Literary notes about mend (AI summary)
The word "mend" in literature often carries a dual significance, oscillating between a literal act of repair and a metaphorical call for improvement. Authors use it to depict the physical restoration of objects or bodily functions, as when characters fix carriages, linens, or broken implements ([1], [2], [3], [4]), while simultaneously employing the term in a figurative sense to urge moral, behavioral, or social reform, urging characters to mend their ways or lives ([5], [6], [7], [8]). This versatility allows writers—from Shakespeare to Austen—to explore themes of regeneration, whether in tangible objects or in the spirit of individuals and communities ([9], [10], [11], [12]).
- At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen.
— from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert - However, I could not manage it, my carriage broke down, and took five hours to mend, so I had to sleep at another posting station.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - A servant came and told me that the wheelwright had arrived, and that he would take four hours to mend my carriage, so I went downstairs.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - Lay carpets and mend clothing and upholstery.
— from Boy Scouts Handbook by Boy Scouts of America - I added a warning whose truth I felt intuitively: "Unless you mend your ways, someday you will be asked to leave this ashram.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda - This so grieved the father that he died; yet, in spite of his mother's tears and prayers, Aladdin did not mend his ways.
— from The Arabian Nights Entertainments by Andrew Lang - For mother's sake I implore you to mend your ways.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - I thought I must endeavour to mend my life; for else, thought I, I am sure to be damned.
— from The Pilgrim's Progress from this world to that which is to come by John Bunyan - Over and beside Signior Baptista’s liberality, I’ll mend it with a largess.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - I have observed, Mrs. Elton, in the course of my life, that if things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.”
— from Emma by Jane Austen - Then disturbances may destroy it, but revolutions cannot mend it: it needs a master, and not a liberator.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Well, words will not mend the matter, and it is time that we were doing.”
— from The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper
