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More "Niggard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Parsimony.— N. parsimony, parcity|; parsimoniousness[obs3], stinginess &c. adj.; stint; illiberality, tenacity. avarice, greed &c. 817a. miser, niggard, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm[obs3], scrimp, lickpenny[obs3], hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer; Hessian [U.S.]; pinch fist, pinch penny. V. be parsimonious &c. adj.; grudge, begrudge, stint, pinch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... compliment with his neighbour is a good thump on the back, and his salutation commonly some blunt curse.] He thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and ill husbandry, from which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse. He is a niggard all the week, except only market-day, where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. His feet never stink so unbecomingly as when he trots after a lawyer in Westminster-hall, and even cleaves the ground with hard scraping in beseeching his ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... dawning notion. Will years of study and observation give us the power to wield the wand at will? We cannot but believe it. Our vast and fertile downs were never destined to be idle and unproductive for months and months, dependent only on the niggard clouds o'erhead. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... being passing strange that she had begun to love him when the last sand of his life was well nigh run out; that wondrous are the ways of the revolving heavens which bestow wealth upon the niggard that cannot use it, wisdom upon the bad man who will misuse it, a beautiful wife upon the fool who cannot protect her, and fertilizing showers upon the stony hills. And thinking over these things, the gallant and ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Government of India have applied themselves with great energy, with fresh activity, and they believe they have got the secret of this fell disaster. They have laid down a large policy of medical, sanitary, and financial aid. I am a hardened niggard of public money. I watch the expenditure of Indian revenue as the ferocious dragon of the old mythology watched the golden apples. I do not forget that I come from a constituency which, so far as I have known it, if it is most generous, is also most prudent. Nevertheless, though ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... with hollow eyes, he tracks the swallows in their flight, and notes that winter is at hand. This is the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II., he whose young wife deserted him, who made for himself alone a hermit-pedant's round of petty cares and niggard avarice and mean-brained superstition. He drew a second consort from the convent, and raised up seed unto his line by forethought, but beheld his princeling fade untimely in the bloom of boyhood. Nothing is left but ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the bard's museum, this the fane To Phoebus sacred, and the Aonian maids: But, oh! it stabs his heart, that niggard fate To him in such small measure should dispense Her better gifts: to him! whose generous soul Could relish, with as fine an elegance, The golden joys of grandeur, and of wealth; He who could tyrannise o'er menial slaves, Or ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... the advice of the old sailor from whom he had gleaned the information he sought, he was enabled to purchase a fine vessel and equip her for sea within the space of a few days. He lavished his gold with no niggard hand, and gold is a wondrous talisman to remove obstacles and facilitate designs. In a word, on the sixth morning after his arrival at Leghorn, Fernand Wagner embarked on board his ship, which was manned with a gallant crew, and carried ten pieces of ordnance. A favoring ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... a list of Republicans appointed by the President to conspicuous office has disproved the charge against the President of niggard partisanship. Although the President would not tolerate a coalition cabinet, he gave to Republicans all manner of opportunities to share in the conduct and the credit of the war. I ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... added that two of the greatest figures in British scientific history, Darwin and Huxley, were among the workers in this fruitful field, it will be admitted that the acknowledgment is not made in any niggard spirit. But we are now concerned with Peron as historian of what related to Terre Naploeon and the surrounding circumstances. Here his statements have been shown to be unreliable. It is probable that he wrote largely from memory; ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... really wonderful: architecture, painting, gardening, all are alike subject to his genius. Be it remembered, that English gardening is the purposed perfectioning of niggard Nature, and that without it England is but a hedge-and-ditch, double-post-and-rail, Hounslow-heath and Clapham-common sort of a country, since the principal forests have been felled. It is, in general, far from a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... by nature a good and affectionate son, but as I took my way into the great world from which I had been so long secluded I could not help remembering that all my misfortunes had flowed like a stream from the niggard economy of my parents in the matter of school luncheons; and I knew of no reason to think ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... graces grant to thee, Since thou art such a niggard of thy grace? O how can graces in thy body be? Where neither they nor pity find a place! . . . Grant me some grace! For thou with grace art wealthy And kindly may'st afford some ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... 1/25th of the heat is blown into the sea; this is but a small proportion, and as there will be a greater waste of heat, if from the existence of scale upon the flues the heat can be only imperfectly transmitted to the water, there cannot be even an economy of fuel in niggard blowing off, while it involves the introduction of other evils. The proportion of 4/33rds of saltness, however, or 16 oz. to the gallon, is larger than is advisable, especially as it is difficult to keep the saltness at a perfectly uniform ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... years or more, but worked his niggard hillside all the day, and seldom came to town. His aged wife was kind; the flowers of her life she gave away, but none could glance upon the garden. She seemed to know when neighbors were ill; hers was the dignity of being indispensable. Many the mother of that region ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... Paradiastole, which therfore nothing improperly we call the Curry-fauell, as when we make the best of a bad thing, or turne a signification to the more plausible sence: as, to call an vnthrift, a liberall Gentleman: the foolish-hardy, valiant or couragious: the niggard, thriftie: a great riot, or outrage, an youthfull pranke, and such like termes: moderating and abating the force of the matter by craft, and for a pleasing purpose, as appeareth by these verses of ours, teaching in what cases it may commendably be ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... my brother Robert. All her little failings would, I know, be a source of irritation to him. If they vex me it is a most pleasurable vexation. I delight to find her at fault; and were I always resident with her, I am aware she would be no niggard in thus ministering to my enjoyment. She would just give me something to do, to rectify—a theme for my tutor lectures. I never lecture Henry, never feel disposed to do so. If he does wrong—and that is very seldom, dear, excellent lad!—a word suffices. Often I do no more than shake my head. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... 90 Where my Love abideth. Sleep's no softer; it proceeds On through lawns, on through meads, On and on, whate'er befall, Meandering and musical, 95 Though the niggard pasturage Bears not on its shaven ledge Aught but weeds and waving grasses To view the river as it passes, Save here and there a scanty patch 100 Of primroses too faint to catch A weary bee. And scarce it pushes Its gentle way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher Flutters ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the regimental routine as a man sits down in a comfortable chair. To others, not a few, all this hustle was an act in a domestic tragedy. Sometimes it was a comedy, as in the case of one man who had built up a "nice little butchering business," snatching his profits from the niggard hand of competition; and now he must go forth to kill men, leaving his rival master in the field of domestic butchery. But the comedies were few, or else I did not come across them, for it was the serious side of this business that impressed me the most. Men caught away from new-found ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... respects be what they may, I will pretend to say, that I have in my own mind those qualities which I praised him for. And if we are to come together, I could for that reason better dispense with them in him.—So if a husband, who has a bountiful-tempered wife, is not a niggard, nor seeks to restrain her, but has an opinion of all she does, that is enough for him: as, on the contrary, if a bountiful-tempered husband has a frugal wife, it is best for both. For one to give, and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... voices of the boatmen, yelling to each other as their wont is, had an uncommon tendency to diffuse themselves in echo. Over all, the heavens had put on their summer blue, in promise of that delicious weather which in the lagoons lasts half the year, and which makes every other climate seem niggard of sunshine and azure skies. I know we have beautiful days at home—days of which the sumptuous splendor used to take my memory with unspeakable longing and regret even in Italy;—but we do not have, week after week, month after ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... was judged and punished in the next-world. No contrast is discoverable between a place of torments and a realm of joy; at the worst but a negative castigation awaited the liar, the coward, or the niggard. The typical belief of the tribes of the United States was well expressed in the reply of Esau Hajo, great medal chief and speaker for the Creek nation in the National Council, to the question, Do the red people believe in a future state of rewards and punishments? "We ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... niggard, the dissatisfied, the passionate, the suspicious, and those who live upon ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... lunch was taken beneath the shade of the nearest tree, or, in case the pickers were boarded by the grower, all adjourned to the largest room in an out-building, where a rural feast was spread with no niggard hand. Hop-pickers expect to live on the fat of the farmer's land, and as a rule they are not disappointed. Whole sheep and beeves vanish like manna before the Israelites in the short three weeks of the picking season, while gallons of coffee, firkins of butter, barrels ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... efface the effect his words had made, but every attempt was rejected with disdain. The King's ministers in Holland had orders to do all they could to thwart the projects of the Prince of Orange, to excite people against him, to protect openly those opposed to him, and to be in no way niggard of money in order to secure the election of magistrates unfavourable to him. The Prince never ceased, until the breaking-out of this war, to use every effort to appease the anger of the King. At last, growing tired, and hoping soon to make his invasion into ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... fought with credit. I have lost my Lord Tatho's navy, but I think Phorenice will see me righted there. If those that are against her took so much trouble to kill my Lord Deucalion before he could come to her aid, I can fancy she will not be niggard in her joy when I put Deucalion safe, if somewhat dented and blood-bespattered, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... are serious, simple qualities which do not show much, and are soon forgotten by those who benefit from them. Had she laughed more, danced more, taken more kindly to the fools and their follies, she might have been acid of tongue and niggard of sympathy; the world would have thought ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... meat to men, and to such men as are every way worthy of life. Let the proudest squire that sits at thy table rise and encounter with me in any honorable point of activity whatsoever, and if he and thou prove me not a man, send me away comfortless. If thou refuse this, as a niggard of thy cates, I will have amongst you with my sword; for rather will I die valiantly, than perish with so cowardly ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... using this word has some confused notion that it comes from negro; whereas it really means niggard. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... to our place, we shall surely get great good of him; and if thou grudge him the banquet do thou bid him and I will entertain him of my monies." Quoth he, "Dost thou know me to be niggardly, that thou sayest this Say?; and quoth she, "Thou art no niggard, but thou lackest tact. Invite him this very night and come not without him. An he refuse, conjure him by the divorce oath and be persistent with him "On my head and eyes," answered he and moulded the ring till he had finished it, after which he passed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... in a valley greene, Spred with Flora summer queene: Where shee heaping all hir graces, Niggard seem'd in other places: Spring it was, and here did spring All that nature ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... from his kindred, from his country's soil, By want enfeebled, and oppress'd by toil, Compelled with slow reluctance to demand The niggard pity of a stranger's hand, And forced, in silent anguish, to abide The sneer of malice, the rebuke of pride: A wretch opprest by sorrow's galling weight, Deplored his ruined peace, his hapless fate. His was such anguish as the guilty know, For self-reproach ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... of the veldt. To the nomadic traveller and man of peace, landmarks as barren and bare as the great ironstone belts of Northern Africa, which constrain the power of the unwilling Nile until she surges in angry cataract through such niggard opening as they will allow her. To the man of war, a veritable Gibraltar; a maze of possibilities in defence; a stupendous undertaking in attack, an undertaking which will brook neither error nor miscalculation, and from which nature has eliminated much of the ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... the scent was so hot that I thought the quarry was mine; but it got away. With Dalliance and Strife the author completes a trilogy upon the Boer War, but here we are given too much flirtation and too little fighting. His liberality in the matter of heroines compensates me not at all for his niggard accounts of the war. That he himself should apparently take more interest in dalliance than in strife seems to indicate sheer perversity, for, when once he has ceased to toy with tennis-teas and trivialities, it is possible to respect ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... rewards the worthless—kings of knaves exalters be; Wealth attends the selfish niggard, and the cloud ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... charitable trusts, and other functions. Thirdly, when the Mass ceased to be said it was secularized completely. Service was held in the church, but the Hospital became a perfectly secular charity, supporting a few almspeople with niggard hand, and a Master in great splendour. Fourthly, it was again treated as a semi-ecclesiastical foundation, for reasons which do not appear. At the same time, while its charities were enlarged, no duties were assigned to the Brothers, who seem to have been considered as Fellows, forming ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... board, than that which gathered to greet the hospitality of Israel Wurm. In the course of the evening, an old Scotch gardener gave it as his opinion that the "miser was fey." (When a man suddenly changes his character, as when a spendthrift becomes saving, or a niggard generous, the Scotch say that he is fey, and consider the change a forerunner ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... her stores: In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green: Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race. Is nature then a niggard of her bliss? Repine we guiltless in a world like this? But our lewd tastes her lawful charms refuse, And painted art's depraved allurements choose. Such Fulvia's passion for the town; fresh air (An odd effect!) gives vapours to the fair; Green fields, and shady groves, and crystal springs, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... fell of the foe he made, Saracen corse upon corse was laid, The field all flowed with the bright blood shed; Roland, to corselet and arm, was red— Red his steed to the neck and flank. Nor is Olivier niggard of blows as frank; Nor to one of the peers be blame this day, For the Franks are fiery to smite and slay. "Well fought," said Turpin, "our barons true!" And he ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... exaggerated, canon in natural history of "Natura non facit saltum." We meet with this admission in the writings of almost every experienced naturalist; or, as Milne Edwards has well expressed it, "Nature is prodigal in variety, but niggard in innovation." Why, on the theory of Creation, should there be so much variety and so little real novelty? Why should all the parts and organs of many independent beings, each supposed to have been separately ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... feasting his retainers with beef and ale, was a niggard to the noble Mehevi!—All along the piazza of the Ti were arranged elaborately carved canoe-shaped vessels, some twenty feet in length, tied with newly made poee-poee, and sheltered from the sun by the broad leaves of the banana. At intervals were ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Mrs. Grantly read, "do not mind him. He was ever quick of speech and rash. Be no niggard with your love. Love cannot hurt you. To deny love is to sin. Obey your heart and you can do no wrong. Obey worldly considerations, obey pride, obey those that prompt you against your heart's prompting, and you do sin. Do not mind your father. He is angry now, as was ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... the money well spent; those who had won would be the more lavish in the spending. They had simply won a few more pleasures. "Quick come; quick go!" sang the whirling wheels. "The niggard in pound and pence is a usurer in happiness; a miser driving a hard bargain with pleasure. Better burn the candle at both ends than not burn it at all! In one case, you get light; in the other nothing but darkness. Laughter is cheap at any price. A castle in the air is ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... vested in the blazonments of rule, Shewed not so kingly to the obeisant sight As was his soul. Who than ye better knew His bravery; his lofty heroism; His purity, and great unselfish heart? Nature in him betrayed no niggard touch Of corporate or ethereal. Yet I yield That men of lesser mould in outward form Have been as great in deeds of rich renown. But then, I take it, greatness lies not in The flesh, but in the spirit. He is great Who from the quick ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... changed,—hath felt the touch of sorrow, No love hath she, no understanding friend; O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow What the poor niggard earth has not to lend; But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend. The tallest flower that skyward rears its head Grows from the common ground, and there must shed Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely, That they should find so base a bridal bed, Who lived in virgin ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... passionately, and we held each other tightly for a moment. I saw come into her eyes that look which comes but once into the eyes of a maid, that look of ineffable self-surrender, of passionate abandonment. Life is niggard of such moments, yet can our lives ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... purvey them steed, And bring them hitherward with speed. Forbear your mirth and rude alarm, For none shall do them shame or harm." "Hear ye his boast?" cried John of Brent, 140 Ever to strife and jangling bent; "Shall he strike doe beside our lodge, And yet the jealous niggard grudge To pay the forester his fee? I'll have my share, howe'er it be, 145 Despite of Moray, Mar, or thee." Bertram his forward step withstood; And, burning in his vengeful mood, Old Allan, though unfit for strife; Laid hand upon his ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... makes him bethink him how he shall shift another day. He prays hotly against fasting, and so he may sup well on Friday nights, he cares not though his master be a puritan. He practices to make the words in his declaration spread as a sewer doth the dishes of a niggard's table; a clerk of a swooping dash is as commendable as a Flanders horse of a large tail. Though you be never so much delayed you must not call his master knave, that makes him go beyond himself, and write ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... through his gloomy forebodings he biassed the actors against the play before they had even seen it, but no sooner had the rehearsals begun in earnest than they warmed to their assigned parts, and in due time admired and revelled in the comedy. Colman, niggard, would risk nothing in the production of the piece, neither in new costumes nor theatrical fittings. He actually held forth disparagingly in his own box-office to those who sent to purchase ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... lord. Fetch a pine torch, Bianca. The old staircase Is full of pitfalls, and the churlish moon Grows, like a miser, niggard of her beams, And hides her face behind a muslin mask As harlots do when they go forth to snare Some wretched soul in sin. Now, I will get Your cloak and sword. Nay, pardon, my good Lord, It is but meet that I should wait on you Who have so honoured ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... martyrized on far-off detachments, or vegetating with friends in the country; the more ambitious, after much private practice, strove to imitate his way of twisting his mustache as he stood before the fire, though with some, to whom nature had been niggard of hirsute honors, it was grasping a shadow and ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Lycinus. All this is not quite like you, who never used to be over-ready with your commendation; you seem to have gone now to the opposite extreme of prodigality, and developed from a niggard into a spendthrift of praise. Do not be ashamed to make alterations in what you have already published, either. They say Phidias did as much after finishing his Olympian Zeus. He stood behind the doors when he had opened them for the first time to let the work be ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... When does he make advances?—He thinks that women should woo him; Yet, if a girl should do so, would be but alarmed and disgusted. She that should love him must look for small love in return,—like the ivy On the stone wall, must expect but rigid and niggard support, and Even to get that must go searching all round with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... took the Heart, and wood on the waste he found, The wood that grew and died, as it crept on the niggard ground, And grew and died again, and lay like whitened bones; And the ernes cried over his head, as he builded his hearth of stones, And kindled the fire for cooking, and sat and sang o'er the roast The song of his fathers of old, and the Wolflings' ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... They gleam through Spenser's elfin dream, And mix in Milton's heavenly theme; And Dryden, in immortal strain, Had raised the Table Round again, But that a ribald king and court Bade him toil on, to make them sport; Demanded for their niggard pay, Fit for their souls, a looser lay, Licentious satire, song, and play; The world defrauded of the high design, Profaned the God-given strength, and ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the burying of an alii,' was the priest's quick reply. 