"Paltry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... others PROFIT by? I know not; only this I know, If what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. 'Happy,' my brother? First of all, what difference is it whether thou art happy or not! 'Happiness our being's end and aim,' all that very paltry speculation is at bottom, if we will count well, not yet two centuries old in the world" [Footnote: Sartor Resartus: "The Everlasting No" Past and Present: "Happy" Leaving aside this last statement, which is an irrelevant untruth, we probably ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... complications, with the need of exacting certificates of origin on every class of goods, with the need of demanding strict assessment of all commodities brought to their shores—has any nation ever erected the vast and complicated network which would be involved in such a duty, simply for the paltry purpose of imposing a duty of 1 per cent.? I say there is no argument and no reason for such a course, and the only argument which could justify it is the argument used by Dr. Smartt at the Colonial Conference when he said (page 514 of the Blue Book), "The foreigner pays, and we do not." Mr. ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Directory, and in their destitution it seemed enormous. They also accepted with pleasure a hundred of the finest horses in Lombardy to replace, as Bonaparte wrote on sending his present, the ordinary ones which drew their carriages. Was this paltry four million dollars the whole of what was derived from the sequestrations of princely domains and the secularization of ecclesiastical estates? By no means. The army chest, of which none knew the contents but Bonaparte, was as inexhaustible as the widow's cruse. At the opening of the campaign ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... went on. "And you, who could have demanded half a million easily for the information you had, sold out your benefactor and his friends and the decent element on the Street for a paltry hundred thousand! You sold your honor and ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... with the rest of his townsfolk? Did he not excel in all the exercises and accomplishments proper to youth? Was he not beloved, held dear, well seen of all men? You will not deny it. How then could you at the behest of a paltry friar, silly, brutish and envious, bring yourself to deal with him in any harsh sort? I cannot estimate the error of those ladies who look askance on men and hold them cheap; whereas, bethinking them of what they are themselves, and what and how great is the ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
|
