Bet to Birminghamized

A Concordance to the Collected Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Compiled by Eugene F. Irey 

bet, n. (1)

    Boks 7.210 4 Now [the bidders for the Valdarfer Boccaccio] talked apart, now ate a biscuit, now made a bet...

betake, v. (2)

    MN 1.220 19 Shall we not...betake ourselves to some desert cliff of Mount Katahdin...
    Tran 1.341 2 ...many intelligent and religious persons...betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living...

betakes, v. (3)

    SwM 4.113 3 ...as often as [nature] betakes herself upward from visible phenomena...she instantly as it were disappears, while no one knows what has become of her...
    Dem1 10.20 7 There is one world common to all who are awake, but each sleeper betakes himself to one of his own.
    Wom 11.426 11 Woman should find in man her guardian. Silently she looks for that, and when she finds that he is not, as she instantly does, she betakes her to her own defences...

Bethany, Palestine, n. (1)

    LT 1.274 8 [The wealthy man] entertains [the divine]...lodges him; his religion comes home at night, prays, is...sumptuously laid to sleep; rises...is better breakfasted than he whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem...

Bethel, n. (1)

    Elo2 8.114 9 ...you may find [the orator] in some lowly Bethel...

bethink, v. (2)

    Int 2.329 4 [Ideas]...so fully engage us that we...gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own. By and by we fall out of that rapture, bethink us where we have been, what we have seen...
    Prch 10.236 20 We want some intercalated days, to bethink us and to derive order to our life from the heart.

bethinks, v. (1)

    MoS 4.149 13 A man is flushed with success, and bethinks himself what this good luck signifies.

Bethlehem Star, n. (1)

    Chr2 10.90 3 For what need I of book or priest/ Or Sibyl from the mummied East/ When every star is Bethlehem Star,-/...

bethought, v. (5)

    ET16 5.286 26 My friends asked, whether there were any Americans?...any theory of the right future of that country? Thus challenged, I bethought myself neither of caucuses nor congress...
    F 6.33 21 ...the Marquis of Worcester, Watt, and Fulton bethought themselves that where was power was not devil...
    Civ 7.27 21 The farmer had much ill temper, laziness and shirking to endure from his hand-sawyers, until one day he bethought him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a waterfall;...
    Boks 7.210 8 Earl Spencer bethought him like a prudent general of useless bloodshed and waste of powder...
    Thor 10.457 14 ...a young girl...sharply asked [Thoreau], Whether his lecture would be a nice, interesting story...or whether it was one of those old philosophical things that she did not care about. Henry turned to her, and bethought himself...

betoken, v. (2)

    ET4 5.66 25 When it is considered...what resources of mental and moral power the traits of the blonde race betoken, its accession to empire marks a new and finer epoch...
    DL 7.116 17 ...many things betoken a revolution of opinion and practice in regard to manual labor...

betokened, v. (1)

    ET8 5.140 3 King Harold gave [Haldor] this testimony, that he, among all his men, cared least about doubtful circumstances, whether they betokened danger or pleasure;...

betokens, v. (1)

    SwM 4.144 12 The entire want of poetry in so transcendent a mind [as Swedenborg's] betokens the disease...

betray, v. (24)

    AmS 1.101 6 ...[the scholar] must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts...
    Hist 2.19 20 The Indian and Egyptian temples still betray the mounds and subterranean houses of their forefathers.
    Lov1 2.172 14 Perhaps we never saw [the lovers] before and never shall meet them again. But we see them...betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers.
    Chr1 3.110 22 The coldest precisian cannot go abroad without encountering inexplicable influences. One man fastens an eye on him and... the secrets that make him wretched either to keep or to betray must be yielded;...
    Mrs1 3.143 15 ...the respect which these mysteries [of fashion] inspire in the most rude and sylvan characters, and the curiosity with which the details of high life are read, betray the universality of the love of cultivated manners.
    Nat2 3.186 26 All things betray the same calculated profusion.
    Nat2 3.187 27 Jacob Behmen and George Fox betray their egotism in the pertinacity of their controversial tracts...
    NER 3.270 7 When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened...
    ET14 5.254 17 ...parochial and shop-till politics, and idolatry of usage, betray the ebb of life and spirit [in English students].
    F 6.9 14 ...mats of hair, the pigment of the epidermis betray character.
    Wth 6.92 5 The brave workman, who might betray his feeling of it in his manners...must replace the grace or elegance forfeited, by the merit of the work done.
    Wth 6.104 10 If you take out of State Street the ten honestest merchants and put in ten roguish persons controlling the same amount of capital...the pulpit will betray it...
    Bhr 6.182 4 What refinement and what limitations the teeth betray!
    Bhr 6.197 20 ...'t is a thousand to one that [the young girl's] air and manner will at once betray that she is not primary...
    Bty 6.299 14 A beautiful person among the Greeks was thought to betray by this sign some secret favor of the immortal gods;...
    Ill 6.317 14 ...[men who make themselves felt in the world] never deeply interest us unless they...betray, never so slightly, their penetration of what is behind [the curtain].
    PI 8.63 12 [The high poets] have touched this heaven and retain afterwards some sparkle of it: they betray their belief that such discourse is possible.
    Comc 8.157 4 The rocks, the plants, the beasts, the birds, neither do anything ridiculous, nor betray a perception of anything absurd done in their presence.
    QO 8.186 18 There are many fables which, as they...betray no sign of being borrowed, are said to be agreeable to the human mind.
    Aris 10.43 19 ...the manners betray the like puny constitution.
    HDC 11.51 25 The questions which the Indians put [to John Eliot] betray their reason and their ignorance.
    MLit 12.318 6 [The educated and susceptible] betray this impatience [with the poverty of our dogmas of religion and philosophy] by fleeing for resource to a conversation with Nature...
    Let 12.397 21 As long as [a man] sleeps in the shade of the present error, the after-nature does not betray its resources.
    Trag 12.412 24 There is a fire in some men which demands an outlet in some rude action; they betray their impatience of quiet by an irregular Catilinarian gait;...

betrayed, v. (19)

    Con 1.305 12 ...you [reformers] are betrayed by your own nature.
    MoS 4.155 19 Neither will [the skeptic] be betrayed to a book and wrapped in a gown.
    ET6 5.105 19 [The Englishman] is never betrayed into any curiosity or unbecoming emotion.
    ET17 5.297 1 A gentleman in the neighborhood told the story of Walter Scott's staying once for a week with Wordsworth, and slipping out every day...to the Swan Inn for a cold cut and porter; and one day passing with Wordsworth the inn, he was betrayed by the landlord's asking him if he had come for his porter.
    ET18 5.301 11 ...[the foreign policy of England] betrayed Genoa, Sicily, Parma, Greece, Turkey, Rome and Hungary.
    F 6.29 13 ...'T is written on the gate of Heaven, Woe unto him who suffers himself to be betrayed by Fate!
    Ctr 6.153 16 ...in cities [the gods] have betrayed you to a cloud of insignificant annoyances...
    Wsp 6.234 13 I recall some traits of a remarkable person whose life and discourse betrayed many inspirations of this [moral] sentiment.
    Elo1 7.86 5 ...the court and the county have really come together to arrive at these three or four memorable expressions which betrayed the mind and meaning of somebody.
    DL 7.114 13 ...we desire to play the benefactor and the prince...with the man or woman of worth who alights at our door. How can we do this, if the wants of each day...constrain us to a continual vigilance lest we be betrayed into expense?
    Cour 7.270 12 ...each is betrayed when he seeks in himself the courage of others.
    Prch 10.227 13 Be not betrayed into undervaluing the churches which annoy you by their bigoted claims.
    Prch 10.229 4 ...anything but losing hold of the moral intuitions, as betrayed in the clinging to a form of devotion or a theological dogma;...
    EzRy 10.389 24 ...[Ezra Ripley] repeated to me at table some of the particulars of that gentleman's [Jack Downing's] intimacy with General Jackson, in a manner which betrayed to me at once that he took the whole for fact.
    SlHr 10.438 27 ...when the votes of the Free States...had...betrayed the cause of freedom, [Samuel Hoar] considered the question of justice and liberty, for his age, lost...
    Wom 11.423 25 ...when I read the list of men of intellect, of refined pursuits...and see what they have voted for and suffered to be voted for, I think no community was ever so politely and elegantly betrayed.
    MAng1 12.222 2 There needs no better proof of our instinctive feeling of the immense expression of which the human figure is capable than the uniform tendency which the religion of every country has betrayed towards Anthropomorphism...
    Milt1 12.259 1 ...[Milton] writes: Many have been celebrated for their compositions, whose common conversation and intercourse have betrayed no marks of sublimity or genius.
    MLit 12.318 3 All over the modern world the educated and susceptible have betrayed their discontent with the limits of our municipal life...

betrayers, n. (1)

    SA 8.83 26 Manners are...the betrayers of any disproportion or want of symmetry in mind and character.

betraying, adj. (1)

    Dem1 10.11 10 All life, all creation, is telltale and betraying.

betraying, v. (3)

    SR 2.47 17 Great men have always...confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart...
    Lov1 2.172 11 ...what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties?
    MMEm 10.427 7 I sometimes fancy I detect in [Mary Moody Emerson's] writings a certain...polite and courtly homage to the name and dignity of Jesus...really veiling and betraying her organic dislike to any interference, any mediation between her and the Author of her being...

betrays, v. (32)

    Nat 1.44 17 So intimate is this Unity, that...it...betrays its source in Universal Spirit.
    Tran 1.335 6 I-this thought which is called I-is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax. The mould is invisible, but the world betrays the shape of the mould.
    Hist 2.9 4 ...the purpose of nature, betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history.
    SL 2.141 20 The pretence that [a man] has another call, a summons by name and personal election...betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all the individuals...
    Fdsp 2.198 5 The soul invirons itself with friends that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season that it may exalt its conversation or society. This method betrays itself along the whole history of our personal relations.
    Fdsp 2.213 16 Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances...
    OS 2.282 11 Everywhere the history of religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm.
    Cir 2.307 6 The continual effort...to work a pitch above his last height, betrays itself in a man's relations.
    Art1 2.353 8 ...[a man] cannot wipe out from his work every trace of the thoughts amidst which it grew. The very avoidance betrays the usage he avoids.
    Art1 2.363 6 The real value of the Iliad or the Transfiguration is as signs of power;...tokens of the everlasting effort to produce, which even in its worst estate the soul betrays.
    Exp 3.78 7 Every day, every act betrays the ill-concealed deity.
    Nat2 3.175 21 The muse herself betrays her son [the poor young poet]...
    Nat2 3.181 5 Compound it how [nature] will, star, sand, fire, water, tree, man, it is still one stuff, and betrays the same properties.
    Nat2 3.195 12 Our servitude to particulars betrays us into a hundred foolish expectations.
    ET4 5.50 20 The English composite character betrays a mixed origin.
    ET6 5.104 13 [The Englishman's] vivacity betrays itself at all points...
    F 6.22 14 [Man] betrays his relation to what is below him...
    CbW 6.264 19 He who desponds betrays that he has not seen [the law which distributes things].
    WD 7.185 16 ...this is the progress of every earnest mind;...from local skills and the economy which reckons the amount of production per hour to the finer economy which respects the quality of what is done, and...the fidelity with which it flows from ourselves; then to the depth of thought it betrays...
    PI 8.12 18 Genius thus [through figurative speech]...betrays the rhymes and echoes that pole makes with pole.
    PI 8.17 9 [Poetry's] essential mark is that it betrays in every word instant activity of mind...
    PI 8.33 8 Style betrays you...
    SA 8.87 5 Sometimes, when in almost all expressions the Choctaw and the slave have been worked out of [a man], a coarse nature still betrays itself in his contemptible squeals of joy.
    Elo2 8.120 15 The voice...betrays the nature and disposition...
    QO 8.192 15 [Quotation] betrays the consciousness that truth is the property of no individual...
    QO 8.193 9 ...it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others, as it is to invent. Always...some sudden alteration...of point of view, betrays the foreign interpolation.
    Dem1 10.27 19 ...I think the numberless forms in which this superstition [demonology] has reappeared...betrays [man's] conviction that behind all your explanations is a vast and potent and living Nature...
    Schr 10.264 27 The poet with poets betrays no amiable weakness.
    MLit 12.334 13 He who doubts whether this age or this country can yield any contribution to the literature of the world only betrays his own blindness to the necessities of the human soul.
    WSL 12.337 4 We sometimes meet in a stage-coach in New England an erect, muscular man...whose nervous speech instantly betrays the English traveller;...
    WSL 12.343 26 [Landor's] love of beauty...betrays itself in all petulant and contemptuous expressions.
    EurB 12.374 15 ...Zanoni pains us and the author loses our respect, because he speedily betrays that he does not see the true limitations of the charm;...

betrothal, n. (1)

    ET13 5.218 12 It was strange to hear the pretty pastoral of the betrothal of Rebecca and Isaac, in the morning of the world, read with circumstantiality in York minster, on the 13th January, 1848...

betrothed, adj. (3)

    Nat2 3.193 11 The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him.
    Wth 6.113 10 ...the betrothed maiden by one secure affection is relieved from a system of slaveries...
    DL 7.115 21 You are to bring with you that spirit which is understanding, health and self-help. To offer [man] money in lieu of these is to do him the same wrong as when the bridegroom offers his betrothed virgin a sum of money to release him from his engagements.

betrothed, v. (1)

    Boks 7.217 1 Money, and killing, and the Wandering Jew, and persuading the lover that his mistress is betrothed to another, these are the main-springs [of the novel];...

better, adj. (428)

    Nat 1.11 1 [The waving of the boughs'] effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me...
    Nat 1.16 11 For better consideration, we may distribute the aspects of beauty in a threefold manner.
    Nat 1.37 13 ...good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed!
    Nat 1.72 25 ...in the thick darkness, there are not wanting gleams of a better light...
    AmS 1.81 19 Perhaps the time is already come...when the sluggard intellect of this continent will...fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill.
    AmS 1.98 17 ...the final value of action, like that of books, and better than books, is that it is a resource.
    AmS 1.103 26 ...the deeper [the orator] dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds this is the most...universally true. The people delight in it; the better part of every man feels, This is my music;...
    AmS 1.108 12 ...we crave a better and more abundant food.
    DSA 1.137 11 ...we can make...a far better, holier, sweeter [Sabbath], for ourselves.
    DSA 1.139 8 When [the good hearer] listens to these vain words, he comforts himself by their relation to his remembrance of better hours...
    DSA 1.141 12 ...the exceptions are not so much to be found in a few eminent preachers, as in the better hours...of all...
    LE 1.160 27 There is a better way than this indolent learning of another.
    LE 1.181 1 Let the scholar appreciate this combination of gifts, which, applied to better purpose, make true wisdom.
    LE 1.187 4 ...Ask not...Who is the better for the philosopher who conceals his accomplishments...
    MN 1.192 26 Let there be worse cotton and better men.
    MN 1.199 2 How can I hope for better hap in my attempts to enunciate spiritual facts?
    MN 1.203 17 Why should not then these messieurs of Versailles strut and plot for tabourets and ribbons, for a season, without prejudice to their faculty to run on better errands by and by?
    MN 1.209 6 A man's wisdom is to know...that the best end must be superseded by a better.
    MR 1.242 12 Better that the book should not be quite so good, and the book-maker abler and better...
    MR 1.242 14 Better that the book should not be quite so good, and the book-maker abler and better...
    MR 1.245 17 It is better to go without [the conveniences of life], than to have them at too great a cost.
    MR 1.253 23 It is better to work on institutions by the sun than by the wind.
    MR 1.254 8 I am to see to it that the world is the better for me...
    MR 1.256 1 It is better that joy should be spread over all the day in the form of strength...
    LT 1.268 2 Let us not see the foundations...of a new and better order of things laid, with...an attention preoccupied with trifles.
    LT 1.268 11 Here is the innumerable multitude of those who accept the state and the church from the last generation, and stand on no argument but possession. They have reason also, and, as I think, better reason than is commonly stated.
    LT 1.276 17 The love which lifted men to the sight of these better ends was the true and best distinction of this time...
    Con 1.297 27 ...[conservatism] will not open its eyes to see a better fact.
    Con 1.303 22 [The existing world] will stand until a better cast of the dice is made.
    Con 1.304 4 We hold to this [existing world], until you can demonstrate something better.
    Con 1.304 27 You who...are willing to...risk the indisputable good that exists, for the chance of better, live, move, and have your being in this [society]...
    Con 1.313 15 Thank the rude foster-mother [Necessity], though she has taught you a better wisdom than her own...
    Con 1.320 9 [Conservatism's] social and political action has no better aim;...
    Tran 1.333 11 Mind is the only reality, of which men and all other natures are better or worse reflectors.
    Tran 1.346 1 Will it be better with the new generation?
    Tran 1.347 10 [Transcendentalists] say to themselves, It is better to be alone than in bad company.
    YA 1.370 4 How much better when the whole land is a garden...
    YA 1.372 23 Remark the unceasing effort throughout nature at somewhat better than the actual creatures...
    YA 1.373 3 The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but...the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.
    YA 1.379 23 ...Trade is also but for a time, and must give way to somewhat broader and better...
    YA 1.391 6 ...the wise and just man will always feel...that if all went down, he and such as he would quite easily combine in a new and better constitution.
    Hist 2.6 19 Universal history, the poets, the romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures...anywhere make us feel...that this is for better men;...
    Hist 2.10 14 Ferguson discovered many things in astronomy which had long been known. The better for him.
    Hist 2.33 7 ...if the man is true to his better instincts or sentiments...then the facts fall aptly and supple into their places;...
    SR 2.50 1 Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.
    SR 2.52 1 I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last...
    SR 2.66 17 Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion?
    SR 2.66 18 Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being?
    SR 2.67 6 These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones;...
    SR 2.89 6 Is not a man better than a town?
    Comp 2.95 24 ...men are better than their theology.
    Comp 2.119 10 The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you;...
    SL 2.133 4 The regular course of studies...have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School.
    SL 2.133 18 ...the question is everywhere vexed when a noble nature is commended, whether the man is not better who strives with temptation.
    SL 2.134 3 When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful and pleasant as roses, we must...not...say, Crump is a better man with his grunting resistance to all his native devils.
    SL 2.147 19 People are not the better for the sun and moon, the horizon and the trees;...
    SL 2.158 6 A stranger comes from a distant school, with better dress...
    SL 2.160 4 ...the hero fears not that if he withhold the avowal of a just and brave act it will go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it,--himself,--and is pledged by it...to nobleness of aim which will prove in the end a better proclamation of it than the relating of the incident.
    SL 2.161 17 The epochs of our life are...in a thought which...says,--Thus hast thou done, but it were better thus.
    Fdsp 2.195 25 [Our friend's] goodness seems better than our goodness...
    Prd1 2.233 23 Is it not better that a man should accept the first pains and mortifications of this sort...as hints that he must expect no other good than the just fruit of his own labor and self-denial?
    Prd1 2.234 12 There is nothing [a man] will not be the better for knowing...
    Prd1 2.239 19 The natural motions of the soul are so much better than the voluntary ones that you will never do yourself justice in dispute.
    Prd1 2.240 4 We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy and intimacy to come.
    Hsm1 2.246 19 ...[To die] is to end/ An old, stale, weary work and to commence/ A newer and a better..../
    Hsm1 2.253 10 ...the soul of a better quality thrusts back the unreasonable economy into the vaults of life...
    Hsm1 2.254 15 ...[the great soul's] own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.
    Hsm1 2.255 3 Better still is the temperance of King David...
    Hsm1 2.259 6 ...a better valor and a purer truth shall one day organize [many extraordinary young men's] belief.
    Hsm1 2.262 6 The circumstances of man, we say, are historically somewhat better in this country and at this hour than perhaps ever before.
    Hsm1 2.262 17 It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob...and died when it was better not to live.
    OS 2.269 20 ...by falling back on our better thoughts...we can know what [the soul] saith.
    OS 2.275 16 The soul...requires beneficence, but is somewhat better;...
    OS 2.292 18 ...for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable.
    Cir 2.303 2 ...that which builds is better than that which is built.
    Cir 2.303 3 Better than the hand and nimbler was the invisible thought which wrought through it;...
    Cir 2.307 15 For every friend whom he loses for truth, [a man] gains a better.
    Cir 2.311 21 Good as is discourse, silence is better...
    Cir 2.314 25 The same law of eternal procession...extinguishes each [virtue] in the light of a better.
    Cir 2.315 23 Blessed be nothing and The worse things are, the better they are are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life.
    Cir 2.321 3 The difference between talents and character is adroitness to keep the old and trodden round, and power and courage to make a new road to new and better goals.
    Int 2.327 12 ...any record of our fancies or reflections, disentangled from the web of our unconsciousness, becomes an object impersonal and immortal. ... A better art than that of Egypt has taken fear and corruption out of it.
    Int 2.339 20 Is it any better if the student...aims to make a mechanical whole of history...by a numerical addition of all the facts that fall within his vision.
    Art1 2.366 15 Men are not well pleased with the figure they make in their own imaginations, and...convey their better sense in an oratorio, a statue, or a picture.
    Art1 2.367 19 Would it not be better to begin higher up,--to serve the ideal before [men] eat and drink;...
    Pt1 3.12 13 This day shall be better than my birthday...
    Pt1 3.13 13 Being used as a type, a second wonderful value appears in the object, far better than its old value;...
    Pt1 3.20 22 ...through that better perception [the poet] stands one step nearer to things...
    Exp 3.49 4 If to-morrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me,--neither better nor worse.
    Exp 3.65 22 Thou art sick, but shalt not be worse, and the universe, which holds thee dear, shall be the better.
    Exp 3.75 5 ...[a man's] good is tidings of a better.
    Chr1 3.101 21 No institution will be better than the institutor.
    Chr1 3.108 25 Every trait which the artist recorded in stone he had seen in life, and better than his copy.
    Mrs1 3.123 21 In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.
    Mrs1 3.141 26 Parliamentary history has few better passages than the debate in which Burke and Fox separated in the House of Commons;...
    Mrs1 3.149 3 A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face;...
    Mrs1 3.149 4 ...a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form...
    Gts 3.160 27 In our condition of universal dependence it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience. If it be a fantastic desire, it is better to leave to others the office of punishing him.
    Nat2 3.177 9 The fop of fields is no better than his brother of Broadway.
    Pol1 3.199 9 ...we ought to remember...that [the State's institutions] all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good, we may make better.
    Pol1 3.204 18 We are kept by better guards than the vigilance of such magistrates as we commonly elect.
    Pol1 3.207 16 [Our political institutions] are not better, but only fitter for us.
    Pol1 3.207 21 Democracy is better for us, because the religious sentiment of the present time accords better with it.
    Pol1 3.208 14 Parties...have better guides to their own humble aims than the sagacity of their leaders.
    Pol1 3.215 20 ...the less government we have the better...
    Pol1 3.220 5 Are our methods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? could not a nation of friends even devise better ways?
    NR 3.239 3 ...[the recluse] goes into a mob...into a camp, and in each new place he is no better than an idiot;...
    NR 3.245 11 ...Speech is better than silence; silence is better than speech;...
    NR 3.245 12 ...Speech is better than silence; silence is better than speech;...
    NER 3.258 8 ...the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.
    NER 3.261 21 It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment...than to make a sally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration.
    NER 3.261 27 ...there is no part of society or of life better than any other part.
    NER 3.265 25 ...concert is neither better nor worse...than individual force.
    NER 3.273 15 Men in all ways are better than they seem.
    UGM 4.13 24 If you affect to give me bread and fire...at last it leaves me as it found me, neither better nor worse...
    PPh 4.63 18 Nature is good, but the intellect is better...
    PPh 4.64 9 ...[said Plato] the persuasion that we must search that which we do not know, will render us, beyond comparison, better, braver and more industrious than if we thought it impossible to discover what we do not know, and useless to search for it.
    PPh 4.71 25 [Socrates]...thought every thing in Athens a little better than anything in any other place.
    PPh 4.79 3 ...when we praise the style, or the common sense, or arithmetic [of Plato], we speak as boys, and much of our impatient criticism of the dialectic, I suspect, is no better.
    PNR 4.84 2 Plato affirms...that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it;...
    PNR 4.88 8 Shakspeare is a Platonist when he writes,--Nature is made better by no mean,/ But nature makes that mean/...
    SwM 4.120 7 [Swedenborg] had borrowed from Plato the fine fable of a most ancient people, men better than we and dwelling nigher to the gods;...
    SwM 4.138 2 The less we have to do with our sins the better.
    MoS 4.153 1 Spence relates that Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, when his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in. Nephew, said Sir Godfrey, you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world. I don't know how great men you may be, said the Guinea man, but I don't like your looks. I have often bought a man much better than both of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas.
    MoS 4.160 9 [Skepticism] is a position taken up for better defence...
    MoS 4.166 14 [Montaigne]...is so nervous, by factitious life, that he thinks the more barbarous man is, the better he is.
    MoS 4.172 26 [The wise skeptic] is a reformer; yet he is no better member of the philanthropic association.
    MoS 4.179 2 ...we may, in fifty years, have half a dozen reasonable hours. But what are these cares and works the better?
    ShP 4.196 11 Shakspeare knew that tradition supplies a better fable than any invention can.
    ShP 4.203 4 [Jonson] no doubt thought the praise he has conceded to [Shakespeare] generous, and esteemed himself...the better poet of the two.
    GoW 4.274 26 Eyes are better on the whole than telescopes or microscopes.
    GoW 4.283 18 However excellent [Goethe's] sentence is, he has somewhat better in view.
    ET1 5.21 24 [Wordsworth] had never gone farther than the first part [of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister]; so disgusted was he that he threw the book across the room. I deprecated this wrath, and said what I could for the better parts of the book...
    ET1 5.23 19 I said Tinturn Abbey appeared to be the favorite poem with the public, but more contemplative readers preferred the first books of the Excursion, and the Sonnets. He said, Yes, they are better.
    ET1 5.24 11 [Wordsworth] then said he would show me a better way towards the inn;...
    ET2 5.30 26 Jack [Tar] has a life of risks, incessant abuse and the worst pay. It is a little better with the mate, and not very much better with the captain.
    ET4 5.51 11 Neither do this people [the English] appear to be of one stem, but collectively a better race than any from which they are derived.
    ET4 5.60 2 History rarely yields us better passages than the conversation between King Sigurd the Crusader and King Eystein his brother...
    ET4 5.71 24 Their young boiling clerks and lusty collegians [in England] like the company of horses better than the company of professors. I suppose the horses are better company for them.
    ET5 5.80 10 [The English]...cannot conceal their contempt for sallies of thought...whose steps they cannot count by their wonted rule. Neither do they reckon better a syllogism that ends in syllogism.
    ET5 5.86 26 ...conscious that no race of better men exists, [the English] rely most on the simplest means...
    ET5 5.93 18 ...it is [Englishmen's] commercial advantage that whatever light appears in better method or happy invention, breaks out in their race.
    ET6 5.108 5 ...the poorest [Englishmen] have some spoon or saucepan... saved out of better times.
    ET6 5.110 22 As soon as [the English] have rid themselves of some grievance and settled the better practice, they make haste to fix it as a finality...
    ET7 5.120 6 If war do not bring in its sequel new trade, better agriculture and manufactures...no prosperity could support it;...
    ET8 5.131 19 Of absolute stoutness no nation has more or better examples [than England].
    ET9 5.152 17 ...this precious knave [George of Cappadocia] became, in good time, Saint George of England...the pride of the best blood of the modern world. Strange, that the solid truth-speaking Briton should derive from an impostor. Strange, that the New World should have no better luck...
    ET10 5.156 14 If [the English] cannot pay, they do not buy; for they have no presumption of better fortunes next year...
    ET10 5.160 20 ...a better measure than these sounding figures is the estimate that there is wealth enough in England to support the entire population in idleness for one year.
    ET10 5.166 3 I much prefer the condition of an English gentleman of the better class to that of any potentate in Europe...
    ET11 5.174 27 The things these English have done were not done...without wisdom and conduct; and the first hands...were often challenged to show their right to their honors, or yield them to better men.
    ET12 5.209 10 ...so eminent are the members that a glance at the calendars will show that in all the world one cannot be in better company than on the books of one of the larger Oxford or Cambridge colleges.
    ET12 5.212 3 ...the rich libraries collected at every one of many thousands of houses [in England], give an advantage not to be attained by a youth in this country, when one thinks how much more and better may be learned by a scholar who, immediately on hearing of a book, can consult it...
    ET13 5.215 10 In seeing old castles and cathedrals, I sometimes say...This was built by another and a better race than any that now look on it.
    ET14 5.247 15 [Macaulay] thinks it the distinctive merit of the Baconian philosophy in its triumph over the old Platonic, its disentangling the intellect from theories of the all-Fair and all-Good, and pinning it down to the making of a better sick chair and a better wine-whey for an invalid;...
    ET14 5.247 16 [Macaulay] thinks it the distinctive merit of the Baconian philosophy in its triumph over the old Platonic, its disentangling the intellect from theories of the all-Fair and all-Good, and pinning it down to the making of a better sick chair and a better wine-whey for an invalid;...
    ET14 5.247 20 [Macaulay] thinks...that, solid advantage, as he calls it, meaning always sensual benefit, is the only good. The eminent benefit of astronomy is the better navigation it creates to enable the fruit-ships to bring home their lemons and wine to the London grocer.
    ET14 5.257 27 [Tennyson] contents himself with describing the Englishman as he is, and proposes no better.
    ET15 5.271 21 The [London] Times, like every important institution, shows the way to a better.
    ET17 5.295 9 [Wordsworth] had thought an elder brother of Tennyson at first the better poet...
    ET18 5.307 16 ...the American people do not yield better or more able men...than the English.
    ET18 5.307 18 Congress is not wiser or better than Parliament.
    ET19 5.309 10 In looking over recently a newspaper-report of my remarks [at the Manchester Atheneaum Banquet], I incline to reprint it, as fitly expressing the feeling with which I entered England, and which agrees well enough with the more deliberate results of better acquaintance recorded in the foregoing pages.
    F 6.14 15 ...if, after five hundred years you get a better observer or a better glass, he finds, within the last [egg] observed, another [vesicle].
    F 6.26 12 [The mind] dates from itself; not from...better men...
    Pow 6.60 2 The second man is as good as the first,--perhaps better;...
    Pow 6.65 12 These Hoosiers and Suckers are really better than the snivelling opposition.
    Pow 6.76 10 ...in our flowing affairs a decision must be made,--the best, if you can, but any is better than none.
    Pow 6.77 9 The hack is a better roadster than the Arab barb.
    Pow 6.77 12 ...the galvanic stream, slow but continuous, is equal in power to the electric spark, and is, in our arts, a better agent.
    Wth 6.85 21 ...a better order is equivalent to vast amounts of brute labor.
    Wth 6.86 7 ...the art of getting rich consists not in industry...but in a better order...
    Wth 6.86 14 Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago; but is put to better use.
    Wth 6.109 6 A youth coming into the city from his native New Hampshire farm...boards at a first-class hotel, and believes he must somehow have outwitted Dr. Franklin and Malthus, for luxuries are cheap. But he pays for the one convenience of a better dinner, by the loss of some of the richest social and educational advantages.
    Ctr 6.139 16 ...the old English poet Gascoigne says, A boy is better unborn than untaught.
    Ctr 6.151 10 How the imagination is piqued by anecdotes...of Goethe, who preferred...worse rather than better clothes...
    Ctr 6.162 2 Ben Jonson specifies in his address to the Muse:--...Make him lose all his friends, and what is worse,/ Almost all ways to any better course;/ With me thou leav'st a better Muse than thee,/ And which thou brought'st me, blessed Poverty./
    Ctr 6.162 3 Ben Jonson specifies in his address to the Muse:--...Make him lose all his friends, and what is worse,/ Almost all ways to any better course;/ With me thou leav'st a better Muse than thee,/ And which thou brought'st me, blessed Poverty./
    Bhr 6.185 21 Nothing can be more excellent in kind than the Corinthian grace of Gertrude's manners, and yet Blanche, who has no manners, has better manners than she;...
    Bhr 6.189 12 A little integrity is better than any career.
    Bhr 6.193 12 ...[simple and noble persons]...meet on a better ground than the talents and skills they may chance to possess...
    Bhr 6.194 4 The angel that was sent to find a place of torment for [the monk Basle] attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but with no better success;...
    Bhr 6.195 23 I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty;...and in memorable experiences they are suddenly better than beauty...
    Bhr 6.196 8 It is good to give a stranger...a night's lodging. It is better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought...
    Wsp 6.212 5 ...they who pay this homage [to the public sinner] have said to themselves, On the whole, we don't know about this that you call honesty; a bird in the hand is better.
    Wsp 6.215 26 What a day dawns when we have taken to heart the doctrine of faith! to prefer, as a better investment, being to doing;...
    Wsp 6.224 21 Each must be armed--not necessarily with musket and pike. Happy, if seeing these, he can feel that he has better muskets and pikes in his energy and constancy.
    Wsp 6.232 12 It is strange that superior persons should not feel that they have some better resistance against cholera than avoiding green peas and salads.
    CbW 6.247 22 Is all we have to do to draw the breath in and blow it out again? Porphyry's definition is better; Life is that which holds matter together.
    CbW 6.253 15 Good is a good doctor but Bad is sometimes a better.
    CbW 6.258 7 Better, certainly, if we could secure the strength and fire which rude, passionate men bring into society, quite clear of their vices.
    CbW 6.259 21 ...there is...no plant that is not fed from manures. We only insist...that the plant grow upward and convert the base into the better nature.
    CbW 6.259 27 ...all great men come out of the middle classes. 'T is better for the head; 't is better for the heart.
    CbW 6.260 21 ...what we ask daily, is to be conventional. ... But the wise gods say, No, we have better things for thee.
    CbW 6.265 11 ...I find the gayest castles in the air that were ever piled, far better for comfort and for use than the dungeons in the air that are daily dug and caverned out by grumbling, discontented people.
    CbW 6.272 7 Our conversation once and again has apprised us that we belong to better circles than we have yet beheld;...
    CbW 6.273 5 ...few writers have said anything better to this point [of friendship] than Hafiz...
    Bty 6.290 3 ...the forms and colors of nature have a new charm for us in our perception that...each is a sign of some better health or more excellent action.
    Bty 6.296 20 Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of man than any I yet behold.
    Ill 6.312 10 [The boy] has no better friend or influence than Scott, Shakspeare, Plutarch and Homer.
    SS 7.12 6 A backwoodsman...told me that when he heard the best-bred young men at the law-school talk together, he reckoned himself a boor; but whenever he...had one to himself alone, then they were the boors and he the better man.
    Civ 7.23 6 ...the multiplication of the arts of peace, which is nothing but a large allowance to each man...to live by his better hand,--fills the State with useful and happy laborers;...
    Civ 7.32 24 ...I see what cubic values America has, and in these a better certificate of civilization than great cities or enormous wealth.
    Art2 7.44 16 Just as much better as is the polished statue of dazzling marble than the clay model, or as much more impressive as is the granite cathedral or pyramid than the ground-plan or profile of them on paper, so much more beauty owe they to Nature than to Art.
    Elo1 7.61 24 The plight of these phlegmatic brains is better than that of those who prematurely boil...
    Elo1 7.74 22 ...whoever can say off currently, sentence by sentence, matter neither better nor worse than what is there [in the country newspaper] printed, will be very impressive to our easily pleased population.
    Elo1 7.76 10 Leaving behind us these pretensions, better or worse, to come a little nearer to the verity,--eloquence is attractive as an example of the magic of personal ascendency...
    DL 7.107 19 Fact is better than fiction...
    DL 7.108 12 ...we are always hovering round this better divination.
    DL 7.116 13 ...this voice of communities and ages, Give us wealth and the good household shall exist, is vicious, and leaves the whole difficulty untouched. It is better, certainly, in this form, Give us your labor, and the household begins.
    DL 7.125 25 ...we hold fast, all our lives long, a faith in a better life...
    DL 7.125 26 ...we hold fast, all our lives long, a faith...in better men...
    DL 7.126 6 ...Certainly this was not the intention of Nature, to produce...so cheap and humble a result. The aspirations in the heart after the good and true teach us better,--nay, the men themselves suggest a better life.
    DL 7.133 11 These are the consolations,--these are the ends to which the household is instituted and the roof-tree stands. If these are sought and in any good degree attained...can the labor of many for one, yield anything better, or half as good"
    Farm 7.140 10 ...for sleep, [the farmer] has cheaper and better and more of it than citizens.
    Farm 7.148 8 In September, when the pears hang heaviest...comes usually a gusty day which...throws down the heaviest fruit in bruised heaps. The planter took the hint of the Sequoias, built a high wall, or--better-- surrounded the orchard with a nursery of birches and evergreens.
    Farm 7.150 10 By drainage we went down to a subsoil we did not know, and have found...that Massachusetts has a basement story...that promises to pay a better rent than all the superstructure.
    Farm 7.150 14 These [drainage] tiles are political economists, confuters of Malthus and Ricardo; they are so many Young Americans announcing a better era,--more bread.
    Farm 7.150 19 [The farmer's tiles] drain the land, make it sweet and friable; have made English Chat Moss a garden, and will now do as much for the Dismal Swamp. But beyond this benefit they are the text of better opinions and better auguries for mankind.
    Farm 7.151 14 The first planter, the savage...takes poor land. The better lands are loaded with timber, which he cannot clear;...
    Farm 7.152 1 Later [the first planter] learns that his planting is better than hunting;...
    WD 7.158 22 ...Leibnitz said of Newton, that if he reckoned all that had been done by mathematicians from the beginning of the world down to Newton, and what had been done by him, his would be the better half...
    WD 7.160 26 ...there is no argument of theism better than the grandeur of ends brought about by paltry means.
    WD 7.164 9 Tantalus begins to think...galvanism no better than it should be.
    WD 7.166 7 What have these arts done for the character, for the worth of mankind? Are men better?
    Boks 7.189 12 In Plato's Gorgias, Socrates says: The shipmaster walks in a modest garb near the sea, after bringing his passengers from Aegina or from Pontus;...certainly knowing that his passengers are the same and in no respect better than when he took them on board.
    Boks 7.189 16 The bookseller might certainly know that his customers are in no respect better for the purchase and consumption of his wares.
    Clbs 7.233 6 It does not help that you find as good or a better man than yourself, if he is not timed and fitted to you.
    Clbs 7.248 14 Plutarch, Xenophon and Plato, who have celebrated each a banquet of their set, have given us next to no data of the viands; and it is to be believed that an indifferent tavern dinner in such society was more relished by the convives than a much better one in worse company.
    Cour 7.254 11 Men admire...the power of better combination and foresight...
    Cour 7.263 9 Use makes a better soldier than the most urgent considerations of duty...
    Cour 7.273 1 The statue, the architecture, were the later and inferior creation of the same [Greek] genius. In view of this moment of history, we recognize a certain prophetic instinct, better than wisdom.
    Suc 7.288 14 The inventor knows there is much more and better where this came from.
    Suc 7.295 9 ...it is sanity to know that, over my talent or knack, and a million times better than any talent, is the central intelligence...
    Suc 7.297 12 ...has [the scholar or writer] never found that there is a better poetry hinted in a boy's whistle of a tune...than in all his literary results?
    OA 7.322 15 We still feel the force...of Archimedes, holding Syracuse against the Romans by his wit, and himself better than all their nation;...
    OA 7.335 7 [John Adams]...is better the next day after having visitors in his chamber from morning to night.
    PI 8.20 21 Better than images is seen through them.
    PI 8.21 27 Poetry must first be good sense, though it is something better.
    PI 8.27 19 William Blake...writes thus: He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments and in stronger and better light than his perishing mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all.
    PI 8.27 20 William Blake...writes thus: He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments and in stronger and better light than his perishing mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all.
    PI 8.33 18 Great design belongs to a poem, and is better than any skill of execution...
    PI 8.37 1 [The poet's] wreath and robe is...escape from the gossip and routine of society, and the allowed right and practice of making better.
    PI 8.42 3 Better men saw heavens and earths;...
    PI 8.43 13 Better examples [of poetry] are Shakspeare's Ariel, his Caliban...
    PI 8.48 13 So in our songs and ballads the refrain skilfully used, and deriving some novelty or better sense in each of many verses...
    PI 8.50 10 Thomas Taylor...is really a better man of imagination, a better poet...than any man between Milton and Wordsworth.
    PI 8.50 11 Thomas Taylor...is really...a better poet...than any man between Milton and Wordsworth.
    PI 8.50 12 Thomas Taylor...is really...a better poet, or perhaps I should say a better feeder to a poet, than any man between Milton and Wordsworth.
    PI 8.56 13 Gray avows that he thinks even a bad verse as good a thing or better than the best observation that was ever made on it.
    PI 8.68 13 Better not to be easily pleased.
    SA 8.91 27 It may happen that each hears from the other a better wisdom than any one else will ever hear from either.
    SA 8.93 4 If every one recalled his experiences, he might find the best in the speech of superior women;--which was better than song...
    SA 8.106 26 ...those people, and no others, interest us...who are absorbed, if you please to say so, in their own dream. They only can give the key and leading to better society...
    Elo2 8.111 4 I do not know any kind of history, except the event of a battle, to which people listen with more interest than to any anecdote of eloquence; and the wise think it better than a battle.
    Elo2 8.116 23 ...[the orator] taking no counsel of past things but only of the inspiration of his to-day's feeling, surprises [the people]...with his better knowledge...
    Res 8.137 17 I am benefited by every observation of a victory of man over Nature; by seeing that wisdom is better than strength;...
    Res 8.138 10 A Schopenhauer...inferring that sleep is better than waking, and death than sleep,--all the talent in the world cannot save him from being odious.
    Res 8.146 27 ...one man whose eye commands the end in view and the means by which it can be attained, is not only better than ten men or a hundred men, but victor over all mankind who do not see the issue and the means.
    Res 8.150 22 There are better games than billiards and whist.
    Res 8.153 11 ...I think [the mighty law of vegetation] more grateful and health-giving than any news I am likely to find of man in the journals, and better than Washington politics.
    Comc 8.168 18 The pedantry of literature belongs to the same category [as that of religion and science]. In both cases there is a lie, when the mind... learning languages and reading books to the end of a better acquaintance with man, stops in the languages and books;...
    QO 8.182 8 ...the psalms and liturgies of churches, are...of this slow growth,-a fagot of selections gathered through ages, leaving the worse and saving the better...
    QO 8.190 14 Whatever we think and say is wonderfully better for our spirits and trust, in another mouth.
    QO 8.197 2 In hours of high mental activity we sometimes do the book too much honor, reading out of it better things than the author wrote...
    QO 8.199 19 ...does it not look...as if we stood...in a circle of intelligences that reached...back to the first negro, who, with more health or better perception, gave a shriller sound or name for the thing he saw and dealt with?
    PC 8.209 19 ...[the coxcomb] has found...that good sense is now in power, and that resting on a vast constituency of intelligent labor, and, better yet, on perceptions less and less dim of laws the most sublime.
    PC 8.213 16 ...we have not on the instant better men to show than Plutarch' s heroes.
    PC 8.215 23 If [your public] are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better.
    PC 8.234 15 I read the promise of better times and of greater men.
    PPo 8.237 21 ...the essential value [in books] is the adding of knowledge to our stock by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record of intuitions which distribute facts...
    Insp 8.272 10 Rarey can tame a wild horse; but if he could give speed to a dull horse, were not that better?
    Insp 8.277 11 ...all poets have signalized their consciousness of rare moments...when a light, a freedom, a power came to them which lifted them to performances far better than they could reach at other times;...
    Insp 8.279 20 ...when you can use the lightning it is better than cannon.
    Insp 8.296 1 Books of natural science...all the better if written without literary aim or ambition.
    Grts 8.304 18 I am to infer that you keep good company by your better information and manners...
    Grts 8.313 8 Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility.
    Imtl 8.329 21 I think all sound minds rest on a certain preliminary conviction, namely, that if it be best that conscious personal life shall continue, it will continue; if not best, then it will not; and we, if we saw the whole, should of course see that it was better so.
    Imtl 8.332 15 ...the impulse which drew these minds to this inquiry [concerning immortality] through so many years was a better affirmative evidence than their failure to find a confirmation was negative.
    Imtl 8.346 1 I mean that I am a better believer, and all serious souls are better believers in the immortality, than we can give grounds for.
    Imtl 8.346 2 I mean that I am a better believer, and all serious souls are better believers in the immortality, than we can give grounds for.
    Dem1 10.14 23 ...this man [Masollam] inquired the reason of [the multitude's] halting. The augur showed him a bird, and told him, If that bird remained where he was, it would be better for them all to remain;...
    Dem1 10.21 20 The best are never demoniacal or magnetic; leave this limbo to the Prince of the power of the air. The lowest angel is better.
    Aris 10.48 2 Every Frenchman would have a career. We English are not any better with our love of making a figure.
    Aris 10.49 19 I think that the community...will be the best measure and the justest judge of the citizen...better than any royal patronage;...
    Aris 10.49 20 I think that the community...will be the best measure and the justest judge of the citizen...better than any premium on race;...
    Aris 10.49 20 I think that the community...will be the best measure and the justest judge of the citizen...better than any statute elevating families to hereditary distinction...
    PerF 10.70 2 ...I find it wholesome and invigorating to enumerate the resources we can command, to look a little into this arsenal, and see...how many arms better than Springfield muskets, we can bring to bear.
    PerF 10.86 22 The divine knowledge has ebbed out of us and we do not know enough to be free. I hope better of the State.
    Chr2 10.115 16 Every exaggeration of [person and text]...inclines the manly reader to lay down the New Testament, to take up the Pagan philosophers. It is not that the Upanishads or the Maxims of Antoninus are better, but that they do not invade his freedom;...
    Edc1 10.127 5 Certain nations, with a better brain...have made such progress as to compare with these [savages] as these compare with the bear and the wolf.
    Edc1 10.147 10 It is better to teach the child arithmetic and Latin grammar than rhetoric or moral philosophy...
    Supl 10.178 7 Universally, the better gold, the worse man.
    SovE 10.184 7 In ignorant ages it was common to vaunt the human superiority by underrating the instinct of other animals; but a better discernment finds that the difference is only of less and more.
    SovE 10.185 21 The finer the sense of justice, the better poet.
    SovE 10.188 19 When we trace from the beginning, that ferocity has uses; only so are the conditions of the then world met, and these monsters are the...diggers, pioneers and fertilizers...making better life possible.
    SovE 10.200 20 Jesus was better than others, because he refused to listen to others and listened at home.
    Prch 10.217 6 In the history of opinion, the pinch of falsehood shows itself first...in insincerity, indifference and abandonment of...the scientific or political or economic institution for other better or worse forms.
    Prch 10.221 18 Unlovely, nay, frightful, is the solitude of the soul which is without God in the world. To wander all day in the sunlight among the tribes of animals, unrelated to anything better;...
    MoL 10.253 5 Does any one doubt that a good general is better than a park of artillery?
    Schr 10.267 20 The action of these [busy] men I cannot respect, for they do not respect it themselves. They were better and more respectable abed and asleep.
    Schr 10.280 27 The objection of men of the world to what they call the morbid intellectual tendency in our young men at present, is...that the idealistic views unfit their children for business in their sense, and do not qualify them for any complete life of a better kind.
    Plu 10.300 3 ...though Plutarch is as plain-spoken [as Montaigne], his moral sentiment is always pure. What better praise has any writer received than he whom Montaigne finds frank in giving things, not words...
    Plu 10.301 20 I find [Plutarch] a better teacher of rhetoric than any modern.
    Plu 10.314 6 [Plutarch] believes that the souls of infants pass immediately into a better and more divine state.
    LLNE 10.347 10 [Robert Owen] was the better Christian in his controversy with Christians...
    LLNE 10.353 11 ...it would be better to say, Let us be lovers and servants of that which is just...
    LLNE 10.360 16 [Brook Farm] was a noble and generous movement in the projectors, to try an experiment of better living.
    CSC 10.376 7 These men and women [at the Chardon Street Convention] were in search of something better and more satisfying than a vote or a definition...
    EzRy 10.391 23 [Ezra Ripley] showed even in his fireside discourse traits of that pertinency and judgment...which, under a better discipline, might have ripened into a Bentley or a Porson.
    MMEm 10.414 23 ...as I [Mary Moody Emerson] walked out this afternoon, so sad was wearied Nature that I felt her whisper to me, Even these leaves you use to think my better emblem have lost their charm on me too...
    MMEm 10.420 6 Better anything than dishonest dependence...
    MMEm 10.420 23 The difficulty of getting places of low board for a lady, is obvious. And, at moments, I [Mary Moody Emerson] am tired out. Yet how independent, how better than to hang on friends!
    MMEm 10.422 22 To her nephew Charles [Mary Moody Emerson writes]: War; what do I think of it? Why in your ear I think it so much better than oppression that if it were ravaging the whole geography of despotism it would be an omen of high and glorious import.
    MMEm 10.423 2 Channing paints [war's] miseries, but does he know those of a worse war...the cruel oppression of the poor by the rich, which corrupts old worlds? How much better, more honest, are storming and conflagration of towns!
    MMEm 10.426 9 Sadness is better than walking talking acting somnambulism.
    MMEm 10.430 1 If one could choose, and without crime be gibbeted,- were it not altogether better than the long drooping away by age without mentality or devotion?
    Thor 10.451 18 [Thoreau's] father was a manufacturer of lead-pencils, and Henry applied himself for a time to this craft, believing he could make a better pencil than was then in use.
    Thor 10.457 7 I said [to Thoreau]...who does not see with regret that his page is not solid with a right materialistic treatment, which delights everybody? Henry objected, of course, and vaunted the better lectures which reached only a few persons.
    Thor 10.473 8 The farmers who employed [Thoreau] as a surveyor soon discovered...his knowledge of their lands...which enabled him to tell every farmer more than he knew before of his own farm; so that he began to feel a little as if Mr. Thoreau had better rights in his land than he.
    Thor 10.475 23 ...[Thoreau] have not the poetic temperament, he never lacks the causal thought, showing that his genius was better than his talent.
    Thor 10.476 26 [Thoreau's] classic poem on Smoke suggests Simonides, but is better than any poem of Simonides.
    Carl 10.494 10 A natural defender of anything...[Carlyle] respects; and the nobler this object, of course, the better.
    LS 11.10 23 ...when the Jews on that occasion [at Capernaum] complained that they did not comprehend what [Jesus] meant, he added for their better understanding...that we might not think his body was to be actually eaten, that he only meant we should live by his commandment.
    LS 11.16 19 But it is said: Admit that the rite [the Lord's Supper] was not designed to be perpetual. What harm doth it? Here it stands...the undoubted occasion of much good; is it not better it should remain?
    HDC 11.35 27 ...the pilgrims had the preparation of an armed mind, better than any hardihood of body.
    HDC 11.55 19 New plantations and better land had been opened, far and near;...
    HDC 11.56 15 We have among us [says Peter Bulkeley] excess and...pride in apparel, daintiness in diet, and that in those who, in times past, would have been satisfied with bread. This is the sin of the lowest of the people. Better evidence could not be desired of the rapid growth of the settlement [Concord].
    HDC 11.67 18 In 1764, [George] Whitfield preached again at Concord, on Sunday afternoon; Mr. [Daniel] Bliss preached in the morning, and the Concord people thought their minister gave them the better sermon of the two.
    HDC 11.77 3 To you [veterans of the battle of Concord] belongs a better badge than stars and ribbons.
    EWI 11.99 5 We are met to exchange congratulations on the anniversary of an event singular in the history of civilization; a day of reason;...of that which makes us better than a flock of birds and beasts;...
    EWI 11.136 15 It is better to suffer every evil, than to consent to any.
    War 11.160 19 The sublime question has startled one and another happy soul in different quarters of the globe,-Cannot love be, as well as hate? Would not love answer the same end, or even a better?
    War 11.174 4 I regard no longer those names that so tingled in my ear. [The man of principle] is a baron of a better nobility and a stouter stomach.
    War 11.174 10 If peace is sought to be defended or preserved for the safety of the luxurious and the timid, it is a sham, and the peace will be base. War is better...
    FSLN 11.223 20 ...it was the misfortune of his country that with this large understanding [Webster] had not what is better than intellect...
    FSLN 11.226 17 ...a ghastly result of all those years of experience in affairs, this, that there was nothing better for the foremost American man [Webster] to tell his countrymen than that Slavery was now at that strength that they must beat down their conscience and become kidnappers for it.
    FSLN 11.241 23 It is a potent support and ally to a brave man standing single, or with a few, for the right...to know that better men in other parts of the country appreciate the service...
    AsSu 11.248 17 If...Massachusetts could send to the Senate a better man than Mr. Sumner, his death would be only so much the more quick and certain.
    JBB 11.268 22 [John Brown] believes in two articles,-two instruments, shall I say?-the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence; and he used this expression in conversation here concerning them, Better that a whole generation of men, women and children should pass away by a violent death than that one word of either should be violated in this country.
    JBS 11.278 10 ...in Pennsylvania...[John Brown] fell in with a boy...whom he looked upon as his superior. This boy was a slave;...he saw that this boy had nothing better to look forward to in life...
    TPar 11.291 11 I can readily forgive [silence], only not the other, the false tongue which makes the worse appear the better cause.
    ACiv 11.298 17 In every house...the children ask the serious father,-What is the news of the war to-day, and when will there be better times?
    ACiv 11.299 21 There are periods, said Niebuhr, when something much better than happiness and security of life is attainable.
    ACiv 11.303 3 Better the war should more dangerously threaten us...and so...exasperate our nationality.
    ACiv 11.310 7 ...ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.
    ACiv 11.311 4 More and better than the President has spoken shall, perhaps, the effect of this message [proposal for gradual abolition] be...
    ACiv 11.311 6 More and better than the President has spoken shall, perhaps, the effect of this message [proposal for gradual abolition] be,- but...not more or better than he hoped in his heart...
    EPro 11.316 10 These measures [for liberty]...are received into a sympathy so deep as to apprise us that mankind are greater and better than we know.
    EPro 11.318 15 Better is virtue in the sovereign than plenty in the season, say the Chinese.
    SMC 11.363 5 I [George Prescott] told [the West Point officer] I had a good many young men in my company whose mothers asked me to look after them, and I should do so, and not allow them to hear such language, especially from an officer, whose duty it was to set them a better example.
    SMC 11.363 13 [George Prescott's] next point is to keep [his men] cheerful. 'T is better than medicine.
    EdAd 11.392 2 We have a better opinion of the economy of Nature than to fear that those varying phases which humanity presents ever leave out any of the grand springs of human action.
    Wom 11.408 18 ...[women's] fine organization, their taste and love of details, makes the knowledge they give better in their hands.
    Wom 11.408 19 ...there is an art which is better than painting, poetry, music, or architecture...namely, Conversation.
    Wom 11.408 20 ...there is an art...better than botany, geology, or any science; namely, Conversation.
    Wom 11.426 3 The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings. The melioration of manners brought their melioration of course. It could not be otherwise, and hence the new desire of better laws.
    RBur 11.439 22 ...We are here to hold our parliament [the Burns Festival] with love and poesy, as men were wont to do in the Middle Ages. Those famous parliaments might or might not have had more stateliness and better singers than we...but they could not have better reason.
    RBur 11.439 24 ...We are here to hold our parliament [the Burns Festival] with love and poesy, as men were wont to do in the Middle Ages. Those famous parliaments might or might not have had more stateliness and better singers than we...but they could not have better reason.
    RBur 11.442 20 ...[Burns] had that secret of genius to draw from the bottom of society the strength of its speech, and astonish the ears of the polite with these artless words, better than art...
    Scot 11.467 12 What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer.
    FRO2 11.486 10 ...there is a force always at work to make the best better and the worst good.
    FRO2 11.489 8 It is the praise of our New Testament...that no better lesson has been taught or incarnated.
    CPL 11.503 14 ...what omniscience has music! so absolutely impersonal, and yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow reached. Yet to a scholar the book is as good or better.
    FRep 11.511 10 The sailors sail by chronometers that do not lose two or three seconds in a year, ever since Newton explained to Parliament that the way to improve navigation was to get good watches, and to offer public premiums for a better time-keeper than any then in use.
    FRep 11.512 14 The wine-merchant has his analyst and taster, the more exquisite the better.
    FRep 11.513 18 Our sleepy civilization, ever since Roger Bacon and Monk Schwartz invented gunpowder, has built its whole art of war...on that one compound...and reckons Greeks and Romans and Middle Ages little better than Indians and bow-and-arrow times.
    FRep 11.515 18 When the cannon is aimed by ideas...when men die for what they live for...then gods join in the combat; then poets are born, and the better code of laws at last records the victory.
    FRep 11.516 22 The mind is always better the more it is used...
    FRep 11.527 6 ...here that same great body [of the people] has arrived at a sloven plenty...the man...disposed to give his children a better education than he received.
    FRep 11.533 13 We buy much of Europe that does not make us better men;...
    FRep 11.543 2 Happily we are under better guidance than of statesmen.
    FRep 11.543 22 Our helm is given up to a better guidance than our own;...
    PLT 12.6 18 My belief in the use of a course of philosophy is...that [the student] shall see in [the mind] the source of all traditions, and shall see each one of them as better or worse statement of its revelations;...
    PLT 12.8 18 Was it better when we came to the philosophers, who found everybody wrong;...
    PLT 12.14 14 There is something surgical in metaphysics as we treat it. Were not an ode a better form?
    PLT 12.15 26 What but thought...makes us better than cow or cat?
    PLT 12.48 5 Somewhat is to come to the light, and one [talent] was created to fetch it,-a vessel of honor or of dishonor. 'T is of instant use in the economy of the Cosmos, and the more armed and biassed for the work the better.
    PLT 12.54 1 The more the peculiarities are pressed, the better the result.
    PLT 12.59 9 We are passing into new heavens...in thought by our better knowledge.
    PLT 12.62 16 ...Aristotle declares that the origin of reason is not reason, but something better.
    PLT 12.63 14 ...[Socrates] utilized his humanity chiefly as a better eye-glass to penetrate the vapors that baffled the vision of other men.
    II 12.75 20 ...your nature and genius will certainly give your vigilance the slip...and will educate the children by the inevitable infusions of its quality. You will do as you can. Why then cumber yourself about it, and make believe be better than you are?
    Mem 12.91 23 The Past has a new value every moment to the active mind, through the incessant purification and better method of its memory.
    Mem 12.98 7 [The orator] has an old story, an odd circumstance, that illustrates the point he is now proving, and is better than an argument.
    Mem 12.99 23 The mind has a better secret in generalization than merely adding units to its list of facts.
    CInt 12.115 25 [The college] is essentially the most radiating and public of agencies, like, but better than, the light-house...
    CInt 12.116 8 If the colleges were better...we should all rush to their gates;...
    CInt 12.121 25 ...in the class called intellectual the men are no better than the uninstructed.
    CInt 12.125 20 What right have you to be better than your neighbor?
    CInt 12.130 13 ...know that, next to being [intellect's] minister, like Aristotle, and perhaps better than that, is the profound reception and sympathy, without ambition, which secularizes and trades it.
    CL 12.139 9 ...if...we would, manlike, see what grows, or might grow, in Massachusetts...and...ponder the moral secrets which, in her solitudes, Nature has to whisper to us, we were better patriots and happier men.
    CL 12.142 17 Good observers have the manners of trees and animals...and if they add words, 't is only when words are better than silence.
    CW 12.170 12 The gentle deities/ Showed me the love of color and of sounds,/ The innumerable tenements of beauty,/ the miracle of generative force,/ Far-reaching concords of astronomy/ Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds;/ Better, the linked purpose of the whole./
    CW 12.176 15 ...it is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany...by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book.
    Bost 12.191 2 In our beautiful [Boston] bay...a good boatman can...wonder that Governor Carver had not better eyes than to stop on the Plymouth Sands.
    Bost 12.198 1 I do not look to find in England better manners than the best manners here [in New England].
    MAng1 12.219 26 ...to the artist it belongs by a better knowledge of anatomy, and, within anatomy, of life and thought, to acquire the power of true drawing.
    MAng1 12.221 26 There needs no better proof of our instinctive feeling of the immense expression of which the human figure is capable than the uniform tendency which the religion of every country has betrayed towards Anthropomorphism...
    MAng1 12.238 2 Vasari observed that [Michelangelo] did not use wax candles, but a better sort made of the tallow of goats.
    Milt1 12.259 20 ...probably no traveller ever entered that country of history [Italy] with better right to its hospitality [than Milton]...
    Milt1 12.272 6 [Milton] maintained the doctrine of domestic liberty, or the liberty of divorce, on the ground that unfit disposition of mind was a better reason for the act of divorce than infirmity of body...
    Milt1 12.278 5 ...according to Lord Bacon's definition of poetry...Poetry... seeks...to create an ideal world better than the world of experience.
    Milt1 12.279 3 ...are we not the better; are not all men fortified by the remembrance of the bravery...of this man [Milton]...
    ACri 12.284 15 ...the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better;...
    ACri 12.286 21 Look at this forlorn caravan of travellers who wander over Europe dumb...condemned to the company of a courier and of the padrone when they cannot take refuge in the society of countrymen. A well-chosen series of stereoscopic views would have served a better purpose...
    ACri 12.288 3 The short Saxon words with which the people help themselves are better than Latin.
    ACri 12.288 14 ...some men swear with genius. I knew a poet in whose talent Nature carried this freak so far that his only graceful verses were pretty blasphemies. The better the worse, you will say;...
    ACri 12.290 10 The next virtue of rhetoric is compression, the science of omitting, which makes good the old verse of Hesiod, Fools, they did not know that half was better than the whole.
    ACri 12.291 16 Never say, I beg not to be misunderstood. It is only graceful in the case when you are afraid that what is called a better meaning will be taken, and you wish to insist on a worse;...
    ACri 12.291 19 ...a man has a right to pass...for a worse man than he is, but not for a better.
    PD 12.307 3 The tongue is prone to lose the way;/ Not so the pen, for in a letter/ We have not better things to say,/ But surely say them better./
    MLit 12.309 5 In our fidelity to the higher truth we need not disown our debt, in our actual state of culture, in the twilights of experience, to these rude helpers. They keep alive the memory and the hope of a better day.
    MLit 12.311 4 ...[the library of the Present Age] vents...books...which leave no man where they found him, but make him better or worse;...
    WSL 12.338 5 Add to this proud blindness [of John Bull] the better quality of great downrightness in speaking the truth...
    WSL 12.339 3 ...[Landor] delights to throw a clod of dirt on the table, and cry, Gentlemen, there is a better man than all of you.
    WSL 12.343 12 Do not brag of your actions, as if they were better than Homer's verses or Raphael's pictures.
    WSL 12.343 20 Whoever writes for the love of truth and beauty...belongs to this sacred class; and among these, few men of the present age have a better claim to be numbered than Mr. Landor.
    AgMs 12.360 10 The First Report, [Edmund Hosmer] said, is better than the last...
    AgMs 12.361 11 ...our [New England] people...will remove from town to town as...a better farm is to be had...
    EurB 12.370 17 Otto-of-roses is good, but wild air is better.
    PPr 12.382 16 A man's diet should be what is simplest and readiest to be had, because it is so private a good. His house should be better, because that is for the use of hundreds, perhaps of thousands...
    PPr 12.382 24 [A man's] manners,-let them be hospitable and civilizing, so that no Phidias or Raphael shall have taught anything better in canvas or stone;...
    Let 12.394 9 Excellent reasons [the correspondents] have shown why something better should be tried.
    Let 12.396 8 It is not for nothing, we assure ourselves, that our people are busied with these projects of a better social state...
    Let 12.401 24 ...where the divine nature and the artist is crushed...every other planet is better than the earth.
    Let 12.402 24 It may easily happen...that the times must be worse before they are better.
    Trag 12.408 15 After reason and faith have introduced a better public and private tradition, the tragic element is somewhat circumscribed.

better, adv. (145)

    Nat 1.60 26 [The soul]...is a doer, only that it may the better watch.
    AmS 1.82 22 It is one of those fables which out of an unknown antiquity convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods...divided Man into men...just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end.
    AmS 1.89 27 I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit...
    AmS 1.99 18 Those...who dwell and act with him, will feel the force of [the great soul's] constitution in the doings and passages of the day better than it can be measured by any public and designed display.
    MR 1.235 20 ...I should not be pained at a change which threatened a loss of some of the luxuries or conveniences of society, if it proceeded from a preference of the agricultural life out of the belief that our primary duties as men could be better discharged in that calling.
    MR 1.241 22 ...where there is a fine organization, apt for poetry and philosophy, that individual...is better taught by a moderate and dainty exercise...than by the downright drudgery of the farmer and the smith.
    LT 1.274 6 [The wealthy man] entertains [the divine]...lodges him; his religion comes home at night, prays, is...sumptuously laid to sleep; rises...is better breakfasted than he whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem...
    LT 1.277 23 I think the work of the reformer as innocent as other work that is done around him; but when I have seen it near, I do not like it better.
    Con 1.309 10 I cannot then spare you the whole world. I love you better.
    Tran 1.348 15 ...genius is the power to labor better and more availably.
    Tran 1.353 10 That is to be done which [the Transcendentalist] has not skill to do, or to be said which others can say better...
    Tran 1.353 15 Much of our reading, much of our labor, seems mere waiting; it was not that we were born for. Any other could do it as well or better.
    YA 1.379 7 We design it thus and thus; it turns out otherwise and far better.
    Hist 2.29 4 The fact teaches [the child]...how the Pyramids were built, better than the discovery by Champollion of the names of all the workmen and the cost of every tile.
    SR 2.53 26 ...you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.
    SR 2.71 20 I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
    Comp 2.113 2 [The borrower] may soon come to see that he had better have broken his own bones than to have ridden in his neighbor's coach...
    SL 2.133 23 The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues the better we like him.
    SL 2.135 20 [Nature] does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds and wars.
    SL 2.140 1 If we would not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work...of men would go on far better than now...
    SL 2.157 22 If a man know that he can do any thing,--that he can do it better than any one else,--he has a pledge of the acknowledgement of that fact by all persons.
    Fdsp 2.192 22 We talk better [with the commended stranger] than we are wont.
    Fdsp 2.208 23 Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
    OS 2.278 16 We know better than we do.
    Cir 2.315 3 ...it behooves each to see, when he sacrifices prudence, to what god he devotes it; if to ease and pleasure, he had better be prudent still;...
    Art1 2.356 25 When [dancing] has educated the frame...to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten;...
    Exp 3.83 4 I know better than to claim any completeness for my picture.
    Mrs1 3.138 24 I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws than with a sloven and unpresentable person.
    Mrs1 3.150 12 Certainly let [woman] be as much better placed in the laws and in social forms as the most zealous reformer can ask...
    Pol1 3.202 24 ...if question arise whether additional officers or watch-towers should be provided, must not Laban and Isaac, and those who must sell part of their herds to buy protection for the rest, judge better of this, and with more right, than Jacob, who...eats their bread and not his own?
    Pol1 3.207 23 Democracy is better for us, because the religious sentiment of the present time accords better with it.
    NR 3.237 20 [Nature] loves better a wheelwright who dreams all night of wheels...
    UGM 4.13 10 We must not be sacks and stomachs. To ascend one step,-- we are better served through our sympathy.
    UGM 4.15 1 There is a power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can...
    PPh 4.65 23 ...in the Republic [Plato says],--By each of these disciplines a certain organ of the soul is both purified and reanimated...an organ better worth saving than ten thousand eyes...
    ShP 4.212 4 For executive faculty, for creation, Shakspeare is unique. No man can imagine it better.
    NMW 4.247 26 ...it is at all times the belief of society that the world is used up. But Bonaparte knew better than society;...
    NMW 4.247 27 ...Bonaparte knew better than society; and moreover knew that he knew better.
    NMW 4.247 27 I think all men know better than they do;...
    NMW 4.251 3 Believe me, [Bonaparte] said...we had better leave off all these remedies...
    ET1 5.16 13 ...[Carlyle] liked Nero's death, Qualis artifex pereo! better than most history.
    ET4 5.71 22 Their young boiling clerks and lusty collegians [in England] like the company of horses better than the company of professors.
    ET4 5.72 27 ...[the English] boast that they understand horses better than any other people in the world...
    ET4 5.73 4 William the Conqueror being, says Camden, better affected to beasts than to men, imposed heavy fines and punishments on those that should meddle with his game.
    ET5 5.97 17 The pauper [in England] lives better than the free laborer, the thief better than the pauper...
    ET5 5.97 18 The pauper [in England] lives better than the free laborer...and the transported felon better than the one under imprisonment.
    ET8 5.136 7 [The English] like the sayers of No, better than the sayers of Yes.
    ET10 5.155 3 ...Mr. Wortley said, though, in the higher ranks, to cultivate family affections was a good thing, it was not so among the lower orders. Better take [the children] away from those who might deprave them.
    ET11 5.189 13 Against the cry of the old tenantry and the sympathetic cry of the English press, the [English nobility] have rooted out and planted anew, and now six millions of people live, and live better, on the same land that fed three millions.
    ET12 5.211 14 I should readily concede these [physical] advantages...if I did not find also that [Oxford men] read better than we, and write better.
    ET12 5.211 15 I should readily concede these [physical] advantages...if I did not find also that [Oxford men] read better than we, and write better.
    ET13 5.215 1 [Prudent men say] Better find some niche or crevice in this mountain of stone which religious ages have quarried and carved...than attempt anything ridiculously and dangerously above your strength, like removing it.
    ET14 5.246 2 ...[Hallam] lifts himself to own better than almost any the greatness of Shakspeare...
    ET14 5.246 4 ...better than Johnson [Hallam] appreciates Milton.
    ET15 5.270 10 [The London Times's] editors know better than to defend Russia, or Austria...on abstract grounds.
    ET17 5.291 14 ...what is nowhere better found than in England, a cultivated person fitly surrounded by a happy home, with Honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,/ is of all institutions the best.
    ET19 5.310 20 ...these things are not for me to say; these compliments, though true, would better come from one who felt and understood these merits more.
    ET19 5.313 15 I see [England]...with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day...
    F 6.42 5 ...a man likes better to be complimented on his position...than on his merits.
    Pow 6.63 22 The senators who dissented from Mr. Polk's Mexican war were not those who knew better...
    Pow 6.78 1 John Kemble said that the worst provincial company of actors would go through a play better than the best amateur company.
    Pow 6.78 26 Cannot one converse better on a topic on which he has experience, than on one which is new?
    CbW 6.265 23 A man should make life and nature happier to us, or he had better never been born.
    CbW 6.270 21 How to live with unfit companions?--for with such, life is for the most part spent; and experience teaches little better than our earliest instinct of self-defence...
    Ill 6.312 23 [the dreariest alderman] wishes the bow and compliment of some leader in the state or in society; weighs what he says; perhaps he never comes nearer to him for that, but dies at last better contented for this amusement of his eyes and his fancy.
    SS 7.3 17 ...[my new friend's] evident earnestness engaged my attention, and in the weeks that followed we became better acquainted.
    Civ 7.25 11 The skill that pervades complex details;...the very prison compelled to maintain itself...and better still, made a reform school...these are examples of that tendency to combine antagonisms...which is the index of high civilization.
    Elo1 7.77 19 The newspapers, every week, report the adventures of some impudent swindler, who, by steadiness of carriage, duped those who should have known better.
    DL 7.126 5 ...Certainly this was not the intention of Nature, to produce...so cheap and humble a result. The aspirations in the heart after the good and true teach us better...
    Farm 7.149 4 The smaller [the farmer's] garden, the better he can feed it...
    WD 7.163 4 ...we have a pretty artillery of tools now in our social arrangements: we...travel, grind, weave, forge, plant, till and excavate better [than our fathers did].
    Clbs 7.239 18 Hyde, Earl of Rochester, asked Lord-Keeper Guilford, Do you not think I could understand any business in England in a month? Yes, my lord, replied the other, but I think you would understand it better in two months.
    Clbs 7.248 26 ...it was when things went prosperously, and the company was full of honor, at the banquet of the Cid, that the guests all...agreed in one thing,--that they had not eaten better for three years.
    Cour 7.267 2 In every school there are certain fighting boys;...in every town, bravoes and bullies, better or worse dressed...
    Cour 7.274 23 Sacred courage indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world;...
    Suc 7.290 3 ...Nature utilizes misers, fanatics, show-men, egotists, to accomplish her ends; but we must not think better of the foible for that.
    Suc 7.298 26 The owner of the wood-lot finds only a number of discolored trees, and says...they are n't growing any better;...
    Suc 7.305 6 ...if [Sylvina] says [Odoacer] was defeated, why he had better a great deal have been defeated than give her a moment's annoy.
    PI 8.35 26 On the stage, the farce is commonly far better given than the tragedy...
    PI 8.36 12 ...there is entertainment and room for talent in the artist's selection of ancient or remote subjects; as when the poet goes to India, or to Rome, or to Persia, for his fable. But I believe nobody knows better than he that herein he consults his ease rather than his strength or his desire.
    PI 8.46 5 The universality of this taste [for rhyme] is proved by our habit of casting our facts into rhyme to remember them better...
    PI 8.46 13 Sailors can work better for their yo-heave-o.
    PI 8.46 14 Soldiers can march better and fight better for the drum and trumpet.
    PI 8.46 15 Soldiers can march better and fight better for the drum and trumpet.
    PI 8.68 17 The poet should rejoice...if he has so moved us as...to open the eye of the intellect to see farther and better.
    SA 8.85 8 Wait till your affairs go better...
    Elo2 8.125 6 You say, If [the man in the street] could only express himself; but he does already, better than any one can for him...
    QO 8.184 12 ...[the Earl of Strafford] drew all that ran in the author more strictly, and might better judge of his own wants to supply them.
    QO 8.189 6 In literature, quotation is good only when the writer whom I follow goes my way, being better mounted than I, gives me a cast, as we say;...
    QO 8.189 8 In literature, quotation is good only when the writer whom I follow goes my way, being better mounted than I, gives me a cast, as we say; but if I like the gay equipage so well as to go out of my road, I had better have gone afoot.
    QO 8.196 15 ...many men can write better under a mask than for themselves;...
    QO 8.197 23 ...James Hogg...is but a third-rate author, owing his fame to his effigy colossalized through the lens of John Wilson,-who, again, writes better under the domino of Christopher North than in his proper clothes.
    PC 8.217 19 If a man know the laws of Nature better than other men, his nation cannot spare him;...
    PC 8.217 24 If [a man] can converse better than any other, he rules the minds of men...
    PPo 8.251 10 In general what is more tedious than dedications or panegyrics addressed to grandees? Yet in the Divan you would not skip them, since [Hafiz's] muse seldom supports him better...
    Insp 8.293 12 Homer said, When two come together, one apprehends before the other; but it is because one thought well that the other thinks better...
    Grts 8.319 4 These may serve as local examples [of real heroes] to indicate a magnetism which is probably known better and finer to each scholar in the little Olympus of his own favorites...
    Imtl 8.340 10 Salt is a good preserver; cold is: but a truth cures the taint of mortality better...
    Aris 10.51 4 ...if [Will] is not in you, you had better not put yourself in places where not to have it is to be a public enemy.
    Aris 10.57 13 It was objected to Gustavus that he did not better distinguish between the duties of a carabine and a general...
    PerF 10.87 8 If I have not my own respect, I...had better creep into my grave.
    PerF 10.87 11 I admire the sentiment of Thoreau, who said, Nothing is so much to be feared as fear; God himself likes atheism better.
    Chr2 10.100 2 Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better.
    Edc1 10.143 7 Let [the youth]...read Tom Brown at Oxford,-better yet, read Hodson's Life...
    LLNE 10.333 14 [Everett] abounded...even in a sort of defying experiment of his own wit and skill in giving an oracular weight to Hebrew or Rabbinical words;-feats which no man could better accomplish...
    EzRy 10.384 8 Perhaps I cannot better illustrate this tendency [to believe in a particular providence] than by citing a record from the diary of the father of [Ezra Ripley's] predecessor...
    MMEm 10.425 23 ...the bare bones of this poor embryo earth may give the idea of the Infinite far, far better than when dignified with arts and industry...
    SlHr 10.445 1 [Samuel Hoar's] ability lay in the clear apprehension and the powerful statement of the material points of his case. He soon possessed it, and he never possessed it better...
    Thor 10.455 23 In his travels, [Thoreau] used the railroad only to get over so much country as was unimportant to the present purpose, walking hundreds of miles...buying a lodging in farmers' and fishermen's houses... because there he could better find the men and the information he wanted.
    Thor 10.461 20 [Thoreau] could find his path in the woods at night, he said, better by his feet than his eyes.
    Thor 10.463 12 ...Thoreau thought all diets a very small matter, saying that the man who shoots the buffalo lives better than the man who boards at the Graham House.
    Thor 10.471 18 ...none knew better than [Thoreau] that it is not the fact that imports...
    Thor 10.478 14 [Thoreau] thought that without religion or devotion of some kind nothing great was ever accomplished: and he thought that the bigoted sectarian had better bear this in mind.
    EWI 11.100 20 ...[the opponent of slavery] feels that none but a stupid or a malignant person can hesitate on a view of the facts. Under such an impulse...I had almost said, Creep into your grave, the universe has no need of you! But I have thought better: let him not go.
    EWI 11.103 16 Very sad was the negro tradition, that the Great Spirit, in the beginning offered the black man, whom he loved better than the buckra, or white, his choice of two boxes...
    EWI 11.135 2 ...government exists to defend the weak and the poor and the injured party; the rich and the strong can better take care of themselves.
    JBB 11.272 11 If judges cannot find law enough to maintain the sovereignty of the state...it is idle to compliment them as learned and venerable. What avails their learning or veneration? At a pinch, they are no more use than idiots. After the mischance they wring their hands, but they had better never have been born.
    JBB 11.273 4 ...I am detaining the meeting on matters which others understand better.
    JBS 11.277 6 ...the best orators who have added their praise to his fame... have one rival who comes off a little better, and that is JOHN BROWN.
    TPar 11.289 14 One fault [Theodore Parker] had, he...sometimes vexed [his friends] with the importunity of his good opinion, whilst they knew better the ebb which follows unfounded praise.
    Wom 11.410 23 ...man invents and adorns all he does with delays and degrees, paints it all over with forms, to please himself better;...
    Wom 11.411 4 ...how should we better measure the gulf between the best intercourse of men in old Athens, in London, or in our American capitals,- between this and the hedgehog existence of diggers of worms, and the eaters of clay and offal,-than by signalizing just this department of taste or comeliness?
    Wom 11.412 6 The worm its golden woof presents./ Whatever runs, flies, dives or delves/ All doff for [woman] their ornaments,/ Which suit her better than themselves./
    CPL 11.500 12 Henry Thoreau we all remember as a man...known to our farmers as...better acquainted with their forests and meadows and trees than themselves...
    PLT 12.34 6 Each man has a feeling that what is done anywhere is done by the same wit as his. All men are his representatives, and he is glad to see that his wit can work at this or that problem as it ought to be done, and better than he could do it.
    PLT 12.51 12 The horse goes better with blinders...
    II 12.74 11 When a young man asked old Goethe about Faust, he replied, What can I know of this? I ought rather to ask you, who are young, and can enter much better into that feeling.
    Mem 12.91 20 ...a piece of news I hear, has a value at this moment exactly proportioned to my skill to deal with it. To-morrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of knowledge, and use it better.
    Mem 12.92 1 Some fact that had a childish significance to your childhood and was a type in the nursery, when riper intelligence recalls it means more and serves you better as an illustration;...
    Mem 12.98 10 The more [the orator] is heated, the wider he sees; he seems to remember all he ever knew; thus certifying us that he is in the habit of seeing better than other people;...
    Mem 12.101 20 Shall we not on higher stages of being remember and understand our early history better?
    CInt 12.122 19 [A man] looks at all men as his representatives, and is glad to see that his wit can work at that problem as it ought to be done, and better than he could do it;...
    CL 12.166 18 ...the imagination...does not impart its secret to inquisitive persons. Sometimes a parlor in which fine persons are found...answers our purpose still better.
    Bost 12.209 25 As long as [Boston] cleaves to her liberty, her education and to her spiritual faith as the foundation of [material accumulations], she will teach the teachers and rule the rulers of America. Her mechanics, her farmers will toil better;...
    MAng1 12.239 19 ...it is said that when [Michelangelo] left Florence to go to Rome...he turned his horse's head on the last hill from which the noble dome of the cathedral (built by Brunelleschi) was visible, and said, Like you, I will not build; better than you I cannot.
    Milt1 12.254 15 Better than any other [Milton] has discharged the office of every great man, namely, to raise the idea of Man in the minds of his contemporaries and of posterity...
    ACri 12.294 22 Shakespeare's] loom is better toothed, cranked and pedalled than other people's...
    PD 12.307 4 The tongue is prone to lose the way;/ Not so the pen, for in a letter/ We have not better things to say,/ But surely say them better./
    MLit 12.326 4 The fair hearers [says Wieland] were enthusiastic at the nature in this piece [Goethe's journal]; I liked the sly art in the composition...still better.
    MLit 12.332 14 [Goethe] has written better than other poets only as his talent was subtler...
    MLit 12.332 23 ...they have served [humanity] better, who assured it out of the innocent hope in their hearts that a Physician will come, than this majestic Artist [Goethe]...
    AgMs 12.360 21 [Farmers] could not afford to follow such advice as is given here [in the Agricultural Survey]; they have sterner teachers; their own business teaches them better.
    AgMs 12.361 26 ...necessity finds out when to go to Brighton, and when to feed in the stall, better than Mr. [Henry] Colman can tell us.
    Let 12.395 14 Another objection [to Communities] seems to have occurred to a subtle but ardent advocate. Is it, he writes, a too great wilfulness and intermeddling with life,-which is better accepted than calculated?
    Let 12.396 5 The more discontent, the better we like it.

better, n. (7)

    SR 2.46 14 There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction...that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion;...
    Cir 2.318 27 ...that which is made instructs how to make a better.
    ET13 5.222 5 Wellington esteems a saint only as far as he can be an army chaplain: Mr. Briscoll, by his admirable conduct and good sense, got the better of Methodism, which had appeared among the soldiers and once among the officers.
    F 6.11 18 The more of these drones perish, the better for the hive.
    War 11.160 12 The eternal germination of the better has unfolded new powers...
    War 11.167 21 ...chiefly it is said,-Either accept this principle [of peace] for better, for worse, carry it out to the end, and meet its absurd consequences; or else...give up the principle...
    CL 12.143 18 ...De Quincey prefixes to this description of Wordsworth a little piece of advice which I wonder has not attracted more attention. ...if young ladies were aware of the magical transformations which can be wrought in the depth and sweetness of the eye by a few weeks' exercise, I fancy we should see their habits