'It is the law. We cannot be niggard with Kahekili and cut his ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... purchase, by coming so far to do him a service. But I think, from what I have seen of him last night, that he is not such a niggard and misanthrope as I was led to believe. He exhibited considerable emotion, despite the monosyllabic greeting, when he shook my hand. If he were a man to feel annoyance at any person coming after him, he would not have received me as he did, nor would he ask me to live with him, but he would have ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Decimation tried To furnish forth the needful tide; And Civil War as vainly shed Her niggard offering ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... complain," was the reply; "I was only thinking of the niggard economy of Nature in building a great big beast like you and not ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... nobly disregarding their differences of creed and country, are of a mind that it is better to give than to receive. That commodity is good advice. We note further that the liberality with which this is everywhere offered is only to be equalled (he means 'to be equalled only') by the niggard reception at most times accorded to the munificent donation; in fact the very goodness of advice given apparently militates against its due appreciation in (by?) the recipient." The critic then proceeds to fit his ipse dixit upon my case. The sense of the sentiment is the reverse of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... is no niggard in accommodating her followers," said the mariner, observing the manner in which the Queen's officer was employed. "Here, you see, the Skimmer keeps room enough for an admiral, in his cabins; and the fellows are berthed ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... who refuse To their own child the honours due, And look ungently on the Muse; But ever shall those cities rue The dry, unyielding, niggard breast, Offering no nourishment, no rest, To that young head which soon shall rise Disdainfully, in might and ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... first home-made party that Collumpsion had ever given; for though during his bachelorhood he had been no niggard of his hospitality, yet the confectioner had supplied the edibles, and the upholsterer arranged the decorations; but now Mrs. Applebite, with a laudable spirit of economy, converted No. 24, Pleasant-terrace, into a perfect cuisine for a week preceding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... her children with; if all the world 720 Should in a pet of temperance feed on Pulse, Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but Freize, Th'all-giver would be unthank't, would be unprais'd, Not half his riches known, and yet despis'd, And we should serve him as a grudging master, As a penurious niggard of his wealth, And live like Natures bastards, not her sons, Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, And strangl'd with her waste fertility; Th'earth cumber'd, and the wing'd air dark't with plumes. 730 The herds would over-multitude ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... see a niggard man, One of the great Macdonald clan; When others are in quest of gain This man the needy will sustain. Your mother, if an honest dame, Has not retained her wedlock fame; No part is Mac from top to toe, You're either Rose or else Munro. When to the house you turned your face, Let it be ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... flame arose, Thy life, my precept,—thy good works, my school. Could my weak pow'rs thy num'rous virtues trace, By filial love each fear should be repress'd; The blush of Incapacity I'd chace, And stand, Recorder of thy worth, confess'd But since my niggard stars that gift refuse, Concealment is the only boon I claim Obscure be still the unsuccessful Muse, Who cannot raise, but would not sink, thy fame, Oh! of my life at once the source and joy! If e'er thy eyes these feeble lines survey, Let not their folly their intent destroy; ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... artist who had drawn a set of Antony and Cleopatra for the Gobelins. The same idea extended to the furniture coverings which ran to this design as well as to the Fables. Thus originated a set familiar to those of us nowadays who covet and who buy the rare old bits that the niggard hand of the past accords to the seeker after ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... to act as a providence, many a time robbing Peter to pay Paul, and stripping the niggard that he might indulge his fervent love of generosity. Of all usurers and bailiffs he had a wholesome horror, and merry was the prank which he played upon the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... by my fate far away from each friend; Ye loved ones, then: ERGO BIBAMUS! With wallet light-laden from hence I must wend, So double our ERGO BIBAMUS! Whate'er to his treasure the niggard may add, Yet regard for the joyous will ever be had, For gladness lends ever its charms to the glad, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and gazed upon his gold, His sweat, his blood, the wage of weary days; But now how sweet, how doubly sweet to hold All gay and gleamy to the campfire blaze. The evening sky was sinister and cold; The willows shivered, wanly lay the snow; The uncommiserating land, so old, So worn, so grey, so niggard in its woe, Peered through its ragged shroud. The lone man sighed, Poured back the gaudy dust into its poke, Gazed at the seething river listless-eyed, Loaded his corn-cob pipe as if to smoke; Then crushed with weariness and hardship crept ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... cloud, or the sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge. Nor does the portrait of a stern, unbending egotist satisfy us when we remember the life-long devotion that existed between him and Dorothy, and the fact that Coleridge loved him, and that Lamb and Scott were his friends. He may have been a niggard of warm-heartedness to the outside world, but it is clear from his biography that he possessed the genius of a good heart as well ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... of these disagreeable sensations, let me prescribe for you patience; and a bit of my cheese. I know that you are no niggard of your good things among your friends, and some of them are in much need of a slice. There, in my eye is our friend Smellie; a man positively of the first abilities and greatest strength of mind, as well as one of the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... was there ever a seventy or a thirty years' peace? or was there even a DAY'S universal peace? except perhaps in China, where they have found out the miserable happiness of a stationary and unwarlike mediocrity. And is all this because nature is niggard or savage? or mankind ungrateful? Let philosophers decide. I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... he spends his money?" interrupted Madame Lecoeur, with much asperity. "He's a miserly niggard, a scurvy fellow, that's what I say! Do you know, mademoiselle, he'd see me die of starvation rather than lend me five francs! He knows quite well that there's nothing to be made out of butter this season, any ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... but every attempt was rejected with disdain. The King's ministers in Holland had orders to do all they could to thwart the projects of the Prince of Orange, to excite people against him, to protect openly those opposed to him, and to be in no way niggard of money in order to secure the election of magistrates unfavourable to him. The Prince never ceased, until the breaking-out of this war, to use every effort to appease the anger of the King. At last, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... lone survivor of that Yesterday— The one of Many whom the withering Gale Hath left unpunished to record their Tale. But who shall hear it? on that barren Sand None comes to stretch the hospitable hand. That shore reveals no print of human foot, Nor e'en the pawing of the wilder Brute; And niggard vegetation will not smile, All sunless ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... nature a good and affectionate son, but as I took my way into the great world from which I had been so long secluded I could not help remembering that all my misfortunes had flowed like a stream from the niggard economy of my parents in the matter of school luncheons; and I knew of no reason ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Shall hear their sea-boys[272] hail it from the mast; When Victory's Gallic column[273] shall but rise, Like Pompey's pillar[274], in a desert's skies, 110 The rocky Isle that holds or held his dust, Shall crown the Atlantic like the Hero's bust, And mighty Nature o'er his obsequies Do more than niggard Envy still denies. But what are these to him? Can Glory's lust Touch the freed spirit or the fettered dust? Small care hath he of what his tomb consists; Nought if he sleeps—nor more if he exists: Alike the better-seeing Shade will smile On the rude cavern[275] of the rocky isle, 120 As if his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... speed. Forbear your mirth and rude alarm, For none shall do them shame or harm." "Hear ye his boast?" cried John of Brent, 140 Ever to strife and jangling bent; "Shall he strike doe beside our lodge, And yet the jealous niggard grudge To pay the forester his fee? I'll have my share, howe'er it be, 145 Despite of Moray, Mar, or thee." Bertram his forward step withstood; And, burning in his vengeful mood, Old Allan, though unfit for strife; Laid hand upon his ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... to see a niggard man, One of the great Macdonald clan; When others are in quest of gain This man the needy will sustain. Your mother, if an honest dame, Has not retained her wedlock fame; No part is Mac from top to toe, You're ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... precept,—thy good works, my school. Could my weak pow'rs thy num'rous virtues trace, By filial love each fear should be repress'd; The blush of Incapacity I'd chace, And stand, Recorder of thy worth, confess'd But since my niggard stars that gift refuse, Concealment is the only boon I claim Obscure be still the unsuccessful Muse, Who cannot raise, but would not sink, thy fame, Oh! of my life at once the source and joy! If e'er thy eyes these ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... me thy belief to be That I was niggard in the other life, It may be from the circle ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... days; But now how sweet, how doubly sweet to hold All gay and gleamy to the campfire blaze. The evening sky was sinister and cold; The willows shivered, wanly lay the snow; The uncommiserating land, so old, So worn, so grey, so niggard in its woe, Peered through its ragged shroud. The lone man sighed, Poured back the gaudy dust into its poke, Gazed at the seething river listless-eyed, Loaded his corn-cob pipe as if to smoke; Then crushed with weariness and hardship crept Into his ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... is shown by that old, but somewhat exaggerated, canon in natural history of "Natura non facit saltum." We meet with this admission in the writings of almost every experienced naturalist; or, as Milne Edwards has well expressed it, "Nature is prodigal in variety, but niggard in innovation." Why, on the theory of Creation, should there be so much variety and so little real novelty? Why should all the parts and organs of many independent beings, each supposed to have been separately created for its own proper place in nature, be so ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... the slight increase of incubating motion to vitality. Victor and Colney had been champion duellists for the rosy and the saturnine since the former cheerfully slaved for a small stipend in the City of his affection, and the latter entered on an inheritance counted in niggard hundreds, that withdrew a briefless barrister disposed for scholarship from the forlornest of seats in the Courts. They had foretold of one another each the unfulfilled; each claimed the actual as the child of his prediction. Victor was to have been ruined ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ivory[128] tare from its sockets' repose. Thy skinny, thy cold, thy visageless mould, Its disgust is untold, and its surface is dim; What a signal of wrack is the wrinkle's dull track, And the bend of the back, and the limp of the limb! Thou leper of fear—thou niggard of cheer— Where glory is dear, shall thy welcome be found? Thou contempt of the brave—oh, rather the grave, Than to pine as the slave that thy fetters have bound. Like the dusk of the day is thy colour of gray, Thou foe of the lay, and thou phantom of gloom; Thou bane of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the Queen, Addison was once more in office, and held his old position of Irish Secretary. In the following year he defended the Whig Government and Whig principles in the Freeholder, a paper published twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his 'civil virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's praise disagrees, it need scarcely be said, with the more minute and veracious description of the King given by Thackeray, but a party politician ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... no niggard in accommodating her followers," said the mariner, observing the manner in which the Queen's officer was employed. "Here, you see, the Skimmer keeps room enough for an admiral, in his cabins; and the fellows are berthed aft, far beyond the fore-mast;—wilt step to the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... against the play before they had even seen it, but no sooner had the rehearsals begun in earnest than they warmed to their assigned parts, and in due time admired and revelled in the comedy. Colman, niggard, would risk nothing in the production of the piece, neither in new costumes nor theatrical fittings. He actually held forth disparagingly in his own box-office to those who sent to purchase tickets for ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... the old sailor from whom he had gleaned the information he sought, he was enabled to purchase a fine vessel and equip her for sea within the space of a few days. He lavished his gold with no niggard hand, and gold is a wondrous talisman to remove obstacles and facilitate designs. In a word, on the sixth morning after his arrival at Leghorn, Fernand Wagner embarked on board his ship, which was manned with a gallant crew, and carried ten pieces of ordnance. A favoring ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... region of shining lights with all confidence and joy. He was rich past his wildest hopes, for the treasure had proved to be far greater than even his fondest dreams had credited; and he knew that when division was made, it would be no niggard portion that would fall to the share of the finder. He had won for himself such goodwill from his kinsfolk as would stand him in good stead in days to come. He had enlarged his scholarship, made for himself a number of friends of all degrees, and, above all, had won the love of his cousin ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Having at last won from his patient leave to depart, he set forth laden with rich gifts. In Scotland, Cardan found the most generous paymasters he had ever met. In recording the niggard treatment which he subsequently experienced at the hands of Brissac, the French Viceroy, he contrasts it with the liberal rewards granted to him in what must then have been the poorest of the European kingdoms;[153] ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... the proud lord of Alberoni afforded to the only surviving branches of his family, when returning to their native city they found their patrimonial estates confiscated, and themselves dependent upon the niggard bounty of a cold and selfish relative. Slowly recovering from a severe wound which he had received in the wars of Lombardy, and disgusted with the ingratitude of the prince he served, the ill-starred Francesco was at first rejoiced to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... tufted hill, Which, were it not for many a mountain nigh Rising in lofty ranks, and loftier still, Might well itself be deemed of dignity, The Convent's white walls glisten fair on high: Here dwells the caloyer, nor rude is he,[21.B.] Nor niggard of his cheer;[150] the passer by Is welcome still; nor heedless will he flee From hence, if he delight kind Nature's sheen ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... lessened by absence from the mountains where first the sentiment was felt. The Highland soldier, far from his country, is accompanied by this holy love, this inexhaustible stimulus to exertion, which induces him to save with what may be unjustly called a niggard hand his earnings, to support, in their old age, those who have given him birth. "I have been," says General Stewart, "a frequent witness of these offerings of filial bounty, and the channel through ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... should woo him; Yet, if a girl should do so, would be but alarmed and disgusted. She that should love him must look for small love in return,—like the ivy On the stone wall, must expect but rigid and niggard support, and Even to get that must go searching all round with her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... in the lower town, especially in the locality of the university. Old Stuler's was filled with smoke, students and tumult. Ill feeling ran high. There were many damaged heads, for the cuirassiers had not been niggard with their sabers. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... dost thou spend Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy? Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend, And being frank she lends to those are free: Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse The bounteous largess given thee to give? Profitless usurer, why dost thou use So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? For having traffic with thy self alone, Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive: Then how when nature calls thee to be gone, What acceptable audit ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... to cleave and hew; Havoc fell of the foe he made, Saracen corse upon corse was laid, The field all flowed with the bright blood shed; Roland, to corselet and arm, was red— Red his steed to the neck and flank. Nor is Olivier niggard of blows as frank; Nor to one of the peers be blame this day, For the Franks are fiery to smite and slay. "Well fought," said Turpin, "our barons true!" And he raised the war-cry, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... mist enshrouds the rocks, Shattered in earth's primeval shocks, And niggard Nature ever mocks The ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... find us a flagon of wine, too, and of the best, I know that," said Burdale. "Come, man, rummage out your stores, you used not to be niggard ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... I, Timon, who alive all living men did hate. Pass by, and curse thy fill; but pass, and stay not here thy gait.' These well express in thee thy latter spirits. Though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs, Scorn'dst our brain's flow, and those our droplets which From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead Is noble Timon, of whose memory Hereafter more. Bring me into your city, And I will use the olive with my sword; Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... punishment after death among the Indians of the New World; but that, while the good are assisted and cared for after death by the 'Master of Breath,' the Creeks believe that the liar, the coward, and the niggard (Vedic sinners par excellence!) are left to shift for themselves in darkness; whereas the Aztecs believed in a hell surrounded by the water called 'Nine Rivers,' guarded by a dog and a dragon; and the great Eastern American tribes believe that after the soul has been for a while in heaven ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... leg, which in addition to its usual functions, would also bend forward at the knee, or had a surprising sidewise joint—and there would be profit, too, if one cared to make a show of it. The greatest niggard on the street would pay two pins ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... regimental routine as a man sits down in a comfortable chair. To others, not a few, all this hustle was an act in a domestic tragedy. Sometimes it was a comedy, as in the case of one man who had built up a "nice little butchering business," snatching his profits from the niggard hand of competition; and now he must go forth to kill men, leaving his rival master in the field of domestic butchery. But the comedies were few, or else I did not come across them, for it was the serious side of this business that impressed me the most. Men caught away ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... have any of these disagreeable sensations, let me prescribe for you patience; and a bit of my cheese. I know that you are no niggard of your good things among your friends, and some of them are in much need of a slice. There, in my eye is our friend Smellie; a man positively of the first abilities and greatest strength of mind, as ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... his pipe declared ironically in the same year that he had found three bad qualities in tobacco, for it made a man a thief (which meant danger), a good fellow (which meant cost), and a niggard ("the name of which is hateful"). "It makes him a theefe," he continued "for he will steale it from his father; a good fellow, for he will give the smoake to a beggar; a niggard, for he will not part with his box to an Emperor!" ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... with love to fix a woman's will: Who ev'ry Sunday morn, to please her sight, Knots up his neck-cloth gay, and hosen white: Who for her pleasure keeps his pockets bare, And half his wages spends on pedlar's ware; When every niggard clown, or dotard old, Who hides in secret nooks his oft told gold, Whose field or orchard tempts with all her pride, At little cost may win her for his bride; Whilst all the meed her silly lover gains Is but the neighbours' jeering for ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... only through the medium of your own beggary; otherwise to him who lays covetousness aside the generous man and miser seem all one. The touchstone can prove which is pure gold, and the beggar can say which is the niggard." He said: "I speak of them from experience; for they station dependants by their doors, and plant surly porters at their gates, to deny admittance to the worthy, and to lay violent hands upon the collars of the elect, and say: 'There is nobody at home'; and verily they tell ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... man much liked and respected on all sides, though his friends would not have been sorry if he had given a dinner more frequently, as his little cellar contained some choice old wine, of which, on such rare occasions he was no niggard. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... his kindred, from his country's soil, By want enfeebled, and oppress'd by toil, Compelled with slow reluctance to demand The niggard pity of a stranger's hand, And forced, in silent anguish, to abide The sneer of malice, the rebuke of pride: A wretch opprest by sorrow's galling weight, Deplored his ruined peace, his hapless fate. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... keeping faith with mortal men: The warrior's weapons fail him; the citizen is buried beneath the ruins of his own penates, when engaged in paying his vows to the gods; another falls from his chariot and dashes out his ardent spirit; the glutton chokes at dinner; the niggard starves from abstinence. Give the dice a fair throw and you will find shipwreck everywhere! Ah, but one overwhelmed by the waves obtains no burial! As though it matters in what manner the body, once it is dead, is consumed: by fire, by flood, by time! Do what you ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... need, Sir Peter," said I, looking him in the eye. "I need your faith in me that I am not by choice a niggard." ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... chasten, then, Lycinus. All this is not quite like you, who never used to be over-ready with your commendation; you seem to have gone now to the opposite extreme of prodigality, and developed from a niggard into a spendthrift of praise. Do not be ashamed to make alterations in what you have already published, either. They say Phidias did as much after finishing his Olympian Zeus. He stood behind the doors when he had opened them for the first time to let the work be seen, and listened to ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Alexandre de Laborde to-day. His conversation is lively and entertaining. Full of general information and good sense, he is no niggard in imparting the results of both to those with whom he comes in contact, and talks fluently, if not always ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... seest that thou affectest him and cometh to our place, we shall surely get great good of him; and if thou grudge him the banquet do thou bid him and I will entertain him of my monies." Quoth he, "Dost thou know me to be niggardly, that thou sayest this Say?; and quoth she, "Thou art no niggard, but thou lackest tact. Invite him this very night and come not without him. An he refuse, conjure him by the divorce oath and be persistent with him "On my head and eyes," answered he and moulded the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... ludicrous Espouses it. But see we sons of day, Off whom Life leans for guidance in our fight, Accept the throb for lord of us; For lord, for the main central light That gives direction, not the eclipse; Or dost thou look where niggard Age, Demanding reverence for wrinkles, whips A tumbled top to grind a wolf's worn tooth; - Hoar despot on our final stage, In dotage of a stunted Youth; - Or it may be some venerable sage, Not having thee awake in him, compact Of wisdom else, the breast's old tempter trips; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... brave, strong, uncomplaining nature in his own house, and remorse tore him fiercely as he recalled how he had persistently discouraged all the poor girl's ambitious efforts to make her way as an artist, not on account of the expense—for Mr. Hardy was not a niggard in that respect—but because he had a false idea concerning the profession. He looked at the girl now as she limped across the floor to her mother, her pale, intellectual face brightened by her love, and her eyes shining with tears at her father's unusual praise. "O God," was the inner cry of Mr. ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... are given anything worth remembering they will not forget it. You may rely on that. They know what each gives—whether freely or with a niggard hand—and each shall be paid back in his own coin. They give freely enough themselves. It is always so with the aristocrats; but they expect an equal generosity in others, which is ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... the first water. Oh, he was no niggard of his crowns, our Emperor! I had a bed-fellow of mine, a brave soldier, who was afterwards promoted to be king. This flattered us; for, if it was not one, it was the other. And so, at this game, your father became count; but, count or not, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of silver beads hanging out. That spectacle would provoke my brother Robert. All her little failings would, I know, be a source of irritation to him. If they vex me it is a most pleasurable vexation. I delight to find her at fault; and were I always resident with her, I am aware she would be no niggard in thus ministering to my enjoyment. She would just give me something to do, to rectify—a theme for my tutor lectures. I never lecture Henry, never feel disposed to do so. If he does wrong—and that is very seldom, dear, excellent lad!—a word suffices. Often I do no more than ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... patient, absorbing dissection of pathologic tissue had not rendered the gloss and glow of a girl's cheek less velvet-soft. On the contrary, the healthy, wholesome flesh, the matured beauty of this mountain maid seemed of more worth than any fame to be wrung from the niggard hands of the Royal Academy. The absorption of the true scientist was completely broken up. "Love is worth while," he said, in answer to himself, "and to serve others the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... multitude of enemies, and he asked himself whom he could choose among the rest. [67] He remembered how his Persians led the sorriest of lives at home owing to their poverty, working long and hard on the niggard soil, and he felt sure they were the men who would most value the life at his court. [68] Accordingly he selected ten thousand lancers from among them, to keep guard round the palace, night and day, whenever he was at home, and to ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... understand, Have thou enough, what thar* thee reck or care *needs, behoves How merrily that other folkes fare? For certes, olde dotard, by your leave, Ye shall have [pleasure] right enough at eve. He is too great a niggard that will werne* *forbid A man to light a candle at his lantern; He shall have never the less light, pardie. Have thou enough, thee thar* not plaine** thee *need **complain Thou say'st also, if that we make us gay With clothing and with precious ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... been in the year 1815 that my father and mother took me with them on either one or two more journeys. The objective points were Cambridge and London respectively. My father had built, under the very niggard and discouraging laws which repressed rather than encouraged the erection of new churches at that period, the church of St. Thomas at Seaforth, and he wanted a clergyman for it.[4] Guided in these matters very much by the deeply religious temper of my mother, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... where God doth reign, There is no chance," she gently said, "For, whether large or small his gain, Here every man alike is paid. No niggard churl our High Chieftain, But lavishly His gifts are made, Like streams from a moat that flow amain, Or rushing waves that rise unstayed. Free were his pardon whoever prayed Him who to save man's soul did vow, Unstinted his bliss, ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... protect us by thy splendor from evil; burn down every ghoul. Let us stand straight that we may walk and live. Find out our worship among the gods. Save us, O Agni, from the sorcerer, save us from mischief, from the niggard. Save us from him who does us harm or tries to kill us, O youngest god with bright splendor! As with a club smite the niggards in all directions, and him who deceives us, O god with fiery jaws. The mortal who makes his weapons very sharp ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... A Greek should be like a mole, visible only at night. 2. He should be a niggard of his speech, and a profligate with his liquor, giving freely, but taking cautiously. 3. He must always deprecate play in public, and pretend an entire ignorance of his game. 4. He must be subtle as the fox, and vary as ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... possible, the idea of your father from your memory. Enough, you know he lives. We know no more. Your mother labours to forget him; her only consolation for sorrows such as few women ever experienced, is her child, yourself, your love. Now be no niggard with it. Cling to this unrivalled parent, who has dedicated her life to you. Soothe her sufferings, endeavour to make her share your happiness; but, of this be certain, that if you raise up the name and memory of your father between your mother and ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... chiefs of British song Scorned not such legends to prolong: They gleam through Spenser's elfin dream, And mix in Milton's heavenly theme; And Dryden, in immortal strain, Had raised the Table Round again, But that a ribald king and court Bade him toil on, to make them sport; Demanded for their niggard pay, Fit for their souls, a looser lay, Licentious satire, song, and play; The world defrauded of the high design, Profaned the God-given strength, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... or Userti, or Saptah. Perhaps the divine neck has not been oiled of late, or too much oiled, or too little oiled, or prayers—or strings—may have gone wrong. Or Pharaoh may have been niggard in his gifts to that college of the great god of his House. Who am I that I should know the ways of gods? That in the temple where I served at Thebes fifty years ago did not pretend to bow or to trouble ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... ideas of culture and freedom. At first, Alexander II. did not hold out any hope of reform. Driven to straits, he busied himself with throwing a sop to public opinion by various small relaxations in administrative matters. They were small enough; and they were given with a niggard hand. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Ye niggard Gods! you make our Lives too long: You fill 'em with Diseases, Wants, and Woes, And only dash 'em with a little Love; Sprinkled by Fits, and with a sparing Hand. Count all our Joys, from Childhood ev'n to Age, They wou'd but make a Day of ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... should marry, you should know whom to choose, being a cosmopolitan as you are; the Hall should be occupied; you are a good and faithful steward, giving to the poor with no niggard hand, and out of your present small income; yes, you should decidedly marry and you should as decidedly have an heir," ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... Amaz'd reading these Words. 'Dumb, (cried he out) naturally Dumb? O ye niggard Powers, why was such a wond'rous Piece of Art left imperfect?' He had many other wild Reasonings upon the lamentable Subject, but falling from these to more calm Reflections, he examined her Note again, and finding by the last Words ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... in using this word has some confused notion that it comes from negro; whereas it really means niggard. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... seemed persons of every rank and condition: some, dressed in all the brilliancy of the mode; others, whose garments bespoke direst poverty. There were women, too, whose costume emulated the classic drapery of the ancients, and who displayed, in their looped togas, no niggard share of their forms; while others, in shabby mourning, sat in obscure corners, not noticing the scene before them, nor noticed themselves. A strange equipage, with two horses extravagantly bedizened with rosettes and bouquets, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... mankind enjoy but half her stores: In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green: Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race. Is nature then a niggard of her bliss? Repine we guiltless in a world like this? But our lewd tastes her lawful charms refuse, And painted art's depraved allurements choose. Such Fulvia's passion for the town; fresh air (An odd effect!) gives vapours to the fair; Green fields, and shady groves, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... betrayed for the laughter of a chambermaid. By an actual Bottom the Weaver our pity might be reached for the sake of his single self-reliance, his fancy and resource condemned to burlesque and ignominy by the niggard doom of circumstance. But is not life one thing and is not art another? Is it not the privilege of literature to make selection and to treat things singly, without the after-thoughts of life, without the troublous completeness ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... auaile you to make any fence for your Orchard, if you be a niggard of your fruit. For as liberality will saue it best from noysome neighbours, liberality I say is the best fence, so Iustice must restraine rioters. Thus when your ground is tempered, squared, and fenced, it is time to ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... precipices and morasses of Iceland to the distant district she had assigned for her place of sepulture. A remarkable incident occurred on the way. The transporters of the body arrived at evening, late, weary, and drenched with rain, in a house called Nether-Ness, where the niggard hospitality of the proprietor only afforded them house-room, without any supply of food or fuel. But, so soon as they entered, an unwonted noise was heard in the kitchen of the mansion, and the figure of a woman, soon recognised to be the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... Has smitten Janasthan and made Asylum safe in Dandak's shade. Enslaved and dull, of blinded sight, Intoxicate with vain delight, Thou closest still thy heedless eyes To dangers in thy realm that rise. A king besotted, mean, unkind, Of niggard hand and slavish mind. Will find no faithful followers heed Their master in his hour of need. The friend on whom he most relies, In danger, from a monarch flies, Imperious in his high estate, Conceited, proud, and passionate; Who ne'er to state affairs attends ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the blazonments of rule, Shewed not so kingly to the obeisant sight As was his soul. Who than ye better knew His bravery; his lofty heroism; His purity, and great unselfish heart? Nature in him betrayed no niggard touch Of corporate or ethereal. Yet I yield That men of lesser mould in outward form Have been as great in deeds of rich renown. But then, I take it, greatness lies not in The flesh, but in the spirit. He is great Who ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... different schemes; he had been reviewer and historian, critic, medical writer, poet, pamphleteer. He had fought endless literary battles; and braved and wielded for years the cudgels of controversy. It was a hard and savage fight in those days, and a niggard pay. He was oppressed by illness, age, narrow fortune; but his spirit was still resolute, and his courage steady; the battle over, he could do justice to the enemy with whom he had been so fiercely engaged, and give a not unfriendly ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... proudest squire that sits at thy table rise and encounter with me in any honorable point of activity whatsoever, and if he and thou prove me not a man, send me away comfortless. If thou refuse this, as a niggard of thy cates, I will have amongst you with my sword; for rather will I die valiantly, than perish with so ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... on us, and whiles she would give us of her store, and that often, and abundantly. We deem also that every time when she came to us our increase became more plenteous, which is well seen by this, that since she hath ceased to come, the seasons have been niggard unto us." ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... of insufficient aid to the poor is niggardliness.—The niggard is thinking all the time of himself, and how he hates to part with what belongs to him. He gives as little as he can; and that little hurts him terribly. This vice cannot be overcome directly. It is a phase of selfishness; and like all forms of selfishness it can be cured only ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... 'luring charms Of phantoms gay, our reason all seduc'd, With pleasure roams thro' endless desarts wild, Enjoys the objects which herself has form'd. And this illusion for some time repairs The want of real joys, which niggard Nature Never has ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... few coins? I spent them all next day On a new chapel on the Eisenthal; There were no choristers but nightingales— No teachers there save bees: how long is this? Have you turned niggard? ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... crowns yon tufted hill, Which, were it not for many a mountain nigh Rising in lofty ranks, and loftier still, Might well itself be deem'd of dignity; The convent's white walls glisten fair on high: Here dwells the caloyer, nor rude is he, Nor niggard of his cheer; the passer-by Is welcome still; nor heedless will he flee From hence, if he delight kind Nature's ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... down to the river. Perhaps the world can show more beauteous sights than the river which runs between Truro and Falmouth, but I have my doubts. Nature here is at the height of her loveliness and spreads her riches with no niggard hand. For the clear water coils its way through a rich countryside, where green woods and rich meadows slope down to the river's bank. Here the flowers come early in the springtime, and scent the air through the summer; and here, too, winter is tardy in making its appearance, as if loth to shrivel ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... and that any law not based on a recognition of this fact was an iniquitous law, but loyal to his friends, his class, his party, and his country; ready to spend and work for his own rights' sake, but no niggard of time or money in larger causes; sincere in his convictions, dauntless in affirming and upholding them, hardly conceiving that honest men could differ from them; strong in his self-confidence, believing that the best men always won, suspecting from the bottom of his heart every appeal to sentiment ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... I forsake my niggard leas, My orchard, too late hoar, And wander over lands and seas To find ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... middle course, Nor, loving praise, rob Judgment of her force. Just his conceptions, natural and great, His feelings strong, his words enforced with weight. Was speech-famed Quin himself to hear him speak, Envy would drive the colour from his cheek; But step-dame Nature, niggard of her grace, Denied the social powers of voice and face. Fix'd in one frame of features, glare of eye, Passions, like chaos, in confusion lie; 1000 In vain the wonders of his skill are tried To form distinctions Nature hath denied. His voice no touch of ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... sea. In addition, there were the three little flotillas on Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Champlain; and a few minor vessels elsewhere. All the crews together did not exceed ten thousand men, replacements included. Yet, even with these niggard means, the American Navy won the command of two lakes completely, held the command of the third in suspense, won every important duel out at sea, except the famous fight against the Shannon, inflicted serious loss on British sea-borne ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... from that balcony. Gazing with hollow eyes, he tracks the swallows in their flight, and notes that winter is at hand. This is the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II., he whose young wife deserted him, who made for himself alone a hermit-pedant's round of petty cares and niggard avarice and mean-brained superstition. He drew a second consort from the convent, and raised up seed unto his line by forethought, but beheld his princeling fade untimely in the bloom of boyhood. Nothing is left but solitude. To the mortmain of the Church reverts ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... parcity^; parsimoniousness^, stinginess &c adj.; stint; illiberality, tenacity. avarice, greed &c 817.1. miser, niggard, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm^, scrimp, lickpenny^, hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer; Hessian [U.S.]; pinch fist, pinch penny. V. be parsimonious &c adj.; grudge, begrudge, stint, pinch, gripe, screw, dole out, hold ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... clouds of ravens o'er the turrets sail. A hardy race who never shrunk from war, The Scott, to rival realms a mighty bar, Here fixed his mountain home;—a wide domain, And rich the soil, had purple heath been grain; But what the niggard ground of wealth denied, From fields more ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... few odds and ends of information. Therefore it was not long before Jerry did hit upon a trade, and it was one thoroughly to his mind. From his boyhood he had been a passionate lover of the open, and Mother Nature had shared her secrets with him in no niggard fashion. ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... was the reply; "I was only thinking of the niggard economy of Nature in building a great big beast like you and not giving him ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... have to say, so far. It has been decided that you shall go, if you are willing, with us to Petersburg the day after to-morrow to see the balloon, and make your report. All your expenses will be paid on the most liberal scale, for the Tsar is no niggard in spending either his own or other people's money, and you will have a handsome fee into the ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... Mayne glideth 90 Where my Love abideth. Sleep's no softer; it proceeds On through lawns, on through meads, On and on, whate'er befall, Meandering and musical, 95 Though the niggard pasturage Bears not on its shaven ledge Aught but weeds and waving grasses To view the river as it passes, Save here and there a scanty patch 100 Of primroses too faint to catch A weary bee. And scarce it pushes Its ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... individual to far greater account had the quantity of books at my disposal been greater; but they were now diminishing rapidly, and as I had no hopes of a fresh supply, I was almost tempted to be niggard of the few which remained. This agent was a Greek bricklayer, by name Johannes Chrysostom, who had been introduced to me by Dionysius. He was a native of the Morea, but had been upwards of thirty-five years ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... he moves with easy mien; Politely on the left he takes his place; The ivory pin is at his girdle seen:— His dress and gait show gentlemanly grace. Why do we brand him in our satire here? 'Tis this—-his niggard soul provokes ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... of nature's architecture of the veldt. To the nomadic traveller and man of peace, landmarks as barren and bare as the great ironstone belts of Northern Africa, which constrain the power of the unwilling Nile until she surges in angry cataract through such niggard opening as they will allow her. To the man of war, a veritable Gibraltar; a maze of possibilities in defence; a stupendous undertaking in attack, an undertaking which will brook neither error nor miscalculation, and from ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... thought of these things. He was content to go straight ahead without looking down those side paths into which so many immature thinkers stray. He had fought at Sedan, had thrown his life with no niggard hand into the balance. When wounded he had cunningly escaped the attentions of the official field hospitals. He might easily have sent in his name to Prussian head-quarters as that of a wounded officer begging to be released on parole. But he cherished ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Milton's or the living bard's are defective in this respect. There is no Sonnet of Milton's on the Restoration of Charles II. There is no Sonnet of Mr. Wordsworth's corresponding to that of 'the poet blind and bold' 'On the late Massacre in Piedmont.' It would be no niggard praise to Mr. Wordsworth to grant that he was either half the man or half the poet that Milton was. He has not his high and various imagination, nor his deep and fixed principle. Milton did not worship the rising sun, nor turn his back on a losing ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of revolutions Maraquita was no niggard. She knew how the thing should be done—well, or not at all. There would be so much for rifles, machine-guns, and what not: and there would be so much for the expense of smuggling them into the country. Then there would be so much to be laid out in corrupting the republican army. Roland brightened ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... this remark is indeed shown by that old but somewhat exaggerated canon in natural history of "Natura non facit saltum." We meet with this admission in the writings of almost every experienced naturalist; or, as Milne Edwards has well expressed it, Nature is prodigal in variety, but niggard in innovation. Why, on the theory of Creation, should this be so? Why should all the parts and organs of many independent beings, each supposed to have been separately created for its proper place in nature, be so commonly linked ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... other scandals that have lived and died, And left the living scandal that shall die— Were dead to him already; bent as he was To make disproof of scorn, and strong in hopes, And prodigal of all brain-labor he, Charier of sleep, and wine and exercise, Except when for a breathing-while at eve, Some niggard fraction of an hour, he ran Beside the river-bank: and then indeed Harder the times were, and the hands of power Were bloodier, and the according hearts of men Seem'd harder too; but the soft river-breeze, Which fann'd the gardens of that rival rose Yet fragrant in a heart remembering His former ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... too low; others protected articles which the interests wanted as free raw materials; a few could be abolished without offending any large interests and with the effect of punishing some small ones that had been niggard in contributing to the "campaign fund" which maintains the standing army of political workers and augments it whenever a battle is on. Accordingly, a revision of the tariff was in progress. To soothe Roebuck, they gave him a tariff schedule ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... become such a niggard? You should have economized when you gave the sasandars[41] something like ten rubles ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... their scenery, can be such near neighbours, that these luxuriant valleys, nestling among the roots of these gigantic hills, are only separated by a narrow expanse of sea from those shores over which nature has strewed, with so niggard a hand, a soil capable of bearing the productions characteristic of the latitudes ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... himself that he may devour himself again? God is the All, you say, who suffices to himself. Eternal he is and shall be, because all that goes forth from him is absorbed by him again, and the great niggard bestows no grain of sand, no ray of light, no breath of wind, without reclaiming it for his household, which is ruled by no design, no reason, no goodness, but by a tyrannical necessity, whose slave he himself is. The coward hides behind ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Ireland ever since Englishmen have controlled her fortunes, be mingled with considerations of mournfulness and peril! It is not merely—and, alas! that such a calamity should have to be treated as of secondary magnitude—it is not merely that the niggard state charity of England is now at once to cease and be entirely withdrawn, but we have to contemplate a still more fearful and far wider-spreading misery at the end of autumn and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... those lands which a niggard nature had apparently condemned to perpetual poverty and obscurity, the principle of reasonable human freedom, without which there is no national prosperity or glory worth contending for, was taking deepest and strongest ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cities who refuse To their own child the honours due, And look ungently on the Muse; But ever shall those cities rue The dry, unyielding, niggard breast, Offering no nourishment, no rest, To that young head which soon shall rise Disdainfully, in might ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... instance incommensurably deep, those with whom they were at war had saved the German blue-jackets at the venture of their lives; Knappe was, besides, far from ungenerous; and I can only explain the niggard figure by supposing it was paid from his own pocket. In one case, at least, it was refused. "I have saved three Germans," said the rescuer; "I will make you a present ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I lead Rob thee of thy daily need Of a whiter soul, or steal What thy lordly prayers reveal? Who could be enriched of thee By such hoard of poverty As thy niggard hand pretends To dole me— thy worst of friends? Therefore shouldst thou pause to bless One indeed who blesses thee: Robbing thee, I dispossess But myself—. ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... mankind enjoy but half her stores: In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green: Pure, gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race. Is Nature then a niggard of her bliss? Repine we guiltless in a world like this? But our lewd tastes her lawful charms refuse, And painted art's depraved allurements choose. Such Fulvia's passion for the town; fresh air (An odd effect!) gives vapours to the fair; Green fields, and shady groves, and crystal ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... excellency?" exclaimed Brunelli, contemptuously. "The Spanish ambassador knows nothing of the art of cookery, or he would not possibly be satisfied with his cook! He is a niggard, a poor fellow, of whom all Rome is speaking to-day, and laughing at him and his master, while they are praising ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... drinks afterwards." If the captain did not set the rum punch flowing with sufficient liberality they would "pay him with their worst Wood," and "commonly" they "had a stock of such" ready for the niggard when he came. Often, indeed, they would give such a one a load of hollow logs "filled with dirt in the middle, and both ends plugg'd up with a piece of the same." But if the captain commanding ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... the contrast between his own and hers; between the niggard spirit of the beggarly receiver, and the high bloom of the exalted giver. Nevertheless, he loved her too well not to share much of her nature, and wedding it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... unlucky comrades, martyrized on far-off detachments, or vegetating with friends in the country; the more ambitious, after much private practice, strove to imitate his way of twisting his mustache as he stood before the fire, though with some, to whom nature had been niggard of hirsute honors, it was grasping a shadow and ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... too cold for me, (He said) and when he gave, he gave unkindly; Informed himself with too precautious strictness Concerning the receiver, not content To leant the want, unless he knew its cause, And measuring out by that his niggard bounty. Thou wilt not thus bestow. So harshly kind Shall Saladin not seem in thee. Thou art not Like the choked pipe, whence sullied and by spurts Flow the pure waters it absorbs in silence. Al-Hafi ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... your own lips and punish your own self; it's only fair;" old lady Chia remarked. Then facing Mrs. Hsueeh, "I'm not a niggard, fond of winning money," she went on to say, "but ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... I have sacrificed to a rigid punctilio of honour the dearest ideas of my heart. I beheld your unrivalled charms, and deeply felt their power. Yet, while a possibility of Melvil's reformation remained, and while I was restrained by my niggard fortune from making a tender worthy of your acceptance, I combated with my inclinations, and bore without repining the pangs of hopeless love. But, now that my honour is disengaged, and my fortune rendered independent, by ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... on its way? And so, my friends, it is my prayer That God will have you in his care." His well-fed saintship said no more, But in their faces shut the door. What think you, reader, is the service, For which I use this niggard rat? To paint a monk? No, but a dervise. A monk, I think, however fat, Must ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... paid the purchase, by coming so far to do him a service. But I think, from what I have seen of him last night, that he is not such a niggard and misanthrope as I was led to believe. He exhibited considerable emotion, despite the monosyllabic greeting, when he shook my hand. If he were a man to feel annoyance at any person coming after him, he would not have received me as he did, nor would he ask me to live with him, but he would have ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... yet addressed myself much to the lower orders in these parts. Indeed the quantity of books, at my disposal, at present remaining unsold in Spain is so small, that I am almost tempted to be niggard of them, lest in an unprovided hour an extraordinary call should be made. However, before leaving Seville, it will be well to pay some attention to the poor. I have an agent awaiting my orders, another Greek, introduced to me by Dionysius; he is a labouring brick-layer, a native of the Morea, ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... draw from Mammon's harpy keeping. Go, lure the tomtit from the twig, Go, coax the tiger from his quarry, The toper from his thirsty swig, The swindler from his schemings sorry: "Persuade" the Sweater to be just, The 'cute Monopolist to be kindly; Tempt hunger to resign his crust, The niggard churl to lavish blindly: Make—by soft words—the ruthless wrecker Subscribe for life-boats, ropes and rockets; Then plump the National Exchequer By willing doles ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... built, whereon to gaze, And sighing, shivering there around to stray; To give a penny would the niggard craze, And worse than bane he hates the ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... No niggard hand it was that found Thy punctual fare, nor short the measure Of garbage brought from miles around And meal that cost its weight in treasure; But ever as the U-boat u'd And lunch grew relatively lighter We filled thee up with wholesome food And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... the one side the Sinner, on the other the Judge. Diabolic—betraying whether we yield to it, or condemn: Here is Gibbon's sneer—if you care for it; but I gather first from the confused paragraphs which conduct to it, the sentences of praise, less niggard than the Sage of Lausanne usually grants to any hero who has confessed the ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... in his fields, the generous returns of the earth, the benignant and favoring skies, tend to make him earnest, provident, and grateful; the education of the market-place makes him querulous, crafty, envious, and an intolerable niggard. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... customary to speak of the natural resources of a country as furnishing a guarantee of material prosperity. But here was a republic almost without natural resources, which had yet supplied by human intelligence and thrift what a niggard nature had denied. Spain was overflowing with unlimited treasure, and had possessed half the world in fee; and Spain was bankrupt, decaying, sinking into universal pauperism. Holland, with freedom of thought, of commerce, of speech, of action, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... grim key of many a rusty smile, For Satire, emptying his corrosive flood On hissing Folly's gas-exhaling brood, The pun, the fun, the moral, and the joke, The hit, the thrust, the pugilistic poke,— Small space for these, so pressed by niggard Time, Like that false matron, known to nursery rhyme,— Insidious Morey,—scarce her tale begun, Ere listening infants weep the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... thousands on the highway lined With little graves; or reach at last their goal Of stunted manhood and embittered age, To brood awhile with dark and troubled mind, Beside the smouldering fire of sullen rage, On life's unfruitful work and niggard wage. Are these the regiments that Freedom rears To serve her cause in coming years? Nay, every life that Avarice doth maim And beggar in the helpless days of youth, Shall surely claim A just revenge, and take it without ruth; And every soul ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Of such a perfect virtue, grace and sweetnes, That Nature was to all our sex beside A niggard, only bountiful to her; One whose harmonious bewtie may intitule All hearts its captive: yet she doats on you With such a masculine fancy that to love her Is duty ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... lonely night on through the dusk they went, On through the empty house of Dis, the land of nought at all. E'en as beneath the doubtful moon, when niggard light doth fall 270 Upon some way amid the woods, when God hath hidden heaven, And black night from the things of earth the colours ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... at the words. "It is in truth great honor to the house of Loring," said she, "yet our roof is now humble and, as you have seen, our fare is plain. The King knows not that we are so poor. I fear lest we seem churlish and niggard ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... friends! I should have something more to say unto you! I should have something more to give unto you! Why do I not give it? Am I then a niggard?— ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... for 5 years, including books, stationery, fuel, and all other expenses, is 7 dollars 2 cents per annum. This system of education is followed in nearly all the States; and while it reflects the highest credit on America, it contrasts strangely with the niggard plan pursued in England, where so important a thing as the education of the people depends almost entirely on precarious subscriptions ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... disposed to be niggard of cheerfulness; for it has always seemed to me that one of the duties of a writer is to supply solace in a world where, amid all the beauty, so many things seem to go wrong. But, while I would fain banish ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... pretences. I'm, he resumed with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of 300 pounds per annum. That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... visible in the New World. Nowhere was any well-defined doctrine that moral turpitude was judged and punished in the next-world. No contrast is discoverable between a place of torments and a realm of joy; at the worst but a negative castigation awaited the liar, the coward, or the niggard. The typical belief of the tribes of the United States was well expressed in the reply of Esau Hajo, great medal chief and speaker for the Creek nation in the National Council, to the question, Do the red people believe in a future state of rewards and punishments? "We have an opinion that those ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... whom the withering Gale Hath left unpunished to record their Tale. But who shall hear it? on that barren Sand None comes to stretch the hospitable hand. That shore reveals no print of human foot, Nor e'en the pawing of the wilder Brute; And niggard vegetation will not smile, All ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... no doors? No firm-set rock Marked field from field by niggard masters held. The very oaks ran honey; the mild flock Brought home ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... Duke of Vanholt's an honourable gentleman, and one to whom I must be no niggard of my ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... she was usually styled, to accompany her, for Pauline was, indeed, very popular in Chowringee and around its vicinity, and her Bungalow was a constant lounge for the gallants of all services. Horace was no niggard in his hospitality, but preferred the ease and comfort of his own sanctum to the gay rattle that was continually going on in his pretty little wife's drawing room or verandahs. And Arthur was again, for a fourth time since his arrival in the country, in Calcutta. ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... by the unhesitating utterance of the implacable "No!" Indeed, in business, the perfection of grit is this power of saying "No," and saying it with such wrathful emphasis that the whole race of vampires and harpies are scared from you counting-room, and your reputation as unenterprising, unbearable niggard is fully established among all borrowers of money never meant to be repaid, and all projectors of schemes intended for the benefit of the projectors alone. At the expense of a little temporary obloquy, a man can thus conquer the right to mind his own business; and having ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... lads were, for the most, scurvy-rotten, I will say they fought with credit. I have lost my Lord Tatho's navy, but I think Phorenice will see me righted there. If those that are against her took so much trouble to kill my Lord Deucalion before he could come to her aid, I can fancy she will not be niggard in her joy when I put Deucalion safe, if somewhat dented and ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... felt the touch of sorrow, No love hath she, no understanding friend; O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow What the poor niggard earth has not to lend; But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend. The tallest flower that skyward rears its head Grows from the common ground, and there must shed Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely, That they should find so base a bridal bed, Who lived in virgin ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... hull of use A wisdom and a meaning which may speak Of spiritual secrets to the ear Of spirit; so, in whatsoe'er the heart Hath fashioned for a solace to itself, To make its inspirations suit its creed, And from the niggard hands of falsehood wring Its needful food of truth, there ever is A sympathy with Nature, which reveals, Not less than her own works, pure gleams of light 30 And earnest parables of inward lore. Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece, As full of gracious youth, and beauty still As ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... am called by my fate far away from each friend; Ye loved ones, then: ERGO BIBAMUS! With wallet light-laden from hence I must wend, So double our ERGO BIBAMUS! Whate'er to his treasure the niggard may add, Yet regard for the joyous will ever be had, For gladness lends ever its charms to the glad, So, brethren, sing: ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the lofty distance? Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? the lonely lichen brighten or pale its lustre with change? Does not the gift of prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? The prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the blue of a midsummer's ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... hospitality of Israel Wurm. In the course of the evening, an old Scotch gardener gave it as his opinion that the "miser was fey." (When a man suddenly changes his character, as when a spendthrift becomes saving, or a niggard generous, the Scotch say that he is fey, and consider the change a forerunner ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... certain person with whom Fate had thrown me into a life-partnership, who bore her poverty with such a smiling sweetness and easy grace, that niggard Fortune relented before her, and, like some savage Ogre in the fairy tales, melted at the constant goodness and cheerfulness of that uncomplaining, artless, innocent creature. However poor she was, all ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... battle must have been mine. This is not merely perceived in retrospect; it was tolerably clear to me even at the time. But the impulse in me was wanting. I could have won, but I did not truly desire to win. I could have given what she asked, but my own heart was a niggard. It was from me more than from her that the restraint came; it was with me to move, and I could not stir. She was lovable, but I did not love her; she had love to give, but I could not ask for it. To marry her was my duty, to seem to desire the marriage my role. There obligation ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... he stepped high, nor can I find it in my heart to begrudge him his day. Cunningly had he clutched a few golden moments from the hoard that Fate, the niggard, guards from us so jealously. To myself I acclaimed him as one to ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... myself alone:"— O man, forget not thou,—earth's honored priest, Its tongue, its soul, its life, its pulse, its heart,— In earth's great chorus to sustain thy part! Chiefest of guests at Love's ungrudging feast, Play not the niggard; spurn thy native clod, And self disown; Live to thy neighbor; live unto thy God; Not ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... not say; but this we are sure of,—the French Catholics, at least, did not harm them, nor disturb their minds merely to corrupt them. The French, they loved. But the stern Presbyterian, with his dogmas and his task-work, the city circle and the college, with their niggard concessions and unfeeling stare, have never tried the experiment. It has not been tried. Our people and our government have sinned alike against the first-born of the soil, and if they are the fated agents of a new era, they ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Oh! you cheat! who turn all into money, who flutter from one extortion to another; may you disgorge as quickly as you have crammed yourself! Then only would I sing, "Let us drink, let us drink to this happy event!"[50] Then even the son of Iulius,[51] the old niggard, would empty his cup with transports of joy, crying, "Io, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... how he spends his money?" interrupted Madame Lecoeur, with much asperity. "He's a miserly niggard, a scurvy fellow, that's what I say! Do you know, mademoiselle, he'd see me die of starvation rather than lend me five francs! He knows quite well that there's nothing to be made out of butter this season, any more than out of cheese and eggs; whereas ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... to book. When Colman had accepted the piece, through his gloomy forebodings he biassed the actors against the play before they had even seen it, but no sooner had the rehearsals begun in earnest than they warmed to their assigned parts, and in due time admired and revelled in the comedy. Colman, niggard, would risk nothing in the production of the piece, neither in new costumes nor theatrical fittings. He actually held forth disparagingly in his own box-office to those who sent to purchase ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... no Sonnet of Milton's on the Restoration of Charles II. There is no Sonnet of Mr. Wordsworth's corresponding to that of 'the poet blind and bold' 'On the late Massacre in Piedmont.' It would be no niggard praise to Mr. Wordsworth to grant that he was either half the man or half the poet that Milton was. He has not his high and various imagination, nor his deep and fixed principle. Milton did not worship the rising sun, nor turn his back on ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... when have you become such a niggard? You should have economized when you gave the sasandars[41] something like ten rubles for ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... other." The emperor without more ado replies: "Fair son, in God's name, say not so. This land and mighty are diverse and contrary. And that man is a slave. Constantinople is wholly yours. You must not hold me a niggard when I would fain give you so fair a boon. Soon will I have you crowned; and a knight shall you be to-morrow. All Greece shall be in your hand; and you shall receive from your barons—as indeed you ought to receive—their ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... Dorothy used great caution in exchanging words and glances, but familiarity with danger breeds contempt for it. So they utilized every opportunity that niggard chance offered, and blinded by their great longing soon began to make opportunities for speech with each other, thereby bringing trouble to Dorothy and deadly peril to John. Of that I shall soon ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... not yet addressed myself much to the lower orders in these parts. Indeed the quantity of books, at my disposal, at present remaining unsold in Spain is so small, that I am almost tempted to be niggard of them, lest in an unprovided hour an extraordinary call should be made. However, before leaving Seville, it will be well to pay some attention to the poor. I have an agent awaiting my orders, another Greek, introduced to me by Dionysius; he ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... ruins, was the sole shelter which the proud lord of Alberoni afforded to the only surviving branches of his family, when returning to their native city they found their patrimonial estates confiscated, and themselves dependent upon the niggard bounty of a cold and selfish relative. Slowly recovering from a severe wound which he had received in the wars of Lombardy, and disgusted with the ingratitude of the prince he served, the ill-starred Francesco ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... he had to take his pannikin and plate round to Teddy's cookhouse to get his food. "Slushy," as the cook was familiarly called, dipped him out a liberal measure of pork and beans, and handed him half a loaf of new-made bread. Jinks was no niggard, and Tresler was always welcome to all ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... dusky band I lead Rob thee of thy daily need Of a whiter soul, or steal What thy lordly prayers reveal? Who could be enriched of thee By such hoard of poverty As thy niggard hand pretends To dole me— thy worst of friends? Therefore shouldst thou pause to bless One indeed who blesses thee: Robbing thee, I dispossess But myself—. Pray ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... take my bags of coin and go. Leave here my jewels and some gold, for I may hear of some stores of grain hoarded by niggard farmers, and may induce them to sell, if not for the love of God, then for the love of gold. Take, too, authority from me, written and sealed with my seal, to sell all my lands and timber, and castles, except this one alone where I must dwell. Send a man, trustworthy ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... every lake and sea and river with their rich burdens of trade, pouring a fabulous and a willing wealth into the coffers of the king. Gold and silver mines will yield their precious stores, while from these niggard natives we will wrest with mighty arm the tribute they so contemptuously deny the weakling curs who snap and snarl at my heels. Grey tower and fortress will guard every inlet, and watch this sheltered coast. In every vale the low chant of ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... unerring rule >From thy example the pure flame arose, Thy life, my precept,—thy good works, my school. Could my weak pow'rs thy num'rous virtues trace, By filial love each fear should be repress'd; The blush of Incapacity I'd chace, And stand, Recorder of thy worth, confess'd But since my niggard stars that gift refuse, Concealment is the only boon I claim Obscure be still the unsuccessful Muse, Who cannot raise, but would not sink, thy fame, Oh! of my life at once the source and joy! If e'er thy eyes these feeble ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... GREEKING. 1. A Greek should be like a mole, visible only at night. 2. He should be a niggard of his speech, and a profligate with his liquor, giving freely, but taking cautiously. 3. He must always deprecate play in public, and pretend an entire ignorance of his game. 4. He must be subtle as the fox, and vary as the well-trained hawk; never showing ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and we held each other tightly for a moment. I saw come into her eyes that look which comes but once into the eyes of a maid, that look of ineffable self-surrender, of passionate abandonment. Life is niggard of such moments, yet can our lives be summed ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... idea extended to the furniture coverings which ran to this design as well as to the Fables. Thus originated a set familiar to those of us nowadays who covet and who buy the rare old bits that the niggard hand of the past accords to the seeker ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... by coming so far to do him a service. But I think, from what I have seen of him last night, that he is not such a niggard and misanthrope as I was led to believe. He exhibited considerable emotion, despite the monosyllabic greeting, when he shook my hand. If he were a man to feel annoyance at any person coming after him, he would not have ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... suppose a region far removed even from such a niggard commerce of life as there was then in the Scottish Highlands. It is sixty miles from the warming salt-wash of the sea, and has winds nearly as cold as those that blow from the Arctic. This is because it stands high, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... But these are serious, simple qualities which do not show much, and are soon forgotten by those who benefit from them. Had she laughed more, danced more, taken more kindly to the fools and their follies, she might have been acid of tongue and niggard of sympathy; the world would have thought her much ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... water. Oh, he was no niggard of his crowns, our Emperor! I had a bed-fellow of mine, a brave soldier, who was afterwards promoted to be king. This flattered us; for, if it was not one, it was the other. And so, at this game, your father became count; but, count or not, he was ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
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