment; since some accounts refer its invention to a still earlier period of time. Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian, who lived about 450 years before Christ, relates ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... British writer, the "Comet" of Henry Bell on the Clyde in 1812, was the first example of a steamboat brought into serviceable use within European waters, and the writer incidentally added that steam navigation in Britain took practical form almost on the spot where James Watt, the illustrious improver of the steam engine was born. The word "improver" is well put. It has much to do with the story of many inventions. The labor of Fitch was far-reaching in many directions, and it detracts nothing from Fulton's fame that the experiments of Fitch and ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... problem of race betterment is not only immensely simplified, but it is clearly shown to be more a matter for treatment by the biologist, acting through eugenics, than for the optimistic improver ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... property in capital is well defined by J. S. Mill, Principles, II, ch. 2, 6. "The reasons which form the justification, in an economical point of view, of property in land, are only valid in so far as the proprietor of the land is its improver. In no sound theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it." He here alludes specially to Ireland. The Fourierist, Considerant, distinguishes ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... crop. Buckwheat was sown after barley. Hemp and flax are mentioned as common crops. Enclosures must have been numerous in some counties; and there is a very good comparison between "champion (open fields) country and several,'' which Blith afterwards transcribed into his Improver Improved. Carrots, cabbages, turnips and rape, not yet cultivated in the fields, are mentioned among the herbs and roots for the kitchen. There is nothing to be found in Tusser about serfs or bondmen, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... owe him a debt of gratitude. God forbid! that I should be suspected of a wish to enter into a rivalry with Schelling for the honours so unequivocally his right, not only as a great and original genius, but as the founder of the Philosophy of Nature, and as the most successful improver of the Dynamic System [31] which, begun by Bruno, was re- introduced (in a more philosophical form, and freed from all its impurities and visionary accompaniments) by Kant; in whom it was the native and necessary growth of his own system. Kant's followers, however, on whom (for ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... stout; his hair and eyes black, and his complexion brown, insomuch as he was called the great black Knight of the North; though the word great attributed to him not so much for his stature, as power, and estate, and fortune. He was a wise man, and a great improver of his estate, which might have prospered better with his posterity, had he not been extra-ordinarily given to the love of women." There is unfortunately nothing left above the ground of the manor house of Roxby, the grass-covered site merely showing ridges and mounds where the buildings ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... to him was no more than dirt, and his gentleman and groom, and all belonging to him, the same; but the sporting season over, he grew tired of the place, and having got down a great architect for the house, and an improver for the grounds, and seen their plans and elevations, he fixed a day for settling with the tenants, but went off in a whirlwind to town, just as some of them came into the yard in the morning. A circular letter came next post from the new agent, with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... with the famous "attitude of the scissors" in the arms of Laertes; and all the speeches in "Hamlet" will be so ingeniously parodied that the originals will be reduced to a mere memoria technica of the improver's puns—premonitory signs of a hideous millennium, in which the lion will have to lie down with the lascivious monkeys whom (if we may trust ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... of Chute Hall, is also an improver and architectural reformer, his efforts being directed towards the abolition of thatch in favour of slate, an idea which has proved more fortunate in his case than in that of the great-grandfather of the ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... agent or attorney of the middle class of modern society.—He was the agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the internal improver, the liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, the opener of doors and markets, the subverter ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... knowledge that, if I wanted any angels to play with, I must henceforth put up with the anaemic, night-gowned nonentities that hovered over the bed of the Sunday-school child in the pages of the Sabbath Improver. ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... is, you know, the scene of St. Pierre's beautiful story of Paul and Virginia, over which I suppose most people have sentimentalised at one time or another of their lives. Until we reached here I did not know that the tale was like the lady's improver—a fiction founded on fact, and that Paul and Virginia were at one time flesh and blood, and that their veritable dust was buried at Pamplemousses in a spot considered as one of the lions of the place, and visited as classic ground. Now, though I never was greatly given to the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Stephenson, grandson of the inventor and improver of the locomotive, is said to have ordered a thousand copies to be distributed on railways all over the world to show what an American ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... his knowledge of this particular work in its earlier sections, using also to some extent the subtle art of the