Improve

What’s behind it won’t improve your love-life, grow hair on your bald spot, or add five years to your natural span (not even five minutes).

His first words were not calculated to improve the atmosphere of a gathering already considerably depressed by the deepening snow-filled twilight outside.. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that our position is what is usually termed, in melodramatic phraseology, a ‘Lost Cause.’” “You think so?” said Sermak, gloomily.

The man does not live, never has lived, never will live, that can improve upon it!

He was resolutely silent however; and, from a determination of making him speak, she continued— “I remember, when we first knew her in Hertfordshire, how amazed we all were to find that she was a reputed beauty; and I particularly recollect your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, ‘She a beauty!—I should as soon call her mother a wit.’ But afterwards she seemed to improve on you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at one time.” “Yes,” replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, “but that was only when I first knew her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.” He then went away, and Miss Bingley was left to all the satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself.

“I seldom fling children from towers to improve their health.

But latterly, when more and more disquieting reports came from the seat of war and Natásha’s health began to improve and she no longer aroused in him the former feeling of careful pity, an ever-increasing restlessness, which he could not explain, took possession of him.

“The strong possibility that they were right did nothing to improve our relations.” He had accepted the superflu epidemic with equanimity, he said, because at last he would be able to retire and paint full- time, as he had always wanted to do.

“Now, lad, do you know about the Truthsayer drug?” “You take it to improve your ability to detect falsehood,” he said.

Like washable beaver hats that improve with rain, his nerves were rendered stouter and more vigorous, by showers of tears, which, being tokens of weakness, and so far tacit admissions of his own power, pleased and exalted him.

You know, when we agreed to take you in, we hoped we could improve you — build you — make you a decent human being.

“Even I am willing to shame myself, to mortify myself with finery and take myself off to some hideous event, if it might improve our lot here.

I thought I would improve the occasion and learn something, so I asked him:— “What about the flies these times?” He smiled on me in quite a superior sort of way—such a smile as would have become the face of Malvolio—as he answered me:— “The fly, my dear sir, has one striking feature; its wings are typical of the aërial powers of the psychic faculties.

His words, his looks, imprinted in her heart, Improve the passion, and increase the smart.

The orthomoleculan formula that was supposed to improve neural firing in the brain, speed it up and synchronize it.

These were mainly the accumulated efforts of friendly editors to improve Paine’s grammar or spelling; some were misprints, or developed out of such; and some resulted from the sale in London of a copy of Part Second surreptitiously made from the manuscript.

"My feet could only improve the taste, ser," Egg said, wriggling his toes.

I name only the most important.” “You are, doubtless, acquainted with a variety of languages, so as to have been able to read all these?” “Yes, I speak five of the modern tongues—that is to say, German, French, Italian, English, and Spanish; by the aid of ancient Greek I learned modern Greek—I don’t speak it so well as I could wish, but I am still trying to improve myself.” “Improve yourself!” repeated Dantès; “why, how can you manage to do so?” “Why, I made a vocabulary of the words I knew; turned, returned, and arranged them, so as to enable me to express my thoughts through their medium.

I rather enjoy this, and now I’ll imitate what is called ‘a charming girl;’ I can do it, for I have May Chester as a model, and I’ll improve upon her.

At first I was only just not absolutely dull; then my health began to improve—then every day became dearer and more precious to me, and the longer I stayed, the dearer became the time to me; so much so that I could not help observing it; but why this was so, it would be difficult to say.” “So that you didn’t care to go away anywhere else?” “Well, at first I did; I was restless; I didn’t know however I should manage to support life—you know there are such moments, especially in solitude.

I’ll try and say ‘How doth the little—’ ” and she crossed her hands on her lap as if she were saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words did not come the same as they used to do:— “How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale!

This very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of the raw material, which had rendered it possible in the first place, to raise the price of manufacture, a benefit to the country; in the second place, to improve the workmanship, an advantage to the consumer; in the third place, to sell at a lower price, while trebling the profit, which was a benefit to the manufacturer.

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

will it improve manners?

May the Lord improve it!

To improve the shining hour he wondered whether he might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing.

There was talk of performing an operation on him later, one which might improve the circulation of blood to his brain.

Not just my skin, but my brain and muscle control continue to improve.

We should never try to improve an advantage.

These, and the indulgence of his publisher, allowed Tolkien a luxury few authors enjoy: multiple chances not only to correct his text but to improve it, and to further develop the languages, geography, and peoples of Middle-earth.

Men Improve with the Years I am worn out with dreams; A weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams; And all day long I look Upon this lady’s beauty As though I had found in book A pictured beauty, Pleased to have filled the eyes Or the discerning ears, Delighted to be but wise, For men improve with the years; And yet and yet Is this my dream, or the truth?

It gives a girl a chance to meet some awfully nice gentlemen and improve her mind with conversation, and you get so you can read a guy’s character at the first glance.” “Look here, Ida; please don’t think I’m getting fresh—” He was hotly reflecting that it would be humiliating to be rejected by this child, and dangerous to be accepted.

“Now, Percy Jackson, let’s see if we can improve your memory.” The principia was even more impressive inside.

I may illustrate what I mean by supposing three varieties of sheep to be kept, one adapted to an extensive mountainous region; a second to a comparatively narrow, hilly tract; and a third to the wide plains at the base; and that the inhabitants are all trying with equal steadiness and skill to improve their stocks by selection; the chances in this case will be strongly in favour of the great holders on the mountains or on the plains improving their breeds more quickly than the small holders on the intermediate narrow, hilly tract; and consequently the improved mountain or plain breed will soon take the place of the less improved hill breed; and thus the two breeds, which originally existed in greater numbers, will come into close contact with each other, without the interposition of the supplanted, intermediate hill variety.

Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments, excepting those wrought on the forests by the fires they made to improve their hunting grounds, vanish in a few centuries.

She reminded herself that fixed loyalty was a thing they had learned to improve upon from the Atreides pattern.

I do not at this moment remember two emendations on Homer, calculated to substantially improve the poetry of a passage, although a mass of remarks, from Herodotus down to Loewe, have given us the history of a thousand minute points, without which our Greek knowledge would be gloomy and jejune.

A pretty slave girl might have done wonders to improve his temper … particularly one with silvery hair, like the whore who had been sitting on his cock back in Selhorys.

Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma’s health did not improve.

He came up at last weary and breathless, and planting himself in front of the bridal pair, drove his staff, which had a steel spike at the end, into the ground, and, with a pale face and eyes fixed on Quiteria, he thus addressed her in a hoarse, trembling voice: “Well dost thou know, ungrateful Quiteria, that according to the holy law we acknowledge, so long as live thou canst take no husband; nor art thou ignorant either that, in my hopes that time and my own exertions would improve my fortunes, I have never failed to observe the respect due to thy honour; but thou, casting behind thee all thou owest to my true love, wouldst surrender what is mine to another whose wealth serves to bring him not only good fortune but supreme happiness; and now to complete it (not that I think he deserves it, but inasmuch as heaven is pleased to bestow it upon him), I will, with my own hands, do away with the obstacle that may interfere with it, and remove myself from between you.

In almost no time he had his pilot’s wings and found himself overseas, where things began suddenly to improve.

I was dispatched, accordingly, in the troopship Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.

A young man who goes abroad at seventeen or eighteen, and returns home at one and twenty, returns three or four years older than he was when he went abroad; and at that age it is very difficult not to improve a good deal in three or four years.