"Unimproved" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... compelled to foreclose some mortgages; and as we did not wish to keep the farms of which we thus became possessed, we sold them at more or less profit. We were in the way of hearing when land was to be sold at a cheap rate, either improved or unimproved, and by purchasing such land and re-selling to newly-arrived settlers, who became good customers, we profited considerably. We got the best of everything, and our desire was to supply those who bought of us with what we knew they would most require, and ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... had to be borne in mind, in disposing of the canoes; for that of Gershom was to be secreted, as well as that of the bee-hunter. A tall aquatic plant, that is termed wild rice, and which we suppose to be the ordinary rice-plant, unimproved by tillage, grows spontaneously about the mouths and on the flats of most of the rivers of the part of Michigan of which we are writing; as, indeed, it is to be found in nearly all the shallow waters of those regions. There was a good deal of this rice at hand; ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... on kindness to such an extent, we returned to the hotel in Alton, and now urgently advise that those who ever have an opportunity to enjoy a moonlight drive through the Ozark forests should not let it pass unimproved. ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... from each other by the valley of the Torrens, than which nothing can be prettier. Its grassy flats are shaded by beautiful and umbrageous trees, and the scenery is such as one could not have expected in an unimproved state. The valley of the Torrens is a portion of the Park lands which run round the city to the breadth of half a mile. Nothing could have been more judicious than the appropriation of this open space for the amusement and convenience of the public, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... Lady Cressage, but the spirit of the remarks seemed not unpleasant to her. "I'm sure you're full of kindness," she said. "You must forget that I snapped at you—about papa." "All I remember about that is," he began, his eye lighting up with the thought that this time the opportunity should not pass unimproved, "that you said he didn't shine much in adversity—-any more than you did. Now on that last point I disagree with you, straight. There wouldn't be any place in which ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Civil War a Swede named Ebbe Petersen emigrated to this country to better his condition. Fortune smiled upon him and he amassed a modest bank account, which, with considerable foresight, he invested in a large tract of unimproved land in the region known as "The Bronx," New ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... to die entirely out, I think we shall feel that there is a solemn background of very awful truth, in the representation of what befell the unfaithful servant. Hopes unnourished are gone; opportunities unimproved are gone, capacities undeveloped are gone; fold after fold, as it were, is peeled off the soul, until there is nothing left but the naked self, pauperised and empty-handed for evermore. 'Take it from him'; he never was the better ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... as though they were gold. He educated himself and did much of his best work during his spare moments. He learned arithmetic during the night shifts when he was an engineer. Mozart would not allow a moment to slip by unimproved. He would not stop his work long enough to sleep, and would sometimes write two whole nights and a day without intermission. He wrote his famous ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... that his face looked like the yeasty crest of a billow, and vain to think of talking under it, as for a drowning priest in the sea to exhort his fellow-sinners on a raft. Nothing would do, but he must keep his mouth shut. Doubtless, the interval was not, in a meditative way, unimproved; for, upon the traces of the operation being at last removed, the cosmopolitan rose, and, for added refreshment, washed his face and hands; and having generally readjusted himself, began, at last, addressing the barber in a manner different, singularly so, from his previous one. Hard to say exactly ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the east of Dumbarton Oaks, separates it from Montrose Park. It is still, as it has always been, I am glad to say, completely unimproved, unspoiled, sweet and rambling and quiet, wending its way along the brook that empties into Rock Creek at the beginning of Oak Hill. I suppose there is hardly a soul of middle-age living in Georgetown who has not fond memories of Lover's Lane, for in the days of ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... person who dislikes the modern caravansary, and yet grumbles when he finds a hotel of the superannuated sort, one ought to choose, it would seem, and make the best of either alternative. The two old taverns at Arles are quite unimproved; such as they must have been in the infancy of the modern world, when Stendhal passed that way, and the lumbering diligence deposited him in the Place des Hommes, such in every detail they are to-day. Vieilles auberges de France, one ought to enjoy their gritty floors ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... or not, it had been in Dicksie's mind to bring up the subject of the disagreeable scene, hoping that Marion would suggest a way for making some kind of unembarrassing amends. But such opportunities had slipped away unimproved, and here was the new railroad superintendent, whom their bluff neighbor Sinclair never referred to other than as the college guy, being brought apparently as a prisoner ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... street in the old city. About 1830, the region beyond the wall was held largely by Spaniards to whom grants of land had been made for one reason or another. These tracts were plantations, pastures, or unimproved lands, according to the fancy of the proprietor who usually lived in the city and enjoyed himself after the manner of his kind. Here and there, a straggling village of palm-leaf huts sprang up. The roads were rough tracks. To Governor-General Tacon seems ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... narrative, the profoundness of the observations, and the terseness of the style, render this the most entertaining, as it is, perhaps, the most instructive of his works. His criticisms, indeed, often betray either the want of a natural perception for the higher beauties of poetry, or a taste unimproved by the diligent study of the most perfect models; yet they are always acute, lucid, and original. That his judgment is often warped by a political bias can scarcely be doubted; but there is no good reason to suspect that it is ever perverted by malevolence or envy. The booksellers ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... house, lest he should give him offence, and thereby lose his protection, of which he had so much need, in a city which required him to be always on his guard. He knew so little of the town, that he could not tell where to convey her, and he could not make up his mind to suffer the adventure to go unimproved. In this uncertainty, he determined to throw himself upon chance; and without making any answer, went on, and the lady followed him. Amgiad led her from street to street, from square to square, till they ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... you; I share your destiny, faithful to the end. The day that I have concluded upon for this task is SABBATH next, when the family with the citizens are generally at church. For Heaven's sake let not that day pass unimproved: trust not till tomorrow, it is the cheat of life —the future that never comes—the grave of many noble births —the cavern of ruined enterprise: which like the lightning's flash is born, and dies, and perishes, ere the voice of him who sees can cry, BEHOLD! BEHOLD!! You may trust to what I say, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... instructions given on Monday to visit all the houses in the city and its suburbs where there were any Protestants, and obtain their names and surnames,[1049] afforded an opportunity which was not permitted to slip by unimproved, for the exaction of heavy bribes, as well as for more open plunder and violence. So notorious was it, nearly a week after the butchery began, that the massacre had only abated in intensity, that, on the thirtieth of August, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... over 2,000 square miles of arable land in this magnificent region, and there has never been a crop failure since its settlement. Outside of Government lands prices range at from $4 to $10 per acre for unimproved, and from $12 to ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... "man of the times," with more common sense than poetry in his composition, must grieve as he looks at the great advantages here possessed for drainage and irrigation which are unimproved. There is not a spot in the whole valley that is not capable of the most perfect drainage,[28] while basins have been formed by nature in the highest points, from which irrigation could be supplied to the whole valley; but decay and neglect—fitting ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... utterly fallacious. The government lands of our country were remote from the centers of capital and difficult to examine; the French national real estate was near these centers—even in them—and easy to examine. Our national real estate was unimproved and unproductive; theirs was improved and productive—its average productiveness in market in ordinary times being from four to five ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... my refuge I went out once more into the region of high sheep-walks, adorned with beechen woods and traveller's-joy in the hedges, rambling by Highclere, Burghclere, and Kingsclere. The last—Hampshire's little Cuzco—is a small and village-like old red brick town, unapproached by a railroad and unimproved, therefore still beautiful, as were all places in other, better, less civilized days. Here in the late afternoon a chilly grey haze crept over the country and set me wishing for a fireside and the sound of friendly voices, and I turned my face towards ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... clear to reason, for there was a long seaboard with numerous interior navigable watercourses, and at the same time scanty and indifferent communications by land. Critical portions of the territory involved were yet an unimproved wilderness. Experience, the rude but efficient schoolmaster of that large portion of mankind which gains knowledge only by hard knocks, had confirmed through the preceding French wars the inferences of the thoughtful. Therefore, conscious ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... pronounced, more scientific than there between 1875 and '80. In 1881 the May Laws were passed in Russia. In 1882 there was a ritual murder trial in Hungary. Our statutes and sciences, after all, are but ways and means, improved ways and means, to what?—often to unimproved ends, it seems. Our learning and knowledge are what?—but channels to educate, to lead out (e-duco) the noble qualities in man? yes; perhaps also his jealousies and hatreds. And thus there comes a time of doubt. The ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... arrived. Certain it was, that if this chance were suffered to pass unimproved, a second would hardly present itself. For early, doubtless, on the following morning, if not some way prevented, the two soldiers would convey Israel back to his floating prison, where he would thenceforth remain confined until the close of the war; years and years, perhaps. When he thought of ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... no harm done; but those who use the argument seem to imply that a vote unused is a very dangerous thing to leave lying around, and will probably spoil and blow up. In support of this statement instances are cited of women letting their vote lie idle and unimproved in elections for school trustee and alderman. Of course, the percentage of men voting in these contests was quite small, too, but no person finds fault ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... in cultivation, on account of its stony character, which makes cultivation difficult. Where unimproved it is covered with a heavy growth of chestnut, oak, and pine. The land is locally called "chestnut land." In a few small areas the larger stones have been removed and the land is cultivated, corn and wheat being the principal crops. The yield of corn ranges from 20 to 35 bushels and of ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... These hours were not unimproved by Henrich. His character was formed, and his principles were fixed, and his mind and spirit grew strong and ripe beyond his years. Never were these hours of peaceful happiness forgotten; and often amid the strange and stirring scenes which it was his lot in after-life to witness ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... interesting story of how their father's land speculation went out of sight in the queer mutations that befall real estate. In the year before Roswell the elder died, he took his younger son for a drive in the country south of St. Louis, where the property lies unimproved to this day. "Rosy," said the father, "hold on to your Carondelet property. In fifteen years it will be worth half a million dollars, and, very likely, a million and a half." That was thirty-three years ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... reasons for all that he said and did. That inexhaustible capacity of devising base motives for conduct, which is an especial attribute of mean minds, had now opportunity to put forth its full powers in the way of insinuation and assertion. It did not go unimproved. A common charge brought against him after the publication of the "Letter to His Countrymen" was that it had been written for the sake of gaining office. It was even said that Van Buren had a hand in it. Then ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... have no difficulty in raising half a cubic mile of water a minute to our enclosure, which is but little above sea-level, and into which, till the pressure increases, we can fan or blow the water, so that it can be full three weeks after our longest day, or, since the present unimproved arrangement gives the indigenes but one day and night a year, I will add the 21st ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... Brinsmade, a member of the firm, and Mr. Richards, and duly signed by the king and premier, which had serious after-consequences. It granted to Ladd & Co. the privilege of "leasing any now unoccupied and unimproved localities" in the islands for one hundred years, at a low rental, each millsite to include fifteen acres, and the adjoining land for cultivation in each locality not to exceed two hundred acres, with privileges ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... gallery at the playhouse, and to admit Mr. Partridge as one of the company. For as Jones had really that taste for humor which many affect, he expected to enjoy much entertainment in the criticisms of Partridge, from whom he expected the simple dictates of nature, unimproved, indeed, but likewise unadulterated ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... "Ostensibly," he answered, "to substitute the interest of money, instead of the ill-paid and precarious rents of an unimproved estate; but chiefly, it was believed, to suit the wishes and views of a certain intended purchaser, who had become a principal creditor, and forced himself into the management of the affairs by means best known to himself, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... before you can weigh my advice, or enter into my reasoning: I would then, with fond anxiety, lead you very early in life to form your grand principle of action, to save you from the vain regret of having, through irresolution, let the spring-tide of existence pass away, unimproved, unenjoyed.—Gain experience—ah! gain it—while experience is worth having, and acquire sufficient fortitude to pursue your own happiness; it includes your utility, by a direct path. What is wisdom too often, but the owl of the goddess, who sits moping in a desolated ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... organization. What they could do, was simply as ministerial agents and rhetoricians to prosecute any general movement, when the national arm had cloven a channel and opened the road before them. Consequently, that great opening for a turbulent son of thunder passed unimproved; and the great day drew near without symptoms of tempest. At last it arrived; and I remember nothing which indicated as much ill temper in the public mind as I have seen on many hundreds of occasions, trivial by ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... O Harold! hast thou to contend against the rude heroes of the Norse, with their ancestral strategy unimproved! The civilisation of Battle meets thee now!—and all the craft of the Roman guides the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had then to get sober as he best could. He was terribly sober when he saw Antwerp half a century afterwards. One lesson he did learn without suspecting that he must immediately lose it. He felt his middle ages and the sixteenth century alive. He was young enough, and the towns were dirty enough — unimproved, unrestored, untouristed — to retain the sense of reality. As a taste or a smell, it was education, especially because it lasted barely ten years longer; but it was education only sensual. He never dreamed of trying to educate ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... receives a return because of his property ownership, receives a property income. This man has a title deed to a piece of unimproved land lying in the centre of a newly developing town. A storekeeper offers him a thousand dollars a year for the privilege of placing a store on the land. The owner of the land need make no exertion. He simply ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... were in his eyes a very unimportant consideration. Marston, on the other hand, was poor, and played with the eye of a lynx and the appetite of a shark. The ease and perfect good-humor with which Sir Wynston lost were not unimproved by his entertainer, who, as may readily be supposed, was not sorry to reap this golden harvest, provided without the slightest sacrifice, on his part, of pride or independence. If, indeed, he sometimes suspected that his guest was a little more anxious to lose ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... second part of 'England's Improvement,'[20] in which he gave a summary account of its then limited growths and manufactures, pointing out that England and Ireland were the only northern kingdoms remaining unimproved; he re-urged the benefits and necessity of a voluntary register of real property; pointed out a method of improving the Royal Navy, lessening the growing power of France, and establishing home fisheries; proposed the securing and ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... and the cost of his experiments. He had devoted himself to his inventions so entirely that he had lost all of his professional income. So it was that he was forced to face the prospect of staying in Boston and allowing this opportunity of opportunities to pass unimproved. His fiancee, Miss Hubbard, expected to attend the exposition, and had heard nothing of Bell's inability to go. He went with her to the station, and as the train was leaving she learned for the first time that he was not to accompany her. ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... of happiness and misery, of love and hate, of good and evil,—all mingling their different results in that graphic record; and I trembled as my own name met my view, with the long list of opportunities for good unimproved, together with the many sins, both of omission and commission, of which I had been guilty during the past year; but there was nothing left out,—the events in the life of every individual member ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... administration. In 1861 it was comparatively a small city. Its population numbered only about 65,000. The magnificent modern residences had not been built. The houses were few, low, not handsome, with hideous spaces of unimproved land lying between. The streets were not paved with asphalt. Some were paved with cobble stones, and some consisted of plain aboriginal mud. The dome of the Capitol was but half finished when Lincoln saw it for ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... under its complex relations of life. And it may be asked what advantage, as far as we can see, would it be to an infusorian animalcule—to an intestinal worm, or even to an earthworm—to be highly organized. If it were no advantage, these forms would be left, by natural selection, unimproved or but little improved, and might remain for indefinite ages in their present lowly condition. And geology tells us that some of the lowest forms, as the infusoria and rhizopods, have remained for an enormous period in nearly their present state. But to suppose that ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... seven feet of earth up there on the edge of the wilderness." Tisdale's voice vibrated gently; an emotion like the surface stir of shaken depths crossed his face. "And a tract of unimproved desert down here in ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... feel that I can not too earnestly invite the special attention of Congress, without the exercise of whose authority the opportunity to accomplish so much public good must pass unimproved. Deeply impressed with its vital importance, the Executive has taken all the steps within his constitutional power to guard the public revenue and defeat the expectation which the Bank of the United States indulged of renewing and perpetuating its monopoly on the ground of its necessity ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... hundred and fifty acres of very indifferent ground, about thre equarters of a mile from Sydney, were sold by virtue of an execution, in lots of twelve acres each, and averaged L14 per acre. This, however, is the highest price that has yet been given for land not situated in a town. The general value of unimproved forest land, when it is not heightened by some advantageous locality, as proximity to a town or navigable river, cannot be estimated at more than five shillings per acre. Flooded land will fetch double that sum. But on the banks of the Hawkesbury, as far as that ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... stream; without considering, perhaps, the difficulties of the voyage back again, and the time necessary to perform it in; and because they have no other means of coming to us, but by long land transportations and unimproved roads. These causes have hitherto checked the industry of the present settlers; for except the demand for provisions, occasioned by the increase of population, and a little flour, which the necessities of the Spaniards compel them to buy, they have ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... finishing and building. The nicer play of finer forces may then require more pleasing thoughts than the fierce fights of early ages can ever suggest. It belongs to the idea of progress that beginnings can never seem attractive to those who live far on; the price of improvement is, that the unimproved will ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... the Merchants, and away it goes every year beyond Sea, and never returns; whereby our Wealth is made a Prey to other Nations, whose Poor are imploy'd and maintain'd thereby, whilst in the mean time our Nation is in a Consumption, our Poor live by Begging, Poverty increases, and our Lands lye unimproved, for want ...
— Proposals For Building, In Every County, A Working-Alms-House or Hospital • Richard Haines
... platform of the non-partisan organization of farmers of North Dakota which swept the State in the last election. Every branch of the government was captured by the farmers, whose platform declared for the untaxing of all kinds of farm-improvements and an increase in the tax rate on unimproved land as a means of developing the State and ending the idle-land speculation ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various |
