Taste is improved by cultivation. [ Willmott ]

Little opportunities should be improved. [ Fenélon ]

The just season of doing things must be nicked, and all accidents improved. [ L'Estrange ]

Doubtless the world is wicked enough; but it will not be improved by the extension of a spirit which selfrighteously sees more to reform outside of itself than in itself. [ J. G. Holland ]

Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not to talk; when they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous; but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects. [ Johnson ]

Today it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I have never bought cigars with life-belts around them. I early found that those were too expensive for me: I have always bought cheap cigars - reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven, now. Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes; it's seven. But that includes the barrel. I often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people that come have always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is? [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]