"Better off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... done in me to grieve for her. She is far better off than ever I could have made her with the best of wills, and as for me—I ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... they are usually the cheapest prints. Wooden chairs, and generally every object of the cheapest, are to be met with in the dwellings of the New York poor. If we find something better in the present instance, it is not because Paul and his mother are any better off than their neighbors. On the contrary, there are few whose income is so small. But they have seen better days, and the furniture we see has been saved from the time of ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... will not argue about it. Time will show. As a woman of the Mahrattas, I trust that day will never come; but as one who knows the English, I have my fears. Of one thing I am sure, that were they masters here, the cultivators would be vastly better off than ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... when Benton was sick—as he very often was—they could not understand other needs, or minister to the sickness of the mind. If I received any counsel, it was to the effect that a woman was in every way better off to be married. I used to wonder why God had not made us married—why he had given us our individual natures, since there was forever this ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... are doing their best, especially in France, and perhaps a little in England, to set class against class, and pick up every stone in the kennel to shy at a gentleman with a good coat on his back, something useful might be done by a few good-humoured sketches of those innocent criminals a little better off than their neighbours, whom, however we dislike them, I take it for granted we shall have to endure, in one shape or another, as long as civilization exists; and they seem, on the whole, as good in their present shape as we are likely to get, shake the dice-box ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is better off learning a trade than cramming his head full of culture fads; he is then doing something useful and profitable on which the happiness and success of his life will depend. By the time his companions have done dabbling in science and have come to the conclusion that ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... remarked, "Milly is settled now anyway—hope she'll be happy! She wasn't much of a business woman, eh?" He looked at Ernestine, who smiled grimly, but made no reply. "She's better off married, I expect—most women are," he philosophized, "whether they like it or not.... That's what a woman like Milly is meant for.... She's the kind that men have run after from the beginning of the world, I guess—the woman with ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... will you be better off?—the letters are gone; and Poole has you in his power if you threaten him again. Now, hark you; you did not murder the Italian who was found stabbed in the fields yonder a week ago; L100 reward ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Blackford, with a laugh, "I didn't want to seem too anxious. I knew that it was safe where you had put it, Miss Nelson," and he looked at Betty. "Besides, I have been without it so long now that it seems almost as if I never had it. And from all the good it is going to do me, perhaps I might be better off without it now." ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... only find out the right and wrong of a given course by summing up the advantages and disadvantages, and striking a balance, and there is nothing in the Religion of Humanity to force two men to find the balance on the same side. The Comtists are no better off than other utilitarians in judging policy, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... which sets up all these rivalries and collisions, then it is the populations of the Great States which should be the most enviable; the position of the Russian should be more desirable than that of the Hollander; it is not. The Austrian should be better off than the Switzer; he is not. If a nation's wealth is really subject to military confiscation, and needs the defence of military power, then the wealth of those small states should be insecure indeed—and Belgian national stocks ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... kill a bear unless he, the hunter, is in gala attire, and then not until he has made a short speech in which he assures his victim that the affair is not one of personal enmity, but of expedience, and that anyway he, the bear, will be better off in the Hereafter. And then the skull is cleaned and set on a pole near running water, there to remain during twelve moons. Also at the tail-root of a newly-deceased beaver is tied a thong braided of red wool ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... you'd be any better off. I ain't got nobody and I ain't what you might call cheerful. I know what's the matter with you, though. That Kenelm's been frettin' ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... not answer. In my youth I was wild. They forced me to come here. I had no money. I was obliged to obey. I have christianized a few hundred worthless savages who were better off in their barbarism, and I have made myself a power among a few thousand men of whom the outer world, the great world, knows nothing. My Mission is the most prosperous in the Californias—and I—" he set and ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... another where he failed. There was a bank of clay, some few feet high, and he could not round it at either end or surmount it in the middle. Finally he literally pawed and cut a path, much as if he were digging in the sand for water. When he got over that he was not much better off. The slope above was endless and grew steeper, more difficult toward the top. Slone knew absolutely that no horse could climb over it. He grew apprehensive, however, for Wildfire might stick up there on the slope until the line of fire passed. The horse apparently ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... too good and wise to suffer forever herself or let him suffer because, in society, there were blunders. There was a way out—a clean, right way—and they must take it. He could get a divorce on grounds of mere desertion, and three people, at least, would be better off. It was pitiful, the scene, one afternoon. He had called to see her, and was pleading with her. It was in the drawing-room, and there were stained windows they both remembered in later years. He had talked of his bondage and of his hopes. She was not quite herself; she was ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... has no chance at home; he is kept down by landlords, and can never get a farm of his own. In Illinois I am a free man, and have no one to lord it over me. If I had lived and slaved in England for a hundred years I should never have been any better off, and now I have a farm as good as any in Will County, and am just as good a man as ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... headed him off in a tired and indifferent voice. "You've saved me a trip for nothing. After all, the property is probably better off in other hands. Now I have nothing in the world to worry about but myself. Bon voyage, Mr. Fong! And ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... to these sudden fluctuations and suspensions, and the most industrious and ambitious workman is often compelled to spend in his enforced weeks of idleness all that he had been able to save when employed, and thus at the end of the year finds himself, through no fault of his own, no better off than at the beginning. Finding himself out of work, our hero visited other shoe establishments in the hope of employment. But his search was in vain. Chance in this emergency made him acquainted with Professor Henderson, a well-known magician and conjurer, whose custom it was to travel, ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... always knew it. You see I thought Rattler loved that girl as well as I did, and I knew she liked him better than she did me, and would be happier I dare say with him. But then I knew that old Robins would have preferred me to him, as I was better off—and the girl would do as he said—and, you see, I thought I was kinder in the way—and so I left. But," he continued, as I was about to interrupt him, "for fear the old man might object to Rattler, I've lent him enough to set him up in business ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... implies both privacy and detachment. Here you can have neither. You must consider yourself as so much public property, must do what others do—i. e. live in public, and make the best of it. No place can be better off for hotels, and few so ill off for lodgings—the latter are only to be had in small dingy houses opening upon the street. They are, of course, very noisy; nor are the let-ters of them at any pains to induce you by the modesty of their demands to drop a veil over this ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... later, when everybody was up to their necks in trouble, when we were obliged to take our knapsacks and guns, again to be cut in pieces; then they said, "if we had only had good sense and justice and prudence we should have been so much better off, we should have been quiet at home instead of this breaking up, which is coming; we can do nothing but be quiet and submit; what ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... would have been better off with the H'Lorkas. This is a patrol ship of the Ptomenites. They are the tyrants of this planet, their power contested only by the people of Baserite to the north. But the Baserites always come out on the bloody end of ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... that the officers were much better off than we were. Their tents may have been a little lighter and less crowded than ours. They had a late dinner to occupy part of the long evening. They had more money to spend, and perhaps more to occupy their minds. But I fancy that as great a ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... recruit. reform, remodel, reorganize; new model. view in a new light, think better of, appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober. palliate, mitigate; lessen an evil &c. 36. Adj. improving &c. v.; progressive, improved &c. v.; better, better off, better for; all the better for; better advised. reformatory, emendatory[obs3]; reparatory &c. (restorative) 660[obs3]; remedial &c. 662. corrigible, improvable; accultural[obs3]. adv. on consideration, on reconsideration, on second thoughts, on better advice; ad melius ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... helped us put up the shelves, and never called for the rent in the dawn of the first day of the month. In the front part of this cellar we had our shop; in the rear, our home. On the floor we laid our mattresses, on the shelves, our goods. And never did we stop to think who in this case was better off. The safety of our merchandise before our own. But ten days after we had settled down, the water issued forth from the floor and inundated our shop and home. It rose so high that it destroyed half of our capital stock and almost all our furniture. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... more experience than you.' There was a tone of melancholy in the father's voice as he said this which quite touched his son, and which brought the two closer together out in the porch. 'Take my word for it,' continued Sir Anthony, 'that you are much better off as you are than you could be ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... you, I am sure," said Dr. Emerton. "You can afford that sort of thing—I can't. I should have sent him to the infirmary, where he would be under Dr. Hutchinson's care; but, of course, he will be better off ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the boys were steady enough yesterday," said the Colonel quietly; "and we shall be far better off in the open than drawn out in a line ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... is a pious duty forced upon us; but it becomes every day more inconceivable to me how men can engage in the other kind of war, and how, in particular, a people so provident as the German people could have hoodwinked themselves into believing that they could be better off by such a monstrous means as warfare has now become. They had behind them the experience of the Russians and Japanese; they had all about them the evidences of their forty years' commercial activity; they must have known, or at least their ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... never replied to that at all. Still, I shall give my note into the hands of his business agent here, and pay him the interest as it falls due. We must "go slow." We are not in the Cleveland Herald. We are a hundred thousand times better off, but there isn't ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hateful. She is angry with those who are better off than herself. I have not seen a ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... diphtheria, mumps, and the others have long been accepted as providential visitations for sins known or unknown. That children had to have them and were better off when they had them has become part of the tradition of the laity, fostered by the lazy ignorance of previous medical generations. But today we are beginning to ask ourselves why children must have these endemic infections of their age. The pathologist ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... butter; glass windows and fire; hats, white shirts, and woolen underwear; boots and shoes; trunks, bags, and boxes; bedsteads, mattresses, sheets, and blankets: all of which a Japanese can do without, and is really better off without. Think for a moment how important an article of Occidental attire is the single costly item of white shirts! Yet even the linen shirt, the so-called "badge of a gentleman," is in itself a useless garment. It gives neither ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... thee was a great deal better off in the gardens of Maria Edgeworth," said Mrs. Crowder, "for there thee could come and go as thee pleased, and it almost makes my flesh creep when I think of thee living in company with the bloody tyrants of the past. And always ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... I am no better off at Chartres than in Paris," was his conclusion. And when these reflections beset him, especially on Sundays, he regretted having accompanied the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... indeed all things earthly were coming to an end, I should be free from Robinson's brutal force, and as to meeting my Creator, I felt far less dread of that than of meeting my cross, unmerciful master. I felt that, sinful as I had been, and unworthy as I was, I should be far better off than I then was; driven to labor all day, without compensation; half starved and poorly clad, and above all, subjected to the whims and caprices of any heartless tyrant to whom my master might give the power to rule over me. But I had not much time for reflection, I hurried home; my mind filled with ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... Barty soon got better off, and moved into better lodgings in Berners Street; a sitting-room and bedroom at No. 12B, which has ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... all these details, {92} should be the visitor's clear aim? To see to it that the children are better off than their parents were, and are saved from the pitfalls into which the latter have fallen; that the boys are better equipped to become breadwinners, and the girls to become homemakers. The training given in our public schools will often seem very inadequate, and some of us look forward to the ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... buried at times on the Johnnie—on the Lucy Foster it must have been tough. And along here the staysail came off the Withrow and eased her a lot. We would all have been better off with less sail along about that time. In proof of that we could see back behind us where the Nannie O, under her trysail, was almost holding her own. But it wouldn't do to take it off. Had they ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... behind counters and sent to the University, not because they had any love of letters, like Domsie's lads at Drumtochty, but because rich old ladies were much impressed by the young men's talk, and the young men were perfectly aware that they would be better off in the ministry than in any situation they could gain by their own merits. As Carmichael grew older, and therefore more charitable, he discovered with what faulty tools the work of the world and even of ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... agree," said Harry; "and we're better off without him. We have Directors enough as it is. Five is a very good number. There can't be a tie vote with five ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... husband, though he is counted a felon, needs only to cross the river to New Jersey to be reasonably safe. Imagine the State of New York spending good money to chase a man whom it does not want as a citizen, and whom it can only punish by sending to jail for a short period. The State is better off without such a man. To bring him back would not even benefit ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... work, and not a privileged person enjoying a gratification. His dignity is not a dispensation, but an additional burden; along with the duties of his office, he subjects himself to an observance of the rules—having become a general, he is no better off than the simple soldier; he rises as early and his daily life is no better; his cell is as bare and his personal support not more expensive. He who commands ten thousand others lives as poorly, under the same strict instructions, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... comparisons of your condition with the condition of workingmen in previous centuries! But what value has the question for you, and what satisfaction can it give you, if, in case the minimum of the accepted standard has risen, you are better off today than the workingmen of eighty, two hundred, three hundred years ago? No more than the fully proved fact that you are better off today than ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... "Not much better off here than we were in the water," suggested Gist. "My fingers are frozen, and some of my toes; and what is to prevent the freezing of the remainder of ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... soldiers; but my grey shooting-jacket and youthful appearance saved me from the imputation of being a "citizen." Two hours later, the passport officer, seeing who I was, procured me a similar situation in the ladies' car, where I was a little better off. After leaving Chattanooga the railroad winds alongside of the Tennessee river, the banks of which are high, and beautifully covered with trees—the river itself is wide, and very pretty; but from ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... she doesn't care a thing about going. She'd be better off in bed. Careful, baby! Your hair is catching on my sequins. Put her down, Harry. You'll spoil the shape of her ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... Tel-el-Kebir, had prevented the razing to the ground of the ancient capital. What now remained to him? As he looked these facts in the face, he realized that after about six months of hardships, misfortunes, and privations he was no better off than when he started; whatever he had done seemed ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... a lot o' fowk kursened. Everybody wor feightin' for th' front pews, an' them 'at gate 'em had to haddle e'm an' net be perticular abaat ther shirt collar—an' when a chap starts aat for a front place i' this life he has to rough it, an' if he succeeds aw wonder sometimes if he's ony better off nor them 'at gate th' front seeats i'th' chapel, for all 'at wor behund 'em seem'd to be tryin' to shove 'em ovver into th' bottom, an' nah an' then aw noaticed odd uns 'at could bide noa longer, an' gave up th' spot they'd fowt soa hard ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... turned Europe upside down and dragged most things from their familiar moorings, had its effect on the lives of the two farmers on the side of Letterbrack. They became better off than they had ever been before. It must not be supposed that they grew rich. According to the standard of English working men they had always been wretchedly poor. All that the war did for them was to put a little, a very little, more ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... been fickle, I was a great deal better off in my wife than I deserved. Remember, Mad, my wife and the mother of my children was a good woman; I was reasonably happy with her, and I trust I bore her tender reverence. She died and left me with our children two winters ago. When we meet again, it will ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... It would be out of the question. He would go to Ralph, and there would be a row, and I would not have it for worlds." Then she tried to smile. "Other girls are unhappy, and I don't see why I'm to be better off than the rest. I know I am a fool. You'll never be unhappy, because you are not a fool. But, Patience, I have told you everything, and if you are not true to me I will never forgive you." Patience promised that she would be true; ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... said Susan, "'n' look where he come out! If Jathrop had been a girl how different everything would have been for him—not to speak o' the rest of us. You can't deny that, Mrs. Lathrop, 'n' you can't deny either as Jathrop would have been better off himself if he 'd been any other thing as God ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... varying, and though there may be a long spell of fine, hot weather, with a glorious crisp air, yet at any moment a change of the wind may bring a week of soaking rain, sleet, possibly snow, and a fall of temperature by twenty degrees. That is no time for the fjelds, and the traveller is better off in a fjordside hotel. ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... America from objections to a peculiar law or a peculiar impost, which state policy still vindicates, or state necessity still maintains! The Irish Catholic peasant, in reality, would not, perhaps, be much better off, in a pecuniary point of view, if the tithes were transferred to the rental of the landlord, yet Irish Catholics have emigrated in hundreds from the oppression, real or imaginary, of Protestant tithe-owners. Whether in ancient times or modern, it ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... their fright, were ready to pull down their barracks and rebuild them at a short distance only from the vent-hole, the surgeon assuring them that they would be better off than their shipmates in the winter season, by having warm ground under their feet. As all hands turned to, the huts were shifted to another spot, a little above their former site, and before ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... have trained Philip to be the powerful enemy to us that he is. Let any one rise and tell me how Philip has grown so strong, if we ourselves are not the source of his strength. {29} 'But, my good Sir,' you say, 'if we are badly off in these respects, we are at any rate better off at home.' And where is the proof of this? Is it in the whitewashing of the battlements, the mending of the roads, the fountains, and all such trumperies? Look then at the men whose policy gives you these things. Some of them who were poor have ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... had been damp with filth. Camp Wood, as they called this military settlement on the Green River, was also muddy; but we were excellently well mounted; the weather was very cold, but peculiarly fine, and the soldiers around us, as far as we could judge, seemed to be better off in all respects than those we had visited at St. Louis, at Rolla, or at Cairo. They were all in tents, and seemed to be light-spirited and happy. Their rations were excellent; but so much may, I think, be said of the whole Northern ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... eight years of age. A few months later his father died of a congestive chill, and little Sammy was thrown on the world. He was indentured to old Squire Higgins. The Squire was a hard master; and in those days a bound boy was not much better off than a slave, any how. Up early in the morning "doing chores," running all day, and bringing the cows from the pasture in the evening, he was kept always busy. The terms of his indenture obligated the Squire to send him to school three months in the winter; ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... "I am better off than you. Let us try a little of this—the first chapter of Romans. Will you read the first ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... any better off?—It would be next to madness to think of fighting the lower-deck guns, in such weather, and we will keep all fast. Should the French commence the sport, we shall have the advantage of being to windward; and the loss of a ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... bother you any more about love. We'll go on the same as before. You are better off and safer on Berande, in spite of the fact that I love you, than anywhere else in the Solomons. But I want you, as a final item of man-talk, to remember, from time to time, that I love you, and that it will be the dearest day of my life when you consent to marry me. I want ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... the water wagon, Dick." He grinned ruefully at his friend. "Nothing like locking the stable after your bronc's been stole. I'd a-been a heap better off if I'd got on the wagon a ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... commercial town, the entrepot of the wine trade of a rich wine district, while Toulouse and the rest were merely residential towns, employing little capital more than was necessary to supply their own consumption. The common people were always better off in a town like Bordeaux, where they lived on capital, than in a town like Toulouse, where they lived on revenue.[145] But while he speaks as if he thought the people of Bordeaux more sober as well as more industrious than the people ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... and he patted the back of her hand. "It is a great shock to you, naturally—oh, most naturally, and does you great credit. But come now, Pevensey is gone, as we must all go some day, and our tears cannot bring him back, my dear. We can but hope he is better off, poor fellow, and look on it as a mysterious dispensation and that sort ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... round him shall cry bravo to,—he is not an artist I can much admire, as matters go! Alas, he is in general merely the windiest mortal of them all; and is admired for being so, into the bargain. Not a windy blockhead there who kept silent but is better off than this excellent stump-orator. Better off, for a great many reasons; for this reason, were there no other: the silent one is not admired; the silent suspects, perhaps partly admits, that he is a kind of blockhead, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... between. The intimacy between them, which was near ruining the young man, had come about through Toner's attention to Newcome's daughter, Sarah Eliza. "But," continued the unhappy lover, "the old man's been and had Serlizer off for more'n a year, and puts me off and off and better off, till I just up and wouldn't stand it no more. I ain't a goin' to sell his stuff, nor drink his stuff, nor hev nawthun more to do along of his gang, but I'd like to know where Serlizer's put to, and I'm here and my gun, with a lot of powder and shot and slugs, for the stummik of any gallihoot ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... say that I'd ever care two cents about. She came up behind me and walked along with me a ways, but I got too many things on my mind to hardly pay the least attention to anything she ever talks about. She's a girl what I think about her the less people pay any 'tention to what she says the better off they are." ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... been. Where is the society of Beforethewars? Destroyed, Doctor! What good were youth and new things? We are better off now. The world is peaceful and jogs along. The race goes nowhere but after all, there is nowhere to go. They proved that. The men who built the road. I will speak with your visitors as I agreed, if they come. But I think I will only ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... to be rather hard, especially the Germans; for they had nothing of their own to eat but dry kuskusou and onions. I was a little better off. We could get nothing from the town during the day, not even a fowl or eggs, nor even ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... here am I only just back from Sidon, where he sent me to see after Europa, and before I am in breath again-off I must go to Argos, in quest of Danae, 'and you can take Boeotia on your way,' says father, 'and see Antiope.' I am half dead with it all. Mortal slaves are better off than I am: they have the chance of being sold to a new master; I wish ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... darlin'; don't cry for the baby,' said her husband. 'Shure it's better off than the rest av us, it is. An' didn't ye hear what the minister said about the beautiful place it is? An' shure he wouldn't lie to us at all.' But a mother cannot be comforted for her ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... my Reverdy. At the school I see him in association with English boys. He is not so strong as they, not so handsome, not so alert and apt. Isabel has never had a child and wants one with consuming passion. This boy is mine, but am I better off than Isabel? My life grows clearer to me. I have receded from it and can see it better. I can look out upon Rome and then close my eyes and recall Chicago. I think of my long years of money making; then I turn ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... my aunt. "I believe Thomas Willing is no better off in what you call this world's gear, nor Franks, nor any of them. You like the game, and, after all, what is it but a kind of gambling? How do you know what hands the ocean holds? Your ventures are no better than my guineas ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... persuasive appeals on the part of Southern newspapers and Southern leaders to Negroes who were either leaving or who anticipated leaving the South. In these appeals the Negroes were told that they were better off in the South, that the southern white man was their friend and that living conditions in the North were far more difficult than those in the South. They cited as examples of this the cold climate of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... grey draught horse this time, and it looked very much broken down. I thought it would have come down every step, and fallen like an old rotten humpy in a gust of wind. And the old man was not much better off. I saw at once that he was a very sick man. His face was drawn, and he bent forward as if he was hurt. He got down stiffly and awkwardly, like a hurt man, and as soon as his feet touched the ground he grabbed my arm, or he would have gone down like a man who steps off a train in motion. He hung towards ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... ourselves, mate," said the one who had not spoken. "We don't like to say no. But look here, go and try round the camp and see what you can do. Some of them's a deal better off than we are. Get it of them. If you can't, come back here and we'll do ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... morning, when Mr. Cotter told me that the money had mounted up to over 100,000 pounds, was that it would unseal my lips. You were still better off than I was, but the difference was now immaterial. I was a rich man, and had not the smallest occasion to marry for money. Whether I married a girl without a penny, or an heiress, could make but little difference to me, ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... experience sufficed to convince me that my new method was by no means so effectual as I had imagined. Uneducated people rarely make generalisations which have no practical utility, and I feel sure that very few Russian peasants ever put to themselves the question: Am I better off now than I was in the time of serfage? When such a question is put to them they feel taken aback. And in truth it is no easy matter to sum up the two sides of the account and draw an accurate balance, save in those exceptional cases ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... had passed in the Beast's palace, and told them of her promise to return on such a day. The two sisters were so very jealous that they determined to ruin her prospects if possible. The eldest said to the other: "Why should this minx be better off than we are? Let us try to keep her here beyond the time; the monster will then be so enraged with her for breaking her promise, that he will destroy her at once when she returns." "That is well thought of," replied the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... woke, through the night, it seemed to shout, "Are you any better off here?" And when I went to church the next day it crept close up to me in the pew, and said, "Come, now, it is all very well to say you are a Christian; but if you were really one you would not be afraid of the place you ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... procedure is cut off from the public, but more than one person has told us of having heard the agonizing cries of the victims. And yet there are people who will tell us these poor creatures are far better off than when in their native country. One slave-owner said it was necessary to make an example of some member of all large households of slaves each month, in order to keep them under discipline! Another said, "I never whip my slaves; ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... of Goram, only eight or ten miles long, there are about a dozen Rajahs, scarcely better off than the rest of the inhabitants, and exercising a mere nominal sway, except when any order is received from the Dutch Government, when, being backed by a higher power, they show a little more strict authority. My friend the Rajah of Ammer (commonly called Rajah of Goram) ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is,—for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. Then I went to another who had still higher pretensions to wisdom, and my conclusion was exactly ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... when offshift. Carbon dioxide and a little water vapor must still come out of the deep crack there... Anyhow, they used to say that a lonesome person—with perhaps a touch of schizophrenia—might do better off the Earth than ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... she is,' he thinks, as he watches her down the passage. 'I wonder what induced her to throw Jimmy over. Couldn't have been better off as regards a husband. Money! as if that would ever enter into her head. Can't make it out at all. She likes ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... said thoughtfully, "women, of course, who would come and see you with pleasure. And yet," he added, "I am not sure that you would not be better off without knowing them." ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... winter, when you sit shivering beside the stove, if you're not hauling in building logs or cordwood through the arctic frost. At night it's deadly silent, unless there's a blizzard howling; the plains are very lonely when the snow lies deep. Don't you think you're better off in ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... anything of that longing that the Psalmist had? He was perfectly comfortable in Babylon. There was abundance of everything that he wanted for his life. The Jews there were materially quite as well off, and many of them a great deal better off, than ever they had been in their narrow little strip of mountain land, shut in between the desert and the sea. But for all that, fat, wealthy Babylon was not Palestine. So amidst the lush vegetation, the wealth of water and the fertile plains, the Psalmist longed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you're putting me in a mighty hard position, girlie?" he protested. "You're a heap better off not to know. He's your brother. I wish you'd take my word that I'll drop the whole thing right where it is. Harry's had all the best of it, so far; let it ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... you are better off than I am," said the City Man. "If I hadn't now and again to appear before the Registrar in the Bankruptcy Court, I don't know what I should do with my time! I am stone broke. That's about it—stone broke! Knocked out of the 'House,' and without a scrap of credit: ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... if the idea afforded him infinite amusement, "but how does it work. There are two or three men in the town who start market gardens and make something out of it. They sell their produce in the city and they do their trading there; they hire Irish laborers from outside the village; and how much better off is the town, except that it can tax them a trifle more if it can get hold of the valuation of their property." "Which it generally can't," interpolated Greenfield grimly, with an inward reminder of certain ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... pushing the development of a tourist industry to relieve high unemployment, which amounts to one-third of the labor force. The gap in Reunion between the well-off and the poor is extraordinary and accounts for the persistent social tensions. The white and Indian communities are substantially better off than other segments of the population, often approaching European standards, whereas minority groups suffer the poverty and unemployment typical of the poorer nations of the African continent. The ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... were better off than those who had no wells to draw water from for their fields; and the only way to provide against such evils in future is to have a well for every field. God has given you the fields, and he has given you the water; and when it does not come from the clouds, you must ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... her fourteen knots, so that by Sunday morning she had covered three hundred and fifty miles. If the wind held, she would make around. If it failed, and the snorter came from anywhere between south-west and north, back the Mary Rogers would be hurled and be no better off than she had been seven weeks before. And on Sunday morning the wind was failing. The big sea was going down and running smooth. Both watches were on deck setting sail after sail as fast as the ship could stand it. And now Captain Cullen went around brazenly before God, smoking a big cigar, smiling ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... private matter between us. This, with what I have already paid, and with an outstanding note of mine, will exceed my subscription of $500. This, too, is exclusive of my ordinary expenses during the campaign, all which being added to my loss of time and business, bears pretty heavily upon one no better off in world's goods than I; but as I had the post of honor, it is not for me to be over-nice. You are feeling badly—'And this too shall ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... vegetables—ay, and English fruit. Though Smyrna's fig is eaten throughout Europe, and Roman brocoli be without a rival; though the cherry and the Japan medlar flourish only at Palermo, and the cactus of Catania can be eaten nowhere else; what country town in England is not better off on the whole, if quality alone be considered? But we have one terrible drawback; for whom are these fruits of the earth produced? Our prices are enormous, and our supply scanty; could we forget this, and the artichoke, the asparagus, the peas and beans of London and Paris, are rarely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... of wits which comes to the man who has been without a meal or so and does not know when or where he is again to break his fast. Try it, friend and see! It was already getting along in the evening, and I knew or supposed I knew no one in Kilburn save only Bill Hahn, Socialist who was little better off than ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... Malizi and the Ljuri, who dwell in that uninviting district, were most anxious that the Serbs should come and should remain. For this the tribes had two principal reasons: in the first place, they recognized that their compatriots in Djakovica and Prizren were immeasurably better off than before they came under Serbian rule; and secondly, they did not wish to be separated from these towns which are their markets. In fact, they had become so anxious to throw in their lot with the Slavs that they formed six battalions, which operated on both banks of the river, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... very near to God, an' beheld the trailin' clouds of His glory!' 'Parson,' sez I, 'What will ye take fer yer knowledge? How much is it worth? While ye've been gazin' out thar at that sunset I've been gazin' at these letters, an' I find I'm better off by twenty-five dollars by gittin' my eggs an' butter to market day afore yesterday, jist when the prices had riz. That's what comes of gazin' at facts sich as price lists an' knowin' how to buy an' sell at the right time. ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... parcels from England were coming along fairly regularly and we were better off for food than the Germans themselves. Owing to the long shift we were compelled to do in the mines we fell into the habit of "hoarding" our food parcels and carrying a small lunch to the mines each ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... great friends. Charles was sadly disconcerted on learning that, so far from being able to provide for others, his brother could scarcely take care of himself. He looked round with a rueful eye on the poet's quarters, and could not help expressing his surprise and disappointment at finding him no better off. "All in good tune, my dear boy," replied poor Goldsmith, with infinite good-humor; "I shall be richer by-and-by. Addison, let me tell you, wrote his poem of the Campaign in a garret in the Haymarket, three stones high, and you see I am ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... I've got the feel of Gurney's grip out of my throat," answered the man. "It's like this, sir. I've been on this here island long enough to see that Wilde's ideas won't work. I can see that, accordin' to his plan, I may stay here all my life and be no better off than I am to-day, 'cause why—the harder I and others like me works the better it is for a lot of lazy shirkin' swabs, who've made up their minds that they'll never do a hand's turn if they can help it. And I don't see ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... said the Vicomtesse. "A seigneur can do little for his people, but in Anjou we have some privileges, and our peasants are better off than those you have seen, though indeed I grieved much for them when first I came ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... called off their silly war (Beethoven down in the cellar during the siege of Vienna expresses the right attitude) and went home, the country would fall back into depression, we'd have some kind of revolution and everybody'd be better off." ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Croft, "take the case of marriage. Don't you think that a man is more apt to marry in spite of his belief that he would be much better off as a bachelor, than in consequence of a conviction that a Benedict's life would ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... were wholly in his favor, and peremptorily ordered the appointment, by the people, of a new committee. The inhabitants complied with the order by the election of a new committee, but took care to have it composed exclusively of men opposed to Mr. Parris; and he found himself no better off than before. He concluded not to employ his church any longer as a principal agent in his lawsuit against the parish; but used ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... to-day is grievous and terrible. For what man, Hellene or foreigner, has not tasted abundance of evil at this present time? {254} Now the fact that we chose the noblest course, and that we are actually better off than those Hellenes who expected to live in prosperity if they sacrificed us, I ascribe to the good fortune of the city. But in so far as we failed, in so far as everything did not fall out in accordance with our wishes, I consider that the city has received the share which was due to us ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... Lander, flattered. "I a'n't feeling very well, to- day. I guess I'm better off at home. But don't you hurry back on my account, Clementina." While the girl was gone to put on her hat she talked on about her. "She's the best gul in the wo'ld, and she won't be one of the poorest; and I shall feel that I'm doin' just what Mr. Landa ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... over a tub. It was washing-day, and she was particularly busy. She was a driving, bustling woman, and, whatever might be her faults of temper, she was at least industrious and energetic. Had Mr. Mudge been equally so, they would have been better off in a worldly point of view. But her husband was constitutionally lazy, and was never disposed to ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... that of other rural postmen in France—from 28 to 32 a year. The inhabitants of St. Bazile, he said, were all very poor, their chief food being potatoes and chestnuts. Before the vines a little further down the valley were destroyed by the phylloxera and mildew, the people were much better off. Then there was plenty of wine in the cellars, but now St. Bazile was a village of water-drinkers. He spoke of the neighbouring parish of Servires, where, at the annual pilgrimage, women go barefoot from one rock to the other on ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... suthin' wuth livin' fer—to whar yuh'll be a sight better off than with a rough cuss ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... way Mrs Malcolm's two eldest laddies, Charlie and Robert, were wont to go to Irville, and it was soon seen that they kept themselves aloof from the other callans in the clachan, and had a genteeler turn than the grulshy bairns of the cottars. Her bit lassies, Kate and Effie, were better off; for some years before, Nanse Banks had taken up a teaching in a garret-room of a house, at the corner where John Bayne has biggit the sclate-house for his grocery-shop. Nanse learnt them reading and working stockings, and how to sew the semplar, ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... that Robinson Crusoe didn't have, and besides all that, we've got each other. We are not alone on a desert island. We are, my friends, as well off as the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock, and we are better off than the hardy colonists who laid the foundation for the country that flies that flag up there. Centuries ago bold adventurers set out to discover unknown lands. They were few in number and poorly equipped. But they ventured into the wilderness and built villages ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... justice lay. The greater part of those on the Lutheran side, he feared, was composed of unconverted men," while the Moravian party seemed open to the reproach of enthusiasm. So he concluded that each sort of Christians would be better off without the other. Time proved his diagnosis to be better than his treatment. In the course of a generation the Lutheran body, carefully weeded of pietistic admixtures, sank perilously deep in cold rationalism, and the Moravian ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon |
