"Reform" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... faire warnings might have beene reform'd, Not these unmanly rages. You have heard The fiction of the north winde and the sunne, 80 Both working on a traveller, and contending Which had most power to take his cloake from him: Which when the winde attempted, hee roar'd out Outragious ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... penitentiary population, run the round just as I have observed with respect to the Bridewell at Edinburgh; the same men come and go, round and round again." Well, then, nothing is accomplished in the way of reform, even under this lauded plan, which aims at the twofold object of efficient punishment and reformation, by enforcing reflection. Their error, and consequent failure in producing the good they expected, I conceive arises from their having neglected to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... be consistent, don't you? Leave all other mad and wicked people as well. Then you'll find it easier to reform the rest." ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the magistrate-parson resolved that, in spite of all the interest of tutorship and chess-play, and even all the influence of his wife and daughter (who were hearty admirers of brave smuggling), he must either reform this young man, or compel him to keep at a distance, which would be ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... characteristic of English Toryism, that it gives way just in time. Every reform has hitherto been granted as it was on the point of being extorted. Official carriages roll over the very spot where Charles I. dropped his self-willed head; Lady Macbeth might wash her hands as soon as the English people their memories of the civil bloodstain. Toryism knows one thing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... in the olden times it has been made the organ of communication between the Deity and His creatures; and when, as I have seen, a dream produces upon a mind, to all appearance hopelessly reprobate and depraved, an effect so powerful and so lasting as to break down the inveterate habits, and to reform the life of an abandoned sinner, we see in the result, in the reformation of morals which appeared incorrigible, in the reclamation of a human soul which seemed to be irretrievably lost, something ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... idol, fashion and flirtation, engrossed the homage of the majority of females, while a few misguided ones, weary of the inanity of the mass of womanhood and desiring to effect a reform, mistook the sources of the evil, and, rushing to the opposite extreme, demanded power, which as a privilege they already possessed, but as a right ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... outlook of a bachelor and that of a married man. The former considered humanity as a balloonist surveys a throng,—immediately and without perspective,—but the latter always sees mankind through the frame of his family. A single man tends naturally to philosophy and reform; a married man to administration and statesmanship. There have been no great unmarried statesmen; there have been no great married philosophers ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... that the marriage should go off quietly, agreed in the desirableness of a dissolution. He told the queen that the reform of religion must be left to a better opportunity; and the prince could not, and should not, set his foot in a country where parties were for ever on the edge of cutting each other's throats. It was no time for her to be indulging Gardiner in humours which were ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... discovered that the American people were not, as yet, prepared to engage in earnest for the abolition of slavery. On more mature reflection she came to the conclusion that slavery must be abolished only as the result of a general emancipation, and a radical reform of the ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... go in, and that so deeply, that it seems as if it clung to them for life. To enter Prison once, means in many cases an almost certain return there at an early date. All this has to be changed, and will be, when once the work of Prison Reform is taken in hand by men who understand the subject, who believe in the reformation of human nature in every form which its depravity can assume, and who are in full sympathy with the class for whose benefit they labour; and when those charged directly with the care of criminals ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the State Prison Commission. This exhibit contained photographs of the members of the State Prison Commission, photographs showing the interiors of the different prisons, reports, etc., and revealed the fact that the Empire State is in the front rank in inaugurating reform movements looking toward the health, safety and ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... backbone of the economy, accounting for roughly 60% of budget revenues, 30% of GDP, and over 95% of export earnings. Algeria has the fifth-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and is the second largest gas exporter; it ranks fourteenth for oil reserves. Algiers' efforts to reform one of the most centrally planned economies in the Arab world stalled in 1992 as the country became embroiled in political turmoil. Algeria's financial and economic indicators improved during the mid-1990s, in part because of policy reforms ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in Mill's time there existed some traces of social tyranny, where are they now? Look at the newspapers and the journals. Is there any theory too wild, any reform too violent, to be openly defended? Look at the drawing-rooms or the meetings of learned societies. Are not the most eccentric talkers the spoiled children of the fashionable world? When young lords ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... paper, for instance, presents, day and night, a spectacle of the almost ceaseless industry of jaded operatives. The need of relief in this respect was long ago recognized. The attempt at combination-letters was not less a precursor of reform than an acknowledgment of its necessity. It remained for American inventive genius, in this generation, to conceive and perfect the greatest labor-saving device that has ever been applied to the art of printing,—the last need of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... be diplomatic, wouldn't it? But you seem anxious to side with our opponents! We hold the suffrage in honor, and it is the suffrage that is to reform society. If once one begins to meddle ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... under our constitution as over any Government Department, for the Foreign Office, like every other Department, is under the control of a member of Parliament, elected by the people. But we are more interested in social reform, in labour legislation, and in constitutional reform than in foreign politics; and so it is on questions of home policy that we make and unmake Governments, and when we discuss whether a Conservative or a Liberal Government ought ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... of Privilege raised by the Lords Debates on the State of the Nation Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason Case of Lord Mohun Debates on the India Trade Supply Ways and Means; Land Tax Origin of the National Debt Parliamentary Reform The Place Bill The Triennial Bill The First Parliamentary Discussion on the Liberty of the Press State of Ireland The King refuses to pass the Triennial Bill Ministerial Arrangements The King goes to Holland; a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which declares his Dignitie, And the regard of Heav'n on all his waies; 620 While other Animals unactive range, And of thir doings God takes no account. Tomorrow ere fresh Morning streak the East With first approach of light, we must be ris'n, And at our pleasant labour, to reform Yon flourie Arbors, yonder Allies green, Our walks at noon, with branches overgrown, That mock our scant manuring, and require More hands then ours to lop thir wanton growth: Those Blossoms also, and those dropping Gumms, 630 That lie bestrowne unsightly and unsmooth, Ask riddance, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... to reform as kindly as he knew how; he felt uncomfortable at letting her go so; he remembered just then who washed the feet of his Master with her tears. But she would not listen. She turned from him, and out into the storm, some cry on her lips,—it ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Miss Selvyn, 'that your lordship thinks me mean enough to take pleasure in such a triumph, or so vain as to imagine I can reform a man of dissolute manners, the last thing I should hope or endeavour to succeed in. Such a tincture of corruption will always remain the mind of what you are pleased to term a gallant man, to whom I should give the less polite appellation ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... humility was concerned; namely, in decent raiment, and had sought her husband's forgiveness. There had been a touching scene in the scullery which Mrs. Marigold had given up to them for the sake of privacy, in which the lady had made tearful promises of reform and the corporal had magnanimously passed the sponge over the terrible reckoning on her slate. Would he then go home to his penitent wife? But the gallant fellow, with the sturdy common-sense for ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... France, but modern Europe; and who at any time during his reign could, by making a sign, as he has said, have had the nobles of France massacred. These bloodsucking creatures were always in the road of reform, always steeped overhead in political intrigue, always concerned in plots against the life of Napoleon, and always shrieking with resentment when they and their accomplices were caught. Some writers are so completely imbued with the righteousness ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... the churches—all denominations—of the years we are speaking about, began endless schemes of deliverance that the man, as they hoped, might be changed from the outside—that is to say, man's idea of benefitting man was by an outward reform. ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... that matter, neither praise nor blame could affect him; and although he had not been mentioned since, he read it assiduously every afternoon upon its arrival at Leith, feeling confident that Mr. Peter Pardriff (who had always in private conversation proclaimed himself emphatically for reform) would not eventually refuse—to a prophet—public recognition. One afternoon towards the end of that month of April, when the sun had made the last snow-drift into a pool, Mr. Crewe settled himself on his south ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... has renounced it. Ask them again whether they think it attainable by following this way of life. They will answer, No. Ask them afterward how they reconcile things so opposite as their life and their hopes. They will answer that they are resolved to reform, and by and by they will enter on the work. They will say, as Felix said to St. Paul, "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee." Nothing is less wise than this delay. At a future period I will reform. But who has assured me that at a future period I ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... practice might lead to great abuse and that it is necessary to uproot it gradually, is our opinion. But this radical reform can be realized only in forthcoming works; those of the ancient school ought to be interpreted by following the conventions which ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... The reform-monging suffragists seem to be equally devoid of the more caressing gifts. They may be filled with altruistic passion, but they certainly have bad complexions, and not many of them know how to dress their hair. Nine-tenths of them advocate reforms aimed at the alleged lubricity ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... a solemn thing to think of, fellow-citizens, and I appeal to those who may read this, as a man who may not live to see a satisfactory political reform—I appeal to you to refrain from the dog. He is purely ornamental. We may love a good dog, but we ought to love our children more. It would be a very, very noble and expensive dog that I would agree to ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Here I am, boys, turned up again-a subject of this moral reform school, of moral old Charleston. If my good old mother thinks it'll reform a cast-off remnant of human patchwork like me, I've nothing to say in protest. Yes, here I am, comrades (poor Tom Swiggs, as you used to call me), with rum my victor, and modern vengeance ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... My brother has an exalted idea of sovereign power. To reform a man, not to speak about reforming ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... late. Should these pages meet the eye of any who have been misled, let them remember that they have begun a career which multitudes repent bitterly; and from which few are apt to return. But there have been instances of reform; therefore none ought to despair. 'What man has done, ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... decided change in the social atmosphere. Nina would be eighteen in June, and affairs for Nina and her friends began to assume a more formal air. Ward, who seemed anxious to placate his father, and convince him of his genuine reform, was almost always at home, and Madame Carter was willing to accept the comfort and amusement that Harriet's return brought to the house, and rarely raised an issue with the triumphant secretary. And, more strange than ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... English eloquence, to the consummate painter of life and manners. It was due, above all, to the great satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it, who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform, and who reconciled wit with virtue, after a long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been lead astray by profligacy, and ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... through all the vocations of life. But what is woman's aim? what her object in life? These questions are more or less frequently asked in our day, and asked in reference to that general spirit of reform and progress of society which seems to characterize our age, and in relation to which, just in proportion as men forget to listen to the Word of God, they grope about in the darkness of their own ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... girl. Like Topsy, she acknowledged her naughtiness, but never attempted to reform. A considerable quantity of milk had disappeared from a jug, and her mistress asked—"You been drink milk, Laura?" "No, missis, me no drink 'em." But the tell-tale moustache of cream still lingered on her lips. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... company, you're going to be improved. (You'll sure stand a lot of it, too!) A woman's relief club back East has felt the burden of your no-accountness and general orneriness, and has sent one of its leading members out here to reform yuh. You're going to be hazed into a Cowboys' Mutual Improvement and Social Society, and quit smoking cigarettes and cussing your hosses and laying over Rusty's bar when yuh ride into town; and for pleasure and recreation you're going to read Tennyson's poems, and when yuh get caught out ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... days I saw one reform after another on the bargain counter; but we women remain mere spectators while ideals come and go; we can not realize how much they mean ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... another word for cowardice. How can woman's position be changed from that of a subordinate to an equal, without opposition, without the broadest discussion of all the questions involved in her present degradation? For so far-reaching and momentous a reform as her complete independence, an entire revolution in all existing institutions ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... housing, clean water, electricity, medical care, and jobs, but the Afghan government and international donors remain committed to improving access to these basic necessities by prioritizing infrastructure development, education, housing development, jobs programs, and economic reform over the next year. Growing political stability and continued international commitment to Afghan reconstruction create an optimistic outlook for maintaining improvements to the Afghan economy in 2004. The replacement ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... excess which had roused the indignation of Luther. There was among the Italians both much piety and much impiety; but, with very few exceptions, neither the piety nor the impiety took the turn of Protestantism. The religious Italians desired a reform of morals and discipline, but not a reform of doctrine, and least of all a schism. The irreligious Italians simply disbelieved Christianity, without hating it. They looked at it as artists or as statesmen; and, so looking ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... process of democracy by passing our election reform and financing proposals, by tightening our laws regulating lobbying, and by restoring a reasonable franchise to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson • Lyndon B. Johnson
... they purposed to reform our spelling, which has always been a mere rag-bag of lawlessness, I hoped that they would do it right; but I was too deeply immersed in completing the index of my forthcoming volume to spend thought upon this question; nor did ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... dangerous and destructive principles among the tenantry. They are cunning, unscrupulous, and vindictive, but cautious, plausible, and cloaked with the deepest hypocrisy. I have been endeavoring for years to conciliate, or rather, reform them by kindness, but hitherto without effect; whether I shall ultimately succeed in purifying this fountain-head of bigotry and unconstitutional principle—I do not wish to use a shorter, but a much ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... storm of 1830, that crushed the Bourbonic throne, destroyed the Wellington Administration, and made the Reform Bill no longer deferable, which the Whigs entered office to carry. Meantime, the deceased had succeeded to an enormous estate and the baronetcy, by the demise of his father, Sir R. Peel. But he was, in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the excitement, the mobilization, the blessing of the colours, the wave of patriotism which swept over the country; even I, under the influence of the specious proclamations that were issued broadcast by the Government, with their promises of reform, and redress for Poland after the war was over, felt more Russian than Polish. Lies! Lies! Lies! that was what the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... conditions of our 'S.E.' homophones: and that something better should win the first place, I hold to be the most desirable of possible events. But perhaps our 'S.E.' is not yet so far committed to the process of decay as to be incapable of reform, and the machinery that we use for penetration may be used as well for organizing a reform and for enforcing it. There is as much fashion as inevitable law in our 'P.S.P.' or 'S.E.' talk, and if the fashion for a better, that is a more distinct and conservative, pronunciation should set ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... innovator and the madness of the alarmist had alike had their day. Jacobinism and anti-Jacobinism had gone out of fashion together. The most liberal statesman did not think that season propitious for schemes of parliamentary reform; and the most conservative statesman could not pretend that there was any occasion for gagging bills and suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act. The great struggle for independence and national honour occupied ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... behaviour of the English merchants, and to the latter for all debts due to them, had been so complicated by various oppressive laws, that at one time the East India Company had threatened to stop all business. Lord Amherst, however, accomplished nothing in the direction of reform. From the date of his landing at Tientsin, he was persistently told that unless he agreed to perform the kotow, he could not possibly be permitted to an audience. It was probably his equally persistent refusal to do so—a ceremonial which had been excused by Ch'ien Lung ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... floods. The peasantry, indeed, resisted the improvements that have proved so beneficent to that part of England, because the draining and cultivation of so many miles of swamp would deprive them of fishing and fowling privileges enjoyed from time immemorial. Hardly any reform or improvement can be effected without some disruption of existing interests; and a people deeply sunk in poverty and toil could hardly be expected to contemplate with philosophical calm projects which, however advantageous ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... wanting, unless a terrible pressure of calamity or danger from without produces cohesion. Hence the constructive power of such assemblies is generally deficient. The chief triumphs of modern days, in Europe, have been in pulling down and obliterating; not in building up. But Repeal is not Reform. Time must bring with him the Restorer ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... tremendous excitement in Paris about the approaching first representation of "Vautrin"; and foreign politics, banquets, and even the burning question of reform, paled in interest before the great event. All the seats were sold beforehand; and as there was a rush for the tickets, Balzac and Harel chose their audience, and thought that they had managed to secure one friendly to Balzac. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... next year, Meneval reported that he had represented to Saint-Castin the necessity of reform, and that in consequence he had abandoned his trade with the English, given up his squaws, married, and promised to try to make a solid settlement. [Footnote: Memoire du Sieur de Meneval sur l'Acadie, 10 Sept., 1688.] True he had reformed before, and might ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... connexion between Wyclif's teaching and the peasants' insurrection under Richard II is as undeniable as that between Luther's doctrines and the great social uprising in Germany a century and a half afterwards. When, upon the declaration of the Papal Schism, Wyclif abandoned all hope of a reform of the Church from within, and, defying the injunctions of foe and friend alike, entered upon a course of theological opposition, the popular influence of his followers must have tended to spread a theory admitting of very easy application ad hominem—the theory, namely, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... they haven't the slightest idea that they were put upon earth to reform the universe,—they're just happy. They run across great stretches of clear, white sand, washed with resplendent purple waves, and, when the little brown babies roll in the surf, their brown mothers run after them, laughing and splashing ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... their old-fashioned opinions, and correcting their slightest mistakes, which secretly aggravated them beyond endurance. It was worse still, when my father, in despair, tried to tempt him into marriage, as the one final chance of working his reform; and invited half the marriageable young ladies of our acquaintance to the house, for ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the failures. He made a distinct move toward a reduction of the tariff, and while this failed, leaving us with the reactionary result of higher duties than ever before, it is not impossible that the words, actions, and sacrifices of Cleveland will be the foundation of a new tariff-reform party. Allusion has been made to his soundness on finance. His course in this respect was unvarying. Capitalists and financiers can take care of themselves, no matter what are the changes in the currency; but men ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... harum-scarum Daisy she always was, in spite of the efforts of her Lord Chesterfield of a husband to reform her," thought Judith, fondly, as her old schoolmate, catching sight of her at the window, waved her parasol so wildly that the staid old 'bus horses began ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Most of the land-reform programs, beginning with those of the extreme conservatives, laissez-faire theorists of various schools, and ending with those of the extreme radicals, anarchists, and socialists of various leanings, are primarily concerned with ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... his stepmother, was not to be made to forgo her plans for the boy's reform by any such vulgar ribaldries; and Mr. Newcome being absent in the City on his business, and Tommy refractory as usual, she summoned the serious butler and the black footman (for the lashings of whose brethren she felt ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... allowed the ships to reform three-dimensionally, skip, skip, skip, as they moved from star ...
— The Game of Rat and Dragon • Cordwainer Smith
... the United States has been intrusted the exclusive management of our foreign affairs. Beyond that it wields a few general enumerated powers. It does not force reform on the States. It leaves individuals, over whom it casts its protecting influence, entirely free to improve their own condition by the legitimate exercise of all their mental and physical powers. It is a common protector of each and all the States; of every man who lives upon our ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... pile. She'd give me enough with pleasure if she thought it would help towards my reform. But if you take the dollars, you've got to ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... and subdue the veil of prejudice. Sixth. The tressle-board is the image of our reason, where the functions are combined to effect, compare and think. Seventh. The rough-stone is the resemblance of our vices, which we ought to reform. Eighth. The cubic stone is our passions, which we ought to surmount. Ninth. The columns signify strength in all things. Tenth. The blazing star teaches that our hearts ought to be as a clear sun, among those that are troubled with the things of this ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... of a Measure. When, instead of a candidate, you are supporting some measure to be adopted, some reform to be instituted, some change to be inaugurated, your task is easier in one respect. There will be less temptation to indulge in personal matters. You will find it easier to adhere to your theme. In such attempts to mold public ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... shown again its share of responsibility. Another appeal must be made to the President who, growing steadily in control over the people and over his Congress, was the one leader powerful enough to direct his party to accept this reform. But he was busy gathering his power to lead them elsewhere. Again we would have to compete with pro-war anti-war sentiment. But it was no time ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... remedied—nay, why should they be remedied, why should they be stigmatised as ills, seeing that "everything is right"? Let {59} Mr. Wells once take his principles seriously enough to apply them, and personal as well as social reform is at an end. Perhaps it may be permissible to say that of all forms of Determinism the most irrational is that optimistic form which deprecates discontent with things as they are as a mark ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... frame, of some two hundred and seventy pounds weight, corresponding abdominal development, and well-proportioned limbs, all demonstrated, with anatomical accuracy, the truth of his observation. His superior intellect seemed roused in all its functions. The United States, England, the reform measures, the union of church and state, and its absurdity, were only a few of the subjects of his caustic remark. "I have just performed a duty, gentlemen, which has been too long delayed; you have neglected the remains of Thomas Paine; I have done myself the honor to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Sunday school regularly, and to what the minister said when you took the divinity prize. The idea should be conveyed to the householder's mind that, if let off with a caution, your innate goodness of heart will lead you to reform and to ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... discontent of the poor, the aggressions of the rich, the multiplication and ferocious treatment of slaves, and the social rivalries of the capital, the condition of Italy and the general deterioration of public morality imperatively demanded reform. It has been already said that we do not know for certain how the plebs arose. But we know how it wrested political equality from the patres, and, speaking roughly, we may date the fusion of the two orders under he common title ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... Dr. Dubbe, "instituted the 'musical reform' in Germany—the new German school of Liszt and Wagner. Berlioz's music is all on the surface, while Brahms' music sounds the depths. He uses the contra-bassoon in about all of his orchestral compositions (you will hear it to-day), and most of his piano ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... fisher people who resided at Bonneville. They were ruined by their house being washed away by the sea. The father and mother lived extremely dissolute lives, and their son grew up little better than a savage. Pauline Quenu made great efforts to reform him, but he refused all attempts to make him settle ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... that the colored voter learned to leave his powerless "protectors" and take care of himself. Let every one read, listen, think, reform his own ideas of affairs in his own locality; let him be less interested in the continual wars of national politics than in the interests of his own town and county and state; let him make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness of his own neighborhood, so ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Marshall with a smile. "I'll try to be 'chummy'—perhaps I'm not yet too old to learn the secret of friendliness. Your letter has made me think that I have missed much in shutting all young life out from mine as I have done. I want to reform in this respect ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... majority of people do not possess teeth like the monkey, and to these I can only suggest that they macerate their nuts in a nut butter machine. There are several of these machines on the market, and they are stocked by all large "Food-Reform" provision dealers. They cost anything from six or seven shillings. The daily allowance of nuts may be thoroughly macerated and eaten with fruit in the place of cream. Ordinary people may use a nut-mill, which flakes, not macerates, the nuts. ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... Citizens like yourselves, and with more at stake than you, they opened their own walls and introduced us into their own city, not as foes but as friends, to prevent the bad among you from becoming worse; to give honest men their due; to reform principles without attacking persons, since you were not to be banished from your city, but brought home to your kindred, nor to be made enemies to any, but friends ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... on which they had been accustomed to rely, without removing those other defects which excuse, if not encourage, the continuation of the present system. Without, therefore, appealing to violent remedies, it is to be hoped that, in order to render plans of reform effectual, it will be sufficient, under more propitious circumstances, to see property brought from other countries to these Islands, as well as persons coming to settle in them, capable of managing it with that intelligence and economy required by trade. The competition ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... movement, of recalling the left, and of proceeding at once to the right to save what was left of that corps as speedily as possible. He ordered back his left from across the river, and calling on his staff to mount, rode full gallop over to the right to reform that command on a new line and save his army. Now that he was on the defensive, after McCook's disaster, it was impossible to carry out his original plan ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... necessity of dissolving the "Rump Parliament" (S450) and of electing a Parliament which should really represent the nation, reform the laws, and pass a general act of pardon. In his despatch to the House of Commons after the victory of Worcester, he called the battle a "crowning mercy." Some of the republicans in that body took alarm at this phrase, and thought that ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... heart enough to love it—these things are for me a surer proof that the American is a great race than the existence of any quantity of wealthy universities, museums of classic art, associations for prison reform, or deep-delved safe-deposit vaults crammed with bonds. Such a monument does not spring up by chance; it is part of the slow flowering of a ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... home range, which is Upper Milk River. But it was cussed lonesome with all the old bunch gone; so I sold my outfit and quit cow-punching for good. I wonder if the puncher lives that didn't sell his saddle and bed, and reform at least ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... questions. Tisza pointed out that the Germans were difficult to deal with; they were arrogant and despotic; yet without them we could not bring the war to an end. The proposal to cede Hungarian territory (Transylvania) and also the plan to enforce an internal Hungarian reform in favour of the subject nationalities were matters that were not capable of discussion. The congress in London in 1915 had adopted resolutions that were quite mad and never could be realised, and the desire for destruction prevailing in the Entente ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... Ottoboni takes no end of pains to educate Italy; he writes little books to enlighten the intelligence of the children and the common people, and he smuggles them very cleverly into Italy. He takes immense trouble to reform the moral sense of our luckless country, which, after all, prefers pleasure to freedom,—and ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... visit a country whose customs you dislike? We do not invite you to come among us, but when you do come, and behave well, we treat you accordingly. Respect then our hospitality, but don't pretend to regulate or reform it." Such is the language held to Europeans by all the petty officers of government with whom ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... could not see my way clear to begin it. Glaring faults there were; remedies appeared ready at hand and easy of application; the will of an aroused public opinion alone seemed to be lacking. By what method could this wheel horse of reform best be harnessed to the car of ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... the Pacific. He paid off the church debt, made Dunstan Archbishop of Canterbury, helped reform the church, and, though but sixteen years of age when he removed all explosives from the throne and seated himself there, he showed that he had a massive scope, and his subjects looked forward to ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... have, or neglected it if he pleased, without asking the opinion of his neighbor. In those days nobody meddled with concerns above his comprehension, nor thrust his nose into other people's affairs, nor neglected to correct his own conduct and reform his own character, in his zeal to pull to pieces the characters of others; but in a word, every respectable citizen ate when he was not hungry, drank when he was not thirsty, and went regularly to bed when the sun ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... most important sense, they were true. He was pointed out as a miracle of mercy—the great convert—a wonder to the world. He could now suffer opprobrium and cavils—play with errors—entangle himself and drink in flattery. No one can suppose that this outward reform was put on hypocritically, as a disguise to attain some sinister object; it was real, but it arose from a desire to shine before his neighbours, from shame and from the fear of future punishment, and not from that love to God which leads the Christian to the fear ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... obliged him to confine himself to verbal expressions of anger; until at length, sensible that this impotent railing did but expose him to contempt, he resolved to arm himself with the powers of radical reform, by open rebellion. His ultimate purpose was the restoration of the ancient republic, or, (as he himself expresses it in an interesting letter, which yet survives,) "ut in antiquum statum publica forma ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... but thrived far better on Spartan severity and simplicity; hence, it took two centuries of gradual and most tardy softening and modifying of character to prepare the Puritan mind for so advanced a reform and luxury as proper warmth in the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... reputation, if he allows himself to be peevish and censorious, scares young people, makes them think evil of virtue, and frightens them with the idea of an excessive reform and a tiresome strictness of conduct. If, on the other hand, he proves easy to get on with, he sets a practical lesson before them, since he proves to them that a man can live gaily and yet laboriously, and can hold serious views without renouncing honest pleasures; so he becomes ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... to have held the appointment of captain or commander in the army, and at the same time, as a "Royal Scribe," he cultivated the art of letters, and perhaps made himself acquainted with those legal matters which in later years he was destined to reform. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... and reform that Thought: Think of my past Service, and judge by that my future; weigh all the respect I have paid you long, and ever lov'd ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... worthy of will and execution. There shall be but one law for the high and the low, the poor and the rich. The distinguished Chancellor Carmer shall immediately go to work upon it, and you shall aid him. The necessity of such a reform we have lately felt in the Arnold process, where the judge decided in favor of the rich, and wronged the poor man. How could the judge sustain Count Schmettau against the miller Arnold, who had been deprived of ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... years, there has been a partial reform in library construction. Some have been built fire-proof throughout, with only stone, brick, concrete and iron material, even to the floors and window casings. Many more have had iron shelves and iron stacks to hold the shelves constructed, and there are now several competing manufacturers ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... skepticism, save as a passing coryza of the spirit, as it is of wit, which is skepticism's daughter. Time was when this was not true, as Congreve, Pope, Wycherley and even Thackeray show, but that time was before the Reform Bill of 1832, the great intellectual levelling, the emancipation of the chandala. In these our days the Englishman is an incurable foe of distinction, and being so he must needs take in with his mother's milk the delusions which go with that enmity, and particularly the master delusion that ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... by halves. He at once threw himself earnestly into the temperance reform; supplied himself with books and papers, and became thoroughly conversant with all phases of the question, wondering, as he did so, how as a Christian man he could so long have overlooked his duty in this matter. Resolved to do so no longer, he at once commenced a ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... vices of cloisters, etc. This proved by Experience, who, from a New Testament, shows the office of a bushop. The Man of Armes and the Burges approve of all that was said against the clergy, and alledge the expediency of a reform, with the consent of Parliament. The Bushop dissents. The Man of Armes and the Burges said they were two, and he but one, wherefore their voice should have most effect. Thereafter the King, in the play, ratified, approved, and confirmed all that ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... built and garrisoned a strong fort, the "Penon de Alger,"[2] to stop their boats from sallying forth. But the Moors had still more than one strong post on the rocky promontories of Barbary, and having tasted the delights of chasing Spaniards, they were not likely to reform, especially as the choice lay between piracy and starvation. Dig they would not, and they preferred to beg by force, like the "gentlemen of the road." So they bided their time, till Ferdinand the Catholic passed away to his account, and then, in defiance ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... overturned the dynasty of her ancient sovereigns was the indirect consequence of the discontent provoked by reforms which the government had sought to impose with a view to ameliorating the condition of China. The suppression of opium and gaming, the reform of the army, and the creation of schools, involved an increase of taxation which, as well as the reforms themselves, greatly indisposed ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... have been asked by the mayor and certain others to bring out the militia and crush this movement. I assure you it cannot be done, and, if you attempt it, it will cause you and us great trouble. Do as Governor McDougal did in '51. See in this movement what he saw in that—a local movement for a local reform in which the State is not concerned. We are not a mob. We demand no overthrow of institutions. We ask not a single court to adjourn. We ask not a single officer to vacate his position. We demand only the enforcement of the law which we ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... his party; the tendency is, to displace love of country and devotion to duty, and to substitute therefor subserviency to strong party leaders. So crying has the evil become, that many of the wisest and most patriotic men in the country are seeking to so far reform the public service that an officer may feel reasonably secure in his position so long as he performs his duties faithfully, and that vacancies shall be filled by the promotion of ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... can't realize what you are saying. The stage has always been a hotbed of immorality from the very beginning of theatrical art, and nothing can reform it." ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... increased in wealth and numbers. The decline continued into the next century, when the Church was at its worst condition about the beginning of the reign of Alfred. The revival of monasticism was not until the tenth century as a result of the Cluny Reform. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Christian to donate to the Negro than by word or pen to denounce the wrongs to which he is subject. Wrong smiles complacently at any mode save direct attack. It is not in silent acquiescence, but on the forum of agitation and denouncement, that reform finds lodgment, so sadly needed in many of the States where he is the victim of lawlessness and murder, his ballot suppressed, and denied representation. The partiality and indecent haste with which he is tried and almost invariably ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... substratum to the other. A more probable solution is the following, though it may be as far from the truth:—At the dissolution of the priory of Burscough in the time of our great reformer Henry the Eighth—who, like many modern pretenders to this name, was more careful to reform the inaccuracies of others than his own—the bells were removed to Ormskirk; but the small tower beneath the spire not being sufficiently capacious, the present square steeple was added, and the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... inconveniences; and how they had managed to keep up such a fashion for generations when it was plain that what I had suffered to-day they had had to suffer all the days of their lives. I wanted to think that out; and moreover I wanted to think out some way to reform this evil and persuade the people to let the foolish fashion die out; but thinking was out of the question in the circumstances. You couldn't think, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... neo-Catholics who were making a struggle for continuity by applying the principle of evolution to their own faith, joining hands with modern science, and outflanking the hesitating English instinct towards liturgical reform (a flank march which I at the time quite expected to witness, with the gathering of many millions of waiting agnostics into its fold); since then, one may ask, what other purely English establishment than the Church, of sufficient dignity and footing, and with such strength ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... seems to cry against the city's woe, In liquid Latin syllables,—Clamo! As thro' the crowded street his cart he jams And cries aloud, ah, think of more than clams! Receive his secret plaint with pity warm, And grant Italia's plea for Tenement-House Reform! ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... War was going to reform ideas on dress and make things more simple for those whose trouser-knees go baggy so soon and remain thus for so long; but, like too many of the expectations which we used to foster, this also has failed. It is therefore the benign couple who must carry on the good work. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... acceptance, much as it damped the hopes of the exiled Court. The engagements already made with Sweden rendered supplies necessary, and to raise these supplies it was necessary to summon a Parliament. Cromwell's bold scheme of Parliamentary reform, by which he had added to the county representatives and diminished those of the smaller burghs, was departed from, and the burgh representatives were again increased so as to give to the "Court" better opportunities of interfering in elections. Parliament met on January 27th, 1658/9, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... against the court had naturally drawn into his acquaintance all who desired a change. The Palais Royal was the elegant centre of a conspiracy with open doors, for the reform of government: the philosophy of the age there encountered politics and literature: it was the palace of opinion. Buffon came there constantly to pass the latter evenings of his life. Rousseau there received at a distance the only worship ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... acquaintance that was developin' between Augustus and Olivia. Them two was what the minister calls 'kindred sperrits.' Seems she was sufferin' from science same as he was and, more'n that, she was loaded to the gunwale with 'social reform.' To hear the pair of 'em go on about helpin' the poor and 'settlement work' and such was enough, accordin' to Nate, to make you leave the table. But there! He couldn't complain. Olivia was her uncle's ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... books of statutes are consumed in flames, And courts and copyholds are empty names: Then will be times of joy—but ere they come, Havock, and war, and blood must be our doom." The man here paused—then loudly for Reform He call'd, and hail'd the prospect of the storm: The wholesome blast, the fertilizing flood - Peace gain'd by tumult, plenty bought with blood: Sharp means, he own'd; but when the land's disease Asks cure complete, no med'cines ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... to me, and I fancy I have arrived at last at that point where the style is adequate to the thought. Unfortunately my outside occupations absorb much of my time. The orchestra and opera of Weymar were greatly in need of reform and of stirring up. The remarkable and extraordinary works to which our theater owes its new renown—"Tannhauser," "Lohengrin," "Benvenuto Cellini"—required numerous rehearsals, which I could not give ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... much as law or physic; and a man can no more become intemperate in a month, than he can become a lawyer or a physician in a month. Many wonder that certain intemperate men, of fine talents, noble hearts, and manly feelings, do not reform; but it is a greater wonder that any ever do. The evil genius of intemperance gradually preys upon the strength of both body and mind, till the victim, when he is caught, finds, that although he was a giant once, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... history, such as might be gathered from the ordinary historians, and from such books as Baker's Chronicle and Rushworth, he was profoundly skilled. The history of the law from the days of Magna Charta to the passage of the reform bill of Earl Grey's administration, was the study of his whole professional and public life. He not only knew every leading event, every great statute, but he had the minutest details at command, and ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... everywhere, at home and abroad, by three rounds of applause;—in which surely all of us still join; though the PER CONTRA also is becoming visible to some of us, and our enthusiasm grows less complete than formerly. This was Friedrich's first step in Law-Reform, done on his fourth day of Kingship. A long career in that kind lies ahead of him; in reform of Law, civil as well as criminal, his efforts ended with life only. For his love of Justice was really great; and the mendacities and wiggeries, attached to such a necessary of life as ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... you what is to come," said the School-Master, "it must show your fate with perfect accuracy, or it ceases to be science, in which event your entertaining notions as to reform and so on are ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... relief. Make it public, that all may see and know its habitues, and who may feel the reforming influence of public opinion. For, at last, this is the only power by which the morals of a community are preserved. Let laws punish crimes—public opinion reform vices. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... others she failed. It would be hard to say whether her success or her failure involved the greater tragedy. For behind all these aims was a larger ideal that was not to be realised—the dream, entertained as passionately by Catherine Benincasa as by Savonarola or by Luther, of thorough Church-reform. Catherine at Avignon, pleading this great cause in the frivolous culture and dainty pomp of the place; Catherine at Rome, defending to her last breath the legal rights of a Pope whom she could hardly have honoured, and whose claims she saw defended by extremely doubtful means—is ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... warranted in presenting after a profound study of its vital constitution. The examination finished, he felt that he had a right to offer the diagnosis. Not that his modesty permitted him to foretell the future or to dictate reforms. When his opinion was asked in relation to any reform he generally declined giving it. "I am merely a consulting physician," he would reply; "I do not possess sufficient details on that particular question—I am not sufficiently familiar with circumstances which vary from day to day." In effect, according to him, there ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... which, in the space of forty years, had been gradually doubled, he reduced, in the first years of his reign, one fourth of the tribute of the East. Valentinian appears to have been less attentive and less anxious to relieve the burdens of his people. He might reform the abuses of the fiscal administration; but he exacted, without scruple, a very large share of the private property; as he was convinced, that the revenues, which supported the luxury of individuals, would be much more advantageously ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... I had restored peace to the country, I thought that it would be advisable to reform the constitution. I had some slight difficulty in comprehending its principles, especially as I only as yet imperfectly understood the language. My notions were, however, so opposed by the sages of the country, and so great was the commotion created, that ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... past is associated with a passion for reform. Men think of destroying that which should only be transformed. They condemn everything that has been, unconditionally, and launch out towards a new future. The suffering which has been gone through ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves. He is like the lower end of a suspended chain; you can sway him slightly to the right or the left, but remove your hand and he falls into line with the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the matter may have stood in general,—and I repeat my conviction that in this case the happy medium is hard to find,—to me the reform was a great blessing. For Wesselburen, like the other towns, acquired an elementary school and a man was chosen as teacher of it whose name I cannot write down without a feeling of the deepest gratitude, because in spite of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... outlet for his energy, he took advantage of the Cove's unwonted animation and plunged into municipal reform. "The Opp Eagle" demanded streets, it demanded lamp-posts, it demanded temperance. The right of pigs to take their daily siesta in the middle of Main Street was questioned and fiercely denied. Dry-goods boxes, which for ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... path of reform—full steam ahead, as he puts it—he is prepared to change the past, present and future in order to give happiness to his own subjects. But France is likely to pay for all this; sooner or later some new rescript will tell us that ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... three or four heroic battalions of the Old and Middle Guard fall back step by step, halting to reform in square when they get badly broken and shrunk. At last they are surrounded by the English Guards and other foot, who keep firing on them and smiting them to smaller and smaller numbers. GENERAL CAMBRONNE is ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy |
