Improve

Famous quotes containing the word improve:

“The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the infringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.”
—Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792)

“The days to come are a watershed.
You have to improve your portrait of God
To make it plain.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)