decipherer, [Footnote: An art which, in the preceding century, had been greatly improved by Wallis, Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford, the improver of analytic mathematics, and the great historian of algebra. Algebra it was that suggested to him his exquisite deciphering skill, and the parliamentary war it was that furnished him with a sufficient ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... more magnificent proportions than could be found anywhere else. The Board gave a spirited support to this enterprise, and negotiations were entered into with the most eminent instrument-maker of those days. This was Jesse Ramsden (1735-1800), famous as the improver of the sextant, as the constructor of the great theodolite used by General Roy in the English Survey, and as the inventor of the dividing engine for graduating astronomical instruments. Ramsden had built for Sir George Schuckburgh the largest ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... sadly torn by shot and shell. He found Lady Mabel busy renovating, modernising and adorning the rude and comfortless apartments of her monastic quarters. Immediately his pencil, his professional ingenuity and skill are devoted to her service. He appoints himself architect, upholsterer and improver-general to the household. He designed elegant curtains, with graceful festoons for the misshapen windows, tasteful hangings to conceal bare walls of rough-hewn stone, picturesque screens to hide unsightly corners; and arranged and put ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... or cultivation in common—are consistent with only a low stage of development. The idea of property, which naturally arises with reference to things of human production, is easily transferred to land, and an institution which when population is sparse merely secures to the improver and user the due reward of his labor, finally, as population becomes dense and rent arises, operates to strip the producer of his wages. Not merely this, but the appropriation of rent for public purposes, which is the only way in which, with anything like a high development, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... parasols now in fashion were devised by some thoughtful improver of woman, to enhance beauty by imparting a roseate hue to the complexion. Unfortunately, however, the reflection from the pink silk does not always reach the face at the right angle. Sometimes it concentrates altogether upon the most prominent feature of the face, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... to know little of ourselves as connected with the history of puppet-shows; but in an article in the curious Dictionary of Trevoux, I find that John Brioche, to whom had been attributed the invention of Marionnettes, is only to be considered as an improver; in his time (but the learned writers supply no date) an Englishman discovered the secret of moving them by springs, and without strings; but the Marionnettes of Brioche were preferred for the pleasantries which he made them deliver. The erudite Quadrio appears to have more successfully substantiated ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... belief, that some of the decayed remains of those oaks, the place of which was in this manner usurped, had been planted by the Hermit's own hand. This sainted spot, however, suffered comparatively little injury. At the bidding of an alien improver, the Hind's Cottage, upon Vicar's island, in the same lake, with its embowering sycamores and cattle-shed, disappeared from the corner where they stood; and right in the middle, and upon the precise point of the island's highest elevation, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... achievements of a writing-master are detailed by contemporaries with laborious accuracy. Mr D'Israeli, in his "Curiosities of Literature," has not scrupled to devote many pages to Bales's contests for superiority with a rival penman of the name of Johnson. Bales was the improver of Dr Bright's system, and, according to his own account in his "Writing Schoolmaster," he was able to keep pace with a moderate speaker. He seems to have been engaged in public life, by acting as secretary where caligraphy was required; and he was at length accused ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Portuguese along the coast of Africa, was as an invention compared to an improvement. Each new discovery then was but a step beyond that which had preceded it; Columbus was the first to steer boldly from shore into the waste of waters, an originator, not a mere improver. ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... improver of many kinds of woods is raw linseed-oil mixed with a little rectified ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... highly polished coffee; and to supply this demand, the beans are sent through another huller having a phosphor-bronze cylinder and cone. Much Guadeloupe coffee is prepared in this way, and is known as cafe bonifieur from the fact that the polishing machine is called in Guadeloupe the bonifieur (improver). It is also called cafe de luxe. Coffee that has not received the extra polish is described as habitant; while coffee in the parchment is known as cafe en parche. Extra polished coffee is much in demand in the London, Hamburg, and other European ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... degrade the victims whom it brands, however unjustly. But let us hope a brighter day is approaching, when a Scottish country gentleman may be a scholar without the pedantry of our friend the Baron, a sportsman without the low habits of Mr. Falconer, and a judicious improver of his property without becoming a ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... his side-line advanced upon his neighbour, until at last the central proprietor saw his estate absorbed. In Oatlands, two properties were measured according to the common practice: the side-lines were guessed at; one cultivated, and the other sold his property; but when measured, the improver of his estate discovered that his homestead, and nearly one hundred acres of his land fell by description ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Church tumbled down—and the Channel Fleet been knocked to atoms. I believe his motives are always pure, and his measures often able; but they are endless, and never done with that pedetentous pace and pedetentous mind in which it behoves the wise and virtuous improver to walk. He alarms the wise Liberals; and it is impossible to sleep soundly while he has the command ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... university. What a pity that the thousands of ambitious, energetic men and women who missed their opportunities for an education at the school age, and feel crippled by their loss, fail to catch the significance of this, fail to realize the tremendous cumulative possibilities of that great life-improver that admirable substitute for a ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... in the name of Prose, to give us a few hints in the composition of our great history. The name of the first pavier, we fear, is unknown, unless we could identify him with Triptolemus, who was a great improver of Rhodes; but it is the fate of all the greatest benefactors of their kind to be neglected, and in time forgotten. The first regularly defined paths were probably footways—the first carriages broad-wheeled. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... On the same plan hath Envy form'd her rage, 370 'Gainst those whom fortune hath our rivals made, In way of science, and in way of trade: Stung with mean jealousy she arms her spite, First works, then views their ruin with delight. Our Hogarth here a grand improver shines, And nobly on the general plan refines; He like himself o'erleaps the servile bound; Worth is his mark, wherever worth is found. Should painters only his vast wrath suffice? Genius in every walk is lawful prize: 380 'Tis a gross insult to his o'ergrown ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... himself erected at Squillace, was a borderer in another sense than that already mentioned—a borderer between the two worlds of Politics and Religion; and in this capacity also, as the contemporary, perhaps the friend, certainly the imitator, of St. Benedict, and in some respects the improver upon his method, Cassiodorus largely helped to mould the destinies of mediaeval and therefore of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... cowries next fall in Datura, the price of next year's oil and cloth and tools. The peanut, a legume Aaron had no experience of beyond purchasing an occasional tooth-ful at the grocery-store, won half a dozen acres from Korean lespedeza, the crop he'd at first selected as his soil-improver there. He got acquainted with a plant no Amishman before him had ever sown, a crabgrass called fonio, a staple cereal and source of beer-malt on Murna, imported with the ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... But every improver of tools had a long and difficult battle to fight; for any improvement in their effective power was sure to touch the interests of some established craft. Especially was this the case with machines, which are but tools of a more complete though complicated ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... have been willing to insure it at twenty-five bushels. Col. C. has nearly 2,000 acres in cultivation, which within his recollection was cultivated entirely with hoes—his grandfather would not use a plow—was as much set against that great land improver as some modern, but no more wise farmers, are against guano. Col. C. uses the best of plows; sows 200 lbs. guano to the acre and plows it in six inches deep, and sows one bushel of wheat and harrows thoroughly, but not deep enough to disturb the guano. His gain has been eight ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... always some partial good he would introduce; and thus he but destroys the just proportions of a nicely-regulated system of things by exaggerating one of the parts. I passed of late through a richly-cultivated district of country, in which the agricultural improver had done his utmost. Never were there finer fields, more convenient steadings, crops of richer promise, a better regulated system of production. Corn and cattle had mightily improved; but what had man, the lord of the soil, become? Is not the body better than food, and life than raiment? ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... city. As [Page: 108] the former period may be characterised by the predominance of the relatively unskilled workman and of the skilled, so this next incipient age by the development of the chief workman proper, the literal architectos or architect; and by his companion the rustic improver, gardener and forester, farmer, irrigator, and their correspondingly ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... thus gone through this publication, with a view to enable our readers to determine, whether the author of these verses which have now been exhibited, is entitled to claim the honours of an improver or restorer of our poetry, and to found a new school to supersede or new-model all our maxims on the subject. If we were to stop here, we do not think that Mr. Wordsworth, or his admirers, would have any reason to complain; for what we have now quoted is undeniably ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... though the Skalds talk mainly of the latter,—misleading certain critics not a little; for no nation of men could ever live by fighting alone; there could not produce enough come out of that! I suppose the right good fighter was oftenest also the right good forest-feller,—the right good improver, discerner, doer and worker in every kind; for true valour, different enough from ferocity, is the basis of all. A more legitimate kind of valour that; showing itself against the untamed Forests and dark brute Powers of Nature, to conquer Nature for us. In the same direction ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle |
